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Follow Up on the
News
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Who’s
That Calling?
While everyone at the well-attended town board meeting supported
the cellular service, many had trouble with the microwave
dish, a technology that is widely believed to generate harmful
rays into the air.
The permit was issued via a unanimous vote of the town board
after all heard a presentation from Verizon Attorney Brian
Matula. Matula said the system will provide lots of coverage
in town, but Verizon is still considering ways to completely
cover Olive.
“It’s designed to cover huge gaps in the town
of Olive coverage,” he said of the technology slated
for the South Mountain tower. “It won’t take care
of all of them but it will improve coverage.”A map he
had showed cellular signal covering much of town, but less
so on the south side near the borders of Rochester and Marbletown.
Matula, an attorney that works for a private firm hired by
Verizon, had no knowledge of Verizon's plans to build a separate
tower at the towns transfer station on Beaverkill Road.
Many in the audience have property near the transfer station
and wanted information as to whether Verizon planned to use
microwave technology at that site. Matula could not say.
Councilman Bruce LaMonda told the audience that Matula was
only present that evening to submit the application for a
permit to build on the South Mountain Tower.
As for the talk of Verizon building at the transfer station
LaMonda said, “We don’t even have a proposal at
this time.”
Matula said that now that the board has approved the application
and granted the permit the matter goes to the town’s
building inspector. Verizon, he said, is ready to begin work
immediately following the Inspectors permission, and he estimates
the system would be operational about one month after getting
permission to build.
Pressed for a more exact timeframe, Matula only said “as
soon as possible” and noted that Verizon must begin
paying Masterpage rent as soon the building permit is issued,
so Verizon has a strong incentive to get the facility operational
and generating revenues quickly.
As a mechanism to prevent the proliferation of towers in town,
Olive’s telecommunications law requires cellular providers
to occupy existing towers. Leifeld is not sure that Verizon
can legally erect their own since the Masterpage structure
is already up. Matula says they can because the Masterpage
tower does not provide coverage to the entire town. He said
if the gaps can’t be covered by installing antennas
on existing facilities, then another tower is allowed.
As many in Olive eagerly await their cellular signal to light
up their phones, most in Shandaken have given up hope.
At this time, after years of preparation and after the project
was designed and approved, the town is now back to square
one, still with little to no cellular communication in town
and no potential providers anywhere in sight.
Just three hours before the Shandaken town board was going
to sign a deal for a long overdue telecommunications tower
project to begin, Masterpage, which held the reigns of the
complicated arrangement, pulled out.
At the April town board session, board members and audience
alike were stunned when Supervisor Robert Cross Jr. read aloud
a letter, faxed to his home at 4 pm that afternoon, from Masterpage
which had a contract to build a tower on town owned land before
May 2007.
Masterpage made the deal with the town a year and half ago
but only got as far as the design phase and receiving approval
for the project from the town planning board. In March Masterpage
owner Kevin Kellarhouse admitted to the town board that he
could not build the tower and asked that the board give the
lease agreement to Homeland Towers, LLC. and extend the deadline
to allow Homeland to construct the facility this year.
The deal fell apart though because, according to Masterpage
Attorney Christopher Buckey of the Albany based firm Whiteman,
Osterman and Hanna, the main tenant slated to rent space on
the tower backed out.
Buckey wrote that Homeland backed out only hours earlier Monday.
“Counsel for Homeland advised us this morning that Homeland
does not intend to move forward with the assignment of the
lease and construction of the telecommunications facility
at the site,” Buckey stated. “ Homeland has based
its decision upon its failure to secure a replacement telecommunications
carrier for the site.”
Cross said that he called Homeland President Manny Vicente,
and was told that Nextel backed out due to project delays
and uncertainty about the projects future.
With the town back at the starting point, resident Mary Herrmann
said that although the town was unsuccessful in attracting
other cellular providers to Shandaken when all this began
four years ago, perhaps it was time to try again.
“It looks like we’ll be heading that way,”
said Cross at the time.
That was April. In mid June there are still no advances.
Political
Season?
These three are on a town board that also has longstanding
members Bruce LaMonda and Helen Chase. Both are Democrats
as well.
