Note of Thanks
Montauk
December 25, 2025
Editor,
A short note of thanks to our dedicated community members who volunteer their time to serve as first responders on the Montauk ambulance and fire department. They remind me of how grateful and thankful I am to be living in such a warm, loving community as Montauk.
This is the second time in just over a year that the ambulance squad has come to rescue me. This time I was lying in the road bleeding in front of Marshall’s gas station after having been hit by a motor vehicle while riding my bicycle.
The responders were totally professional and efficient, bandaged me up, and whisked my off to Southampton Hospital.
I am doing fine thanks to their efforts.
Merry Christmas and happy new year to everyone concerned — I love you and Montauk!
I think it was Marshall Prado who hit me. Or it may have been the Irish who are out to get me.
GEORGE WATSON
We Have Bookstores
East Hampton
December 24, 2025
To the Editor,
When I was in elementary school, our classes were taken one day a year to Severance Hall in Cleveland to hear the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by George Szell. Those were wonderful days.
But that was a long time ago. And here in East Hampton we have no such venue. But we have bookstores.
I am willing to bet that most elementary school students have never been in a bookstore. And kids today would get a thrill being taken as a class to a bookstore and just being allowed to roam around among more books than most had ever seen before.
And if these trips to bookstores — BookHampton, Barnes & Noble, or any other bookstore on the East End — do what I think they will do, it will get these youngsters excited about books just as I was excited to hear the Cleveland Orchestra.
And it may kindle in them a new desire to go to the library and get a book for themselves. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN
New Year’s Wish
Amagansett
December 26, 2025
To the Editor:
A quick new year’s wish:
William Blake’s “Jerusalem” (do a Google search for it now) depicts a man with a lantern (when you look closer, it is the sun) entering a Gothic arch. There is danger, but there is also hope. (Why enter the unknown otherwise?) That hope motivates my letters to The Star. (Why bother otherwise?)
As an Italian teenager emailed me in response to an optimistic essay on my website 25 years ago, “I hope for one best world.”
Gei gazinta hait.
For democracy and light in East Hampton and everywhere,
JONATHAN WALLACE
An Epidemic
Springs
December 27, 2025
To the Editor,
As I pointed out in an earlier letter, deer collisions in East Hampton have increased exponentially in the last 25 years from just 25 to 550 last year, according to county data that likely undercounts the issue.
The number of collisions has leveled out over the last five to six years, since the deer herd has probably reached its maximum capacity for the food available in our area. Given the lack of predators, the local deer herd has expanded way beyond what is natural.
This can be seen by the fact in some areas deer are now eating plants or trees they never had before, such as evergreens, which is highly unusual. This situation has not only decimated the local plant life but also many insects and birds that rely on them. The science behind this is clear, and the town even set up several fenced-in areas to show the significant problem that deer overbrowsing can create.
However, in 2025, the greatest problem posed by the overpopulation of deer is the increase in the tick population in our area. How can the town administration keep ignoring what has been called an epidemic of tick-borne diseases? We live in one of the hotspots for the entire country, so it is not surprising that our town has several of the leading doctors nationally in this field.
One of them said several years ago in an interview that, “If you don’t have a deer problem, you don’t have a tick problem.”
Deer ticks come from deer, not mice, squirrels, or birds that so often get blamed, but from the deer that can host up to 1,000 tick larvae each. For lone star ticks, the fastest-growing tick population in our area, that causes alpha gal syndrome: They only need deer to breed.
As someone who has dealt with ticks for decades and been tested and put on antibiotics multiple times, what I’ve always found worrisome is how little doctors actually know about these diseases. Five years ago, the Centers for Disease Control had to admit that Lyme, a disease that can be hard to diagnose and which can have debilitating neurological consequences, was much larger than they previously thought. In New York State, the number of cases diagnosed jumped from 3,000 to over 16,000 from 2021 to 2022.
The same is true for alpha gal allergy. Two years ago, the C.D.C. once again admitted it had grossly underestimated the number of cases by 80 percent, or almost half a million people, nationwide. Just a month ago, a medical research center in Virginia announced that a man in New Jersey was the first known case of someone dying from the disease.
