A skier weaves poles on Mohawk Mountain Feb. 19.
Photo by Alec Linden
Anna Chas of Dutchess Day School finishing in style in a pink tutu.Photo by Alec LindenLatest News
Letters to the Editor 2/27/25
Feb 26, 2025
Why it’s wrong to focus on differences
I recently read Natalia Zuckerman’s very moving account about attending the 80th anniversary ofthe liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.Some years ago I was part of a week-long, Buddhist-ledretreat at these two camps set three miles apart. The retreat was called Bearing Witness, and still takes place annually.About 200 people of different faiths and nationalities spent the days bearing witness to theatrocities committed, reading the names of the dead, saying Kaddish and other prayers, sitting in silence in areas where unbearable suffering took place. A fewattendees were children of survivors, a few children of Nazi soldiers . Our nights were spent in discussion and communion.
If you have spent any time at these concentration camps, your life view isforever changed. Therefore, It is unimaginable to me that VP Vance would visit Dachau in the morning, only to meet with the leader of the far-right German party in the afternoon. Vance’s belief in some version of white Christian nationalism“trumped’his ability to understand where such ideology, based on the supremacy of one group of people over everyone else, led in the past and could lead in the future.
Making one group of people into “the other”, as Trump has done with the undocumented, with transpeople, and other groups, is therefore right out of the Nazi playbook in which anti-Semitism was used to bind together and blind the German people. The astonishing fact about the Nazis was that after their extermination of the Jews, dissidents, homosexuals, the Romani, the disabled, they planned to double the size of Birkenau, already 10,000 acres!, to kill all the slavs, a vast group of people that numbered hundreds of millions. By this means they would gain world domination.
I am not making any direct analogy to the present, only suggesting that using an Us vs. Them mentality as a political tool, and focusing on the differences in people, be it skin color, origin, status, religion, is a tool that can be used to gain domination and bring suffering. We must recognize it as such in order to stand against it.
Barbara Maltby
Lakeville
Venturing out into snow and ice? How about some thoughts on staying put
Of course the huge majority of car crashes are mishaps, unintentional, inadvertent or inattentive, but then the car can’t crash itself, most often the drivers look for other conditions or circumstances that contributed. “Not my fault’ Unfortunately for them, minor or severe, Isaac Newton, who has been helpful and even fun can be suddenly, ‘All of a Sudden!’, unforgiving, unsympathetic.
Venturing out into snow and ice conditions? Sometimes the better judgment is to stay put, rather than yielding to the pressures of convenience, expediency and promptness. A building storm is worse than a clearing storm! Driving is an individual enterprise and often requires social interaction, often ignoring the increased risk and hazards of your momentum on reduced surface-traction handling; longer braking (if any traction is available) and trajectory maneuvering. The weather is inconsiderate of what your car’s manufacturer proposed as increased capability, all cars (!) and tires (!) are subject to the very nearly the same skidding, maybe at only a slightly different distance and speed. And if you perceive yourself as a superior driver (?)…this can be punctuated by the big damaging, crunching noise at the end of a fearful moment! Predictable phenomena, in this case, is not an accident.
I wrote this paragraph for the AAA magazine many years ago, equally as true today.
Robert Green
Lakeville
Keep ReadingShow less
Our Home, Our Future
Feb 26, 2025
Kevin Cantele
Photo by Mary Close Oppenheimer
If you grew up in Salisbury or sought a mortgage from NBT Bank to buy a home, you may know Kevin Cantele. Kevin grew up in Salisbury and, after leaving for college, returned home to the town he loves. He lives here with his wife Lauren, a nurse practitioner at Salisbury School, and their 2-year-old daughter. Kevin’s love of our town and concern for its future have motivated him to volunteer for the Salisbury Affordable Housing Commission.
As a residential lender, he has first-hand experience with people hoping to buy a home in our town. He says, “I understand the financial difficulties many families face every day. I see first-hand just how hard it can be to not only buy a house but also afford the cost of living in this town.”
In January, the 12-month median, single-family residential price reached an all-time high of $945,000. He says “most homes selling at a price point that is affordable need work which, again, makes them unaffordable when you look at the all-in cost.” Many first-time homebuyers struggle to save enough money for the standard 20% down payment, which does not include real estate taxes, homeowners insurance, and other closing costs. As a result, many people are priced out of home ownership.
