By Jeffrey Page 

The agency charged with deciding where one or two casinos can be placed in the mid-Hudson is conducting a hearing to find out what the public thinks.

I’m sorry, that was a joke. A look at some of its actions and decisions suggests that the clumsily named New York State Gaming Commission Facility Location Board doesn’t give a hoot in hell about what the public thinks of allowing casinos and their attendant delights – traffic jams, prostitution, street crime, loan sharking, etc. – into our once calm villages and towns.

How could I be so cynical? Here’s how.

The hearing, which is scheduled for Sept. 23, will run an absurd 12 hours. Did you ever have to pay close attention to an important matter for 12 hours like the five members of the location board will have to do? Nor have I.

Why just one grindingly long session? The Warwick Advertiser reported that Lee Park, the location board’s PR flack, said it would be more efficient this way, and that one long hearing would be best for the five members of the location board – never mind what would be best for the public. The Advertiser quoted Park this way: “These guys all have full-time jobs. It will be a long day.”

That response might suggest to people just in from Planet Neptune that the five location board members are a bunch of working stiffs who punch a clock every morning and afternoon. But that’s not the case at all.

Here are the five men who’ll be tailoring the future of the mid-Hudson, and therefore will have much to say about your future:

• The chairman of the location board is Kevin Law, the CEO and president of the Long Island Association, an economic development firm based in Melville.

• Then there’s Stuart Rabinowitz, the president of Hofstra University – based in Hempstead. He’s also a member of the Long Island Association.

•  Next there’s Bill Thompson, the former New York City comptroller and now the managing director of the investment banking firm of Siebert, Brandford, Shank, which is based in New York City.

• Fourth is Dennis Glazer, retired partner of the Davis Polk and Wardwell law firm, which is in New York City.

• And fifth is Paul Francis, the managing partner of the Cedar Street Group, a venture capital firm located in Larchmont.

Park should rest assured that “these guys,” as he described them, would not be docked a day’s pay if they had to take an extra day or two to conduct the hearing in a fair, sensible manner.

Casinos in the mid-Hudson will change life here forever. So isn’t it odd – or, for that matter, outrageous – that not one member of the location board is a known Orange, Sullivan, or Ulster quantity?

Then there’s the question of where the hearing is to be held. Will it be in Goshen, the Orange County seat? No. How about Monticello, the Sullivan seat? No. Maybe Kingston, the Ulster seat? No.

It is to be staged in Poughkeepsie, across the Hudson in Dutchess County, a city not included on the list of possible casino sites.

Here’s Park’s response to The Warwick Advertiser’s question about the odd placement of the hearing: The location board decided against having the hearing in any of the eligible counties in order to “not show favoritism and to be completely objective.”

Completely objective? When not even one of the three counties is represented on the board?

Where are the mid-Hudson representatives? They rolled snake eyes and are out of it.

If you think the pols need to hear your position on casinos in general or the set-up of the location board in particular, you can reach State Sen. John Bonacic at 344-3311 in Middletown and Sen. Bill Larkin in New Windsor at 567-1270.

By Jeffrey Page

There’s plenty to grouse about at a minor league ballgame.

Example: Those stupid mascots that prance all over the field in the time between half innings. I think a mascot with a gyrating pelvis is inappropriate at a gathering where there are hundreds of seemingly innocent kids. But if the bump-and-grind weren’t enough, the bird-like creature that represents the Rockland Boulders in Pomona also parked himself on an inner tube and appeared to be delivering a lesson on potty training. Maybe I’m too critical.

Example: Then again, maybe I’m not. The Boulders’ announcement that if such-and-such a player on the opposing team struck out, everyone in the stands would get a ticket for a free soda at a future Boulders game. Now I have no problem with someone’s yelling to an opposing player, “Swing and miss, batter! Swing batter batter batter!” Somehow that’s part of the game. But to have free-soda-if-he-fans blasted into his ears (not to mention into our ears) over the stadium sound system? That should be outlawed by any league that is remotely aware of the concept of sportsmanship.

I could go on. There was the woman who sang the National Anthem and tried to jazz up “free” as in “o’er the land of the free” and proved that maybe the Star Spangled Banner is no rollicking affair.

But enough. Let’s talk baseball, which I thoroughly enjoyed at the Boulders game.

There’s a certain purity to be found in minor league baseball that once existed in the bigs but doesn’t much anymore.

