The Phoenicia Times - Follow Up on the News

After some time as acting president, Dakin Morehouse has become president of the museum board, now that Lonnie Gale has officially retired. On a recent tour of the station, Morehouse showed off a special anniversary exhibit of photos, starting with pictures of the first trains to transport tubing enthusiasts from Mt. Pleasant back to Phoenicia after their ride down the Esopus Creek. Other photos show volunteers restoring the interior and exterior of railway coaches in the Phoenicia yard; a saddle steam engine that board member Earl Pardini’s wife bought him as a birthday present some years back; volunteers repairing track washouts from floods, replacing ties, gauging and spiking track.
Several photos depict a line of colorful little railway cars: a Speeder Club in 2007. Speeders, Morehouse explained, are small crew cars used for making repairs. Rarely used nowadays, people have bought them up and formed Speeder Clubs, which rent tracks and cruise around on weekends.
“You can go from Phoenicia to Kingston in a speeder,” Morehouse says, although the trestle at Boiceville and the tracks around the Ashokan Reservoir have to be shored up before they will support the weight of a real train. Plans call for the gradual restoration of those stretches, and Morehouse feels that eventually, “We’ll have one of the finest railroads in the country,” with spectacular reservoir views not accessible from any road.
The museum, a non-profit organization, has a contract with Ulster County, which owns the track bed, to refurbish a specified number of miles of track per year. This schedule has been set back by the need to make repairs since the 2005 flood. With its volunteer work force, the museum’s resources are limited. The Catskill Mountain Railroad is a separate entity that operates the trains as a for-profit business, although it, too, is a volunteer organization.
Morehouse showed off a model of the Phoenicia station and vicinity from the turn of the century, created from railroad blueprints of the period. “My parents and grandparents used to take the trolley from Brooklyn to 42nd Street in Manhattan, where the steamers took off,” he related. “At Kingston Point, the train met the steamer and brought passengers to Phoenicia. Caretakers for the land colonies—Roxmor, Woodland Valley Park Association, Winisook Lodge—would meet the train and bring people to their country homes.”
Besides passengers, trains carried Pennsylvania coal through Phoenicia enroute to Boston. Products shipped to New York City included bluestone curbs, milk, bottled water, lumber, furniture, fresh produce—especially cauliflower—and the mail. “Records from 1913 show over 600,000 people rode the train in one season,” Morehouse said.
He pointed out a display case containing two branching metal objects. “These are called crow’s feet, made of zinc. They were dropped into a beaker of acid to create a battery that ran the teletype.”
Plans call for the battery and teletype to be demonstrated, along with other paraphernalia, in an interactive exhibit in a refurbished boxcar, which currently stands outside the museum, along with several other cars. Once restored, the baggage car will house the model railroads now inside the station, while the caboose will become a library of railroad-related books. First they have to move out the cars and shift the tracks closer to the platform for easier access, explained Morehouse casually, as if moving track were a routine task.
Across the yard is a mini railroad under construction, with fresh 7-1/4-gauge track shining in the sun. (Standard gauge is 56-1/2 inches.) “This is going to be a ride-on railroad,” said Morehouse. “We have someone donating an eight-foot-long coal-fired live steam locomotive.”
Where did Morehouse get his fascination with trains? “I grew up in a railroad town in West Virginia. The railroad yard, which was thirty or forty tracks wide, was between my house and the school. I was often late to school, and I’d crawl through the trains to get there on time. Sometimes we’d ride our bicycles alongside the tracks and race the switch engines. Once the engineer stopped and—” he crooked his finger, showing how the engineer had summoned him. He expected trouble, but instead, “He let me drive the engine! That did it! When I moved up here 35 years ago, I tried my darnedest not to get involved, because I knew I’d get hooked.”
The station has also been a place for community events, such as the annual Christmas party and Santa train ride and a recent book signing by the author of a history of Catskill hotels. (“We sold a mess of books!” Morehouse reported.) Musicians in the Thursday night picking circle now play at the station. A workshop on traditional Catskill music by folksinger Bob Lusk will take place on Wednesday evenings, July 9-30, at a cost of only $40 for four sessions. To register for the workshop, call (845) 338-8587.
Volunteers are always needed to run the museum and gift shop or to help out with trains, tracks, and maintenance. The museum is open on weekends and holidays from Memorial Day through Columbus Day from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. It is located on Lower High Street in Phoenicia. Call (845) 688-7501 for information or to volunteer.

We believe this kind of legal action is called a SLAPP suit and it’s illegal in New York and many other states. SLAPP stands for Strategic Legal Action Against Public Participation and is defined by the law as a proceeding brought for the purpose of harassing, intimidating, punishing or otherwise maliciously inhibiting the free exercise of speech, petition or association rights. This law was passed to protect New Yorkers from those who seek to use the courts, the costs of legal defense, and their superior economic position to intimidate the public, environmental and community activists, and, in this case, the press from commenting on or printing the public’s comments concerning their actions.
