If you have a question about your City of Newburgh sanitation bill and call the number at the top of that bill, 569-7339, and it happens that you’ve dared to call them at 4 p.m. or later, or on weekends, or on holidays, a peculiar thing happens. You hear: “Today is Monday, October 29th and we are closing at 1 p.m. due to the storm. You can drop off your payments on November 1st with no further penalty.” Then: Click.

Early this month, as a public service, i called the Collector’s Office before 4 p.m. and suggested as politely as i could to the woman who answered that, since that greeting is three and a half months out of date, they might want to change it. The woman i spoke to said she’d tell her supervisor about it. When a week went by with no change, i called the mayor, too.

Shortly after that, i misplaced the bill in question. At 12:30 a.m. today (that is to say, just a few minutes ago, in the middle of the night) i went to the city’s website. There, in the listing for the Tax Collector’s Office, it gives the number as 569-7330. When you call that number, you get a message that is less embarrassing than the other one, but also erroneous: “You have reached the Collector’s Office. Our normal hours are 8:30 to 4.  We are sorry we can’t take your call; we are taking care of other customers.” Then: Click.

My suggestions, which would be totally free to implement and would take about one minute to effect:

1. For the 569-7339 answering machine, change the message to indicate that it is no longer Monday, Oct. 29.

2. Change the “away message” for the 569-7330 number to say, “You’ve reached us after hours; our hours are _____ to ____; please leave a message and we’ll get back to you.” And don’t say you’re “taking care of other customers” if it’s after hours. That’s what you say if you’re asking someone to hold. If it’s midnight, you’re not “taking care of other customers”; you’re off duty. By the way: We’re not your ”customers”; we’re residents, we’re taxpayers, and we’re your bosses.

3. And then, as the icing on the cake, go ahead and listen to the messages each morning, and actually return the calls. i dare to hope that within my lifetime, city residents will have the chance to leave a message if, like fools, they call the Collector’s Office at 4:01 p.m.

Newburgh, NY —– Some 30 artists – and one pooch – gathered recently on a softly-lit afternoon in this little upstate city on the banks of the Hudson River. They had all participated in the latest of the city’s successful Artist-Studio Tours, and had agreed to celebrate at the home of Michael Gabor and Gerardo Castro, who own and operate the Newburgh Art Supply shop at 5 Grand St., a few steps from Washington’s Headquarters.
One of those artists was Ruedi Hofman, a photographer who had been Richard Avedon’s assistant and who, with his wife Ann Stratton, had bought a house in Newburgh.
At one point during the party, he told the artists he’d like to get a group shot of them, and said he’d found the perfect spot for it.
Had he ever.
The 27 artists – and one dog – followed Hofman a few blocks to one of the most beautiful, if heartbreaking, locations in the mid-Hudson: Newburgh’s Dutch Reformed Church. High on a hilltop overlooking the river, the imposing, 177-year-old Greek-Revival structure had been abandoned in the mid-1960s and fallen into a tragic state of disrepair, along with the city’s fortunes as businesses moved out and gangs and crime moved in.
But in recent years, artists from New York and beyond began serving as the shock troops of the city’s revival. They bought and renovated many of the old buildings, renovating them and using them both as living quarters and art studios. They not only survived, but thrived here. Many now believe they are approaching the critical mass needed to tip the city back onto the track of progress and prosperity.
So when those 27 artists gathered in the church that fall day, with shards of its fallen roof hanging precariously above them and its broken pews behind them and its battered balcony all around them, it surprised no one that they were all looking straight ahead, with nothing but determination and optimism in their hearts and hope in their eyes.
The 3-foot-wide Hofman photo is on display at Newburgh Art Supply; to view it, to see  more Hofman photos or for more info, call the shop at 845-561-5552.

All are invited to experience “Epiphanous Poetry in a Victorian Solarium.” The readings will be presented by the Hudson River Poets at 2 p.m on Sunday, Jan. 6 at 297 Grand St. in Newburgh.

Many of the Hudson River Poets are published, performing, and award-winning writers. Ages range from 13-80; educational attainment, from high school to Ph.D. On Jan. 6, the poets will be sharing their original poetry of awakening, in conjunction with the twelfth day of Christmas – the Epiphany. This will be the first public community presentation by the Hudson River Poets in many years.

