So Blessed East Hampton December 8, 2014 Dear Editor, We have our calendars, as well as all of the lovely decorations and illuminations that appear in our villages to help remind us of the season — the season of remembering and giving. But the people in the Town of East Hampton have never needed a sign or symbol or season to remember. We are so blessed to live in a community that never needs to be reminded to give because year round, on so many occasions, this community has stepped up to pledge, serve, or donate to support those in need. While we have just come through a season of giving thanks, the family of Colin and Katalina Rodriguez will always be grateful for the kind and generous outreach of so many people, named and unnamed, who have come forward to support these children, who were recently orphaned by the death of their mother. We especially want to thank Alison Lupo, who spearheaded a GoFundMe campaign, the Springs School community, several organizations, and The East Hampton Star and East Hampton Press for their coverage. We also want all to know how fortunate the children are to have their named legal guardian, Carla Gagliotti, who, without hesitation, accepted this role and lovingly provided for all of their important needs. Thank you all for your generosity and kindheartedness. Sincerely, SHIRLEY WORNSTAFF And the Rodriguez Family Paid E.M.T. Services Wainscott December 8, 2014 Dear David: I write with respect to the letter in The East Hampton Star of Dec. 4 from Richard Rosenthal. The death of Tom Twomey is certainly tragic, as is the sudden and unexpected death of any individual regardless of their accomplishments and achievements in life. I know many volunteer emergency medical personnel and fire personnel on the East End of Long Island. I know they are dedicated, hard-working individuals who give freely of their time and talents to take care of the community they live in, and who are constantly seeking ways to improve the service they provide. Over the years, the number of calls placed to these agencies has increased exponentially, while the cost of living in the Hamptons has also required many of these volunteers to work multiple jobs in order to survive, thus putting a significant strain on the time they can offer as a volunteer. Given these strains, perhaps it is time that the services did go full time. From my perspective as an immigrant to this country that would be a great shame, as I believe that the volunteer fire and E.M.S. services are one of the most amazing aspects of the Hamptons, and something that is not found in too many countries outside of the United States. However, if providing a paid service is what many residents of the area believe is the best way to go, then you may also want to be careful for what you wish — the grass is not always greener on the other side. I grew up in a country with a paid service affiliated with a hospital that could take up to 30 minutes to respond to a call. However, that is a little beside the point. My question to Mr. Rosenthal is, where he is getting his extra $100,000 to $150,000 per year to provide this service? Or am I misunderstanding his point? For example, the starting salary for an E.M.T. in New York City with less than one year’s experience is $31,931, excluding benefits. After five years it increases to $45,834. Similarly, for a paramedic the respective salaries are $43,690 and $59,079. East Hampton Village Ambulance maintains three ambulances. In order to ensure that someone is available at all times, 24/7, each ambulance would have to be manned. Assuming using the minimum number of personnel per ambulance required by Suffolk County, that would be two personnel per ambulance, or a total of six medics. Assuming each crew works eight-hour shifts, then you will require nine crews per shift to man three ambulances. In order to provide top-quality care we will assume that each crew contains nine E.M.T.s and nine paramedics. Thus, staffing the service with personnel with less than one year of service would total $680,589. Assuming the community wants experienced personnel and requires every medic to have at least five years of experience, this would run the cost to $944,226. This is before we consider aspects such as benefits, the fact that overnight crews may need to be paid a night differential, the fact that these full-time people would need vacation and probably would not be able to work a full seven days a week, and so part-timers would need to be retained to cover days and hours when full-time personnel are unavailable. It is also based on the fact that these medics are paid the same as New York City. Given the cost of living in the Hamptons, it is conceivable that they may need to be paid more. Thus, as can be seen, the cost of a full-time, paid emergency medical service is substantially