12/20/2007
Same Old…
The county legislature’s current Democratic Majority
Leader Jeanette Provenzano and her supporters failed to
succeed in their challenge to David Donaldson last Wednesday,
December 12, for the post of the lawmaking body’s
chairmanship over the coming year. Peter Kraft of District
3 made the nomination for her challenge. Gary Bischoff
of Saugerties nominated Donaldson, of Kingston, noting
that now was not the time fort shifts in leadership.
Donaldson asked for continued support from the Democrats
during the two years of transition to a charter form of
government and an elected county executive.
Provenzano emphasized harmony with the county’s
minority party.
But after the results of the secret balloting were announced,
it was a victorious Donaldson who spoke of unity.
“Let us work together, and say we can work together,”
he said. “We can respectfully disagree, but we need
to work as a team.”
Provenzano declined a nomination to continue as majority
leader. Second-term legislator Brian Cahill takes over
that role, defeating Hector Rodriguez. Robert Parete of
District 3 will remain as majority whip.
The formal election of a chairman will come at the reorganization
meeting January 2. Provenzano pledged to support the caucus
choice.
Food Kitchens
Area food banks and soup kitchens are experiencing both
a growing demand for emergency food and decreasing supplies.
According to Mark Quandt, executive director of the Regional
Food Bank of Northeastern New York, private donations
aren’t the only thing suffering from an increase
in oil, gas and other recent cost of living spikes; the
numbers of people seeking help have also increased.
The Latham-based Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New
York serves as a conduit between the federal and state
governments, the food industry and local food pantries
in 23 counties, including Ulster. On average, more than
half of the food distributed through local food banks
comes directly through the Regional Food Bank. As has
been reported across the country, local numbers of those
in need have also recently risen sharply.
“We’re seeing an increase in requests for
food pretty substantially,” said Peter Quinlan,
director of People’s Place, a food pantry and thrift
store on Broadway in Kingston. “Earlier this fall,
I compared our numbers with past years. The numbers [of
those in need] are basically trending up, which isn’t
a surprise considering the economy.”
In 2006, People’s Place served 1,556 people in 424
families during Thanksgiving. This year that number jumped
to 1,801 people in 481 families.
But, while the numbers of people in need are rising, the
ease of filling that need has been on a steady decline.
According to Quandt, the Regional Food Bank is seeing
a decrease in donations from two of its greatest suppliers,
food retailers and manufacturers and the federal Department
of Agriculture’s (USDA) Bonus Commodity Program,
which buys surplus goods from farmers and redistributes
it through food banks across the country.
According to Quandt, food donated from retailers and manufacturers
is often surplus goods, or usable food that can no longer
be sold. He said modern inventory techniques are causing
the number of surplus food items to dwindle.
Supplies from the USDA have also dropped, primarily because
farmers are having a good year with less surplus items
to sell at discount to the federal government. In 2006,
federal supplies from the surplus program were valued
at $67 million, down from $154.3 million in 2005, and
$233 million in 2004.
On the good side, though, is an increase of $5 million
in funding to the state’s Hunger Prevention and
Nutrition Assistance Program announced by Gov. Elliott
Spitzer’s office on Nov. 21 will help food banks,
food pantries, soup kitchens and emergency shelters across
New York during the holidays. Also, an increase in the
federal Emergency Food Assistance Program from $140 million
to $250 million approved by Congress for the 2008 budget
is currently before the Senate and, if passed and signed
into law, would also help right the ship over the next
year. The federal program is responsible for the distribution
of USDA commodities to state food banks.
Help if you can…
Bear Baiting
A hunter from Rockland County was recently arrested for
killing a bear in the state’s southern hunting tier,
which includes Ulster and Sullivan counties, using donuts
as bait. The man was fined $1,502 and forfeited his hunting
license for five years. The DEC said that in addition
to donuts, other bait used – illegally – included
molasses, bagels and fish.
The DEC has since noted that 2007 seems to have witnessed
a greater number of complaints in the southern tier about
illegal hunting. 21 violations have been handed out for
activities such as baiting animals and “jacking”
deer in the southern tier. (Jacking deer is a practice
where a hunter hunting at night uses a bright spotlight
to shine it in the deer’s eyes, causing the animal
to freeze, making an easy target.)
Using baiting or bright lights to hunt animals, the DEC
says said, gives the hunter an “unfair advantage
and puts the animal at a disadvantage.”
Green Ulster!