Researchers have also recently stated that to get alpha gal a lone star tick does not need to be on one’s body for a day or two, as was assumed previously. More important, if multiple bites occur, the sugar can build up in the system and have compounding effects. Besides Lyme or alpha gal, ticks carrying Rocky Mountain fever have also shown up in our area. Since climate change will only worsen the current situation, this significant health issue must finally be taken more seriously.
Given the density of the town (over 20,000 homes), it is very difficult for regular hunting to ever bring the deer population down to a normal level, especially when only bows are used most of the season. A professional cull for several years in areas where proper surveys show we have too many deer makes more sense. Another benefit from this step would be that the meat could be donated to local food pantries, where the demand is at record levels.
Research shows there shouldn’t be more than 10 to, at most, 20 deer per square mile if there is to be a healthy environment for both plant life and deer, but wildlife experts from Cornell thought there were parts of town a decade ago that were at 100. In many parts of Springs, there are likely that many today, and a study that might cost $20,000 to $30,000 should finally be implemented in the hamlet with the largest residential year-round population.
While contraception has been advocated, most studies show this is only effective where the herd is in the hundreds, not in the 6,000 to 7,000 deer likely in our town, given the problem has been ignored for so long. Performing operations on female or male deer is very difficult, expensive, and not practical. Current shots through darts are also difficult to implement and only last a year or two and would likely take a decade to have any real impact.
There may be a new shot from Canada that needs to be given only once and that could be approved in the United States in a year or two, from my inquiries. Maybe it could be combined eventually with a four-poster tick machine system to reduce at least the tick population that has also been woefully ignored by our town.
North Haven has a strong four-poster program we should try to replicate, and the Girl Scout Camp in Springs is a great location, given the town was allowed permission to try this six years ago. To do this, the town has to finally allocate real money (millions) and have a well-thought-out plan to achieve meaningful results over a five-year period. Many other towns, states, and even countries are grappling with these same issues but ignoring them will not make them go away.
Sadly, the town board was told in 2013 by its planning board head that, “We still need to reduce our deer population to restore our biodiversity, reduce vehicle collisions, and, hopefully, reduce tick-borne diseases.” We’ve experienced a lost decade since then and the problem has only grown worse. Let’s hope the town board will finally wake up and take much-needed action in multiple areas.
BRAD BROOKS
Sense of Decency
East Hampton
December 23, 2025
Dear Mr. Rattray,
On June 9, 1954, Joseph Welch, the chief counsel for the United States Army, lashed out at Senator Joseph McCarthy during congressional hearings on whether communism had infiltrated the U.S. armed forces. Most memorable are the words with which Welch confronted McCarthy: “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Welch could very well pose the same question today to Trump for his lack of decency.
For example, following the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife, Trump posted on social media, “He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump” and was murdered “reportedly due to the anger he caused.”
During a recent Air Force One flight, Trump responded to a female reporter’s question by telling her, “Quiet, piggy.” He later posted on social media that a female reporter who had written an unflattering story about him, “. . . is a third-rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out.”
At a rally in Pennsylvania in December, Trump admitted to having said, “Why is it we only take people from shithole countries?”
Let’s not forget what Trump did back in November 2015 at a campaign rally in South Carolina. He contorted his arms to mock a reporter who has a severe joint and muscular disorder. Then in October 2016, Trump bragged about how it’s fine to “grab” women “by the pussy” when you’re famous as a “star” like he is.
Just a week after the congressional hearings ended, McCarthy was condemned by the U.S. Senate for contempt. If McCarthy was punished for having no sense of decency, isn’t it time now for the House to impeach and the Senate to convict Trump, not for his lack of decency, but for the high crimes and misdemeanors he has committed?
SALVATORE TOCCI
Disappeared
Montauk
December 28, 2025
Dear David,
How much longer are decent Americans going to silently stand by and watch their friends and family members, workers, and churchgoers get kidnapped and disappeared by Trump’s Gestapo and SS-wannabe goons?
