Lucky to Have
East Hampton
November 3, 2025
To the Editor,
Occasionally I send my oldest friend, Terry, a beacon of light amidst Floridian fog, one of my letters to The Star. This week he wrote back that he was glad that my letters were steadily accepted by the editor.
For a day or so I let him think that but then wrote him that The Star was indeed wonderful and that we were lucky to have such a paper — and that they publish all letters from readers.
Terry responded, "That is so remarkable. American enlightenment."
Indeed.
TOM MACKEY
Appalled to See
Springs
November 3, 2025
Dear David,
I was appalled to see that The East Hampton Star published a paid full-page ad from supporters of the Maidstone Gun Club attempting to spin public concern and local residents' documented evidence as "false claims." This kind of defensive propaganda does nothing to address legitimate community fears about bullets hitting people's homes and entering their private property, lead contamination, and the gun club's harmful environmental impact.
For decades, East Hampton residents have worked hard to protect our water, wildlife, and open space. When supporters of a private gun range operating on public land dismiss those concerns as "misinformation," it shows a deep disrespect for community members.
Environmental stewardship is not proven by self-congratulatory ads but through transparency, accountability, and soil and water monitoring. The community deserves facts verified by experts, not paid ads from those with a stake in keeping the status quo. As you go to the polls this week remember not one candidate for town board supported the residents who fear for their lives because of bullets from those four outdoor ranges.
It's past time for the East Hampton Town Board to listen to residents. We need more than campaign signs claiming to care about clean water and families and lies during candidate debates. Now more than ever, we need leaders who will actually stand up for clean water, safe neighborhoods, open space, and honest public dialogue.
JACQUELINE ESPOSITO
Dispatching?
East Hampton Village
November 2, 2025
David,
Do we think the village administrator, Marcos Baladron's, critical comments on the emergency dispatching plan give Jerry a raison d'etre for his 2026 town supervisor bid?
Just asking.
DAVID GANZ
Disturbing New Plans
East Hampton Village
November 2, 2025
Dear David,
In last week's Christopher Gangemi article "Noise the Sticking Point for Neighbors of Proposed Brewery," Mr. Gangemi hit the nail right on the head in the first paragraph when he wrote, "When it comes to discussing the application for Toilsome Lane Restaurant and Brewery in East Hampton Village, 'It's the noise, stupid.' "
It was heartwarming to see the wonderful support of our neighbors at the recent design review board meeting, as well as seeing the board's concerns and understanding of how the brewery could so easily become a nuisance to the neighborhood.
During that D.R.B. meeting, disturbing new plans show the brewery wants to install outdoor speakers and in reference to special events it was reported that Alex Balsam does not want "to budge on the proposed brewery's right to host 10 per year."
The brewery wants this because outdoor special events with music will draw large crowds and we must not forget it is a restaurant in a brewery where huge quantities of beer will be consumed.
Special events will also create many safety risks since there are no sidewalks on the well-traveled Toilsome Lane. They will also bring an unacceptable deluge of uncontrollable noise throughout our residential neighborhood. If the village does not permit the brewery to hold special events it will not only eliminate unwanted noise but solve the safety issues as well.
Toilsome Lane Restaurant and Brewery's application to the D.R.B. is for a "restaurant," not a disco or nightclub. For that reason, if special event permits are eliminated, it will be just what it was meant to be, a restaurant, and that is what all of us would want, a peaceful restaurant on Toilsome Lane.
MICHAEL AARON
Preserve Older Trees
Montauk
November 11, 2025
To the Editor:
At the Sept. 16 town board work session, the sustainability committee made a compelling case for a tree protection ordinance. The committee listed the benefits that trees provide, from shade to cleaner air. It didn't propose a specific ordinance. Its goal was to stimulate conversation.
In response, the town board's comments generally expressed support but emphasized that any ordinance should be balanced by other considerations, such as the need to fell trees to create open vistas. Even the committee assumed that an ordinance couldn't protect all trees, and it discussed replacement plantings.
I wish the board and committee would become bolder in one respect. I wish they would try to protect all older trees (trees that possess characteristics such as thick bark and large canopies). Unless an older tree presents a serious danger, the town should preserve it.
My recommendation is based on the immediate threat of global warming. Many esteemed scientists estimate that we have only a few years, perhaps three to five, to limit climate change before it produces catastrophic results. They envision floods, wildfires, rising oceans, heat waves, and species losses — all at levels beyond anything we've seen so far.