An Open Space Plan, the object of 15 months of work,and
several months of public input sessions, was given final
approval by the Ulster County legislature at its final
meeting of the year last week, after some last minute
debate over whether all aspects of the issue had been
covered, including complaints from hunting groups that
they had not been heard… per Republicans’
complaints. In the end, the issue passed on a party-line
vote with the minority Republicans opposed to adopting
the plan in its present form.
“It doesn’t say that there shouldn’t
be any growth, said Democrat Brian Shapiro, chairman of
the Environmental Committee, of the new plan. “What
it does is allow specific areas to grow within. Doing
that protects not only our environment, but our economy
as well. It’s been shown that areas that properly
plan for growth do succeed economically, as opposed to
those who do not.”
The legislature also approved a detailed local law prohibiting
illicit discharge activities and connections to the county’s
storm sewer system.
Onteora Skiing
The Onteora High alpine ski team is expecting trouble
continuing its streak of Section 9 titles when their season
starts Hanuary 8 since both their boys and girls teams
lost three of four top skiers from last year and will
be looking to untested talent to continue their local
dominance of the sport. Last season, the Indians boys
won their 10th straight sectional title, while the girls
captured their sixth straight on their way to a first-ever
New York State championship.
“We’ve had a good run and this year will be
a huge test for us,” said Onteora coach Herb Cytyrn.
“For the boys, (two-time state champion) Tyler Bailey
and Doug Clark both graduated and Kevin Van Blarcum is
studying overseas in Germany this year. On the girls team,
Jessica Tar (third in the state) graduated and Katie Haggerty
and Giorgia Nagle are both at ski academies in Lake Placid.”
Buddy Thompson, second in the Section 9 championships
last year and 34th at the state meet, takes over as captain
for the Indians boys team with Brad Clark, who was out
last season with a broken leg, as the team’s potential
No. 2 man. Joe Vanacore, Austin Reiss, Rob Cattey, Andrew
Wilsey and Jake Vanacore are the other returnees.
Cytyrn is expecting eighth-grader Jacob Coombe and seventh-grader
Kealey Viglielmo to contribute as well.
Marlise Coombe, who placed 16th at the state meet last
year, takes over as captain on an extremely youthful girls
team. New York State alternate Claire Wilsey moves up
to the No. 2 spot, while five youngsters including eighth-graders
Rachel Castellano and Isabel LaMotte, along with Emily
Vanacore, Lena Guendel and Morgan Burgess, will battle
to be part of the scoring group.
“We are going to be pushed in sectionals this year,
but both teams are very dedicated and want to succeed,”
Cytyrn added.
The current schedule has Onteora opening its season with
a Giant Slalom at Holiday Mountain beginning at 4:30 p.m.
on January 8; Slalom at Holiday Mountain on January 10;
Giant Slalom at Belleayre Mountain at 10 a.m on January
14; Slalom at Holiday Mountain on January 15.; Slalom
at Holiday Mountain on January 17; a Girls race at Belleayre
Mountain the morning of January 28; Slalom at Holiday
Mountain on January 29; a Boys race at Belleayre Mountain
the morning of January 30; Giant Slalom at Belleayre Mountain
on February 4; Section IX Championships at Belleayre Mountain
the morning of February 12.; and the New York State Championships
at Lake Placid on February 26.
Go, go, go!
Mortgage Front
As the era of quick and easy home credit comes to a crashing
halt with a full blown lending crisis, an increasing number
of local families are faced with the real possibility
of losing their homes to foreclosure. Rural Ulster Preservation
Corp. is trying to stem the tide with programs to help
homeowners avoid default, bankruptcy and financial ruin.
In April, RUPCO was added to a list of agencies qualified
to offer financial counseling to homeowners in danger
of foreclosure and began receiving referrals from a nationwide
hotline set up by the federal department of Housing and
Urban Development (HUD). Since then, RUPCO Home Ownership
Director Kathy Germain said the number of calls has risen
from one or two per week to five or six per day. The only
silver lining Germaine said, is that the growing awareness
of the financial risks of adjustable rate or “subprime”
mortgages is impelling homeowners to seek out advice earlier.
“Six month ago we were getting calls from people
six months or a year behind on their mortgage and when
they’re that far behind it’s really hard to
help,” said Germain. “Now we’re finding
people are coming to us much earlier. They’re coming
in one or two months behind or they’ll say ‘I
can pay my mortgage now, but in six months my rates will
reset and I’ll be in trouble.’”