greater than Mr. Rosenthal believed. However, at the end of the day the question really is not how much extra such a service will cost, but how much value do we place on life and is that extra cost merited as a result? Sincerely, PETER HILLICK Good Cop, Bad Cop East Hampton December 4, 2014 To the Editor: Good cop: It was a typical N.Y.C. situation. Two cars blocking the street while both drivers were fighting over the same empty parking spot. A small crowd gathered to watch as the drivers hurled obscenities at each other. From somewhere a very large cop arrived and interrogated the driver in the first car, then walked over to the second car. I heard the cop say to the driver, “Did you steal his spot?” I couldn’t hear the driver’s explanation, but I saw the cop reach into the driver’s window, hold his finger in front of the driver’s nose, and say, “Naughty naughty!” Bad cop: Oddly enough, a similar situation happened a week later. As I walked up my street I noticed two cars wedged together at an angle in one parking spot. Apparently the man in the first car had called the police, who had just arrived. One of the cops jumped out of his patrol car, pulled his gun out of its holster, pointed it at the driver of the rear car and shouted, “Show me your hands!” Show me your hands!” The driver (an African-American man), who looked scared out of his wits, jumped out of his car with his hands up in the air. I quickly got out of the way, as the cop’s gun was pointing in my direction, although I wish I had stayed and held up my hands and yelled, “Please, officer, don’t shoot!” DAVID STILES On Climate Change Springs December 3, 2014 Dear David, Once again, Peter C. Osborne writes (Dec. 4) to inform us that man-made climate change is “factually false.” Once again, he refers us to a rogues’ gallery of professional science deniers including Roy Spencer, Fred Singer, and Richard Lindzen. These men also contend that secondhand smoke is harmless, DDT is harmless and should be resumed, creationism is superior to evolution, and that market forces are all that is needed to protect the environment. In other words, trust coal companies and oil companies to protect the earth. Mr. Osborne ignores the fact that 97 percent of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals over the last 10 years, the National Climate Assessment, the World Bank, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (made up of scientists from all over the world), the National Science Foundation here, and the scientific establishment of every industrial country in the world disagree with him. I must say, I admire Mr. Osborne’s moxie in espousing so forcefully a view that almost nobody in the world of science takes seriously. The only reason I bother to contest Mr. Osborne’s comments is that not everybody has time to research these things, and I would not want readers of this paper to think there is any scientific controversy in this matter. Follow the footnotes of climate denial, and they all lead back to the Heartland Institute, funded by fossil-fuel interests: Marc Morano, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who has enjoyed millions in campaign contributions, and Rush Limbaugh. These are not objective sources. DON MATHESON Heedless Waste Amagansett December 8, 2014 Dear David, What a terrible waste! I just drove past a shocking pile of wreckage and uprooted landscaping that mere hours earlier was a charming, beautifully maintained, 10-year-old farmhouse on Atlantic Avenue. A massive bulldozer was hard at work efficiently leveling the property, leaving a barren lot ready to receive yet another Farrell McMansion. This is yet another example of the blight that is swiftly altering the face of Amagansett. But I am not going to discuss the issue of the destruction of community character in this letter. Rather, I want to raise the question of the heedless waste of housing stock in a town struggling to figure out how to provide more affordable housing. Years ago, I remember attending an exciting meeting at LTV about needed housing. Some of the discussion included ways of discouraging teardowns, building funds for acquisition of usable buildings, tax incentives, and reference to several New England towns, where some of these ideas were being explored. I’m sure there are many who remember that forum and who would be interested in reviewing the problem in the new year. It surely is timely. Sincerely, BETTY MAZUR New Funding Source Amagansett December 5, 2014 Dear David, Thank you for your editorial on the community housing fund committee’s plan. As committee chairman, I thank the volunteer members — who are Catherine Casey, Michael DeSario, Jeanne Frankel, Barbara Jordan, John Lycke, Michelle Thompson, and myself. The lion’s share of the work was done by Tom Ruhle, director of housing, and Eric Schantz