In light of such a possibility, each community must do what it can to preserve its older trees, which have absorbed and stored considerable carbon dioxide, keeping it out of the atmosphere. If we allow these trees to remain and decompose, the carbon will go into the soil and enrich it. If, instead, we cut down older trees, the carbon will be released into the air. Then, instead of doing our part to prevent disaster, we will contribute to it.
I realize that the number of trees in our community is tiny compared to the number in the world's large forests, and many local residents want to do something to protect them. We can join protests, write letters to public officials, and vote for those who take forest preservation seriously. We also can consider the source of the food we purchase. Beef often comes from ranches that are destroying forests to make room for cattle. These ranches also produce climate-warming methane gas. I hope shoppers will increasingly refuse to buy their meat products.
Because climate change is a global issue, we often feel powerless in the face of it. But if each person and community does something, it can make a difference. Perhaps we can even set an example and influence others.
BILL CRAIN
Sensing a Theme
Amagansett
November 1, 2025
To the Editor:
I received a text message yesterday from someone I have frequently criticized in my letters to The Star, asking me to meet because "[I am] interested why you write things about me, when you know nothing about me." I responded "Yeah, no thanks" and immediately got an answer: "I figure[d] you would say that."
This inspired me to explain why I write to The Star almost every week, usually in a belligerent mode that is unlike the self I display in almost every other interaction.
I have been doing controversial pro bono legal work my whole career, and occasionally been a lightning rod for the far right as a result. My first experience with free work occurred when a human rights organization sent out an appeal for lawyers to represent Haitian boat people in political asylum proceedings, in 1982, I think. They all feared being murdered by the Tonton Macoute, the Haitian secret police, if they returned. The package of materials included an account from a volunteer lawyer, the only one available to travel every day to the remote Florida detention center where the Haitians were being held.
The Reagan administration had assigned two immigration judges to the camp. While the attorney was standing up entering appearances for 10 immigrants in one courtroom, the judge in the other was hurriedly ordering 10 more deported before the lawyer could speak to them. (Very few of the appalling tactics used by the Trump administration are newly invented.) I knew I would be ashamed of myself if I did not volunteer.
I kept 39 Haitian clients in this country until Reagan relented and granted them amnesty. I am proud of that. One only was forced to go back, and when someone searched for him a year or two later, he had vanished. They were good, hard-working people I came to like very much (not a necessary condition for pro bono work but it helps). I am certain that many of them became citizens, and are proud of their citizen grandchildren by now. And that describes my view of immigration, and also, by the way, of diversity, equity, and inclusion — as the words really signify, not as the Forces of Sleep use them.
When I bought my home on Napeague in 1997, this became my quiet refuge, the place where I could be a complete unknown. That lasted almost 20 years. What changed? A group of people, for reasons I still don't understand, targeted the nature preserve across from my home for development, and struck pre-emptively at the very private citizens in my neighborhood. These were retired, middle class people living in houses that (like mine) were extremely modest by Hamptons standards. None were public figures.
When we went to town board meetings, I watched with astonishment as the other side picked out our oldest, frailest (and usually female) neighbors and screamed in their faces from inches away (looking at you, Reg). Amazing slanders were invented, and also aired in the press, that we were "a wealthy elite" trying to deny beach access and stealing land from the town. They never accused us of harming children in a pizzeria basement, probably because they never thought of it. Trump and QAnon were still a few years away.
When the attack on the preserve surged back up, as it does from time to time, Peter Van Scoyoc went out of his way to attend an Amagansett citizens advisory committee meeting to shout me down. David Lys issued surprisingly specific public statements, not about the need for more beach parking in East Hampton, but about the need for parking on my street.
Sensing a theme here? That, excuse the expression, is my origin story: I seem to have a very low tolerance for people who think they are a higher life form, gratuitously invading my solitude.
Yes, I have now started writing letters about people of whom I haven't personally been the target -- when they treat other folks like that. That is why I have written to The Star standing up for the gun club neighbors and the village's ambulance volunteers.
And that actually maps to my overall theme, as expressed in my signature line. Democracy has many virtues: among them, it is the only form of government I know in which you can choose to be left alone.
The meaning of the word "total" in "totalitarian" includes complete access to citizens' private lives, most often to bully and threaten them. And that, by the way, is the reason that I simultaneously advocate for the Democratic machine to relinquish the town — and do not want Jerry Larsen to be the next supervisor.