The Boulders played the Trois Rivieres Aigles from Quebec at Provident Bank Park in Pomona. It was cat and mouse for the first seven and a half innings with the score tiptoeing one run at a time, finally reaching 3-3. The Boulders needed a run; I needed a hot dog. They succeeded; I got a dog whose flavor was unlike any other frank I’d ever consumed. That is not a compliment.

The major leagues have fixated on the home run, to the near exclusion of other run-producing weapons. But as Rockland and Trois Rivieres had at it, I got a nice taste of what the game used to be about.

For example, I saw the Boulders attempt a hit-and-run play, and could not recall the last time I’d seen this exciting tactic. (The runner on first base starts running as the pitcher lets go of the ball. The batter must make contact because if he misses, the runner is toast. If the hitter succeeds and gets a base hit to the outfield, the runner could well reach third base.

Rockland tried it and failed but at least I saw the attempt. Done right, the hit-and-run is as much choreography as it is athleticism and fun to watch.

Something else you find at little places like Provident Bank Park is the sacrifice bunt to move a runner. Do they bunt at Citi Field and Yankee Stadium? Maybe not at the stadium because it’s an American League park and AL teams have the designated hitter – an abomination if you ask me – and probably figure they don’t need to ask their players to bunt.

I saw one of the Aigles lay a bunt down so exquisitely that it caught the Boulders’ infield glued in place. Keats easily could have been describing a left-handed batter pushing a bunt along the third base line when he observed that a thing of beauty is a joy forever.

Back to the present. The Boulders’ bats, which had been suffering from iron deficiency anemia, finally came to in the bottom of the eighth, and the home team scored six runs with single after single. Very exciting. The Aigles picked up two runs – on a home run – in the top of the ninth, and that was it. The final: 9-5. A nice evening.

The hot dogs may taste like an alien life form, the management may make kids look like braying fools by tossing t-shirts into the stands and the children pleased for a shirt to be thrown in their direction, and we still may be blasted with a few notes from the Toreador Song, the Notre Dame Fight Song, and other adrenaline anthems after every pitch, but I’m going back.

It’s a great place to see some baseball.

By Jeffrey Page

One generation in the Shubinsky line has just passed away. The earth of course will abide and I suppose that this, plus my aunt’s having had far more years than most people get, should bring comfort. But I’m bereft.

She was the youngest of three sisters, the only one born here in America. Her name was Rebecca. She was Becky to most people. To me, for some reason I’ve never been able to recall, she was always Beck.

She was married once to a guy who became some big hotshot in the Army. I have no memory of him. But later she married Mickey Klein, one of the sweetest men on the planet. It was from Mickey and Beck I learned my first Yiddish expression.

Soon after they got married, they came to visit us in Queens. My father was in the process of berating me for some transgression I was unaware I had committed. I imagine Mickey sensed my terrible embarrassment, and from him came the plea: luz-em-oop – leave him alone. Beck immediately agreed and my dad’s lesson was over, and these three short sounds became a kind of mantra, the secret password among my aunt, my uncle and me.

Funny how we remember these little moments that shape our lives and bond relationships.

During the war, Beck moved to Washington to take a job with the Navy. She wound up as secretary to some VIP. The story my mother told was that Beck was supposed to type up an official order noting that submariners were to have a service patch sewn onto their uniforms over the left shirt-pocket. Or maybe it was to be sewn onto the left sleeve. Doesn’t matter. What mattered was that Beck got it wrong. Maybe it had been a late night and she didn’t get enough sleep. In any event, for a while no one noticed. For me, it was a point of pride that my aunt changed the course of history. Sort of.

Even around the age of 4 I had a crush on Beck. In the words of the time, she was a swell-looking dame, with a great smile and a soft voice. Whenever she came to see us she would bring something for me. She kissed me a lot. Hugged me as well. In one visit she stood talking with my dad outside the gates of King Park in Jamaica. She kept beckoning me to come over for the gift she bought for me. But I was too bashful and kept riding my three-wheel bike in larger and larger circles.

Later, I opened her gift. It was a record of the Three Little Pigs. Since it was from Beck I had my father play it over and over. I must have listened a dozen times before the record finally broke in two. I’d like to say she got me another, but I don’t remember.

She and Mickey finally moved to Florida and we saw less of them but managed about once a year. Distance can be a curse.

When Mickey died a few years ago, I was saddened. Beck died this week. It doesn’t matter that she was 99. I’m heartbroken.

