At the start of my freshman year at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania in 1959 I lived on the third floor of Brodbeck Hall. I was not 18 yet. In a sense I was alone and I started to smoke cigarettes. Not a lot. No one encouraged me to smoke. My Mother had quit when I was about 10 years of age. She said it was the toughest thing she ever did in her life. She was a three pack a day smoker and at 10 years of age what she said did not register. As a college freshman I had had experience of sorts, from a young age, watching my stay at home Mother smoke.

I was not prepared for what would follow. Within a month I may have been smoking up to a pack a day, but I was not addicted, Then one morning in November, 1959, I awoke and I needed a cigarette. I did not realize that I was trapped. Trapped for 37 years and then I did “the toughest thing” I ever did in my life, I quit smoking. It was September 30, 1996. The last cigarette I smoked was down by the Hudson River in the Mariners Harbor parking lot. I blew a lot of money on cigarettes in those 37 years.

Now a younger member of my family is vaping. He may already be trapped, and it could be for life. I believe all vaping products should be banned. This product kind of snuck in under the radar. I am 77 and I believe that because of vaping I may outlive that much younger family member. I worry about him.

Birth numbers in local school districts are plunging

In 2010 Obamacare became the law of the land. It changed contraceptive products, which became more available. The birth numbers for the Highland School District in 2017 went from 145 in 2007 to only 104 in 2017. This story was replayed in districts throughout the county. New Paltz dropped from 140 in 2008 to 93 in 2017, and Marlboro slid from 148 to 116 in 2017.

Rondout may have had the biggest decrease, dropping from 169 in 2008 to 117 in 2017, followed by Ellenville, which went from 138 to 96. Onteora had the least number of births of Ulster County School Districts at 80. Wallkill had a small decrease from 202 to 178.

Also sliding were Kingston, 640 to 549, and Saugerties, 215 to 155.
The total birth numbers for 2017 in Ulster County were 1,468, the lowest number in the past 65 years. The birth rate of 8.2 of women of child bearing age, may be a county record because it is so low. Of the births, 690 were funded by Medicaid suggesting that a lot of the babies come from households were the child will qualify for free or reduced priced breakfasts and lunches and that their parent or parents may qualify for Food Stamps. Of the births, 676 were out of wedlock, or about 45% of the babies only have one parent, the mother.

Difficult to speak of Brett Kavanaugh’s assault

I can understand why it is difficult for a person, who has been sexually assaulted and has to say the “P” word when reporting what happened, as Deborah Ramirez had, when Brett Kavanaugh stuck his “P” in her face.

I was with a lot of New Paltz college females immediately after Christine Blasey Ford testified and when I asked them if any of them had been sexually assaulted, all of their hands went up. After this, Trump mocked Christine Blasey Ford. I felt something was going to happen.

Last November in the college voting district the vote for most candidates was Democrats 550 and Republicans 45. New Paltz is the reason Jen Metzger is now New Paltz’s first Democratic state senator.

Marlboro solar farm
Jeff Aldridge will have a two- megawatt solar farm on the Milton Turnpike in the Town of Marlboro.

The new Danskammer plant will have 550 megawatts. Opponents of the Danskammer plant say that solar can replace the new natural gas plant, it is wishful thinking and history does not support this. It will take a lot of solar farms and ones bigger than 2 megawatts to do it. I am rooting for these solar farmers, but a great deal of land is needed to come up with 550 megawatts of solar. There are 250 industrial groups and the sixth fastest growing is solar.

Tropical Storm Imelda
No one ever predicted that Tropical Storm Imelda would turn into one of the worst rain storms in history. There was no high winds as was experienced during Michael and Harvey, just the very hot hurricane breeding waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The flooding to hit Houston was as intense, and in some cases worse than Harvey. The flooding went into second floor of homes. Families, which were still recovering, will have to start again. There is no FEMA estimate yet of what this storm.

This storm is just part of the Global Warming crisis, which people worldwide were rallying about.

Some 250,000 people attended the rally in New York City as kids were “fighting for their future.”

There is only one nation in the world that is not in the Paris Accords: the United States.

16 year old Greta Thunberg of Sweden, who had the idea of the worldwide rally was in Washington, D.C. to “fight for our future” and only members of one major political party spoke about the need of the United States to take action.

A lot of people are aware because of the cumulative nature of climate change that the storms and hurricanes will become “worse and worse.’ We saw Marie destroy Puerto Rico, and then recently make most of the Bahamas uninhabitable. What is next?

Clean water under attack
President Donald Trump has rolled back the 2015 Clean Water EPA rules that President Barack Obama adopted. The 1972 Clean Water Act remains. Twenty-two states have adopted the Obama rules. People in Marlboro and Highland have reasons to be concerned as the same body of water runs through both towns. It is the underground Ramapo Fault, which runs from Rockland County to Kingston. It is an underground Ashokan Reservoir.

In Marlboro it supplies the water to the Greiner Brothers’ Pioneer Springs water company, Troncilitto Farms, large water trucking operation, and Felicello’s RMS water trucking business, and along Lattintown Road 100 gallon a minute wells. At Troncilitto’s eight tank trucks can be drawing water at the same time.

In Highland the Ramapo Fault is keeping its reservoirs on Illinois Mountain spring fed 24/7. Further North in Lloyd are homes with 100 gallon a minute wells. Obama wants to protect this water and Trump does not. New York State is always checking the water that is bottled at Pioneer Springs.

Florida is having clean water issues because the Atlantic Ocean is rising because of Global Warming. Obama wants to protect your future on this planet, in the Hudson Valley and the state of Florida.