Ron Wright, a longstanding town justice, is also seeking another
term. He’s a Democrat too.
According to Rank, who was reached Tuesday, there are no plans
yet for the Democratic caucus, the event where the party’s
rank and file chose which candidates to endorse in the general
election in November. Rank was also unaware of any challengers
to the incumbents with plans to unseat anyone at the caucus.
And the Republicans?
Nothing to say yet, according to Chet Scofield, Chair of the
Olive Republican Committee.
“We’re talking to people,” he added.
Republicans have not set a caucus date.
Political
Season?
The clinic will take place at the office of co-organizer and
acupuncturist Julia Rose, at the Phoenicia Healing Arts Center
on Main Street. Appointments must be made in advance for sessions
in massage therapy, reflexology, acupuncture, homeopathy,
flower essence treatment, or craniosacral therapy, by calling
(845) 688-2323. Those who can’t afford to pay will receive
free treatment, and donations are requested from all other
clients.
Weeks is the founder of Health Care is a Human Right, an umbrella
organization that operates the “suitcase clinics”,
in which practitioners arrive at a site, set up their equipment,
treat clients, and then pack up and leave. “It’s
guerilla medicine,” she said. “We’re part
of a grass-roots effort to change the health care system.
Many working people don’t have health insurance, and
we want to give them access to care. But we also want to change
people’s perceptions of what wellness is and how to
stay healthy.”
A large part of alternative medicine is preventive treatment,
which ends up saving money, said Rose, but many people cannot
afford alternative modalities because they are not covered
by health insurance. “Alternative medicine is actually
cheaper than conventional medicine,” she added. “You
can’t expect to go to a regular doctor and be seen for
an hour for $60.”
Practitioners will donate their time to the clinic and arrange
for follow-up treatments on a sliding scale. The tentative
list of practitioners includes Susan Brown (craniosacral therapy,
which balances body functioning through light touch at selected
points), Vickie O’Dougherty (homeopathy, which treats
the whole system with energetic substances derived from plant,
animal, and mineral sources), Julie Evans (massage), Maha
Golden (flower essences for healing emotional imbalances),
Thurman Greco (reflexology, stimulation of points on the feet
to affect specific parts of the body), Julia Rose (acupuncture,
balancing of energy through the body with the use of fine
sterile needles), and Susan Weeks (homeopathy).
Weeks trained as a physician’s assistant and paramedic
in New York City, She worked in Harlem Hospital and later
in the emergency room at Kingston Hospital, until she felt
that “my very strong ethic to ‘do no harm’
became impossible to reconcile with Western medicine, which
is all about drugs. The health care system is run by the drug
companies. When I was training as a physician’s assistant,
the only education we received about menopause was a film
on hormone replacement therapy [HRT], make by the manufacturers
of HRT drugs! I raised my hand and said, ‘I’m
going through menopause myself, and I’m taking herbs.’
And everyone groaned, ‘Oh, there goes Susan again.’”
In a course on anatomy at New York University, she was among
the students dissecting cadavers, a distancing word she prefers
not to use, substituting the term “donor”. “These
were people who donated their bodies and gave us an incredible
gift. A student from Ghana was out in the hall, crying. He
said he couldn’t be a doctor because he couldn’t
cut into the genitals. A lot of people can’t cut into
hands, faces. I said to him, ‘You will be a great doctor
because you really care about people. You and I will organize
a memorial service for the bodies. We’ll thank them.’
It was an amazing, magical experience for everyone. Someone
wrote a song, students brought flowers, thank-you notes, poems,
which were all cremated with the bodies. These were students
of all different religions and races.”
Weeks and anthropology professor Eugene Harris wrote an article
about the ceremony for the journal Clinical Anatomy (“Human
Gross Anatomy: A Crucial Time to Encourage Respect and Compassion
in Students” by Susan E. Weeks, Eugene E. Harris, and
Warren G. Kinsey, 8:69-79 1995). Today such ceremonies are
held in a number of medical schools around the country, and
the article is required reading in anatomy classes.
She went on to study with master homeopath Joel Kreisberg.
Along with other graduates of the training, she came to realize
that only the wealthy could support a homeopathic practice.