By Jeffrey Page

My grandniece Olivia graduated from high school in Fair Lawn this week. I bore witness, except for the several moments when I realized I’d tuned out the speeches and was thinking back to the day I graduated from Forest Hills High School in Queens.

The beaming Olivia, a terrific young scholar, seemed happy and excited by the business of the day. She looked great. Most important she has a positive view of her future, which is an important way to experience life after high school.

My experience was different.

There were so many seniors in the Forest Hills commencement in Forest Park, and the line was so long (alphabetical order) that some of us P’s, R’s, S’s, and T’s snuck out to the street and smoked. We were very cool.

I accepted my diploma, shook someone’s hand and asked my mother if we could leave now. I surrendered my rented gown and mortarboard and realized that my sense of dread centered on three questions I couldn’t answer.

With mandatory school now over forever, what would I do tomorrow? What would I do next Tuesday? And with no appreciable skills what would I do with the rest of my life now that I’d sort of ensured that no college would have me and that without more education, I was doomed to a hand-to-mouth existence. That’s how it sounded in those days: No sheepskin? You’re dead.

Any college admissions officer quickly would see how awful a student I’d been. Let me rephrase that; I was a dolt. I had amassed a catalogue of lousy grades, an embarrassing grade on my math SAT (though a fairly decent one on the language part), and no community work to speak of. I even had a teacher who wanted to bet me 50 cents I’d fail a Spanish Regents exam. I’m not blaming her for anything except being a needless irritant on whatever degree of self-confidence I possessed.

Essentially, I had spent four years at Forest Hills doing very little aside from reading novels and newspapers, and now I was being cut loose. I was happy to know the alarm clock would not be set that night and that I wouldn’t have to start thinking up excuses for not having done various homework assignments. But I was scared. All my questions boiled down to one: What happens next? And I had no idea

I took some menial jobs and learned how boring the work life could be. I registered for a few night courses at Queens College. I read Hemingway and Joyce, Emily Dickinson and Dylan Thomas, Shakespeare and others, and realized these people were my education.

Sometimes things have a way of working out.

I applied for a job as a copyboy at The New York Post and learned how to sharpen pencils and take coffee and sandwich orders from the editors and reporters. I also wrote some small headlines. That was pretty boring, too but it was the start of a happy newspaper life. I reported crime stories in Jersey City for the Jersey Journal. I covered Sullivan County for The Times Herald-Record. And I covered transportation for The Record of Hackensack.

What a way to make a living: Find interesting people and extraordinary situations and write those stories in a way that encouraged readers to go all the way to the end of the tale.

One more thing. That Spanish Regents test?

I got a 75.

By Jeffrey Page

Denholm Elliott

A bunch of us got together to watch the terrific film farce “Noises Off!” which gave me a chance to see Denholm Elliott, my third favorite character actor.

The late Denholm Elliott was terrific playing an aging actor with the wonderful name Selsdon Mobray. Yet even during the movie, I started thinking about my second favorite character actor, someone else whose career I had followed.

But I couldn’t figure out who he was.

In my mind’s eye I could see this other actor perfectly. I would say he was older than Elliott, and seemed taller, grayer and with a deeper voice. Like Elliott, British maybe. But his name escaped me, and the harder I tried to come up with it the more elusive he became. I couldn’t even think of some films in which he played.

Several times, I had a wisp of a sense of understanding and had a physical sensation of something about to gallop out of my mouth. But it passed and this third favorite remained a mystery.

Incidentally, my first favorite was the late Charles Durning. I had absolutely no problem at all in conjuring his face and voice. But No. 2 remained a problem.

The slipperiness of memory as we get older has been the subject of studies and jokes. Such as:

Guy complains to his doctor that he’s getting more and more forgetful.

“Like what?”

“Did I pay the phone bill? W here did I park the car? Am I 60? Or am I 61? Doctor, what should I do?”

“First thing,” the doctor says, “pay me in advance.”

Clearly, this is a joke composed by someone in his 20s or 30s.

Finally, a full 24 hours after we watched “Noises Off!” I turned to my wife.

“Philip!” I declared rather loudly.

From there it was a breeze. Not Philip Seymour Hoffman. Not Phil Hartman and certainly not Phil Rizzuto.

A moment later I had it. Philip Bosco and I went on to say how good he was in the movie version of “Lend Me a Tenor.”

One problem. It turns out there’s never been a movie version of “Lend Me a Tenor.” But if there had been, Bosco would have been perfect for the lead.

