Letters to the Editor - The Lakeville Journal - 9-30-21

Sharon Hospital is at risk now

The community is in the process of losing one of its most important assets — the Sharon Hospital. Since the hospital was sold to the private equity firm Essent for $15,000,000 in about 2002, it has gone through three successive ownerships and each one has cut services. Now our present owner Nuvance wants to cut services, and Sharon Hospital will no longer be a full service hospital.

The medical staff organized a “Leadership Council” to oppose these cuts and recommend expanding services. Unfortunately Nuvance has given very little ground and plans to proceed with cutting maternity, 24-7 surgery and gutting the ICU. Women will have to deliver at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital, Danbury Hospital or Vassar Hospital, especially burdensome in the winter when the roads can be impassible. If a patient comes to the emergency room after normal operating room hours, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., they would have to be transferred to one of these three hospitals. Critically ill patients will be unable to get care in the intensive care unit here near their families.

 None of the recent owners of the hospital have prevented a contraction of services or have expanded services. There are no longer primary care doctors in North Canaan, Dover Plains, Kent, or Millbrook associated with our hospital. We have lost one urologist, two neurologists, a psychiatrist, oncologists, a pain management doctor, a sleep medicine doctor and an otolaryngologist. Due to mismanagement, all in the Northwest Corner will suffer.

We need to develop a plan to save Sharon Hospital by maintaining and expanding services. We need a moratorium on cuts. Since COVID-19, new residents have invigorated the Northwest Corner and will need medical care. The ER volume is trending up and we are seeing new patients. The doctors at the hospital and community must be intimately involved in rejuvenating the hospital. 

The Foundation for Community Health has an obligation to help. A community fundraising effort must be mounted to support maternity and women’s services and recruit doctors with allegiance to Sharon Hospital. The Hospital Board must listen to the community and not accept deleterious cuts. If we all work together Sharon Hospital can remain a full service “Five Star Hospital.” Respectfully submitted.

David Kurish, MD

Sharon

Crossing the bridge from life to death

The world is beckoning one and all to make a choices about life and death, from the earliest stages of each and on scales from the personal to the political and pandemic level.

What’s a person to do who has little say in the matters to do? Seemingly ‘nothing’ but giving people a sense of hope and belonging can help move the bar toward planning to ‘stick together no matter what’ with respect and collaboration.

 “Not so fast” many may say, we’re losing our rights to gather, to voice opinions, to fight takeovers of one’s body, right to buy a home or have a family (or not become a biological mother) and much more.

Plus there are Climate Change Challenges that can’t seem to understand we haven’t figured out Other Important Matters so really should not act out of turn.

Could it please wait a few hundred years so we could sort out what we want to do with our abilities to program computers and robots to do more than The Jetsons ever imagined we’d figure out in 2021?

Many “New Age” and traditional faith tenets hold that ‘we are made of an intelligent capable energy’ which can thrive on love but also is ‘ a work in progress’ linked to survival instincts and affects from thousands of years of evolution.

So that can help shed light on what the heck is going on with humanity. We are a mixed bag of energies and manifestations.

We need to think of the big picture but each live in one body to call our own. What that entails is under the microscope too however and should help us break through limitations of caring about one another.

Having empathy and walking a mile or a decade in each other’s shoes can help us choose to rise above initial reactions and allow ourselves to journal and think through respectful responses and work in groups online and in person courageously and steadfastly.

Valuing and including everyone as though a caring family and circle of friends who change over time due to life experiences, biological and other shifts can soften the need for things to stay the same no matter what. Families, Friends, Faith and Other Groups, Toastmasters, Rotary, Libraries, Schools and Community Networks online and off can be key to showing the way toward mutual respect and understanding. 

Yet we are key to driving the bus we’re all on as we cross the Big Bridge from Life to Death. As we proceed we all will have loss but the gift of love is ours to give in how we die and how we live.  

Catherine Palmer Paton

Falls Village

The unvaccinated who walk among us

I suppose there are some valid reasons for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID.  Medical, possibly, although this goes against the priority given to auto-immune sufferers, and I would think pregnant women, or those who are planning to be, might exercise some reasonable caution. Claims of religious exemptions are allowed, despite the separation of church and state in this country, constitutional tolerance mistakenly applied here, in my view. I’m sure there are other valid situations.

What I don’t understand is the people who say they “don’t trust the government”, or think vaccinating the populace is an evil conspiracy. In other words, people who are convinced that their personal judgment is superior, despite scientific evidence to the contrary, and whose self-centered point of view is expressed and tolerated under the umbrella of their “right” to expose the rest of us to disease, since these very people also assert their “right” to go about the world as unmasked potential carriers.  And they can be, as we know based on behavior in airplanes and restaurants, belligerently self-righteous.

I wonder why this situation doesn’t fall under the same view expressed by Oliver Wendell Holmes when, as an illustration, he said that falsely shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater could not be allowed under the defense that the shouter had a constitutionally protected right to free speech.  The rights of the public, and public safety, were seen to be of superior importance.

Shouldn’t this be the case today? Be vaccinated or stay home, no excuses.

Pamela Osborne

Salisbury

Beware of petitions: research first

One of the purposes of the Lake Wononscopomuc Association is to protect and improve the  quality of the lake and its environment. To strengthen oversight of activities that might be detrimental to the lake the board asked the Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Commission to expand its upland review area from 75 feet to 200 feet.

 The IWWC decided to undertake a review of all its regulations. Some are required by changes in state law and others would be discretionary. A committee was appointed to come up with a draft. The whole IWWC is now considering what regulations it will propose for all streams, rivers, vernal pools and wetlands in the Town of Salisbury including the lakes.

 Nothing has been decided and no final plans have been developed. Yet a group opposed to the process has been waging a campaign of letter writing, petition circulating and legal opinionating to stop it. Their main objection appears to be the proposed expansion of the upland review area.

 They argue it would impose onerous  burdens on property owners requiring them to get a permit to mow their lawn, paint their house or add mulch to their garden. Why would the IWWC write such ridiculous regulations that couldn’t be enforced if they were imposed? 

 The Wetlands commissioners are our friends and neighbors. They own property that would be affected by any new regulations. They are not bureaucrats in Hartford who don’t know a vernal pool from a septic tank. Our goal as lake associations should be to help the commissioners write realistic regulations that protect our water resources, improve our property values and eliminate conflicting and confusing issues between our various agencies. 

 Let’s give them support to do their job with due diligence. Then when there is a final proposal we can argue over specific issues.

Bill Littauer

Lakeville

What a tribute to Piel

Tony Piel, diplomat, long time legal counsel to the World Health Organization, hands on observer worldwide, hiker, naturalist, adventurer, and author passed away recently. His widow, Liz, instead of a memorial service, compiled 300 pages of his “insights”—short, to-the-point essays and letters on many different topics published in his small hometown weekly newspaper The Lakeville Journal. They are gems of wisdom, wonder, indignation, common sense and contrarian verities covering public affairs writ large and small. What a marvelous, permanent way to remember Tony Piel, his family and wholesome zest for life and the good society. 

Ralph Nader

Washington, D.C. and Winsted