No one in their right mind can admire deadbeat dads. To that I would add no one in their right mind should admire deadbeat moms.The world has moved on from considering moms to be stay-at-home housekeepers, with dad earning the money to support the family. Indeed, many businesses (and countries) make it the law that dads get equal paternity leave when a baby is born. So why is it that the courts, child protection services and a whole array of government agencies consider fathers the ones who are financially responsible and culpable if a marriage goes wrong, leading to the kids usually being given to the mother? Mothers are automatically considered the best child raisers (which is often not the case) while men are considered the ones who failed.Just how far off are these notions from the hateful treatment of women in some Muslim-governed countries? Don’t we decry women having to cover up their faces and maintain the role of subservience? And yet we automatically tell dads to cough up the support money, take the kids away from them and seem to favor women, when in fact we are also saying their role is that of housekeeper and mother.A friend of ours was stopped the other month for a burned out taillight. The officer checked his license and registration and was about to give him a warning when the officer’s computer spat out a suspended license warning. The officer checked why, and there it was: overdue payments in child support. Driver’s license suspended. Nevermind the idiocy of suspending a license for child support payments, meaning the man could not work and earn a wage to pay child support.The man went to the Department of Child Support Services (DCSS) and asked what gives. They said his payment record was 100 percent, especially since it comes directly out of his paycheck on time. So he took that readout and went to the judge, who stamped it. He then went to the Department of Motor Vehicles (and you now the wait there is a joy) and they charged him $65 for the privilege of unsuspending his license. The woman handling it quipped, “Next time maybe you’ll pay your responsibility on time.” That “deadbeat” dad label stung, especially since that day he had been late to his night shift since his kids were left alone when mom went out to party.How’d that notice get on there? It seems that months ago the mom had tried to get DCSS to pay toward medical insurance for the kids, claiming dad wasn’t paying. That’s true; he didn’t contribute cash toward medical insurance since his company policy already covered him and the kids (and his wife when they were married). But she thought she could get more money from them, and so he became a deadbeat dad. The DCSS staff were more than willing to come to the mother’s aid without checking the facts.And in case you think it was all cleared up, it wasn’t. DCSS reports to the state, which reports to Health and Human Services (HSS) in Washington, D.C., which tell the police. Our friend was stopped a few days ago for a temporary license plate check and they confiscated his driver’s license again. Washington, informed by DCSS, should “take about three months to remove the notice.” Any punishment for the mom for false filing? None. DCSS said it’s not their job.Another friend was recently stranded in Asia. Going to the embassy to add pages to his passport because he was working with educational relief across two borders, the embassy promptly confiscated his passport because he was a “deadbeat dad.” Let me see — an American in a far-off land is suddenly stripped of that blue book, that proof you are an American, because of money supposedly not paid back home? The risk to his life in the dangerous country he was in was very real.Deadbeat dad? Nope. Two lawyers and 50 long-distance calls and emails later, California DCSS was made to tell HSS, which supposedly amended its computer and told American Citizen Services (ACS) at the embassy they could return the passport. Without spending thousands of dollars to resolve the issue quickly, the embassy was worried it would have to destroy the passport “within a week” unless resolved. What would have become of this American then? He would have been given an embassy voucher to return to the U.S. to be arrested. Yes, arrested.How did the notice appear at DCSS and HSS, and then ACS? It seems his wife, who took the kids to live in another state, filed there as well to get more money from the local government that, in California, had been legally decided. She claimed poverty and a deadbeat dad to get extra cash. The DCSS in that state believed her, and they still do. Why wouldn’t they? She’s a “state-approved” mother; he’s guilty before innocent.Making partners live up to their responsibility is right and proper. Allowing this double standard based on outmoded stereotypes of men and women is not. The government is wrong here — wrong, meddling and abetting crimes of bad parenting, deception and, at times, vengeance. That is not a good government’s job. Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.
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Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton\u2019s Main Street in 1985.
Provided
For Hermans, the award has prompted some reflection about why he has spent so much of his life involved in community projects.
“I was thinking about it this morning: Why do I do what I do?” he said. “And I think no matter what I’ve done, whether it’s been school board or rail trail, I’m trying to be useful to the communities I’m associated with.”
Hermans is perhaps best known as the longtime co-founder and steward of Oblong Books in Millerton, a business that began almost by accident. He and his first wife, Holly Nelson, were living in Millerton and looking for something to do during the winter. They had been painting houses, including the Grange Hall in Millerton, a job Hermans got through his aunt, who belonged to the Grange.
At the time, Hermans was also working in insurance for his father, doing collections.
“It was fine except I was doing collections, and it really kind of left me cold,” he said.
He and Nelson began thinking about what they might do together. Nelson was an avid reader, while Hermans had studied journalism and had worked in a record store. They noticed a chain of book and record stores operating elsewhere in the Hudson Valley and decided to follow that model.
And so Oblong was born.
Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton’s Main Street in 1985.Provided
“We really learned it by the seat of our pants,” Hermans said.
The business would eventually become a beloved and integral part of Millerton’s commercial life. But although Hermans may have learned the book business as he went, his affinity for retail — and for the connections that happen across a counter — had begun much earlier.
As a child, his second-grade teacher operated a little cardboard pencil shop in the classroom, and Hermans still remembers the satisfaction of selling a pencil for a nickel.
“I really liked selling somebody a pencil for a nickel,” he recalled. “I can remember that experience, and it was so pleasant.”
Later, while living in Arizona, he helped establish a food co-op and worked at the counter.