of the Planning Department. We received great support from Councilwoman Sylvia Overby and her assistant, Barbara Claflin, and Marguerite Wolffsohn, the Planning Department director. I read with interest your comments on one proposal, the plan’s support for state legislation to allow the towns to divert a percentage of the community preservation fund for affordable housing. I agree with you that the C.P.F. program has not driven up real estate prices or contributed to the scarcity of affordable housing. There remain over 2,000 vacant lots in the town. Almost all the purchased open space has been waterfront, zoned for two-acre or more lots, or is in prime groundwater-recharge areas — all land unlikely to have become affordable housing. In the long term, we need small developments and creative reuse of existing housing stock. (That said, our committee fully supports the proposed project in Wainscott.) Given budget caps and tight municipal budgets, where will we find the millions of dollars needed for housing? Increasing municipal debt is also difficult to do these days. In East Hampton, an extra $2 million or $3 million per year for housing, out of the $25 million or $35 million C.P.F. income, could put many, many families into homes and apartments over a period of years. Without a new funding source, it is not realistic to expect town government to create more than a handful of housing units a year, on average. As someone devoted to our open-space program, I don’t take “raiding” the C.P.F. fund lightly, but we must balance our passion for the environment with compassion for people who are struggling to survive here, in our beautiful town that also has the second-highest poverty rate in Suffolk County. All the best to you and your family over the holidays. JOB POTTER Govermental Money Pit Springs December 7, 2014 To the Editor, The East Hampton Town Republican Committee supports your Dec. 4 editorial urging that the community preservation fund remain focused exclusively on property preservation and purchase. Affordable housing and septic upgrades are important issues that warrant town board consideration, but not free access to millions of dollars. As successful as the C.P.F. has been, the use of the funds generated has not been as carefully protected as that of funds derived from borrowing. There is no citizen recourse for faulty choices, changes to the program are done hastily and in an expedited fashion, and the funds themselves are utilized as a salve to vagaries of public opinion. All this is accepted by the public because it ends up with protected property that is theirs. To diffuse the C.P.F. and allow assorted experts to steer funding to consultants and bureaucratic programs will render the fund one more self-perpetuating governmental money pit. Our representatives in Albany will do us no service by dismantling the premise of the C.P.F. to further other goals. TOM KNOBEL Chairman East Hampton Town Republican Committee Precedents Do Matter Springs December 8, 2014 Dear David, T.E. McMorrow’s article in last week’s Star, describing determinations made by the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, illustrates disturbing weaknesses in the zoning board’s decision-making process. Owners who were constructing a detached garage knowingly disregarded sections of our zoning code as well as our Building Department’s permit process, and yet the Z.B.A. rewarded them with a 3-2 “yes” vote. In this case, the owners, or the owners’ representative, submitted construction documents to the Building Department for a conforming garage. Upon receiving the permit, the owners then built a larger, nonconforming garage and built a nonconforming second story as well, without ever notifying the Building Department of these changes. It’s no surprise that Mr. Preiato (the town’s acting chief building inspector at the time) issued a stop-work order upon discovering the additional construction. Our town’s own attorney directed the Z.B.A. to not be “punitive.” This appeared to mean, at least to members of the Z.B.A., that the zoning board of appeals was no longer supposed to enforce our laws. What does this mean to me as an architect? Can I file false plans with the Building Department, receive my clients’ dishonestly obtained building permit, and then go on my merry way, modifying roof heights, setbacks, accessory structure sizes, and yes, even add second floors as we go along? My clients may get a mild scolding, and they may need to be wealthy enough to hire an attorney, but they will almost surely be guaranteed a “yes” vote. Precedents do matter. As a result of this decision, I believe that an increasing number of rogue construction projects will end up in front of the zoning board of appeals, where their unpermitted modifications will be approved. This decision undermines