As a group, they considered how to bring their services to
a wider range of clients. One woman wanted to organize a health
fair, but Weeks felt that a single event would not be effective.
“I wanted an ongoing clinic. I think that’s the
only way to help people.”
They created Health Care is a Human Right and approached Family
of Woodstock, where they began to run free clinics, which
are available to all staff and clients of the social service
organization. “We’ve seen a huge difference in
some people’s health,” she reported. “People
come back. We do clinics every three months, and we’d
do them more often if we had more practitioners.”
The expansion to Phoenicia is an effort to reach people living
in the mountains who may not have access to health care. Rose,
who lives in Woodland Valley, is a graduate of the Pacific
College of Oriental Medicine and has practiced acupuncture
in New York City as well as in Phoenicia.
“My original vision is to have a community wellness
center,” she said. “A place where people would
come to hang out, get preventive treatment in both Western
and alternative medicine, have movement and meditation classes,
cook and garden. Payment for treatments would be on a sliding
scale, supplemented by grants and barter—working in
the garden, washing dishes in the café. Because of
the sheer magnitude and cost, I realized we have to start
with a short-term goal, which is to build demand. First we
have to go to communities and treat people, educate people,
introduce them to the different modalities, and build a community
of practitioners.”
Weeks and Rose hope to make the Phoenicia clinic a regular
event. “It all depends on the demand and on funding,”
said Weeks. They are in the process of writing grants for
future support.
Phoenicia’s first alternative medicine clinic will be
held at the Phoenicia Healing Arts Center on Main Street,
Wednesday, June 20, from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Call (845)
688-2323 to make an appointment for a session in massage therapy,
acupuncture, reflexology, flower essence treatment, homeopathy,
or craniosacral therapy. Those who can’t afford to pay
will receive free treatment. Donations are requested from
all other clients.
Field
Campus Changes
Jay Unger’s melody for the song "Ashokan Farewell",
which is coupled with the word "haunting" these
days more than any other melody which springs to mind, came
to him at the end of a summer season at the Ashokan Field
Campus where he and his wife Molly Mason have provided a music
and dance program for almost three decades. When circumstances
threatened to put an end to it last year, Unger and Mason
began a course of action which resulted in Tuesday’s
announcement that the Fiddle & Dance Camp will continue
through the upcoming changes at the Olivebridge retreat. Ironically,
their efforts were fueled by a deep desire NOT to say "farewell"
to the Ashokan location.
"The property is likely to be changing hands around the
1st of the year," observed Tim Neu, Director of the Ashokan
Field Campus, an "outdoor/environmental education center"
operated by Campus Auxiliary Services (CAS) of the State University
of New York at New Paltz which, before last year’s decision
to sell the land, had owned its 365 plus acres since 1955.
"CAS is a not-for-profit corporation contracted by SUNY
New Paltz to provide services to the college like food service,
vending machines, bookstore and the like and we’re run
an outdoor educational program here since 1967. This is our
40th year."
"In March of last year, I wrote to Governor Pataki and
described the situation," recalled Unger. "At the
time, there was another potential buyer and I told him why
we wanted to continue the programs that were going on here.
He was very responsive and put someone on his staff in touch
with us. Through that connection we and Rosemary Nichols,
an attorney in Albany who works with us now, we made contact
with the Open Spaces Institute and arranged a meeting on campus
with CAS, the DEC and DEP, OSI and the Ashokan staff in April.
We had a big hike around the property and from that evolved
the Ashokan Foundation- which Molly and I started, basically
because we needed a non-profit, educational entity to take
it into the future after the college no longer owns it."
A pivot point in the negotiations is the fact that the NYC
DEP is compelled to release periodic spills from the neighboring
Ashokan Reservoir to control water levels and quality and
a certain portion of that spillage runs through campus property.
Open Spaces Institute, established to preserve the scenic
quality of rural life about the same time CAS started its
outdoor program, has agreed to act as a kind of "go-between"
in the DEP’s acquisition of the land with an acknowledgment
that educational and cultural activities will be able to continue
at the site.
Earlier this month, OSI announced a huge land trade with Finch,
Pruyn & Co., a Glen Falls paper manufacturing firm founded
in 1865, exchanging 2,927 acres of commercial timber land
in Essex County that will be "subject to a working forest
conservation easement" for 2,035 acres of non-commercial
forest land.
