By Jeffrey Page

— A gaming corporation says that part of its proposal for a casino in Sterling Forest would be the construction – at its own expense – of Thruway Exit 15B about halfway between the New Jersey state line and Harriman, the Times Herald-Record reported this week.

— The impact of such construction on Harriman State Park would be significant. In fact, Exit 15B arose as an issue about 20 years ago and most people understood that such a project would probably force the state to widen Route 17A, whose hilliness and narrowness just west of the Thruway are what keeps Warwick and some other towns as rural as they’ve remained. Expand Route 17A and kiss Warwick’s charm goodbye.

— The Times Herald-Record said that such a casino would create 2,000 jobs. But the paper didn’t differentiate between construction jobs and permanent staff positions. On the matter of permanent jobs, the paper says nothing about the number of croupiers and chambermaids – never known to be career-starting positions – who are included in that group of 2,000.

— Something else I haven’t seen – maybe I missed it – is a serious investigation into what casino gambling has cost other host municipalities. Supporters frequently talk up gaming’s positive effect on property taxes. But I wonder how much in new expenses is added to municipal budgets – and, of course, to local taxes – as a result of casino gambling. This would include such costs as additional police officers, more assistant prosecutors, and more social services and public assistance caseworkers.

— Have there been any studies on the possible increase in prostitution and drug use?

— It is not unreasonable to assume that local traffic would be nightmarish.

— Does the value of your home go up because more people want to move close to the casino for fun and/or jobs? Or does it decrease because of the very existence of a casino just minutes away?

— I can’t be the only one to understand that there’s no quiet time when it comes to casinos. The longer the house stays open, the more of your money it can squeeze out of you. The roulette wheels never stop turning, the dice never stop being tossed, the blackjack decks never stop being shuffled.

— Sure, placing a pile of chips on No. 9 at the roulette wheel is a lot of fun and might even give you a snazzy return. But who was the last person you know personally who played at the blackjack table and went home significantly richer?

— Question: Does anyone living in southern Orange County really wish to have a casino just down the road?

— Finally, we should remember that Sterling Forest is both a water source for 2 million people in northern New Jersey as well as a pristine New York state park of 22,000 acres. When Sterling Forest was saved from large scale development nearly 20 years ago, when it was in private hands, it was the complicated result of two states working together even including New Jersey’s buying a small tract in New York’s forest. It was understood that New Jersey needed its water and we needed our park.

By Jeffrey Page

The Boy Scout brain trust looked fairly ridiculous last year when, faced with growing mockery about its refusal to admit gay kids, it announced a revised membership position. It still does. Gay boys? Finally, they could join.

But gay Scout leaders? Not a chance. Doesn’t matter if a gay man from the neighborhood actually knows how to build a cooking fire in the woods or can explain the differences between a bowline knot, a sheepshank, and a square knot, there would continue to be no place for him in scouting.

And now, at last, an organization that hosted a Scout troop in Seattle has told the Boy Scouts – as it is said – to take a hike. And with that, Troop 98 is history.

It seems that the national Scout organization took exception to the gay Geoffrey McGrath’s serving as a leader of Troop 98, which was based at the Rainier Beach (Wash.) United Methodist Church. The national office issued an ouster order to church officials: They could fire McGrath or they could be unceremoniously kicked out of the Scouting movement.

The church stuck with McGrath. The New York Times quoted the pastor, the Rev. Dr. Monica K. Corsaro, as saying, “We’re going to stand firm. Geoffrey attends our church and this is a way to support our youth in the neighborhood.”

She went on to describe the no-gay-leaders position as “a policy of discrimination.”

It is also a policy of dazzling hypocrisy.

When a boy joins the Scouts, he is required to memorize, understand and live by the 12 parts of the Scout Law, which declares that a Scout must be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. Each part of the law includes a brief elaboration. More on that in a moment.

When I was a member of Troop 393 in Queens many years ago, we were told that everyone connected with scouting had to know the Scout Law and live by it. But in chasing down Geoffrey McGrath the national leaders failed nine of the 12 parts of the Scout law. Here’s the law in some detail with a look at how national scout leaders fared in abiding by it in the matter of Troop 98.

Are national leaders trustworthy? “People can depend on Scouts,” the law says. And the obvious question: Can people depend on Scouting’s brass hats to allow local people to establish the rules of membership? What, after all, is it that national is afraid of?

Are the leaders loyal? The Scouts demand that a boy display his loyalty to, among others, “Scout leaders.” McGrath was a scout leader who was dissed out of the movement on dubious grounds by national leaders.   

Helpful? “A Scout is concerned about other people,” the law says.

