MILLERTON — On Oct. 12, American Legion Post 178 held its second Town Hall meeting to introduce the candidates running for the position of Dutchess County executive.During the Town Hall meeting, New York Assemblyman Marcus Molinaro spoke to a crowd of roughly two dozen people to explain his stance on several issues that are important to local residents.Molinaro’s opponent is Dan French, who participated in a Town Hall event at the Legion on Oct. 3. French and Molinaro will face off in the election on Tuesday, Nov. 8. The position of Dutchess County executive is currently held by William Steinhaus, who has held the role for 19 years.Molinaro began by giving the audience an overview of his political career, which he began at the age of 18. A year later, he became mayor of Tivoli, earning the title of the youngest mayor ever elected in the United States.He was elected as a New York State Assemblyman in 2006. He currently has 17 years of experience as an elected official.While serving as assemblyman, Molinaro co-sponsored the “Government Consolidation and Citizen Empowerment Act,” which pledges to do just as its name implies: consolidate government offices to improve efficiency and effectiveness and empower citizens to take part in their government.“I believe public service is a dignified duty,” he said while describing the piece of legislation. “We have an obligation to give back.”The themes of that piece of legislation infiltrated the responses he gave for questions asked by the audience.He said that if he becomes the county executive, he would work with the local governments to create a medium for dialogue so that the county and the municipalities can work together as partners to consolidate their efforts and services.He said that he will personally visit town hall meetings to better understand how and why the municipalities make their decisions.He believes that it is the perfect time to realign the government and ask the public what they expect from each level of government. Then it will be possible to evaluate what each part of the government does well and what it does not do well so that plans can be put in place to increase government efficiency and effectiveness while cutting out unnecessary practices.He said the government and the public need to engage in thoughtful dialogue about how things can be done better, even if the answer is walking away from some projects.“Elected officials have the responsibility to create the community that people want,” he said.Molinaro said the government isn’t always the answer for some services. He said that in some cases, charities and nonprofit organizations are better able to provide necessities that government programs like Medicaid, which he believes traps people within its rigid and ineffective system.Since Medicaid is over-burdening the government, Molinaro wants to create a system that let nonprofits pool their resources and contacts to save money and create a more efficient method to get services to those who need them.The other burden on taxpayers that Molinaro discussed was the MTA Payroll Tax, which he described as “a fiscal hostage-taking.”Molinaro stated that he believes it was wrong for the payroll tax to be instated in the first place, but acknowledged that it will be hard to walk away from that income.He said there are several ways to approach the MTA taxes. One way involves renegotiating with Connecticut to make the burden more equal. The other is phasing out the tax over five years.He also stated that an audit and restructuring of the entire MTA system are necessary.On the topic of local job creation, Molinaro said it is important to attract the big companies while also supporting the small and mid-sized companies.“Growing jobs is one thing, but sustaining those jobs over a number of years is completely different,” he said.He wants to find where growth can be sustained, then make the changes to the zoning to allow for it.To help this plan, he wants to use the Chamber of Commerce to help with economic development and ensure that people are ready to enter the workforce once the jobs are created.One of the current hot topics in Dutchess County is the outsourcing of prisoners to other counties who have more room available in their prisons.Molinaro explained that although Dutchess County is the leader in the state for Alternative to Incarceration (ATI) programs, if the well-behaved criminals are shipped out of the county, those programs are not reaching as many people as they could and are therefore not as effective as they could be.Molinaro said that retrofitting existing facilities is an option for solving the space issue, but the retrofitting will still cost a lot of money.He said that negotiating regional overflow with other counties is also a possibility, but will be very difficult to attain since the negotiations will reduce the revenue that is taken in by other counties.The audience did not ask Molinaro any questions about his stance on the Resource Recovery Agency or disposing of garbage through burning, which are hot political topics.Molinaro briefly addressed why he has chosen to move from the position of assemblyman on the state level to the position of executive on the county level instead of moving on to the senate. He said that while he enjoys being a legislator, that role is not as satisfying because it is more difficult to see the fruits of the labor. He believes that serving as county executive will give him the opportunity to put into practice all that he has learned throughout his political career.
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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 former partner, 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.”
This article has been changed to reflect that Hermans and Nelson were partners. A prior version states that they were married.
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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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