"My understanding is that Open Spaces is an organization
that steps in to purchase parcels of land that should be preserved
and kept in an environmentally consistent fashion," observed
Unger. "Where there is another buyer in the wings, they
don’t hold the property but can act more quickly to
obtain it while other buyers in general get their act together.
They frequently work with the State of New York and purchase
properties that wind up becoming part of a park system or
the DEC buys property through them. In this case, (New York)
City will own part of it and the Ashokan Foundation will own
part. So, Open Spaces is centrally involved in all the negotiations
and will be the interim purchaser. Eventually, there’ll
be a subdivision and they’ll step back from it at that
point."
The original buildings will have to replaced by new ones on
higher ground, Unger noted, and it is hoped that construction
will commence next Spring.
"We’re looking at technological uses of natural
energy and we plan to put in sustainable, energy efficient
buildings as models for the future while keeping with the
‘camp’ motif," Unger said. "We’ll
be trying to fund raise to increase the dimensions beyond
what’s there now so we can accommodate 150 to 180 people
more comfortably. We’re already working with the staff
to integrate the new goals into the activities. In the future,
we’ll be looking to bring in more arts and environment-oriented
adult programs for the summers and weekends, keeping all the
outdoor environmental education and living history programs
going on weekdays, Fall through Spring.
"The children’s programs already have a large history
and environmental focus to them. They’re called ‘outdoor
education, ostensively, but there’s a lot more to it
and we’ve begun experiments with bringing music and
dance in for academic reasons, with a historic connection
to this region, to the landscape and it’s been very
successful. But the social, spiritual reason is that they
bring people together in a very quick and meaningful way and
we’d like to keep that a hallmark of programs at Ashokan."
The gifted musicians from opposite coasts, Jay from New York
and Molly from Washington State met at a Town Crier gig in
the 1970s and upon occasion afterwards before becoming a team.
Molly played for a while with the house band on the NPR show
PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION as Jay formed a group called Fiddle
Fever after his adventures in Cat Mother and the Newsboys.
"In 1979, I ran a ‘fiddle & dance’ program
in Putnam County that was a very successful teaching camp,"
Unger recalled. "We wanted to do it again but during
the winter, the prime building at the camp burned down and
one of the attendees suggested we look at the Ashokan Field
Campus and took us there in the Spring of 1980. I thought
it might work but it didn’t have the big dance hall
the other camp had and there were some doubts. We decided
to give it a try and it was really magical for us, as a location,
in many ways. This is our 28th summer and, in some respects,
the program has become world-renown."
Many area residents also listen to Jay and Molly’s monthly
live radio program on WMAC FM, DANCING ON THE AIR.
One possible cloud on the horizon might be sketched in an
Olive town resolution passed on May 18th which supports an
earlier and similar resolution by the Catskill Watershed Coalition
(CWC). Designed to oppose the EPA’s proposed Filtration
Avoidance Determination (FAD) of 2007, it doesn’t skimp
on reasons to counter the draft. One passage in Olive’s
resolution, after expressing concern for impediments to future
growth the FAD might impose on Watershed towns, notes that
the City, EPA and NYS Department of Health "have agreed
upon a land acquisition program covering ten years, with plans
to substantially increase the use of land trusts and other
non-governmental organizations to identify and help the City
acquire eligible lands."
Complaining that CWC’s requests to the DEC for certain
modifications in uses of the City’s Land Acquisition
Program that threaten negative impact on Watershed towns have
been thus far ignored, the resolution points out that the
City and towns which signed onto the Memorandum of Agreement
(MOA) which governs their relationship "understood that
the City would not use tax exempt private entities such as
private not-for-profit land trusts to acquire property."
Another passage in the resolution that slaps directly at the
Large Parcel Law, states "based upon the experience from
the existing Land Acquisition Program, it is clear that the
long term impact of a second Land Acquisition Program could
be devastating to the local real property tax base, to community
character and could prevent there being sufficient developable
land to accommodate future growth..."
Another reason for opposition to the 2007 FAD cites DEP regulations
which would make a new privately owned wastewater treatment
plant "cost prohibitive."