our zoning code and undermines the hard work of our Building Department. It also harms architects and builders who choose to work honestly in this town. I want to recognize and thank Mr. Lys and Mr. White for having the integrity and the clarity of thought to vote “no.” Sincerely, PAMELA BICKET Dolphin Drive Parking Barnes Landing December 8, 2014 David, A number of people, including my fellow board members of the Eastern Long Island Chapter of Surfrider Foundation, have asked me to respond to Jonathan Wallace’s Nov. 20 letter to The Star in which he accuses me, as co-chair of our local Surfrider chapter, of advocating parking on a dune at the South Flora Nature Preserve adjacent to Dolphin Drive in Napeague. That is not true. We do not advocate parking on a dune. I am very familiar with the South Flora property and surrounding area. I have monitored piping plover nests and surveyed for rare plants (seabeach knotweed and seabeach amaranth) in that area. I have also taught a beach and dune field ecology course in that area, and I did a field inspection of the preserve before developing Surfrider’s position on the Dolphin Drive parking issue. Our position on this issue is that access to the preserve and ocean beach should be provided by allowing roadside parking on the east side of Dolphin Drive, adjacent to the nature preserve and, out of respect for the residents of Dolphin Drive, not in front of the homes located on the road’s west side. This is no different than the situation found at Atlantic Avenue, Amagansett, where parking is allowed on the west edge of the roadside adjacent to the Atlantic Double Dunes Preserve, but not on the east side of the road where homes are located. Our position is in accordance with Surfrider Foundation’s mission to protect and enjoy our oceans, waves, and beaches. Included in our mission are campaigns to protect existing public access to the beach and advocate additional accesses, as we did when we challenged the state’s prohibition of surfing at Montauk Point and Camp Hero state parks. Sincerely, MIKE BOTTINI Home Goods Wins East Hampton December 6, 2014 To the Editor: Home Goods is here! Finally, Wainscott will look like a village instead of a pit stop. Compared to the existing businesses’ architecture and landscaping, Home Goods wins. Wainscott: An affordable place to shop and walk to surrounding places! How great is that? Thank you, Home Goods! LALLY MOCKLER A Mug, a Hug Patchogue December 1, 2014 To the Editor, Kindness, forgiveness, giveness, a mug, a hug, and a kiss. This season was made for this. Sincerely, FRED GASREL Another Point of View East Hampton December 2, 2014 Dear David I agree with Bill Crain from the East Hampton Group for Wildlife in his letter to you last week that stated that there should be at least one member on the deer management advisory committee who is in favor of humane protection of our deer population. Bill has been campaigning in front of the town board and the committee time and time again, in person and by letter, requesting a representative be appointed who is not pro-hunting, pro-reduction, or in favor of weekend hunting on our hiking trails. Maybe this flies in the face of the “deer management” agenda but still I was disappointed to learn that he has not been given a response and/or the decency and respect of the reason why the town board and this committee are noncommittal and ignoring his request. There are many citizens of this town who are in favor of protecting the local deer population, as evidenced by the large crowd gathered last year to stop the planned cull. I don’t think I am alone in thinking that any group or committee put together by our town board to work on a specific issue that affects all of us should not be one-sided in its decision-making process. This past year, our new town board showed us how government can work with respect and fairness. I believe it would be fair for more than just the one person who Mr. Crain is requesting to be allowed to be on this advisory committee as an opposing voice of reason if necessary. I sure hope the town board, regardless of politics or personal feelings, hasn’t forgotten how important it is that all of our committees are open to opposing voices, especially when we are not all in agreement. It allows for another point of view, and thus gives us the potential and the opportunity for compromise, with the hope that well-debated decisions are made that we can all live with. BETSY PETROSKI State v. Cuthbert Springs December 1, 2014 To the Editor: I have written the below partly in response to an article that appeared in The Star on Oct. 23, “Police Brutality Claim Dismissed by Jury” by T.E. McMorrow — a mean attempt at journalism, in my opinion — written about a case in our local court, State v. William Cuthbert. I am his defense attorney, Joseph