Back To Large Parcels
Leifeld's Looking Up On Equity Issues After City Drops
Its Assessment Appeal
By Gary Alexander
Olive Supervisor Berndt Leifeld, primed and ready for an Albany
meeting with officials from ORPS (Real Property Tax Service)
on Thursday, March 11 which could have huge ramifications
on the hotly debated Large Parcel bill of 2003, was able to
manage a hopeful smile.
"I think ORPS realizes that they can't just sit on this
number as they have for years," he said. "I don't
know where they got that figure (which values the New York
City Water Department holdings in Olive at $110 million) but
it 's so far off base, it's crazy."
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Our Man In Port-Au-Prince
Staff Photographer Makes His Way To Haiti And Sums
Up What He's Seen
By Paul Smart
Local photographer James Heil, who work has long graced these
pages, says his February 25 flight from LaGuardia to Port-Au-Prince
was pretty empty, with four air marshals on board as security.
"When I arrived at the airport it was pretty much the
same as the last time with many, many taxi drivers still waiting
for journalists coming in... even though there wasn't obviously
anyone coming in," Heil e-mailed on Tuesday, March 2.
"I'm staying in a little guesthouse just two blocks from
the Hotel Oloffson but use the hotel as a base. There are
a lot of low budget journalists and many freelancers here,
some very young and some too old. Only a handful of real professionals
but a lot of them have been to Haiti before because of how
easy and cheap it is to get over here. No journalists have
been hurt but many police and Chime (Aristide's supporters)
and civilians have been shot and killed."
Heil is in his early twenties, fired up about getting started
as a photojournalist. He started taking pictures while doing
community service at the Woodstock Youth Center- after a few
years as "one of those kids" around the Village
Green in the mid to late 1990s, as he once told me. Last winter
he got himself into the SALT program for budding photojournalists
in Portland, ME. Last summer he managed to get Nikon to donate
him a professional camera. Then Apple chipped in a laptop.
Heil made his first trip to Haiti in early February when he
read a report that things were about to descend into revolution.
He took what money he's saved doing construction jobs locally
and flew to Port-Au-Prince, where he found his way to the
Olofsson Hotel, legendary as one of Graham Greene's haunts,
because that's where all the journalists were. But it turns
out he was early, even though he came back with loads of shots
of street violence and the rising sense of discord in the
beleaguered nation's capitol. So he came back to work a few
more weeks and get a credit card, which all the pros told
him he should have. While home in Chichester, he showed what
he had, including shots of a protester shot in the back with
a tear gas canister- and dying. He was jazzed, ready to get
back into it.
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& Photo Gallery >>>
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HOW SWEET IT IS... All around
the Catskills, the recent winter, and current vicissitudes of
Spring, have created what everyone's agreeing should be
a great mapling season. For more photos, see inside on Page
13.
A Bump In The Night
A First-Hand Account Of The Recent Wave Of Vandalism... and
Its Aftermath
By A. Looker (nom de plume)
At 1:58 a.m. by the digital clock on the night table, my wife
and I were awakened by the low register growls of "The
Hero Dog Astérix."
New parents, we are particularly responsive to the slightest
stirring of things in the night.
We listened.
Low register, muffled voices. A metallic yawp. Something
was- breaking?
Deliveries I thought, or malfeasance. This is the quiet
Bed & Breakfast attached to the American General Store in
West Shokan, Town of Olive, New York. This is well-patrolled
Route 28A, along the terror-proofed Ashokan Reservoir of the
great metropolis of New York, New York. Vandalism and break-ins
don't happen here. Milk and egg deliveries happen here.
Continue>>>
Right Living...
How To Start A Literary Magazine
In The Catskills
By Paul Smart
Prima Materia, whose third volume has just hit area bookstores,
as well as such local outlets as Home in Phoenicia, is a literary
journal published out of Mt. Tremper that's more a labor of
love as a pathway to possible riches. The book, which features
writers from the Hudson Valley and Catskills, is serious, beautifully-put-together,
and a work of art in itself. Moreover, it has started to draw
new focus to the creative talents that have made this region
home in recent years, and given it a literary stature that's
fast becoming the envy of other areas around the nation- and
world.
Prima Materia is the creation of Brent Robison, a short-story
writer who was looking to find an outlet for those times when
his fiction writing skills needed to be shelved and replenished
for a spell of time. Yet it's also a project Robison has shared
fully with his wife, Wendy Klein, herself a visual artist of
growing stature and renown, especially for her successful lines
of cutting-edge masks, all made at home.
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