For democracy in East Hampton,
JONATHAN WALLACE
A Lot to Say
Amagansett
November 2, 2025
To the Editor,
Maria Dorr had a lot to say when she was on administrative leave. When I tracked down Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint #520-2022-05790, only someone named in it could have it and tell the tale. Yes, Maria Dorr read me the whole thing.
I truly thought she would return and be the individual I thought I defended. The individual that she proclaimed to be. Her attorneys when they tracked me down in July 2024 already knew something happened with one of our children at the school that was covered up. They knew, when they called, I was someone who was speaking out on more than one issue at the school already.
The issues? Does it matter when everyone acts as if nothing happened in 2023, 2024, and even 2025? The quiet act as if everything is justifiable or just scared to tell the truth. An iron fist is wielding against anyone who dares to speak fact and truth aloud. This is from the minority group who is looking for a voice to be heard. Instead, the majority looks to silence. The new innocent victims aren't the staff anymore.
Still here,
JOE KARPINSKI
Slow Suicide
Montauk
October 30, 2025 .
Dear David,
A recent edition of The Star prominently headlined "Thousands Join 'No Kings' Protest Here." The Democratic Party have been perfecting slow suicide for years. The Biden-Democratic party encouraged the invasion of the U.S.A. through our border with Mexico. This included permitting criminals and other miscreants' entrance into our country. Dems have condemned President Trump for stopping this invasion! They have authored the longest inflation in my memory. When wages and fixed incomes (Social Security) can't keep up, good people have a difficult time. President Trump has turned this around.
For years, pharmaceutical manufacturers have sold their wares cheaper in Europe than in the United States. Dems made no noticeable progress to solve this injustice. In less than a year Donald Trump has stopped this injustice.
The Dems, or should I say socialists, have done little to stop criminals. Governors and mayors have done almost nothing particularly in sanctuary cities and states to protect their constituents. Many are the illegal immigrants that they permitted to cross the border. And yet they protest the president's efforts to support the laws of the country and remove these illegal criminals. Many otherwise good people who have entered the United States without proper authorization are still illegal aliens.
Clearly President Trump has accomplished a great deal regarding foreign policy. What have the democrat/socialists done or even proposed either domestically or for foreign policy?
Thanks,
DAN BRIGANTI
Already Feeling Pain
East Hampton
October 31, 2025
Sir,
Congressman Nick LaLota insists that the Affordable Care Act's premium crisis is a problem for later (email: "Ending the Shutdown by Putting People Before Politics," Oct. 29, 2025). But premiums are rising now, and families are already feeling the pain. Promising to fix it someday while standing by as costs climb today isn't leadership — it's neglect.
At the same time, Rep. LaLota proudly supports the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which will gut Medicaid and the supplemental nutrition program, or SNAP — lifelines for working families, seniors, and children across Long Island. There's nothing beautiful about ripping holes in the safety net that keeps our neighbors healthy and fed.
You can't claim to "put people before politics" while voting to make their lives harder. Cutting health care and food assistance doesn't build fiscal responsibility; it creates hardship. These are not abstract budget items, they are the difference between stability and crisis for thousands of Long Islanders.
If Congressman LaLota truly cared about the people he represents, he'd fight to lower costs and strengthen support — not dress up cruelty as courage.
Sincerely,
ANDREW VAN PRAAG
Meatheads Governing
East Hampton
October 31, 2025
Dear Mr. Rattray,
Some readers may recall a 1970s sitcom series called "All in the Family," where the patriarch of the family, Archie Bunker, referred to his son-in-law as "Meathead." In thinking back on this series, I realized that I am a MAGA supporter — Meatheads Are Governing America. Consider these examples:
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was forced to step down by two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran — Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America — in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct. Mr. Hegseth was co-host of "Fox and Friends" when Trump appointed him as secretary of defense in 2024.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon was co-founder, along with her husband, of Titan Sports in 1980 which later became known as World Wrestling Entertainment. Her only experience in education was serving on the Connecticut State Board of Education from 2009 to 2010.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy dismissed scientific advisers from the Centers for Disease Control and canceled research in the development of new vaccines. He admitted driving around with a dead cub bear carcass and then dumping it in Central Park. His daughter reported that he once cut off the head of a dead whale with a chain saw and strapped it to the roof of his minivan for a five-hour drive home.
Trump picked these people to lead these departments. Do these people really represent America's best for these positions?
SALVATORE TOCCI