Admission at the door is $5, which will support HRP’s participation in Newburgh Illuminated, a festival slated for June 2013. There, the poets will present a literary and visual-art exhibit at the Newburgh Free Library. Some of the Hudson River Poets, such as Clay Buchanan, Eve Hinderer and Rosolinda McGovern, are also visual artists. Other well-known poets in the group include Lou O’Neil, Mona Toscano, Sharon Butler, John Fitzpatrick and Jamaican Raga poet Ras Negus.

For more information on the Jan. 6 poetry reading or the Hudson River Poets, contact Laura Lamica at 568-7334 or Llam4473@my.msmc.edu.

Yo, Self: Twizzlers are the steamed beets of junk food. Nobody likes them. Never buy them again.

Yesterday in Price Chopper i saw a big display of bags of “fun-size” versions of various candies. It had been years since i’d eaten a Twizzler and, having repressed in my memory their rubbery, gummy texture and weird flavor and how they stick in your teeth, i bought a big bag of little bags of them, along with a big bag of little bags of Milky Ways and a big bag of little, tiny bags of M&M’s. Today around 5 p.m. i dumped all the little bags into my big wooden salad bowl and put it on the table on my enclosed porch. Then i turned on the porch light and tied two orange balloons on the balusters at the bottom of the steps (our neighborhood-association-agreed-upon signal that it’s OK to trick-or-treat at this house), and figured i was good.

i was bad!! From the first group of kids to the last — from the toddlers tripping over their own umbilical cords (or were those the tails of their devil-costumes?) whose moms i was sure would have to puree the candy for them, to the 14-year-old jerkoffs who grabbed great handfuls of crap before leaping gleefully away, not a soul left my house without thoughtfully taking the time to articulate their contempt and revulsion over my twisted treats.

And when the dreaded moment arrived when i was out of everything except Twizzlers — not an hour after the first group had left — one final, solitary Satan looked down into my pathetic bowl and  burst out with a wail that might have been heard on the other side of the Styx.

By today’s standards, Twizzlers are a type of health food. People figure, “Hey, they’re low-calorie red things! Like apples! Like tomatoes!  Like … like pomegranates, or something!  Run!”  (And that’s just the grownups. I swear to G-d, tomorrow around dinner time, there’ll be parents all over Newburgh going, “Now, if you kids don’t finish your Twizzlers, you’re not getting any M&Ms for dessert.”)

Yo, Abrams: Put this in the tickler file for October 2013. Don’t forget!

Just one week before Halloween, i see in the Record that the man from Sleepy Hollow has left Newburgh headless. Our creepy city manager has resigned!

Well, i’m sure he’ll find work; there are plenty of prostitutes in Westchester to save.

On Saturday, Nov. 17 at 7:30 p.m., Newburgh’s Temple Beth Jacob will host the Motyl Chamber Ensemble in a concert of music by composers whose lives were cut short or radically transformed by the Holocaust. Some of the composers were “merely” forced into exile, while the majority lost their lives.

 The group, comprising a string quartet, piano and voice, was formed in 2003 by renowned violinist Dr. Aleeza Wadler and features TBJ’s own cantor, soprano Amy Goldstein, as vocalist. The other four musicians are Vivian Chang Freihei on piano, Julie Artzt Becker on violin; Ellen Rose Silver on cello and Anoush Simonian on viola. Wadler will narrate the music, provide background about the composers and explain how their music miraculously survived that nightmarish era of world history. Photos of daily life in Terezin, as well as original watercolors, drawings and poems produced by children in the death camp, are part of the program.

 The ensemble’s name, Czech for “butterfly,” is derived from the poem “The Butterfly,” which was written by Pavel Friedman at the camp. November marks the 74th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” in which thousands of Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues were destroyed throughout Nazi Germany and 30,000 Jews sent off to concentration camps. It’s a date generally considered to be the beginning of Hitler’s “Final Solution” and the Holocaust.

 Tickets are $25 at the door. When purchased in advance, tickets for those over 65 are $15 and for students with valid ID, $10. Refreshments will be available. For reservations or more information, contact Marsha Sobel at 562-5516 or office@tbjnewburgh.org.