Most who are kidnapped are undocumented immigrants who have committed no crimes; many are immigrants who have legal work permits. Others are American citizens who do not have the right Trump color. None of these people were legally detained with an arrest or search warrant and are now being held in hell-hole detention centers throughout the United States.
Just a reminder that in “Night,” Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor whose family was murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, wrote, “Silence kills.”
Martin Niemoller, a German pastor during the Third Reich, wrote,
“First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Wake up, America. One day they will come for you.
Cheers and happy new year,
BRIAN POPE
His Threats Include Us
North Haven
December 22, 2025
Dear David:
This holiday season is our best opportunity to gather and celebrate, but perhaps not just with ourselves and like-minded individuals. This is also a valuable opportunity to enjoy the company of others in our community with different faiths and ideals. We still enjoy a relatively safe environment, despite forces dedicated to creating fear and destruction.
We know of the awful Hanukkah shootings, racial attacks, school shootings, and other acts of violence brought on by deranged individuals. Political and media noise actually encourages that. We shouldn’t make the mistake thinking our neighbor’s different politics are always responsible. The truth is that when we isolate ourselves in fear, we allow true miscreants to gain their power.
Not everyone agreed with New York City Mayor John Lindsay, but he taught us that crime in Central Park could be successfully reduced when the law-abiding public re-populated the park, requiring no SWAT team, just a reasonable police presence. That became a proven reality.
Unfortunately, most political leadership today shows no common sense, and hasn’t any decency left. We just witnessed on TV a pathetic 18-minute breathless ramble from our president, shouting so many lies it was meaningless to fact-check any of it. We are not blind, we know he is desperate, and lying to us as usual.
Trump’s holiday message was delivered in his favorite “firehose” technique, drenching us with a torrent of “alternate facts.” This time we saw a clinical unraveling of behavior: druggy nonsense usually heard from mind-altered vagrants found on the street. Nothing resembled a competent president of the most powerful and respected country.
Mean, creepy, duplicitous autocrats are scattered through history. Some are worse than others. Pol Pot headed the Khmer Rouge that forced troops to rape their opponents. Many of Putin’s troops did this in Ukraine.
The Great Buddhas of Bamiyan were two massive sixth-century Buddhist statues carved into cliffs in the Bamiyan Valley, a significant site on the Silk Road. They were destroyed by the Taliban with explosives in March 2001 for being un-Islamic. In my opinion, this was a deliberate cultural precursor to the 9/11 attacks on our own culture at the World Trade Center Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and (unsuccessfully) the White House. Osama bin Laden’s operatives trained here in Florida, and used fully occupied domestic passenger jets as weapons. That is what the sworn presidential oath for “protection from the enemy within” means — not a leadership gone wrong with actual terrorists going unnoticed.
Trump demolished a third of the White House to satisfy his billionaire ballroom egocentric whim without any public consultation or authorization — seems like he finished what Osama bin Laden failed to accomplish.
Our nation’s culture was meant to be honored at the performance center for the arts that was dedicated in 1971 to John F. Kennedy in memoriam. Its cultural roots and purpose have been torn asunder just like those Great Buddhas. Then D.J.T. slapped his name on it to rub salt in the wound.
What’s next? Or is it now too late? Do we shudder in fear, or do we do something about this menacing presence in the White House?
We have been sitting on our collective behinds, influenced by corrupt media and politics, making excuses for this nonsense for almost 10 years. Now we’re getting the payoff. This monster madman has the keys to everything and is willing to kill people for his purpose, in a totally extrajudicial manner. When are we going to realize his threats include us, our friends, relatives, neighbors, and close companions.
When do we gather ourselves to start giving a damn? No point in calling the police because we are the police. We are the only ones left to deal with this menace. And deal with it we must.
Let’s cross the aisle this holiday season to spread our joy and willingness to support each other in a more loving, friendly, and honest democratic manner. Only together can we effectively fight to repair this mess so we can move on peacefully as we really wish to do.
ANTHONY CORON