Olive councilman Bruce LaMonda elaborated that the town board
was "very disappointed" in Representative Maurice
Hinchey’s recent endorsement of the new 10 -year FAD
draft, saying that the amount of land being purchased by New
York City is an issue that has some worrying that there’ll
soon be nothing left to the Catskills.
"It’s more than the acquisition program,"
LaMonda said. "It’s the economic development program,
the tax disputes, the funding of a lot of different programs
we wouldn’t be able to revisit during that 10 year period
with any leverage. The biggest objection is the length of
time. The City of New York would like everyone to think is
our good neighbor but is actually the neighborhood bully.
With five years negotiating room, at least we can get some
dialogue out there. If it’s a ten-year FAD then they
can just ride roughshod over us for nine years. At the end
of five years we know which programs need expansion or more
funding and what problems arose over the last four years."
Unger, on the other hand, finds that "the DEP has been
incredibly cooperative with the staff at Ashokan, working
out a balance of times the camp is occupied and their need
to release water. There seems to be a lot of mutual respect
involved and we’re real happy about that."
Unger added that the new DEP Commissioner Emily Lloyd "likes
to find sensible, human solutions if at all possible. We have
a lot of confidence in her, so far."
A Jar Of Olives
Summer
Fitness Time...
After Months Putting On, Take It Off Now
I always felt like it was more fun to “cool down”
rather than to “warm up.” Cool breezes, cool
lemonade, and eating outside become the life style of
summer. Olive residents are fortunate to have the Pete
Tosi Memorial Pool at Davis Park in West Shokan. For $50.00
a family or for $35.00 a single can have a summer membership.
Daily rates are only $2.00. It is open now on the weekends
from 11 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. When recreation starts on
July 5, the daily hours are from 4:00 p.m. until 8:00
p.m. Our day campers are fortunate to have the pool as
part of their recreation routine.
Jaimy Sebald is the Pool Director supervising lifeguards:
Jackie Giuditta, Erin Williams, Talia Dibbel, Lindsay
Newkirk, Liz Tong, and Aija and Ivars Opsis. Thinking
back to the leaky, postage-stamp sized, cold pool of yesteryear,
Ingrid Opsis, mom of Aija and Ivars, was the lifeguard
when my own boys went to “Rec.”
Our Recreation Director, Gino Sorbellini, has a valuable
communication system in place. If you call 657-6920, all
the games and events are listed for the day on a recording.
Try it!
I had set two goals for my summer, and I have reached
both of them before summer officially started. I wanted
to keep in shape and unclutter my home. My new four-month
old puppy Diva hastened both of these noble ideals. Diva
has gained six pounds and I lost that much. Just keeping
up with her boundless energy has made me feel like I have
my own four-footed personal trainer. I do dozens of deep
knee bends as I mop up puddles. I do squat thrusts as
I retrieve shoes from under the couch. I do power walks
when we go for the Daily Freeman each morning and to the
stream countless times to play in the water. I do torso
turns as I sweep up the sticks and dirt she drags in.
What I don’t do is sit for five consecutive minutes
because that is the extreme limit of her attention span.
The house has been “puppy proofed” after we
realized the extent of her curiosity. The closet door
is always closed, and all rooms with carpeting have been
hermetically sealed until she is totally housebroken.
The upstairs is barricaded with walls obstacles that she
cannot, yet, climb on. The bathroom door is always shut.
Spinning the toilet paper and running with the liberated
end is her favorite thing. She also likes to “swim”
in the toilet. With hind legs on the floor, she flails
her two front paws until not a drop remains in the bowl.
Then she plays “slip and slide” on the wet
and slippery tile floor. All knick-knacks have been broken
or banished from the living room. The remote controls
to the TV are kept on something four feet high. Shoes,
which we used to slip off to watch television, are now
put away.
So, I begin summer with my body and home more streamlined.
The puppy also reminds me that summer is a time to kick
back and enjoy those few weeks of warm weather. What are
a few chewed sticks and dumped plants in the living room
compared to the world of summer outside? My good friend
Mary Ann Bruck gave me a throw pillow, recently rescued
from the needle sharp jaws of Diva, which says, “Life
is too short for housework.” Good advice!
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