Kevin says, “I think anyone feeling the stresses associated with the cost of buying a home would embrace the opportunity to live in affordable housing. Affordable rentals are a highly desired housing option for people of all ages, particularly for people who work in town. I’m also sure many people would be happy to live in affordable housing while they save money to buy a house. We need younger families and people across all demographics, to be able to live, work, shop, and dine in this town, supporting the local businesses as patrons, and in many instances, as employees. This cannot happen without affordable housing being an option.
When the people who spend five days a week or more working in Salisbury, or a younger couple looking to live and start a family in Salisbury, are priced out of living here, it hurts the local economy and the town as a whole. It is imperative to maintain and expand affordable housing in Salisbury so we can continue to thrive as a community.”
Keep ReadingShow less
A fluttering of the heart
Feb 26, 2025
Carter next to the MumBet, later Elizabeth Freeman, statue, in Sheffield Mass.His play, with Linda Rossi of Canaan,is “1781,” the year MumBet gained her freedom.
Provided
It seems quite common, atrial fibrillation, that is. Or A Fib as it’s jocularly known. A fluttering of the heart, et cetera. So what do you do? It saps your energy, plays hockey puck with your thyroid, wearing no helmet or pads. Wait until it sits in the penalty box? Sometimes that works. The penalty is paid and your chest-thumper returns to normal, awaiting its next highsticking or skate-slashing and other such hockey horrifics.
But often it doesn’t work. The first step in the procedure, leading up to a pacemaker, is called a “cardiac version.” The docs put you out, then pound on your rib cage as many as three times to see if the pounding can restore the proper thump THUMP thump THUMP. The docs do not go beyond three.
I am happy to report that this writer needed but one and now he is no longer an A-Fibber. Does that make him an — A Liar?
There are those who say the writer has no heart. Does this prove them wrong?
There’s also this little thing about the thyroid, whatever it does, I’m sure I don’t know.
It seems the pill leading up to the cardiac version, may lower the thyroid’s level and jack up the cholesterol to boot. The writer has never had a cholesterol problem, slathers everything with Hellmann’s, egg salad this a.m., devours eggs (what’s the price these days, O Dear Beloved Chairman?), and now takes a daily pill to salve the thyroid, bringing it back up to its healthy level, while smashing the cholesterol into the plastic wall behind the goalie.
The writer has two lunch buddies, the three of us, besides other maladies, have thyroidism. An ex-wife joshes us three old white dudes sitting around comparing thyroids.
A friend tells at lunch yesterday for the first fifteen minutes all four talked about their aches and pains. I said Only for the first fifteen!
I was looking for my kaibigan — Tagalog for brother-friend — recently. Instead found his husband Jimmy who told me that Rodney had an aneurysm, but was recovering. What I know about aneurysms is that they don’t recover well, if at all. My great love Sarah had one and she was rushed Medevaced to Hartford Hospital. The doctor emerged and said her brain was “unrecoverable.” I said, Dr. I know what the word means, but what do you mean? He said that her brain shows no activity.
A word about Rodney who can’t be 50. A Chicagoan, Marquette-Jesuit-trained as are we all, he headed to New York to pursue an acting career. We lured him back to Chicago to play the lead in my play THE ROMANCE OF MAGNO RUBIO, which is all Filipino, as is Rod. His family had never seen him act before.
At the curtain call he came out weeping. He had given a magnificent performance and there was his grandmother sitting in the front row, weeping as well. The audience went nuts. I don’t know if they knew the backstory, but appreciated what they saw.
I had hoped to find Rod, hale and hearty, thinking to enlist him in directing an all-female MAGNO, in which he had expressed previous interest.
Now he is “recovering”, Praise the Lord. As the Filipinos put it, ‘Sus, Maria, ‘Sef.
May we all recover. And what about repentance? Shrove Tuesday, also known as Pancake Day, with Lent on its way. I need the ashes. Thump THUMP!
Lonnie Carter is a playwright, Obie winner and his signature play is “The Sovereign State of Boogedy Boogedy.”
Keep ReadingShow less
Turning Back the Pages
Feb 26, 2025
125 years ago — February 1900
Grant Gilson, age 25, a descendant of the Schagticoke Indians, was found frozen to death on the Skiff mountain road in Kent recently.