The Phoenicia Times and its sister publication The Olive Press are community newspapers which for seven years have provided comprehensive news, editorial and public comment on all the local issues that matters to their readers, including Mr. Gitter’s proposed Belleayre Resort. That project, as most residents of the region know, is the largest and most controversial development ever proposed for the Route 28 corridor, Ulster County, New York City’s West of Hudson Watershed, and the central Catskills region. Because of the depth of our coverage, many regard The Phoenicia Times as a newspaper of record for that project. Many have long used our website as a primary source of information, and to download some of the thousands of pages posted there comprising its lengthy and evolving regulatory history. This action by Mr. Gitter will not in any way alter our commitment to providing the best coverage we can on this matter of significant impact to our community. To the extent Mr. Gitter’s action may be a message to others that they should tread lightly or face the same consequences, we remind them that the right to fair comment was the very first to be protected in our Constitution. We intend to aggressively defend ourselves against Mr. Gitter’s charges, to seek dismissal of the matter, and to counterfile for costs and damages under New York State’s anti-SLAPP Suit Law.
The Phoenicia Times
Brian Powers, Publisher
Paul Smart, Editor
For additional information, contact: Rod Futerfas, Esq., Wapner, Koplovitz, & Futerfas PLLC

Catastrophe!
With all of the ‘For Sale’ signs going up in the area, it’s natural to wonder just how directly related they are to the dramatic shift in the economic landscape within the past year and signs along that trail are alarming at a glance, to say the least and even more so the closer you look. With the dollar shrinking under huge budget and trade deficits, food and fuel prices climbing expeditiously, even moderate income families are reaching limits already breeched by those in less fortunate circumstances as economic forecasters speak of a "foreclosure tsunami" bearing down on us.
Chief Deputy Ulster County Clerk Nina Postupack reports that judgments of foreclosure in the county, from January to June 16th this year, have swelled to 143, compared to 82 in 2007 and the sharply upward trend seems to be just getting started after holding to a reasonably gradual increase since 2003, which, she said, is as far back as the system currently in place would allow her to check. (There were 71 in 2006; 69 in 2005; 70 in 2004 and 65 in 2003.)
For homeowners in Olive, with a pressured reval inflating their properties near the height of the last real estate bubble, the current deflation in true value doesn’t paint a pretty picture but there are much more threatening situations developing which deserve urgent attention. Since national media has been soft-pedaling or ignoring these developments (for reasons which will become apparent), some readers may be as shocked as if NASA suddenly discovered parking tickets on its Mars rovers but the evidence and indications are too abundant and substantial for us to ignore any longer. So, this report will outline them as simply and concisely as space will permit.
Cutting through a forest of financial opinion from experts with vested interests is a bothersome chore for anyone who wants to know what’s really going on and how it is destined to impact our region, so I’m going to distill the views to a few representative examples.
Trends Research Institute is described by The Economist magazine as "a network of 25 experts whose range of specialties would rival many university faculties" and its CEO, Gerald Celente, has a perspective on the current situation widely shared on Wall Street. A Dutchess County resident since 1979, Celente maintains an office in Kingston as part of the firm’s operation which strives "to see where we are, understand how we got here and forecast where we're going and to provide insights and directions to help better prepare for what the future may bring."
"It’s more than the Northeast. This is a global meltdown. Every stock market around the world is involved," Celente said on Monday. "The New York markets started to unravel almost a year ago-July 24th, to be precise-when the subprime problems hit. But, it’s much bigger than subprime; it’s all of these leveraged buy-outs- the Blackstones, the Carlyle Groups, Cerberus (Capital Management LP) that have been buying all these multi-billion dollar companies, Chrysler, Hilton, with virtually no money down. The subprime is an easy one to blame- ‘the little people went in over their heads, hee hee’-but how about all of this commercial development- the malls, office buildings, condominiums? Now you have a credit squeeze and foreclosures are just a part of a huge problem that’s not going to go away. It’s only going to get much worse, actually."
When Celente returned from a trip to South Africa last week, he said he found a notice of a fuel oil delivery on his doorknob and had to wonder "How are people going to afford this? How are elderly people on fixed incomes; people that are living from paycheck to paycheck now- how are they going to be able to make it?"
T old that was the answer being sought by the present phone call, Celente bluntly responded, "They’re not going to...This is what people don’t want to face and they’re not talking about it. ‘Well, maybe things will chanage around.’ Yeah, maybe Santa Claus will come, too... People are not prepared. They’re not standing up, taking precautionary actions. No one is. Every community should be cutting back now. Every community should have contingency plans and they’re not doing it. They don’t want to face it. ‘The future is off limits’ is what it basically comes down to. If there’s a cabinet position that’s missing, it should be, as Kurt Vonnegut said, a Minister of the Future."