Newburgh paid for those fireworks, and by G-d, they were going to set them off! Despite the rain. Despite the 100% humidity, when it wasn’t raining. And despite the fact that the sky was putting on a much better show.

i raced home from work as fast as i could a couple of hours ago, after earning my time-and-a-half at the Record, but as i rounded the corner onto Bay View, some big, fat drops were already beginning to hit my windshield, and i knew any explosives set off tonight would be duds. There were plenty of parking spots near my house, as we ‘burghers have learned from hard experience that rain means a lousy Fourth of July show.

Sure enough, the fireworks were struggling to climb from the barge on the river to a height, i’d say, just barely above the deck of the Newburgh-Beacon bridge. They reminded me of my grandpa when he had arthritis and used a cane, trying to get out of a too-soft chair.

But the sky! The lightning mocked us, outlining the black clouds every few seconds. And the thunder! By contrast, it made the muffled sounds of the city’s fireworks sound like a girl snapping her gum. The fireflies, the cigarette lighters of the ‘burghers watching from the bluff, the cars’ white headlights and red taillights sailing past on Water Street as glimpsed through the foliage bordering the hill– everything was exploding, showing the city how to do it.

That reminds me: I’m 63. i’ve hit the three-quarters pole. It’s time for me to light the rest of my own fireworks, if i’ve any left to set off.

Dear Education Officials:

I am a Newburgh School District taxpayer, I and want my money back.

In 2009-10 my school-tax bill was $5,000.

Now it turns out that some of our high-school officials willfully, knowingly and deliberately allowed six of NFA’s basketball players to cut classes. Specifically, they were allowed to miss a mind-boggling 1,187 classes. As a result, none of them got the education that we taxpayers paid for them to get.

Granted, an education is not something you buy; it’s something you get a chance to earn, and if you don’t earn it, you don’t get it. But in this case, it was our education officials who didn’t “get it”; they didn’t get that you can’t inspire students to want to earn an education, if you let them goof off when they’re supposed to be in class.

And granted, their parents either didn’t know or didn’t care if their kids skipped all those classes. So, the parents get a share of the blame, too. (Whatever happened to asking your children what they learned in school today?) But it’s you, our Board of Education, that hires and fires (or in this case, fails to fire) the administrators who are supposed to be recording and reporting student absences.

There’s no question that the students themselves were guilty of taking the easy route, perhaps letting their “hoops dreams” prevent them from attending class, paying attention to teachers, asking questions, doing homework – all the hard work that students everywhere would love to get out of.

But here’s the funny thing: These former players, when asked, not only admitted skipping classes, but admitted regretting it. In this, they showed that they had become men. They should be on the “inspirational speaker” circuit. That’s in contrast to the NFA administrators and then-coaches who “knew nothing about” the class-cutting. Here, the students in question are adults; the people in charge are the children. In our district, everything’s upside-down.

Since these six athletes made up about one two-thousandth of the 11,644 students in the district, please refund that proportion of my tax bill – $2.50 – as soon as possible. A check or money order will be fine.

p.s. Please also send refunds to all other district taxpayers whom you cheated by not educating these students.

p.p.s. Please write an essay telling what you’ve learned from this scandal, and how you’ll prevent it from happening again.

p.p.p.s. Please say it was just a coincidence that all those whom you cheated out of their educations were black. Because if it wasn’t, then the Newburgh School District has a much bigger problem than class-cutting.

Sincerely,

Genie Abrams

Newburgh Poet Laureate Hide Oshiro dead at 101

No haiku today;

Hide Oshiro is dead.

Even flowers weep.

There’ll be no more daily haiku flowering inNewburgh; Hide Oshiro is dead.

In the mid- 1920s, Tokyo High School student Oshiro was deeply moved by a haiku — a Japanese form of poetry containing three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. In the poem, 17th-century poet Matsuo Basho described coming across the subtle beauty of a wildflower during a walk in the mountains.

“I wanted to make this kind of haiku just once in my life,” 101-year-old Oshiro told Kyodo News in a recent interview.

“Nothing else; just one haiku.”

