That area is supposed to be one of the last great wild places. These days, it looks more like the Chrysler building: high and well-lit.

i wonder how the people who live nearby like all that light-pollution. Somebody ought to look into this.

Free and open to the public.

It will be held at Kenco, 1000 Hurley Mountain Road, Kingston.

For more info, email Jeff Senterman at jsenterman@nynjtc.org.

That’s quite a conflation.

Assuming, as always, that their readers are driving from Manhattan, they tell us to take Thruway Exit 18 and head to New Paltz. What would be much faster and easier would be to just take the Metro-North to one of the the state’s much closer-to-the-City “natural wonders,” Breakneck Mountain. The trains stop right there on weekends.

And every day, the trains stop at another, even closer,  great place: Cold Spring. From the station you can easily walk up the village’s fun Main Street and across Rt. 9D to a wonderful hike up Bull Hill (also known as Mount Taurus). In Cold Spring, you can also rent a kayak and shoot underneath the train trestle (an adventure in itself, depending on the tides) into the wild and peaceful  Constitution Marsh, or just paddle around in the Hudson among the boaters and fishers. You can follow up your experience on one of the country’s great rivers with a beer and/or meal, ranging from plain to fancy, at any of Cold Spring’s many eateries.

Oddly, they also omitted the  swimming and hiking available at Rockland Lake State Park, from whose Hook Mountain you can see the skyline of Gotham; the world-famous Bear Mountain and Harriman State Parks; and the hiking on Storm King, Schunnemunk and Black Rock — all of which are way closer to NYC than New Paltz is.

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised at these goofs, though, in a publication that amounts, issue after issue, to nothing more than one long, typo-riddled advertisement for their latest cruise-line “partner.”

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

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Land Trust Alliance, on April 23 in Rochester’s Seneca Park, announced 53 Conservation Partnership Program grants, totaling $1.4 million. The grants, funded through New York State’s Environmental Protection Fund, will be matched by $1.2 million in private and local funding.
Notably among these gifts, a $27,000 EPF grant to the New York New Jersey Trail Conference will support a major project in the Southern Gunks. This project will create an unbroken recreation and wildlife corridor linking the Catskill Forest Preserve and the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

The Southern Gunks, part of the Shawangunk Ridge, stretch about 25 miles northeast from High Point, N.J., to the Northern Gunks, which comprise Sam’s Point Preserve, Minnewaska State Park and Mohonk Preserve. The Shawangunk Ridge, as it is called in New York, is a geologic feature stretching hundreds of miles. In New Jersey, it’s called the Kittatinny Ridge; in Pennsylvania and Maryland, Blue Mountain; and inVirginia, North Mountain. In all five states, the ridge is protected from development — except in the Southern Gunks.

 The announcement of the grants came just 20 days after the Conservation Alliance, a national group of outdoor-industry companies, announced its own grant of $35,000 to the NYNJTC for the Southern Gunks project.
The biggest unprotected areas of the Southern Gunks are in their most southerly 10 miles, between High Point and Otisville. Now, the acquisition of just 13 parcels and/or easements is needed to complete a continuous protected corridor.

The NYNJTC sees its 1,600 members who live in Orange County as an important asset for the grassroots advocacy needed to purchase, and thereby protect, these parcels.

Another grant of local interest was a $16,000 grant to the Hudson Highlands Land Trust, a local land conservation organization based in Garrison, for its Jaycox Park-to-Park Connection Project. Those monies will facilitate a joint effort between the HHLT, New YorkState, and other partners to permanently protect a 50-acre parcel of land and create a long sought-after link between Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve and Clarence Fahnestock Memorial State Park.

Recent research underscores how investments in land conservation and open space boost property values, support local businesses, save taxpayer dollars, and protect public health. A study released in February by the Trust for Public Land found that every dollar of investment fromNew York’s Environmental Protection Fund generates seven dollars in additional economic benefits from tourism, reduced government costs and improved public health. A 2010 report on the economic benefits of open space from the New York State Comptroller recommended the Conservation Partnership Program as a model for public- private collaboration because it leverages substantial resources for local efforts to preserve clean air and water resources, agriculture, and outdoor recreational.

The Hudson Highlands Land Trust is a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the natural resources, rural character, and scenic beauty of the Hudson Highlands. For more information on the HHLT, call 845-424-3358 or visit www.hhlt.org.

Offered by the wonderful New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, the group that procures and protects some of the best hiking trails in the Northeast U.S., it’s a FREE one-day training session covering the skills needed to maintain hiking trail so they’re easily passable and harmonious with their surroundings. Students will learn assessment of trail conditions, clearing, blazing, proper use of tools, and how to report trail problems.

The description at www.nynjtc.org says no previous experience is necessary, and beginners are welcome. That’s me! Students will spend the morning in a classroom and then head out into woods for hands-on instruction. The Trail Conference advises that students wear boots, and bring work gloves, water, and a bag lunch.

Date: Saturday, May 12, 2012 – 9 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Place: Port Jervis Public Library, Port Jervis, N.Y.

Maximum Number of Attendees: 25

Level: Introductory

Coordinator: Larry Wheelock; instructors: Jakob Franke and Andy Garrison

To register or to get more information, email Larry Wheelock wheelock@nynjtc.org or call him at 201-512-9348 x16.