 By Jeffrey Page

Through loopholes and possible sleight of hand, 15 gigantic American corporations reported that they’d made a combined $792 billion in offshore earnings in 2012, money that was not, and will not, be taxed.

Leading the pack, according to an eye-opening chart in The New York Times, was General Electric with $110 billion derived outside the United States and which the IRS can’t get its hands on. Microsoft was second with $76 billion and Pfizer was next with $69 billion.

I’m not here to argue that this money ought to be taxed; that’s a legal and political fight for another day.

Rather, my proposal, at its core, is a morality tithe. Read on and tell me what you think of its chances.

It starts with the famous quote usually attributed to the late Everett Dirksen, a Republican from Illinois. Dirksen is said to have declared: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”

Such a tithe is not complicated. Here’s how it would work. GE’s $110 billion represented 14 percent of the total $792 billion in untaxed profits. So in this case, GE would cough up 14 percent of its $15.4 billion windfall – chump change – for charitable good works.

Think about it. Poor people get some help. Taxpayers get to believe, at least for a while, that corporations actually participate in the great social compact of America. And if GE were a man, he would be proud to look at himself in the bathroom mirror while shaving.

A corporation that shaves is not really a stretch. Recall Citizens United, in which our benighted Supreme Court held that corporations are fairly close to humans and even have freedom of speech.

So GE and IBM and XYZ Inc. tithe themselves. Next thing is for them to assign someone with CFO status to hand out cash to people – individuals or groups – in need here in the U.S. or overseas without crushing their dignity and spirit in the great steel gears of bureaucracy.

As Dirksen taught us, $1 billion isn’t much, but it has the potential to do great good for people who need a hand. Or who need surgery, or a place to live, or medicine for their kids. Or any of a thousand other needs that a lot of people take for granted.

Here’s what $1 billion can buy: 6.7 million front doors for Habitat for Humanity; 2.2 million fistulas repair surgeries through the Fistula Foundation. Based on retail pricing, $1 billion can buy 125 million bottles of the anti-diarrhea medicine Imodium; 67 million bottles of the antibiotic amoxicillin, 153 million bottles of children’s ibuprofen.

And a mere $10 will get a sandwich, coffee and maybe dessert for someone who doesn’t eat regularly.

All this plus your own examples for the use of some money that Big Biz won’t miss.

By Jeffrey Page

I came up with a great idea this week. I’m going to write a letter to certain members of the House of Representatives to ask that I be permitted to opt out of my obligation to pay income tax.

My reasoning is uncomplicated: Paying my tax has simply become a little too burdensome and I need a break.

Ridiculous you say? Well, if a House subcommittee can allow schools to get a waiver on their responsibility to serve more nutritious meals in their breakfast and lunch programs because healthier dishes and menus are too expensive, surely it can get me a waiver on my tax responsibility.

At issue here is the agriculture subcommittee’s vote to allow school districts to opt out of complying with the new nutrition rules the Obama Administration put into effect two years ago. In 2012, school cafeteria officials were told they had to ease up on salt, sugar and fats in the meals they prepare for the kids, and at the same time increase the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables. The use of potatoes is limited. In pasta dishes, schools are required to use whole-grain pasta. Similarly only low-fat milk can be used. See anything wrong with this?

These Obama rules – the first revision in a generation – would provide up-close nutrition education for the kids and cut into the growing epidemic of obesity in young children. 

This doesn’t sound revolutionary. In fact, it sounds like what most responsible parents would serve their children.

But woe is us, some schools cried. In fact we can’t afford it. And they found a friend in Robert Aderholt, the chairman of the agriculture subcommittee, who suggested that making an apple available to a kid in first grade somehow is a complicated matter.

“Everyone supports healthy meals for children,” Aderholt told The Times. “But the bottom line is that schools are finding it’s too much, too quick.” Which is so much twaddle. I’d really like to see Aderholt address his shameless everyone-supports-healthy-meals line to a hungry student with a growling stomach and in poor health.

Can’t afford quality food for the children is about as legitimate an argument as a school district’s announcing that it can’t afford seat belts for its buses. I think the statement “Everyone supports seat belts on school buses but the bottom line is that schools are finding it’s too much, too quick” would be greeted with scorn.

But wait. Might Aderholt suggest that the federal government ought to pick up part of the cost of better food for breakfast and lunch?

He most certainly is not. Instead he says that the bill that goes to the full House of Representatives in a few weeks would contain measures to give up-against-it districts one year to get their cafeterias on track with the new rules.

