In Ulster County 2017 there were, 468 births of which 792 or 54% had married parents and 676 or 46% were out of wedlock and these babies parents were not married. When I was in high school in the late 1950s it seemed that all of the kids had two parents, except for one student, whose father had died in World War II.

People are getting married at a later age, but teen births have declined because of Obamacare and the morning after pill. There are fewer “shotgun” marriages than when I was in high school. I can recall a few. In one case, a male student told me that the girl’s parents were very strict and only allowed this young couple to sit in the car for only a few minutes. The father to be said, “We were only there a minute. It only took a minute, Mr. McKinney,” he said in wonderment. The couple’s arrangement did not work out. Today their daughter is 54, married with children, and is a Facebook friend of mine. Neither of her parents ever had another child.
In the 1950s, five girls on the Highland High School Washington Club to Washington, got pregnant and had babies. A lot of early marriages followed in Highland.

New Paltz had a mixed marriage arrangement between a Jewish girl and a Protestant man. New Paltz then had about 3,000 people, and the story was the talk of the town.

Both the pill and the legalization of abortions changed everything. Possibly having a bigger effect was the acceptance of divorce. A lot of kids then grew up in a household where only one of their two parents lived. Humans learned by watching their parents interact, and in turn get married like their parents did, and then have children. In future and the current generation a lot of young people are not seeing their mother and father interact and then they in turn are not as able to interact with members of the opposite sex.

This could lead to fewer kids getting married, and then having less children. Ulster County in 2017 had a birth rate of 8.2% for women in their child bearing years. Twenty-five years ago it was over 20 percent.

Florida is swallowed by the sea
I am always looking for ways to drive home the point of how dangerous the threat of Global Warming is. Paul Krugmann, of the New York Times, in describing the questionable state of Florida penned, “Florida is swallowed by the sea.” At the Madrid climate change conference the Global Warming scientists reported that once the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt, the water level of the Atlantic Ocean and all other oceans will rise by 220 feet and Florida will be “swallowed by the sea.”

And the Florida land beneath the ocean will not be worth a dime.

It would be fair to ask will the business districts in Highland, Milton and Marlboro also be under water. Two hundred twenty feet is 73.33 yards. I believe the business districts will be safe, but not the West Shore Railroad.

Luigi’s in Highland is selling out
of its homemade sauce
Luigi’s Italian delicatessen in Highland is selling out of its homemade chicken cacciatore pasta tomato sauce. It is delicious. It is as good as Grandma Teresa’s or the great sauce, which the late Ernie Toscani made for Toscani’s Deli in New Paltz. Ernie is/was the father-in-law of Luigi/aka Louis Olson.

I like that Luigi’s sauce is selling because this means that he will continue to make it and I can continue to buy it. This is a situation where the home made is the best.

My mother, Adelaide McKinney, made great sauce. On pasta Sunday our family kitchen smelled the best. She got her recipe from Toscani’s over 50 years ago.

Litts Brothers raises the
best pigs in Highland
For possibly 100 years the Litts Family of Highland has purchased piglets and over a course of a year raised them with the best grain so when they are ready to be harvested are the best tasting ham steaks you have ever eaten. Because of their high quality, they are on the menu at the Culinary. The brothers, Herb and John Oliver learned this from their father, Herbert Litts.

Trump tax cuts need to be reformed

Every time you turn around, you learn that the objective of the Trump tax cuts was to cut taxes on wealthy and most recently big business. The New York Times in its story (December 31), “Lobbyists Took A Big Tax Cut and Made it Bigger” let the reader know how you and I are subsidizing the wealthy, and that now we need the Trump Tax Cuts reform.

The Times reports, “This month, the organization for economic cooperation and development calculated that the United States in 2018 experienced the largest drop in tax revenues of any of the group’s 36 member countries. The United States also had by far the largest deficit of any of the countries.” 2018 was a great year for the stock market because the Fortune 500 were making record profits. How in the world could their profits be skyrocketing and their taxes plunging? Remember this tax cut is going to pay for itself. Helping to pay for the giveaway is by cutting the Food Stamps for the poor. They need a tax attorney and they can’t afford one.

You can read the entire story by Googling “Business Got Big Tax Cut; Lobbyist Made It Bigger.”