You don’t have to be a member of the NYNJTC to take this course (for some of their offerings, you do), but consider joining anyway. Your $30 tax-deductible membership fee goes to help this great nonprofit save open space and map, clear and maintain trails throughout New York and New Jersey. It also gets you discounts on their excellent, waterproof topo maps; hiking books; and cool gear.

Hope to see you in Port Jervis on May 12!

Big Day is our biggest conservation fundraiser of the year. If you have already made a pledge to support bird conservation, thank you! If not, please click here to make your pledge today or contribute a flat donation if you prefer. Your gift will provide much-needed support to help the birds.

The team has been in Texas all week scouting in their new Texas Triangle: San Antonio to the Hill Country, then east to Galveston instead of Corpus Christi.

After a test run of this new triangle, their hopes are high. The biggest find was a Rufous-capped Warbler in the Hill Country. This is a species typically found from Mexico south into Central America, with fewer than 50 records ever in Texas. Bonus birds like that could be crucial in tipping the Sapsuckers over the 264 species mark for a new North American single-day birding record.

Help spur on the team as they attempt to break the all-time Big Day record for the United States (264 species) and raise $250,000 for bird conservation.

Please make a pledge today.

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.

Important Information about your Drinking Water

City of Newburgh Water did not meet treatment requirements

Our water system recently violated a drinking water standard. Although this was not an emergency, as our customers, you have a right to know what happened, what you should do, and what we did to correct this situation.

We routinely monitor your water for turbidity (cloudiness). This tells us whether we are effectively filtering the water. The city exceeded the monthly filter effluent standard (13% of readings >0.3 NTU. No more than 5% of readings should exceed 0.3NTU), for the month of January 2012.

This violation is also being reported to the NYS Department of Health and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

What should I do?

You do not need to boil your water or take other actions. WE do not know of any contamination, and none of our testing has shown disease-causing organisms in the drinking water. People with severely compromised immune systems, infants and some elderly may be at increased risk. These people should seek advice from their health-care providers about drinking water. Guidelines on ways to lessen the risk of infection by microbes are available from the EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Hot Line, 800-426-4791.

What does this mean?

Turbidity has no health effects. However, it can interfere with disinfection and provide a medium for microbial growth. Turbidity may indicate the presence of disease-causing organisms. These include bacteria, viruses and parasites that can cause symptoms like nausea, cramps, diarrhea and headaches. These symptoms are not caused only by organisms in drinking water. If you experience any of these symptoms and they persist, you may want to seek medical advice.

What happened? What was done?

A problem occurred when the sewer main from the water treatment plant became blocked with debris to the point that it affected the normal backwashing of the filters causing our filter effluent turbidity to rise. We addressed the problem immediately by contracting with McVac Environmental Services to pump out our backwash tanks. The serew line that leaves the plant is a dedicated main until it connects to the main trunk line for the city and is about 2 miles long, with limited access for cleanout. Once we found the blockage, and to permanently prevent this from re-occurring, we cut a section of the sewer main out and put in another access point to be able to maintain the sewer main on a regular basis. The plant is in compliance and our turbidity levels are back to normal.

For more information, contact Jeffry Wynans, superintendent of water for the City of Newburgh, at 845-565-3356.

Please share this information with all the people who drink this water, especially those who may not have received this notice directly (for example, people in apartments, nursing homes, schools and businesses).

*******[End of Letter]********

Now, if only they’d tell us what “NTU” means!! Still, i thought that was pretty damn good for a letter from a city. If it was the school board, they’d still be huddling in executive session, trying to figure out a way to keep everyone from knowing what had happened, and how to lie about it when it finally came out in the press.

Yay, City!!

Most people these days are lucky to have never heard them, and possibly to never have heard OF them, so i need to say that the Monkees were a synthetic “singing group” of the mid-60s who neither sang nor played musical instruments, but who as actors, were able to fake both of these activities well enough to star in a wildly popular eponymous TV show that ran until everybody got the joke (two seasons).

In the show, they played a Beatles-type singing group. They sported Beatles haircuts, and Jones, G-d rest his soul, all five feet of him, had an adorable, authentic British accent. I think i caught part of one episode of “The Monkees,”  and this is the best way i can describe it: Imagine an MTV-style music video made of the Dave Clark Five’s pop song, “Catch Me if You Can.” Or imagine extracting from “A Hard Day’s Night” nothing but the scenes of the Beatles trying to escape the crush of adoring fans.

But they had three HUGELY popular hits: “Daydream Believer,” “I’m a Believer” and “Last Train to Clarksville.” To me, they all sounded about the same.

They were very bouncy and they appealed to young girls, who bought lots of Monkees merchandise and studied photos of them and tried to figure out who would be their favorite, and which one they might have the best chance of improving. Davey Jones, i think, was the usual choice.

Anyway, i greatly admire the restrained and gentle way the New York Times today referred to the “talents” of the group. Here are two paragraphs from the obit:

“While the four did much of their own singing, they were relatively unbusy playing.”

And:

“The group’s critical reception was not unsurpassed. In a 1967 article about one of the Monkees’ relatively rare live concerts, at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, The New York Times said: “Frequently during the performance, a sound that resembled the lowing of a sick cow hovered over the stadium. This turned out to be one of those horns often heard at Shea Stadium during baseball games. It didn’t seem to hurt the musical evening.”

Well done, NYT!