Doubtless, Democrats will try and kill the changes, but they’re in the minority and however they choose to fight the new farm bill they’ll likely lose.

So the fights go on in Congress and once again, the constituency most at risk is the one with the softest voice. The children don’t win this fight.

I’ll let you when I get my income tax waiver.

By Jeffrey Page

Indian Point

I had conveniently forgotten to think about Indian Point and its attendant horrors, but as always seems to happen when you’re in a state of denial, the truth taps you on the shoulder and howls in your ear.

Several days ago I was at breakfast with some friends, a regular Friday event. I don’t recall what led to talk about Indian Point, but all of sudden there it was, the silent monstrosity that sits on the banks of the Hudson seeming to bide its time. I think everyone at the table harbored a fear that one of these days, Indian Point will do the unimaginable.

It will explode, or it will leak, or it will send plumes of radioactive smoke into the sky and force millions of people to wait to see where it comes down. Or it will be visited by people who despise us and it will fail to stop them from making off with material to make dirty bombs.

There seems to be enough radioactive waste stored at Indian Point to make more than a few such bombs. In fact, Riverkeeper estimates that Indian Point now holds about 1,500 tons of waste material – with no place to dispose of it permanently.

I have to wonder about security at Indian Point. A couple of years ago, a photographer and I chugged up the Hudson to do a story on sailing the river and the Erie Barge Canal. We were in mid-river as we passed Indian Point. My friend attached a very long lens to one of his cameras and started shooting pictures of the plant. Then the two of us waved.

Response from the ever vigilant Indian Point?

There was no response. No federal agents, no armed guards in fast boats, no loud warning buzzers played over big amplifiers.

If all this is not enough for the feds to reject the application by Entergy – the Indian Point operator – for a 20-year extension on its operating license, there is the matter of the size of the population near Indian Point. There’s another problem: Entergy’s evacuation plan is utter nonsense.

On a map, draw a circle with a 50-mile radius around Indian Point, step back and understand that roughly 20 million people are in that circle. People in Goshen, Middletown, Newburgh, the mid-Hudson, North Jersey, etc. Let us not forget that there’s an important federal interest in taming Indian Point – its proximity to West Point, just five miles up the river.

And there’s the little matter of New York City. Indian Point is about 23 miles from Times Square.

The word “evacuation” should not be allowed when discussing Indian Point. Not when 20 million mostly panic-stricken people would be trying to leave the 78 square miles around the plant all at the same time.

You can’t evacuate an area when the evacuation routes are clogged. Ever notice what happens on Route 17 when two cars smack each other in Sloatsburg during the morning commute? The backup builds quickly and there’s no way out. And that’s just for a jam of a few hundred cars. Now picture that traffic knot with thousands upon thousands of cars trying to escape.

Indian Point needs to be taken more seriously by people like me – people who have managed not to think much about it lately. It needs to be always in the public consciousness. Remember, most of us never heard of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima until they blew.

And may I offer a piece of gratuitous advice for nuclear regulators: Before that license extension is considered, I suggest that the officers and directors of Entergy be required to move – with their spouses and their children – to Buchanan, N.Y., home of Indian Point.

I’m sure this has been suggested before. It’s time to suggest it again.

By Jeffrey Page

Not all cases of child abuse involve physical violence inflicted by an angry adult on a kid who somehow violated the rules of the house. Sometimes, in fact, the abuse is more subtle and physically painless, and is meted out by the people and in the place where you least expect it. That would be administrators making life temporarily miserable for pupils in school.

If you’ve got a child in school and if you happen to be one of the growing numbers of moms and dads who are opting their kids out of the New York State grade 3-8 English language arts exams and state math testing, you have to read this story. And possibly, you might have to take action.

Here in Test-Happy New York, parents have the authority to exempt their children from the endless rounds of testing – testing that, in the minds of some officials, apparently passes for education. Thus, a question: How does a school district care for the needs of students who are not taking the tests during the periods when testing is being administered?

In its May-June issue, NYSUT United, the bimonthly publication of New York State United Teachers union, reports that the policy in 72 districts holds that kids not taking the test remain in the same room with those who are. The policy is called “sit and stare” because that’s all that the opted-out kids are allowed to do.

Read a book? No. Write an essay or compose a poem? No. Invent a game with a pencil and a piece of paper? No. Walk over to the window and follow the antics of a squirrel? No.  This is the kind of torture that some school administrators are inflicting on children.