Celente wasn’t one to be shocked by Martian parking tickets, as he points out, his Trends Journal newsletter forecast the coming "Panic of ‘08" before the fact and his projections for the near future are as grim as a Diogenes searching for an honest man in the U.S. Senate. Recent trips to Rome and Paris showed him first-hand how swiftly rates of exchange, based on the "petro dollar," are shifting to make up for the loss in value of the American dollar.
"What they’re going to have to do in order to salvage the dollar is raise interest rates," said Celente, reciting a familiar see-saw theory of economics. "They’re going to start doing that after the election and slow down an already slowed down economy even more. When you lower interest rates to juice the economy, you devalue the dollar and that’s part of what got us into this in the first place, following the phoney ‘Dot-com’ bubble burst of 2000. After 9/11 they lowered the interest rates 17 consecutive times, flooding the marketplace with cheap dollars, building on speculation instead of letting the decline of excess take its course. Anybody who thinks these Presidential candidates are coming up with a solution, don’t know the first thing they’re talking about..."
There are other strong indications to suggest that a political solution isn’t in the offing and, more than that, when you look closely at the precise mechanisms which produced the crisis and the deliberate structuring of current situation, a political and economic landscape becomes visible which is infinitely more alarming.
To do that, we’ll need to look at views which diverge from Celente’s on certain key issues, like the allegations that energy and food prices are being driven up by major speculators at the Wall Street casino; allegations that were the subject of hearings by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission last week with New York Mercantile Exchange President James Newsome and others testifying in regard to possible regulation of energy futures markets. An examination of this and other issues will help to explain exactly what is happening to the economy, how and why it’s happening and what we can expect in our future.
As we will see in the second part of this report, when we look at author William Engdahl’s detailed analysis (as representative of a school of thought apart from Celente’s understandably defensive stance as a commodity trader, himself, since 1978), of how the creation of what is now called the "Enron loophole" eight years ago and a crucial change in the way oil is traded has led, deliberately, to today’s situation. We’ll also engage in some obvious and nonpartisan speculation of our own as to where it’s leading us and justify the call of an "alarmist" when an alarm needs to be sounded.

Business of the board included rescinding of the 5-8 middle school plan and election of a new board president and vice president. By a unanimous decision, newly elected board member Ralph Legnini was chosen as the board president. Trustees Michelle Friedel and Rick Wolff nominated Maxanne Resnick as Vice President, but she was defeated by Laurie Osmond, approved by newly elected menbers Donna Flayhan, Ann McGillicuddy, Osmond and Legnini.
Legnini explained in a written statement that board members and the public don’t always have to agree, but everyone’s voice will be heard. He added that he appreciated the school board’s unanimous decision to elect him.
“Considering the divisiveness over the past number of years it was a real nice, classy gesture by everyone,” he said.
In a 5-2 vote, the school board rescinded the middle school plan that would have closed Phoenicia elementary school and create a 5-8 middle school. Legnini, Osmond, Flayhan, Resnick and McGillicuddy all voted in favor of rescinding the plan, with Friedel and Wolff voting against.
The board debated over the last sentence of the resolution that placed the 5-8 option in a moratorium for further discussion. Resnick, who initially voted in favor of the Middle School plan, voted to rescind… but wanted more wording.
“I can support this just so long as it doesn’t preclude that discussion of a five-eight going forward or some of the other things,” she said.
Ford said it was written so it does not prevent anyone from discussing it.
“It indicates that there will be further discussion,” said Ford.
But trustee Flayhan voiced concerns with the wording because they were elected to specifically rescind the plan and move forward.
Trustee Wolff said, “Now we don’t have any plan right now, but as we go forward we don’t know how long it’s going to be; you don’t want the question raised at all?”
Flayhan explained that the subject could still be raised, but feared that the additional sentence was too specific.
“What we want to discuss as a body is all the options, not just this particular configuration,” she explained.
The school board changed the wording of the last sentence to include the 5-8 Middle school plan, along with all other options that will be up for discussion.
In other business, the school board got into a lengthy discussion over the creation and continuation of six committees. The audit committee is state mandated; it’s only current member, Sante Moesle, reminded the board that they must attend the next meeting on July 7th and appoint a chairperson. The facilities, policy, technology, audit, communication and green committees were up for debate.
Flayhan said that too many committees creates a lack of transparency and results in more bureaucracy. Friedel added that when she attended the New York State School board training, she discovered that, “committees can be very controversial, there are pros and cons to each side, as we are finding out.” She said that they should look at what the district needs.
“The reason you have committees is for the board to give committees a charge, look at the goals, look at our policies and come back to us, so we are not overburdened,” Friedel said.