But Germain added that the wave of troubled homeowners
seeking advice and assistance was overwhelming her counseling
operation, which consists of her and one part-time counselor.
One reason for the backlog, Germain said, was that the
counseling process was complex and multi-layered, involving
everything from fiscal detective work to personal counseling.
An estimated 15 to 20 hours of work goes into analyzing
documents and family finances before the first one-on-one
counseling session.
Germain said most foreclosures are caused by a combination
of a risky mortgage and a life event like job loss or
health problems. Others though are the result of deception
or outright fraud on the part of lenders.
Meanwhile, Yulitza Franklin, director of Community Outreach
for the New York State Banking Department explained some
tactics, like flyers posted around the neighborhood, door-to-door
solicitation, or offers of “rescue” from eminent
foreclosure, used by unscrupulous lenders to prey on desperate
or financially unsophisticated homeowners. Franklin warned
that, in lending, the devil is in the details. She advised
anyone taking out a mortgage or refinancing one to have
a lawyer review the paperwork or at least to read every
document carefully and not be rushed into a loan by an
aggressive salesperson. Franklin said homeowners in danger
of foreclosure were especially vulnerable to predatory
lending or home equity theft schemes.
RUPCO’s Germain said the prospects of homeowners
caught up in the foreclosure process are less than rosy.
She said just 10 percent of her counseling clients end
up retaining their homes. With no “rescue funds”
available, often the most she can do is help clients limit
credit damage and avoid additional debt. Germain, however
offered hope to homeowners who can hang on long enough
- new federal legislation that could allow bankruptcy
courts to restructure mortgages and other government aid
to those facing foreclosure.
“Our tools are limited but there may be more tools
coming down the pike,” she said.
Keep your fingers crossed… and your checkbooks balanced!
Diverse Gods
The Religion Program at Bard College is presenting a public
seminar “Mapping the World Religions in the Hudson
Valley,” on Friday, December 21. The free program
will be held from 9:30 a.m. to noon in Preston Hall.
Some of the locations chosen for discussion include Buddhist
monasteries Kagyu Thubten Choling in Wappingers Falls,
Karma Triyana Dharmachakra in Woodstock, and Blue Cliff
Monastery in Pine Bush; the Hindu temple Hindu Samaj in
Wappingers Falls; the Islamic center Masjid al Ikhlas
in Newburgh; the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker)
Old Chatham Monthly Meeting in Old Chatham, Bull’s
Head Monthly Meeting in Clinton Corners; and nondenominational
Christian groups the River Church in Poughkeepsie, Woodcrest
Bruderhof in Rifton, and Northern Dutchess Bible Church
in Red Hook.
The presentations are modeled on a template engineered
by the Pluralism Project (headquartered at Harvard University),
a decade-long research project to engage students in studying
the new religious diversity in the United States.
For further information, call Kristin Scheible, assistant
professor of religion at Bard, at 845-758-7207 or e-mail
scheible@bard.edu.
Got Milk?
Too little milk, sunshine and exercise: It’s an
anti-bone trifecta. And for some kids, shockingly, it’s
leading to rickets, the soft-bone scourge of the 19th
century.
But cases of full-blown rickets are just the red flag:
Bone specialists say possibly millions of seemingly healthy
children aren’t building as much strong bone as
they should - a gap that may leave them more vulnerable
to bone-cracking osteoporosis later in life than their
grandparents are.
“This potentially is a time-bomb,” says Dr.
Laura Tosi, bone health chief at Children’s National
Medical Center in Washington.
Now scientists are taking the first steps to track kids’
bone quality and learn just how big a problem the anti-bone
trio is causing, thanks to new research that finally shows
just what “normal” bone density is for children
of different ages.
Almost half of peak bone mass develops during adolescence,
and the concern is that missing out on the strongest possible
bones in childhood could haunt people decades later. By
the 30s, bone is broken down faster than it’s rebuilt.
Then it’s a race to maintain bone and avoid the
thin bones of osteoporosis in old age.
Already there’s evidence that U.S. children break
their arms more often today than four decades ago - girls
56 percent more, and boys 32 percent more, according to
a Mayo Clinic study. And last year, government researchers
found overweight children were more likely to suffer a
fracture, even though theoretically their bones should
be hardier from carrying more weight.