Giannini. Some of you may know me or know of me; I live in Springs and have been practicing criminal defense law here for over 20 years. On Jan. 23, Mr. Cuthbert, a local builder from Springs, was arrested, accused by East Hampton Town Police Officer Frank Trotta of two violations, disorderly conduct and harassment, and of one crime, resisting arrest. On Oct. 16, Mr. Cuthbert was found guilty, by a jury, of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. He was found not guilty of harassment. Mr. Cuthbert is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 4 by Justice Steven Tekulsky. The case against Mr. Cuthbert arose from a minor traffic accident at the intersection of Abraham’s Path and Accabonac Road on the freezing morning of Jan. 23. Mr. Cuthbert started out that morning by driving to Goldberg’s deli to get breakfast to go. A longtime windsurfer, he drove to Napeague to look at the ocean and have his breakfast. His plan was to go home after that, gather his already sorted recyclables, and head UpIsland to sell them. While driving home on Abraham’s Path he stopped his Chevy van at the stop sign on the southeast corner of Abraham’s Path and Accabonac Road. He looked right and left. Then up ahead and saw a vehicle coming south down Abraham’s Path. It swerved back and forth on the ice-and-snow-covered road. Then slid through the intersection and careened into the driver’s side of Mr. Cuthbert’s stopped van, coming to rest behind his van, in the opposite lane. He got out of his van and went over to the other vehicle. The driver, a lone female, was not injured but visibly upset. Mr. Cuthbert then called his girlfriend, Jana Nishida, at her place of business and told her what had happened. He asked her to call the police, but not to use 911. Shortly after, first a car and then a large diesel truck pulled behind his stopped van. Mr. Cuthbert went over to the driver of each vehicle and told them there had been an accident and he was waiting for the police to arrive. Mr. Cuthbert was still outside his van when a Marine Patrol vehicle, going north on Abraham’s Path, pulled up and stopped alongside the diesel truck. The driver of the Marine Patrol S.U.V. was East Hampton Town Police Officer Frank Trotta. Here is where things went 180 degrees for my client. Two different accounts of his encounter with Officer Trotta were to ensue: the police version and my client’s version. Some things are certain. 1. A short time after Officer Trotta arrived, he handcuffed Mr. Cuthbert, putting his hands behind his back and raising them toward his neck. 2. Mr. Cuthbert was charged by Officer Trotta with the above-mentioned two violations and one crime. 3. Mr. Cuthbert was the only person injured during this encounter and while in police custody. 4. Existing photographs of injuries Mr. Cuthbert sustained during his arrest by Officer Trotta and while in custody. At this point, you should know more about the messenger. I want you to believe what I say about the case. In 1970, recently out of the U.S.M.C., I went to law school on the G.I. Bill. I have been defending people, including New York City police officers, since obtaining my J.D. in 1973. That’s 41 years. Over the course of that time I have been asked a single question many times: “Why did you become a lawyer?” Here is how I respond: “In Vietnam, I witnessed as well as experienced the breakdown of the rule of law. Power dispensed at the end of a rifle barrel. The law of the jungle. The rule of men, where might was deemed right. Becoming a lawyer was my way of fighting against that mentality.” Further, two unusual experiences subconsciously guide me. I tried two cases long before I made the decision to go to law school. At 17, accused of speeding, I defended myself at a judge trial in Massapequa Town Justice Court. The police officer came to court with a lawyer. During my cross-examination, I accused the officer of lying. I testified on my own behalf, then informed the court that I had additional witnesses. The judge said to me, “Rest your case.” I did. He found me not guilty. Then, looking in the direction of my mother, who was sitting in the first row, the judge asked, “Is this your son?” She said yes. Then the judge said, “He is going to be an attorney.” No way, I thought. Seven years later, I was in Vietnam with the First Battalion Third Marines leading a Marine rifle platoon. On a cold rainy afternoon in mid-March of 1968 I led my platoon toward what appeared ahead to be an old French position of concrete pillboxes. We were about 100 yards from the old French position when my point squad captured two sleeping N.V.A. soldiers in a large bomb crater. After setting my platoon in defensive positions and having the prisoners choppered out to the rear, I set up my command post in a large stone Buddhist temple. I was about to