All the committees were eventually approved, but Osmond and Flayhan abstained from the communication committee vote. They were not specifically against the committee but concerned about specific responsibilities, costs of calendars, purposes and newsletters. Wolff explained that former board member Dave Patterson started the communications committee in order to get more information out to people in the district. Flayhan said communication to the public should be the responsibility of hired administrators. Ford said the newsletter began with the communication committee but has become more student centered with the help of administrators.

I don’t even mean stories that they might be saving for their therapists--- tales of obsessive love, days of sorrow and despair, bad nights filled with suicidal thoughts or murderous rages,.
Oh, no, I mean full-on, BIG stories, huge secrets that they have never shared with a soul before. Stories about cheating and binging and lying and more. Stories about bags of stolen money stashed in the basement behind the boiler, or husbands that are secretly gay, or how they are sleeping around, binging on drugs and alcohol, lying to their friends and families. Accounts of spouses who hit them, or spouses they hit. Stories of elderly parents who are being mistreated, or parents who are knocking around their kids,
Stories that, frankly, make me blush, which is no easy feat. Oftentimes I am scared, because the stories come from so deep in the heart, so filled with fear and shame, that I don’t know what to say. I’m not a therapist, and have been known to be greatly unawares, going through my life on only a wing and a prayer.
But when someone tells me one of their secrets, there’s only one thing I know for sure--- I will take these stories to my grave. And I think that’s why people are sharing these anecdotes with me--- because they know I will never, ever tell a soul.
Because I was honest in my memoir, Hats & Eyeglasses, because I told about my own addiction and how horribly it affected my life, and, most importantly, because I admitted that I had never told anyone about my own demons, people feel that they can share anything with me. And because the book is funny, because I made them laugh in between cringing for me, they feel that there might be something lighthearted and utterly human in what I did. They always start off by telling me that what they’re doing is worse than what I did, which I often doubt. But because they cannot see anything remotely humorous in their own stories, it does seem like mine was a combination of the horrific and the hysterical, like Lucy becoming a kleptomaniac or an overeater while at the chocolate factory. Cue up the laugh track!
So people have been emailing and telling me that they are staying up all night for 5 days in a row playing online poker and then walking into the operating room to do surgery, or that they have stolen their kids college fund and put it into a slot machine in the local casino. They stop me at the post office and ask if they can meet me for lunch. I can see the look in their eyes, the furtiveness, the tears welling up. And part of me wants to run away. I'm afraid that their secrets will overwhelm me, that I'll take on their problems as my own. But I don’t run away. I meet them at Bread Alone, and over grilled portobelo mushroom paninis I listen, because I wish that when I was in trouble--- when I was playing poker online and lying and afraid all the time--- that there might have been someone, anyone, that I could have opened up to.
Do I think that would have changed the outcome for me? No, not at all. But I think that it might have moved things along quicker, that I might have stopped earlier than I did, and that when people tell me their dirty little (and big) secrets, it brings them one step closer to stopping the downward spiral of their own lives. I hope that by telling me they are taking the first step to getting help, or telling the truth to their families, or maybe even telling the truth to themselves..
At least that's what I tell myself. So if you see me at the supermarket, please don’t hesitate. I’m dying to know what’s on your mind.
Martha Frankel’s great book, Hats & Eyeglasses: A Family Love Affair With Gambling, is available in bookstores and online... and is a real blast. Get it!

A Declaration Of War?
“I am urging Ulster County residents to stick together and defend Belleayre against unjustified criticism and if they continue, I urge Ulster residents to boycott Hunter and Windham,” Donaldson said at the county legislative offices in Kingston, standing alone despite invitations to his fellow legislators to join him. “It’s all about money… I say we take a stance here in Ulster County.”
Donaldson’s attacks against his neighboring county, and the state, came after he and the legislature were called to the carpet by Coalition to Save Belleayre Chairman Joe Kelly in a June 24 press release for not being supportive enough of its major ski area.
Kelly’s angry missive reacted to news that a bill proposed by state Sen. James Seward to set up a commission to study unfair competitive practice’s on the state’s part in the outdoor recreation industry had passed both the state Assembly and Senate and was awaiting the governor’s signature.
Officials in Greene County have complained that Belleayre and similar facilities have an unfair advantage because they can charge lower prices than private businesses and, thanks to taxpayer funding, not have to worry about losing money.
“The Ulster County Legislature has been totally AWOL on this issue,” wrote Kelly in his call to action aimed directly at Donaldson, Chairman of that body. “The inattention of this county administration to this issue is mind-boggling to me. These governmental officials say tourism is important to the county, but they sit back silently while Greene County relentlessly attacks the biggest attraction in western Ulster County. If they aren’t willing to fight for a property that pulls 200,000 visitors a year across the county from Kingston to Highmount, what will they fight for?”