Doctors have long known that less than a quarter of adolescents
get enough calcium. But strong bones require more than
calcium alone. Exercise is at least as important. Consider:
The dominant arm of a tennis player has 35 percent more
bone than the non-dominant arm.
National Debt
Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion
waiting to happen. It’s expanding by about $1.4
billion a day - or nearly $1 million a minute. It is currently
$9.13 trillion, or about $30,000 for every person in the
U.S. The total is worrisome to many because interest payments
on the debt strain government resources — and things
could get worse if the economy slows down, as some economists
predict. And like homeowners who took out adjustable-rate
mortgages, the government faces the prospect of seeing
this debt - now at relatively low interest rates - rolling
over to higher rates, multiplying the financial pain.
So long as somebody is willing to keep loaning the U.S.
government money, the debt is largely out of sight, out
of mind. But the interest payments keep compounding, and
could in time squeeze out most other government spending
- leading to sharply higher taxes or a cut in basic services
like Social Security and other government benefit programs.
Or all of the above.
The amount, representing the total accumulation of annual
budget deficits, is up from $5.7 trillion when President
Bush took office in January 2001 and it will top $10 trillion
sometime right before or right after he leaves in January
2009. And despite vows in both parties to restrain federal
spending, the national debt as a percentage of the U.S.
Gross Domestic Product has grown from about 35 percent
in 1975 to around 65 percent today. By historical standards,
it’s not proportionately as high as during World
War II - when it briefly rose to 120 percent of GDP, but
it’s a big chunk of liability.
“The problem is going forward,” said David
Wyss, chief economist at Standard and Poors, a major credit-rating
agency. “Our estimate is that the national debt
will hit 350 percent of the GDP by 2050 under unchanged
policy. Something has to change, because if you look at
what’s going to happen to expenditures for entitlement
programs after us baby boomers start to retire, at the
current tax rates, it doesn’t work.”
Who is loaning Washington all this money?
Ordinary investors who buy Treasury bills, notes and U.S.
savings bonds, for one. Also it is banks, pension funds,
mutual fund companies and state, local and increasingly
foreign governments. This accounts for about $5.1 trillion
of the total and is called the “publicly held”
debt. The remaining $4 trillion is owed to Social Security
and other government accounts, according to the Treasury
Department, which keeps figures on the national debt down
to the penny on its Web site.
Some economists liken the government’s plight to
consumers who spent like there was no tomorrow - only
to find themselves maxed out on credit cards and having
a hard time keeping up with rising interest payments.
Much of the recent borrowing has been accomplished through
the selling of shorter-term Treasury bills. If these loans
roll over to higher rates, interest payments on the national
debt could soar. Furthermore, the decline of the dollar
against other major currencies is making Treasury securities
less attractive to foreigners - even if they remain one
of the world’s safest investments.
For now, large U.S. trade deficits with much of the rest
of the world work in favor of continued foreign investment
in Treasuries and dollar-denominated securities. After
all, the vast sums Americans pay - in dollars - for imported
goods has to go somewhere. But that dynamic could change.
“The first day the Chinese or the Japanese or the
Saudis say, `we’ve bought enough of your paper,’
then the debt - whatever level it is at that point - becomes
unmanageable,” said Wyss.
A recent comment by a Chinese lawmaker suggesting the
country should buy more euros instead of dollars helped
send the Dow Jones plunging more than 300 points.
The dollar is down about 35 percent since the end of 2001
against a basket of major currencies.
Night Cancer
It was once scientific heresy to suggest that smoking
contributed to lung cancer. Now, another idea initially
dismissed as nutty is gaining acceptance: the graveyard
shift might increase your cancer risk.
Next month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer,
the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, will
classify shift work as a “probable” carcinogen.
And if the shift work theory proves correct, millions
of people worldwide could be affected. Experts estimate
that nearly 20 percent of the working population in developed
countries work night shifts.
It is a surprising twist for an idea that scientists first
described as “wacky,” said Richard Stevens,
a cancer epidemiologist and professor at the University
of Connecticut Health Center. In 1987, Stevens published
a paper suggesting a link between light at night and breast
cancer. Back then, he was trying to figure out why breast
cancer incidence suddenly shot up starting in the 1930s
in industrialized societies, where nighttime work was
considered a hallmark of progress. Most scientists were
bewildered by his proposal. But in recent years, several
studies have found that women working at night for many
years are indeed more prone to breast cancer, and that
animals who have their light-dark schedules switched grow
more cancerous tumors and die quicker. Some research has
also shown that men working at night may have a higher
rate of prostate cancer.
