Way back in 2005 the United States invaded Iraq. In Highland I was part of a prayer group for Eugene Williams and his brother Eric Williams. Eugene had reenlisted in the Army when he found that the job opportunities outside the armed forces was not that good and his wife was pregnant with their second child. I had covered Eugene Williams because the played football for Highland High School, and on the sideline rooting him on was his father, “Cee.” “Cee” went wild when Eugene was the receiver of a long touchdown pass. Eric was involved in theatre, starred in a high school musical, was a close friend of my son, Charles, and was part of a group of kids who once a month I took to Barnes and Noble to look at books and then I took them to a Friendly’s for an ice cream cone. He is also my godson. He followed his older brother into the Army. The brothers were later part of the Iraq invasion.

When we invaded Iraq I remember talking to friends of the brothers about praying for them. And then we learned that Eugene Williams was the fifth GI to die in the invasion and in calling friends about this horror I learned then that the girls had a nickname for Eugene, “Pookie”. They were devastated. After that moment we forgot to pray.

Eugene’s wife is from Hawaii and was living there with her family and her first child and was pregnant with their second child.

The memorial service for Eugene was beautiful. The Williams family is talented and “Cee” and his two living sons each sang a solo in remembrance of Eugene.

Doron Chan’s death in Iraq was another horror,.He was a member of the high school band. His band director Joseph Martellaro was a member of the Army reserve, and could have played a role of Doron joining it as it would pay his tuition at SUNY New Paltz. Doron was an only child. His parents ran a Chinese take out restaurant in Highland. Kids liked to visit the restaurant because Doron’s mother would spoil them. Doron did deliveries for the restaurant on his bike. He worked for me in the newspaper’s dark room, and then he went to college, and then he was activated and then he got killed. Ben Bragg arranged for him to be buried at the Lloyd Cemetery. I visit Doron each year.

His mother was unable emotionally to attend the memorial service for her son.

The last to die from Highland was Michael Oremus. He was the son of Bruce and Madeline Oremus. I saw Michael the day before he left Highland to go to Iraq. Months later we got the announcement at the newspaper office that a sniper had killed him. Michael was a soccer player and every year at the Dome in Milton the Highland soccer program holds a two day scholarship fundraiser in honor of Michael Oremeus. It has raised a lot of money. Every year I visit Michael at the Highland cemetery. I remember this kid, who would skip at his father’s soccer practices. Bruce Oremus was a teacher and a soccer coach.

Marlboro is getting its first Hemp Farm
Marlboro is getting a hemp Farm-all legal. The 2018 Farm bill removed hemp and derivatives from the controlled substance list. It is owned and operated by Gail and Amy Hepworth.

The Hepworths formed a farmer owned cooperative to help develop the hemp industry in the Hudson Valley.

One of the farm’s top products will be CBD hemp, which is used in health products. There is a demand for the CBD hemp.

The Hepworths 200 year old family farm has gone from raising Antwerp raspberries, when Milton was the raspberry capital of the country, to apples, and now hemp, though it will continue to run its organic farming operation. This is part of a continued evolution of the farming business.

If New York State legalizes recreational marijuana the evolution will continue.

Give Schumer and Pelosi infrastructure phone calls
Earlier this year Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer agreed to put together an infrastructure budget. There had to be a budget and a funding mechanism. The Democrats were ready to go. Trump’s administration had never in over two years submitted an infrastructure budget. Barack Obama had submitted eight and when the Democrats controlled both the house and senate they were approved. After that Mitch O’Connell would not fund them. O’Connell should have also been at the meeting with Trump, Pelosi, and Schumer, and they would learn he would not fund it.

Then Trump quit because he was being investigated. I left a message at Schumer’s Albany office to ask Nancy Pelosi to form an infrastructure committee, and have representatives of each of the 50 states to come before the committee with a list of their infrastructure wants and their costs.

Invite reporters into the meetings. I want all senators, Republicans, Democrats and independents to hear what is being said about their state. Republican senators have a history of not funding infrastructure. I wanted to use these hearings to pressure them. All the state governors today are calling for infrastructure because their states badly need it.

The father of infrastructure was President Dwight Eisenhower. He built the interstate highway highway system. To fund it, he had the Republicans have a 10 cent a gallon of gas tax. Eisenhower was not popular with a lot of Republicans because of that tax. The interstate changed the nation. The interstate made the Newburgh connections to the Thruway and Route 84 allow for it to be a great distribution center. The Thruway stop at New Paltz radically changed in 1954 this little college community with a population of 3,000.

Today the infrastructure budget for New York State would be used to replace the 70 year old bridges on or over the Thruway. Plus there are far more needs than this.

But if Mitch O’Connell won’t fund it, you may be driving on a bridge when it implodes. If you would like to leave Chuck Schumer a message you can call his Albany office at 518-431-4070.

I keep in contact with L. Todd Diorio of Laborers Local 17 out of Newburgh. We talk infrastructure. Todd ,because he is always looking for work for the members of his union, and as members retire, he wants to get the word out that he needs new members.

Alabama anti-abortion, pro-gun death state
A lot of states, including a lot of southern states, under the stance of being pro-life, have adopted highly restrictive anti-abortion bills. They have the fetal heart beat bill. And these states, including Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and Missouri seek to save the life of the fetus and also take away a woman’s reproductive rights.

Would one assume that in terms of guns that these states would be pro-life and restrict the guys’ gun rights.

Hold it. These states have one stance for women and another for guys. Guys can shoot and shoot and no back ground checks, unlimited magazines.

Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi rank second, third and fourth in the nation per 100,000 people in gun deaths. So these states have one standard for the girls, and we were a nation of equal rights, but not down south.

Louisiana has 19.2 gun deaths per 100,000. Alabama and Mississippi, 16.2 and 16.1.

Then there are the safe states like New York, which has 5.1 deaths per 100,000, or Massachusetts, 4.1. New York ranks 4th and Massachusetts, second.

Evangelicals are pro-life when it comes to the girls, but not when it comes to the guys.

The Tariff man
The Wall Street Journal, a Republican newspaper, attacked the Tariff man, (Trump) for all of his tariff mistakes and how the Mexican tariffs will hurt this nation.

There are a lot of surprises including an increase in the gas we buy for our cars. Food prices are also going up, and a lot more things are going up. Also our farmers will be hurt some more by Trump. The WSJ also pointed out that countries that we deal with and trade with no longer trust the United States and particularly the Tariff man.

Also Trump’s pulling us out of the Paris Accords and having policies that promote Global Warming, which makes us the only country on this planet to do this, while we are having record floods and tornadoes in the midwest and for the moment record temperatures in the south. It is believed that the flooding will become a permanent change as the source of the rain is the record high temperatures of the Pacific Ocean followed by evaporation, which then comes down as rain or snow in the United States. The Tariff man has found so many ways to hurt this country.