Hide (pronounced “HEE-day”) Oshiro, the 101-year-old poet laureate of Newburgh, died late Sunday morning at Elant Nursing Home in Fishkill. He had written one haiku every morning of his life since he was a teenager. In addition to the haiku, he also produced drawings, paintings, calligraphy, sketches and scrolls. In November, he donated his life’s work, totaling several volumes of poetry and about 750 other pieces of art, to Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont.

In February, the college held an opening reception for the exhibit, at which Oshiro, frail but cheerful, regaled attendees with stories of his life and his wishes for young artists and writers.

In presenting the work to the college on Nov. 3, “He said that the product is only important in how it uncovers for the viewer the process,” Goddard President Barbara Vacarr told Kyodo News, Japan’s largest news agency. “Most artists focus on the product of their work. What Hide talked about was the process, or development, of the work.”

Born in 1910 in what was then the U.S. territory of Hawaii to Japanese parents who had come to work in the pineapple plantations, Oshiro was sent to Japan at the age of 3 to live with his grandparents and receive a Japanese education. Oshiro learned etching, woodcuts, sculpture and brushwork in high school and at Sophia University.

In Japan he was exposed to Shinto, Confucianism, Buddhism and Christianity. His knowledge of such varied religions and philosophies profoundly influenced the convergence of East and West in his creative process.

He returned to Hawai in the 1930s, to teach Japanese at a school on Oahu. He recently recalled the Sunday morning in December 1941 when a group of students came running to him saying, “Japan attacked Hawaii!”

At first, he told Kyodo News, he did not believe it, but soon realized that the bombs falling and fires erupting on the school fields were real.

“I couldn’t think about anything, only darkness and doom,” he said, adding that the 2001 film “Pearl Harbor,” with all of its Hollywood “imagination,” did not come close to the horror of the actual event.

Along with other Americans of Japanese descent at that time, Oshiro spent several months in an internment camp. Despite that, he joined the U.S. army and worked for six years as an army translator and Japanese language instructor. He then left to pursue art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. Eventually he settled in New York City, studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School and set up his own studio in Greenwich Village.

In New York, Oshiro met his French wife, Catherine Bullier; they married in 1969 and settled inNewburgh. He has said he was attracted to the small upstate city because of its vital arts community. While Oshiro never exhibited his art, his wife collected his work all along the way.

Asked to comment about his work, Oshiro was quoted in the Kyodo News as replying, “Our minds can conceive any form, from a galaxy to an atom, from the blue sky to a minnow.”

“It really strikes me how much of the process was preserved,” Goddard Library Assistant Dustin Byerly told Kyodo News. “I think we owe that to his wife — her handwriting is on everything.”

Oshiro’s lifelong dream has been that his work be housed in an educational institution so that future generations of students could learn from it. Carol Curri of Newburgh, an artist and Goddard College graduate, organized the donation to her alma mater.

“It’s not art, it’s just an expression of yourself,” he told the Kyodo News Agency at the event inVermont. “The mind is fantastic; it doesn’t want to be oppressed. Let it be free.”

In Newburgh, Oshiro continued to write a haiku every morning until very recently, when ill health hobbled him. He inspired others, such as the members of the Hudson River Poets, who meet one Thursday evening a month at the Newburgh Free Library, a few blocks from Oshiro’s Grand Street apartment. He was a longtime member of the HRP, reading his own work at the meetings and enjoying the work and company of other poets.

“All who had the honor of knowing him will miss his wisdom and sense of humor,” said Lou O’Neill, a fellow member of the HRP.

Oshiro celebrated his last birthday on December 30 at home, surrounded by friends and fellow artists.

He leaves behind his wife of 43 years, Catherine Bullier Oshiro; his son, Sachiya Oshiro; daughters Akiko Kato and Noriko Honda; seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren; a nephew, Shinichi Matsumura; and two great-nieces, Gabrielle Oshiro and Yoko Matsumura.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to your favorite charity.

Services, to be held at the Hudson Valley Christian Church,100 Grand St., are being planned. A pot-luck memorial celebration of Hide’s life and work will be held at the Falcon, 1348 Rte 9W in Malborough, at a time to be announced.