Scientists suspect that shift work is dangerous because
it disrupts the circadian rhythm, the body’s biological
clock. The hormone melatonin, which can suppress tumor
development, is normally produced at night. Light shuts
down melatonin production, so people working in artificial
light at night may have lower melatonin levels, which
scientists think can raise their chances of developing
cancer.
Sleep deprivation may also be a factor. People who work
at night are not usually able to completely reverse their
day and night cycles. Not getting enough sleep makes your
immune system vulnerable to attack, and less able to fight
off potentially cancerous cells. Confusing your body’s
natural rhythm can also lead to a breakdown of other essential
tasks.
The American Cancer Society said it would most likely
add shift work to its list of “known and probable
carcinogens” when the IARC makes its reclassification.
Up to now, the society has labeled it an “uncertain,
controversial or unproven effect.”
No Pay Phones
AT&T Inc., the nation’s largest phone carrier,
said last week that it is getting out of the 129-year-old
pay-phone business. They said that the company’s
pay phones will be phased out over the next year. A company
spokeswoman declined to say how much revenue its pay-phone
business generated, but the number is small and declining.
Although AT&T is exiting the pay-phone market, not
every major phone company has done so. Verizon Communications
Inc. still operates them in the Northeast, particularly
in busy urban markets such as New York and Boston.
The first public pay-telephone station was set up in 1878,
just two years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the
talking device. The first coin-operated pay phone was
installed in Hartford, Conn., in 1889. For decades after
the pay phone’s invention, many Americans relied
on them because of the expense and difficulty in obtaining
reliable home service. Only after World War II did the
telephone become a household necessity.
Since 1998, however, the number of pay phones in service
has shrunk from 2.6 million to about 1 million, according
to AT&T. The main reason has been the proliferation
of cellular phones, which were invented in the 1970s.
By late 2007, there were almost 251 million wireless customers
nationwide among a U.S. population of 301 million, the
CTIA industry trade group estimates. AT&T alone caters
to almost 66 million mobile subscribers.
By contrast, AT&T operates just 65,000 pay phones
in the 13 states formerly served by the local-phone company
SBC Communications, which acquired the old Ma Bell in
2005 and then took its name.
AT&T said that it will continue to sell wholesale
pay-phone service to independent operators, and it expects
them to pick up some of its business.
Plame Again…
A government watchdog group now says ten to twenty million
White House emails, which may contain information about
the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA status,
have been destroyed by the Bush administration.
In a report from April, Citizens for Responsibility and
Ethics in Washington (CREW) detailed a massive hole in
the White House email records. The report, titled “Without
a Trace: The Missing White House Emails and the Violations
of the Presidential Records Act,” accused the Bush
administration of destroying “more than 5 million”
emails and failing to attempt to recover them.
According to CREW, their sources now tell them the number
of missing emails is probably between ten and twenty million.
Anne Weisman, CREW’s chief counsel said the revised
estimate “highlights that this is a very serious
and systematic problem at the White House.” Currently
CREW, along with The National Security Archives are suing
the Bush administration in an attempt to force the administration
to restore the missing documents from backup tapes.
The missing email were discovered in the fall of 2005
when staff at the White House Office of Administration
were attempting to respond to a subpoena from Special
Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald for any White House records
relating to the leak of Plame Wilson’s identity.
The CREW report includes a letter from Fitzgerald that
shows his investigation was hampered by problems with
the White House email archiving system. “... we
have learned that not all email of the office of the Vice
President and the Executive Office of the President for
certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the
normal archiving process on the White House computer system,”
Fitzgerald wrote in his letter to I. Lewis Libby’s
attorneys.
The report detailed two separate possible violations of
the Presidential Records Act (PRA), a law passed in the
wake of the Watergate scandal that requires the preservation
of all presidential documents for the historical record.
The first violation was the use of unofficial email accounts
by White House staff to conduct official business. The
second potential violation was the destruction of internal
emails at the White House. According to CREW, two independent
White House insiders have confirmed a massive systematic
failure occurred that wiped out “hundreds of days”
of email records between March 2003 and October 2005.
Winter Camp…
Frost Valley YMCA in Claryville is again gearing up for
Winter Camp in the Catskill Mountains. Winter Camp is
offered for children ages 7-16 and runs from Dec. 27-30
and is an exciting program for outdoor winter adventure.