have some C-rats when a Marine captain, a stranger to me, came in. He was wearing clean starched utilities, polished boots, and carrying a Thompson submachine gun. He walked up to me and asked, “Are you Lt. Giannini?” I said that I was. He said, “ This is for you,” and handed me a large, red-bound book. Looking at him I said, “What is this?” He responded, “The Uniform Code of Military Justice.” He continued, “You have been assigned as defense counsel for an enlisted Marine in your battalion. Your C.O. is convening a field courts martial this month. The Marine has been charged with going AWOL from this battalion and with assaulting an officer at the Quang Tri Combat Base. The Marine is facing seven years and a bad conduct discharge.” I was taken aback and said, “But I’m not a lawyer.” His response was, “He’s not entitled to a lawyer, he’s only entitled to an officer.” The field courts martial was convened in a bomb-damaged Catholic church. I’ve been around the block several times. Seen and been part of many things. I’m tempted to say I’ve seen it all — including torture, murder, and summary execution — but given our nature, I know better. In my summation, I accused Officer Frank Trotta and Officer Barry Johnson of using excessive force and injuring my client when they arrested and took him into custody. I said these things because I believe them. Yes, Mr. Cuthbert was convicted by a jury. Juries make mistakes. A week doesn’t go by without a jury verdict being vacated for police misconduct. That’s why we have appellate courts. In my opinion, based on my experience with the case and what I know of Mr. Cuthbert, he’s an innocent man wrongfully convicted. Semper fi, JOSEPH GIANNINI Warrior of the Snows Amagansett December 1, 2014 To the Editor: Recently an Arctic blast of near-unprecedented proportions collapsed on upstate New York. The snowfall was hyperborean in scale. The ferocity of the snow was blistering. The Arctic explorers of 150 years ago could not fathom the universe they were about to be conquered by. Today, few realize that the polar bear population in Alaska and the Bering Sea has almost been halved in the last six years! Our son, Lysander, saw his first polar bear in 2008 and beheld wonder. Wonder, the first of the passions, as the French thinker Descartes called it, for which there is no contrary or opposite emotion. To witness the stride of this fantabulous predator stalking the great silent ice in hope of catching a glimpse of prey or a hint of seal, is to be gifted with an unmatched power and poetry and place. I write hoping against hope that Lysander’s son too will be able to witness the great marauder of the North, for in his gallant glance, in his fearless steps, in his mesmerizing strength lies the gait of a warrior before which we should be humbled. That he has been able to survive for hundreds of thousands of years in the uncanny extremes of winter boggles the rational mind. We saw him crossing ice floes in Svalbard and walking upon boulders in northern Quebec like the great nomadic sovereign that he is. That his world is melting is incontrovertible. The loss of the summer ice signals not just the loss of his world, it is upturning ours as well. The reflectivity at the top of the world civilization has known for 10,000 years will fade. As the prescient Loren Eiseley once wrote, “On a huge industrial scale, however, we have unconsciously introduced a mechanism which threatens to run out of control. It is one thing successfully to plan a moon voyage; it is quite another to solve the moral problems of a distraught, unenlightened, and confused humanity.” I cannot contemplate a world without this great warrior of the snows, the polar bear. As our horizons narrow, waver, and disappear, wonder will too. I surmise that the violence that humanity has visited upon the earth is proportional to the loss of the natural world. After the two world wars, the mutilation and disappearance so-called humanity has visited on nature has been relentless. Over hundreds of millennia, the snows, the great gravity of the glaciers, challenged and nurtured our mind and made it more resilient. The caves of Lascaux forged the recesses of the human imagination. Those cave-bound moments of inner exhilaration helped mold the poetry of the human species and our ability to survive. We were forged from without with the cold landscape of the cryogenic breath. The monarch of that realm was the bear, and greatest among them the polar bear. The bear has influenced the mind of the Northern Hemisphere as no other mammal. Its hibernating powers, its physical stature, its mythological and spiritual influence on the human mind are legion. A new cold war may be descending upon us with the Russian empire. But a far greater one afflicts us with the fading of the great nomad of the Kingdom of Thule. The