“I kind of knew that I liked doing that kind of thing,” he said. “It’s a nice way to be pleasant with people, but without making too much commitment to them.”
His relationship with Millerton also predates Oblong. His grandparents lived in the village, and he first came to Millerton as a baby. Over the years, he has watched the town change through several generations.
He remembers a Millerton with a much broader array of businesses, when stores such as Delson’s, the Main Street department store that stood for nearly 40 years in what is now Millerton’s Antiques Center, seemed to carry almost everything a resident might need.
“You could find everything from a set of dishes to a shotgun,” he recalled.
The rise of shopping malls changed that kind of downtown retail, he said, but Millerton has remained a lively commercial village.
“For us, it’s been a great place to have business,” Hermans said. “It’s a busy village.”
For Hermans, running a store was never simply about selling books and records. It was a way of being part of a place.
Music has remained another constant. Hermans continues to sell music at Oblong and hosts the radio program “New Harmony” on WKZE. The business of selling music has changed dramatically over the years, particularly with the rise of streaming, but Hermans has adapted.
He was initially reluctant to bring vinyl records back into the store because of their expense. But about four or five years ago, he began stocking LPs again, and they have become the main form of music the store sells.
He finds that many of the customers buying them are reconnecting with music they loved years ago.
“I do best with classic albums that people may have had when they were young,” he said. “And now that they’re retired, they want to hear it again.”
Hermans still reviews between 700 and 1,200 new music releases each week through the store’s distributor, Alliance Entertainment, carefully deciding what belongs on Oblong’s shelves.
That same commitment to place has led Hermans into a wide range of community projects. His work with the Harlem Valley Rail Trail is among the efforts he mentions when reflecting on his years of civic involvement. He has also served on the school board and has been involved with the Millerton Business Alliance and the Irondale Schoolhouse. He is now involved with The New Pine Plains Herald, which he sees as complementary to the work of The Millerton News and The Lakeville Journal.
“I really think that the important thing about this award is that people understand what a newspaper does to connect them to their community,” he said. “And if that means anything to their lives, they gotta support it.”
Hermans knew Mary Lou and Robert Estabrook and remembers them as people who were deeply conscious of their responsibilities to the community.
“They were really nice folks,” he said. “They were very conscious of what their role in the community was.”
There is, in fact, still plenty on his plate. Hermans admits he needs to scale back because he has taken on more than his current abilities can comfortably accommodate.
“To be given this award is very special,” he added. “But I don’t feel like I’m done.”
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Adamah Farm crew members planning out the day’s tasks on a late September day.
Janna Siller
Over my 15 years of growing vegetables in Falls Village, I’ve exerted my will over all kinds of conditions, from drought to humidity to crows with a taste for cantaloupe. That’s what farming is all about. You zip around the field, hopping on and off tractors, moving hoses and chasing weeds, all in an effort to arrange conditions in favor of your crops. It is the crops’ job to gulp up sunlight and move water through their stems, to transform solar energy into your next pesto or ratatouille or butternut squash soup. It is the job of the farmer to irrigate just enough but not too much, to slice dandelion leaves without damaging delicate cabbage roots, to pander and pamper and stay in tune with what plants need to thrive.
The easy part of farming is trusting plants’ resilience. I have seen bright green shoots barrel ahead out of a plant torn to shreds by hail. I’ve watched wilty, heat-stressed seedlings turn rigid overnight and greet the next morning with vigor. The hard part is letting go of what you can’t control. As our crops lapped up Friday’s gentle sunshine and I considered the weekend forecast, I imagined roots holding tight to wet earth and branches supporting each other in sideways, pelting rain. I made sure all of our storage crops were already harvested and tucked away. I battened down the sides of our greenhouses and wished the remaining field crops good luck.
The nor’easter didn’t materialize too dramatically in our corner of New England. A few broken branches and debris blown about, nothing like the July Fourth storm that sent half a tree crashing onto the deer fence and left crates of fresh veggies in coolers without power.
Fall storage crop harvests amid soil building cover crops at Adamah Farm in Falls Village. Janna Siller
Farming is an exercise in acceptance. To do it well and return year after year, you have to balance hubris and humility. The prize can often be a certain equanimity, a training in the art of moving into the next day even when the last one scrambled all your plans.
Epic change is not always about the unexpected. It also comes like clockwork on the seasonal calendar. As I type, the last of summer’s watermelons wait naively on the vine for a few hot days to finish ripening. Broccoli are holding their leaves wide as they did in June and July, only to find that the hours of sunlight decrease with each earlier sunset. Plants can’t pick up and go south or call the manager to order a bonus round of sunshine. Their growth slows and they get a resigned look to the hue of their leaves, so different from the frenzied growth of summer.
The release of fall is not tragic or gloomy. It is not an ending because so many fall tasks are about setting up for the new beginnings in spring.
We turn the vines that yielded thousands of pounds of fruit into the soil, where healthy microbes feast on their rotting stems. Then we plant cover crops — a mix of cereal grains like rye and oats and legumes like peas, vetch and clover. Cover crops hold the soil and its nutrients in place over winter, feeding the soil food web and adding organic matter that next season’s crops will need to grow.
We sort sprinklers and repair hoses. We inventory tarps. We take notes about which plants did well where and how we might try a new approach for this or that. We stack crates of cured garlic and onions and winter squash in a cool, dark room.
We save seeds from tomatoes and beans and lettuce, carefully labeling each variety for next season’s long, sunny days.
Janna Siller is the farm director at Adamah, a community farm in Falls Village offering CSA shares, educational programs and a food access program.
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