In fact, the kids not being tested are not allowed to do anything other than the words dictate: sit and stare – and possibly be bored out of their minds. Which seems like a doubly moronic policy since it would appear to annoy and distract test takers knowing that the lucky kids – the decliners – are seated just a couple of rows away.

What the “sit and stare” policy means for a third-grade test decliner seated in a room where testing is being conducted is that she must gaze at the wall for the 70 minutes a day (for three days) allowed for the English Language Arts test. You really have to wonder when was the last time any official of the State Education Department sat still and quiet for that long.   

NYSUT also reported that the policy in 93 other districts allows the students not taking the test to read quietly, a slight improvement. But still, those being tested and those who are not are lumped together in the same room.

Another 157 school districts do the only sensible thing by finding space in for non-test takers in rooms where testing is not being conducted so that they can participate in alternative educational activities.

It goes without saying that if you’re not allowing your daughter or son to be tested it is essential that you contact the school and find out what your kid will be doing during testing. If he or she is going to be ordered to gaze at a blank wall, you might want to make your voice heard at the next meeting of the school board. Clearly, an administrator who makes a kid sit motionless and speechless doesn’t know a thing about children and ought to be doing something else for a living.

Incidentally, if you decide that your kid will not be tested, you may be happy to know you’re in growing company. NYSUT United reports that 34,000 children have been exempted from testing by their parents. For a wealth of information about testing and opting out, check the New York State Allies for Public Education website.

By Jeffrey Page

U.S. Supreme Court Building

I’m not a constitutional lawyer. I’m just an American watching the U.S. Supreme Court change my country in ways that once would have been unimaginable.

For example, in Citizens United, the court decreed that corporations have the same rights as human beings. And now, the court holds that it’s essentially permissible for government to endorse one religion over another and put an end to the concept of religious neutrality.

Once, we were a nation of reason, a sanctuary for the tempest-tossed, a place where immigrants, no matter their faith, seeking peace and maybe even a little understanding, could go to get away from the mob. 

Once, we took the opening clause of the Bill of Rights seriously: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” We didn’t know of any other countries that offered such extraordinary protections to minorities and nonbelievers. The United States was really special.

Sometimes, the great American experiment didn’t work, but such failure was usually corrected fairly quickly. In any case, at least the guarantee of religious freedom was written down and signed; at least we knew how things were supposed to be.

Oh, America! Where else was religious freedom so clearly stated?

This has been a country where the official rule is that a Jew can be a Jew, a Sikh can be a Sikh. And if anyone made being a Jew or a Sikh in America a problem, there was the Supreme Court – with no agenda of its own – to set matters straight. We believed that certain truths were self-evident. You want to pray? Go ahead and pray. Just don’t force it on everyone else.

But now the Supreme Court has decided – in yet another 5-4 decision – that a prayer at the opening of town board meetings in Greece, N.Y. is no violation of the First Amendment because atheists and ministers of all faiths are welcome to register on the board’s “chaplain of the month” roster. The “chaplain of the month” gets to recite the invocation at town board meetings in Greece.

The New York Times has reported that the “chaplain of the month” in Greece was almost always a Christian, that two-thirds of the “chaplains of the month” made reference to “Jesus Christ,” “Jesus,” “your son,” or “the holy spirit,” and that one prayer ended: “We acknowledge the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.”

That sure sounds like the establishment of a religion, a point the Greece Town Board naturally denies.

If the town board is serious about representing all its constituents and if it had noticed – how could it not? – that almost all prayers were Christian in nature, it would have made a stronger effort towards inclusivity.

All the board had to do was to get out into the neighborhoods of Greece and proactively invite Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, Buddhist, Shintoist, and clergy or laity of other faiths to sign up on the “chaplain of the month” list. And since God is everywhere, board members could even have ventured into neighboring towns if, for example, there was no Buddhist temple in Greece but one in the next town over. Incidentally, Rochester, a city of about 211,000 people, is just eight miles east of Greece and is home to 12 synagogues, a Sikh temple, five mosques, and a Baha’i community among other places of worship.

Just hours after the Supreme Court ruling, the Greece Town Board opened its meeting with a prayer by the Rev. Peter Enyan-Boadu, who, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle reported, “asked God to guide the board’s hearts and minds in the spirit of fairness.” He also called on God to bless the minds of the members of the town board, and finished with: “Thank you Lord, for being our source of guidance today.”

The Rev. Enyan-Boadu was from St. John the Evangelist Church.