SHARON — A daring robbery was committed right in our midst on Wednesday evening of last week. While Mr. and Mrs. Frank Harris were at the Eli Perkins lecture their house was broken into, by a back window, and searched. The thieves were evidently after money as they touched nothing but two purses, from one of which the money had been removed by Mr. Harris just before leaving the house, and the other fortunately contained but a small sum.
SHARON — Miss Ree Bierce is having serious trouble with her ears. She has been housed up for several days.
Miss Edith Bliss of Brooklyn is visiting her cousin, Miss Laura Chapin.
A new McPhall piano has been put in the residence of R.D. Jones by Joseph Brinton. The instrument is an upright encased in antique mahogany, and is pronounced by good judges to be remarkably sweet of tone.
100 years ago — February 1925
Miss Nellie Pectal of Falls Village was seriously injured at Canaan on Monday evening. She had alighted from the railroad gasoline bus and started to cross the track when the bus suddenly backed up, threw her to the ground, her right foot going under the wheels, just above the ankle. She was hurried to Winsted Hospital, where the amputation just below the knee was found to be necessary. She has since been doing as well as can be expected.
Miss Margaret Hall and John Finkle were up from New York to spend the week-end at their homes. Mr. and Mrs. Harry Brill took them back to the city on Monday in their auto.
The frost is said to be practically out of the ground, and many of the country roads are almost impassable.
Editor Loope of the Millerton Telegram paid the Journal Office a fraternal visit on Tuesday. Editor Loope is recuperating from an attack of rheumatism which had him down and out last week, but he is out again, showing that you cannot “keep a good man down.”
TACONIC — David Holmes is erecting a semi-bungalow on his lot near the chapel, and it is now at the shingling stage.
50 years ago — February 1975
The jobless rate rose sharply in January for every town in the Northwest Corner, according to the Connecticut State Labor Department. Salisbury again topped the list with 226 persons, or 13.5 percent of the town’s 1668 person labor force, without jobs. The statistics include some persons who normally supply a family’s principal income. But they also include many who are secondary income earners, youths trying to enter the job market for the first time, seasonal workers and others.
Becton-Dickinson of Canaan, the Tri-state’s region largest manufacturer and biggest single employer, is in the process of laying off approximately 50 full time employees. The word of layoffs at B-D came less than two weeks after General Electric announced it would close its Norfolk plant next month, ending the jobs of more than 30 employees.
George VanSantvoord, legendary headmaster of The Hotchkiss School from 1926 to 1955, died this past week at his winter home in Williamstown, Mass. He was 83 years old. During three decades in Lakeville, Mr. VanSantvoord, popularly known as “the Duke,” left a strong imprint on the school, its students and faculty and the community.
The new Connecticut chess champion in the junior high school division is David Janello, 15-year-old son of Sylvia Surdoval of Kent and Kenneth Janello of Bridgeport. David, a ninth-grader at Housatonic Valley Regional High School, outplayed 5 opponents Saturday in 11 hours of tournament activity. He has been playing chess since he was 6 years old, and has been in organized competition for a little more than 2 years.
Thomas Fransioli of Cornwall has been commissioned by the British ambassador to the United States to do a painting of the embassy residence in Washington, D.C. The painting will become part of the permanent collection at the residence. Two paintings by Mr. Fransioli, views of Salisbury and of Pocketknife Square in Lakeville, were recently purchased by the Connecticut Bank and Trust Company. His works are also owned by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Whitney Museum in New York, the Seattle Art Museum, and many corporate and private collections.
25 years ago — February 2000
The Housatonic River Initiative filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Springfield, Mass., Tuesday to intervene in the proposed consent decree for the cleanup of PCB contamination in Pittsfield and in the Housatonic River. The contamination was caused by the General Electric Company plant in Pittsfield. The group, which is based in Pittsfield and has been at the forefront of the cleanup effort, hopes to intervene in the negotiated settlement for the cleanup of sites contaminated by GE. It wants to ensure that properties in Pittsfield and the length of the Housatonic River are adequately cleaned and that public health and safety and the environment are protected.
Alexis Savage of Sharon will travel to Stamford this weekend to participate in the Connecticut Pride’s “Hot Shot” contest. Alexis qualified by winning her local round of competition in Sharon and advancing to the county finals in Kent, where she won her age group, 11- and 12-year-olds, by one point to advance to this weekend’s state finals. Alexis is a sixth-grade student at Sharon Center School and the daughter of Andy and Kim Savage.
Keep ReadingShow less
loading