Inuit shamans honored the great ice bear as an extension of their own psyches. They, the native people of the far north, whom the British and European explorers deemed primitive, honored the polar bear as a peer. They knew at least that he was an equal. He was killed for food only when necessary. He was a totem and a peer and an ineffable presence in their cosmology. One has to wonder, if we still can, what will make us wonder, and stand still with open soul and amazement before the identity and stark power and presence of something beyond us, a being who walked almost like a phantom in the infinity of time and space. Jean Malaurie, the great French explorer who learned the Inuktitut language of the Inuit in the far north, ended his magical tome “The Last Kings of Thule” with an extraordinary warning and prophecy: “The Pole is the roof of the world, the birthplace of our climate condition, and the Earth is not eternal. Men of science, like men of state, have a duty imposed by ethics. The Earth is living: it can and will avenge itself: already there are portents. The Earth has not time left for man’s ignorance, arrogance, sophistry and madness.” That was written in 1956. Let us not wait until 2056 to recalibrate our place on earth. As an Eskimo shaman once told the explorer Rasmussen over 100 years ago, “We fear the cold and the things we do not understand. But most of all we fear the heedless ones among ourselves.” If we should lose the polar bear in the next few decades, it will signal the loss of much more than a great marauding, other-than-human, animal life force. Its great totemic presence and the awe-inspiring gait across the vast infinity corresponds to a remarkable companionship that has evolved alongside us for humanity’s entire evolution. Trophy hunting and the slaughter of the innocent for mindless “sports” is criminal and should be treated as an act of murder. A native elder, Kananginak, who observed polar bears with us in Canada, was shown the photograph of a fogbow we had seen in Svalbard. In its luminous bridge and crescent shape arcing over the Arctic sea, it resembled a portal unto another world, a world of freedom and expanses we cannot fathom. He looked at it amidst the broken ice floes and increasingly warming world and remarked that his people knew this phenomenon and that some elders occasionally saw a pole under the bow — the mythic tree that upheld the world. What, indeed, on the brink of irreversible climate change, does our species bring to the life force? On the eve of the Paris climate summit a year from now, let civilization reverse course. The polar bear is the great white corpuscle of the world’s immune system, the intermediary between heaven and earth at the top of the world. It passage on earth must be honored and salvaged. Humanity’s place on earth depends on it. CYRIL CHRISTO Memory Lane Southold December 1, 2014 Dear Editor, When I was a kid in 1957, my early teens, I had the record “Carousel,” and was a great fan of Gordon MacCrae and Shirley Jones. I played the record so often I wore it out. It must have gotten back to the MacCrae family on Park Avenue in Manhattan. I had the wonderful experience of visiting them in their large apartment. Inside there was a big piano with not a lot of furniture in the large living room. Dining room chairs lined the wall occupied by their many children. I sat on the piano seat facing Sheila MacCrae. In came Gorden MacCrae. I was so happy to meet him, so glad, I overcame my nerves, I wanted to sing so much. He walked directly to the big piano, struck the right chord and I jumped in right away and sang. It was soft at first to the song “If I Loved You.” And when Gorden MacCrae’s voice lowered, my voice got a little bit louder. This was my first successful audition. I was asked to sleep over in a little room. I got such a need for my mother, I couldn’t stop crying. They took me home to Forest Hills! When he was dying about seven years later, I sped down the Long Island Expressway to Manhattan and found the hospital right away. I ran up the steps and walked in his room and saw Sheila MacCrae with the daughters. I stood at the foot of his bed for 10 minutes and left. I felt later, I should have stayed longer. He had such a beautiful voice. I was one of his greatest fans. I hope you enjoyed my tribute to Gorden MacCrae. ANITA FAGAN God’s Smile Boston November 20, 2014 To the Editor, Re: Boxed set The Sandpipers. Dear Student: “The shadow of God’s smile in your 70s.” M.B.A. joke: What is the difference between a car mechanic and a heart surgeon? One operates on the motor while the engine is running. 10-15, 11-16, 12-16 GEORGE RICHERT P.S. White House, Titanic, Virgin-Nefelim Crafts, Asteroid’s fix-it-ups.
Published 4 years ago
Last updated 4 years ago
Letters to the Editor: 12.11.14
December 10, 2014