Activity choices include: cross-country skiing, arts and
crafts, ice skating, broomball, a Slide Mountain Winter
Expedition, history preserved “Winter Olympix,”
snow tubing, high ropes extreme adventure climbing and
more. There is also an optional downhill ski trip to
nearby Belleayre Mountain in Highmount.
For more information or to register for Winter Camp, please
call (845) 985-2291, ext. 203, e-mail: rmcnamara@frostvalley.org
or visit: www.frostvalley.org to register online.
Honey Cure
A teaspoon of honey before bed seems to calm children’s
coughs and help them sleep better, according to a new
study that relied on parents’ reports of their children’s
symptoms. The folk remedy did better than cough medicine
or no treatment in a three-way comparison. Honey may work
by coating and soothing an irritated throat, the study
authors said.
Federal health advisers have recently warned that over-the-counter
cough and cold medicines shouldn’t be used in children
younger than 6, and manufacturers are taking some products
for babies off the market.
History Creations
The Town of Roxbury has won a prestigious award from the
New York State Historic Preservation office for its creative
efforts to bring history to life with its heritage tourism
programs, like Turn of the Century Days and the Roxbury
Nine vintage base ball team. State officials were particulary
impressed with how Roxbury integrates educational opportunities
for local student docents, who assist in all phases of
researching and implementing Roxbury’s heritage
tourism programs and events.
Grammy Man!
Henry "Hank" Sapoznik of Olive Bridge has just
been nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award for his 3 CD reissue
anthology "People Take Warning! Murder Ballads and
Disaster Songs 1913-1938" produced with Chris King
and co-written with Tom Waits for the Tompkins Square
label. This is Sapoznik's fifth Grammy nomination. Way
to go, Hank...
Coykendone…
The nature of riches, and the state’s largesse,
can be cruelly fickle. Consider the fate of the once-fabled
10,900 square foot country estate of Kingston’s
great millionaire of old, Samuel D. Coykendall, set for
demolition by the state Department of Environmental Conservation
this month just as the agency starts full public discussions
on its plans to pump million into its own Belleayre ski
center a few mountain ridges away, as well as to aid the
region’s newest developer’s big plans for
a modern rural getaway. Add to the configuration the fact
that the fabled Coykendall Lodge, located near distant
Alder Lake in the Ulster County town of Hardenburgh, just
got a National Historic designation five years ago and
the ironies almost hurt. Coykendall, who owned the Ulster
& Delaware Railroad as well as Kingston banks and
a controlling interest in the Rosendale cement industry,
began developing his 600 acre property in the deep Catskills
in the early 1890s, creating a pond for fishing purposes
and then one of the region’s first trout hatcheries.
In 1899, he then started building his massive stone-and
mock Tudor lodge as a getaway for his friends and family…
as well as a way of proving his status on the same level
as other such lodges in the area being built by Goulds
and other such “robber barons.” In 1945, decades
after the great man’s death, his family sold the
property to a trout fishing club who 15 years later sold
the property to Long Island’s Nassau County Boy
Scout for use as a staging area for hikes throughout the
Catskills. Situated in the Balsam Lake Mountain Wild Forest
of the Catskill Park, the Coykendall Lodge has long proved
a quandary for the DEC, which has its hand fulls regulating
environmental issues throughout the state, as well as
recreation in its massive Adirondack and Catskill Park
holdings. Ever since acquiring the three-story, wood frame
structure with field stone foundation, and its considerable
history, there has been a back-and-forth struggle within
the agency, as well as with outside groups such as the
state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation
and a succession of private entities formed to try and
save the structure as an example of a bygone era of Catskills
lore. It was repeatedly pointed out how the DEC had burned
the historic old Catskill Mountain House in 1963, as well
as other remnants of the region’s Golden Age throughout
that destructive, pre-preservation decade. In recent years
a group called the Alder Lake Restoration Society, largely
city-based, asked for a chance to find an adaptive re-use
for the structure and persuaded the state to delay the
demolition. But in October, DEC official Bill Rudge met
with all concerned parties. Current plans, set for implementation
in the coming weeks, call for the saving of the stone
portions of Coykendall’s lodge, leaving the showplace’s
foundations intact to a height of eight feet. Furthermore,
ways will be developed to “interpret the historical,
cultural and natural resource values of the site through
some type of textual and pictorial display.” Time
marches on in the Catskills…