Friendly? “A Scout is a friend to all,” Moreover, “he seeks to understand others,” and “he respects those with ideas and customs other than his own.”

Courteous? “A Scout is polite to everyone regardless of age or position,” the law says.

Kind? “[A Scout] treats others as he wants to be treated.”

Obedient? I guess the leaders are obedient.

Cheerful? “He tries to make others happy,” the law says.

Thrifty? I guess the leaders are thrifty.

Brave? “A scout has the courage to stand for what he thinks is right.” (Compare the bravery of national scout officials with that of the Rev. Corsaro. In this, she defines bravery.)

Clean? I guess the leaders are clean.   

Reverent? “He respects the beliefs of others.”

Speaking of respecting the views of others, consider Corsaro’s response in an interview with the BBC: “I would really like them to honor their own bylaws to respect the religious beliefs of their chartering partners. Our religious beliefs include being accepting of all people.”

 By Jeffrey Page

Americans have never been enthusiastic about voting. Whether they saw it as a chore, or maybe something that interferes with a nice day off from work, they’ve avoided the polls to a degree that makes a laughing stock of a country governed by elected leaders.

Since the 1820s, the nation’s highest voter turnout was recorded in 1876 – a full 100 years after the colonies declared they would no longer be ruled by British kings and princes – when just 81.8 percent of eligible voters actually cast ballots. Even in the Great Depression of the Thirties, the highest turnout we managed was 65 percent.

And in the 11 presidential elections from 1972 to 2012, the average turnout was an anemic 53.6 percent, with the vote of 1996 falling to 49 percent. Some people say it doesn’t matter who’s in office so why bother voting? That argument will not stand the next time you use Obamacare, the next time you need an abortion, the next time there’s a vacancy on the Supreme Court, and certainly not the next time Paul Ryan proffers a budget that eliminates funding for early education.

Remember the public service announcements about the importance of voting? The message that suggested a free society could remain free only as long as its citizens exercised the franchise? Americans are deaf to such appeals now.

Some people see this lack of interest in the electoral process as dangerous. Others see it as an opportunity.

We’re supposed to be a nation that treasures its freedom in the voting booth. But now, some politicians see an opportunity, through statute, to make voting more difficult and inconvenient. Thus they discourage certain voters from going to the polls while encouraging others to pull the appropriate levers or slip their ballot into the computer.

Given our national apathy, who’s going to complain?

The New York Times recently ran an extraordinary story whose headline was shocking, even in this time of rabid partisanship in Congress: “New GOP Bid to Limit Voting in Swing States.” The report basically was a catalogue of measures that Republicans are supporting around the country. The truth here is that the Republican Establishment is engaging in voter suppression, which kind of negates the GOP’s eternal yammering about being the “party of Lincoln” and striving for a government of, by, and for the people.

In a nation where we don’t carry in-country passports, some Republicans would force people to carry voter ID cards to prevent election fraud – a rare offense. The existence of pre-Election Day voting makes casting a ballot convenient and easy, especially for working people but some on the right would cut the number of such “early days” or eliminate them altogether.

In Ohio, the governor killed a measure that allowed people to register and vote on the same day, another convenience. Ohio feared voter fraud, but again, there have been no reports of voter fraud.

Great American politicians believe that in a democracy, you encourage as many people as possible to get to the polls and, if needed, you provide assistance for them in the voting booth.

Great American cynics believe that party comes before nation so you educate your base, and then make voting as complicated and inconvenient as possible for the people whose votes you can’t count on.

By Jeffrey Page

Donald Rumsfeld

After several years out of the public eye Donald Rumsfeld – genius of all geniuses of the war in Iraq – returns.

Nowadays, Rumsfeld is being “courted” by some possible Republican presidential candidates. One such matchup is Ted Cruz’s hiring of Victoria Coates to be his foreign policy adviser. Victoria Coates? She was an aide to Rumsfeld when he ran the Pentagon for George W. Bush. Additionally, The Washington Post recently noted that several Republicans are reaching out to policy makers from past GOP administrations. Cruz, for example, has a sit-down scheduled with Rumsfeld himself.

Donald Henry Rumsfeld. As secretary of defense he gave us the misery of a war fought for dubious purposes and based on alleged evidence of Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. Thousands dead and wounded, a treasure’s worth of funds spent, and we never found those weapons.

It took a while, but Rumsfeld finally was shown the door. Between his performance at the Pentagon and some of his bizarre comments over the years, the door should have opened sooner, and you wonder why anyone would “court” him today. But, he left and did what people like him do all the time – he vanished, rose briefly with the publication of his book, and then seemed to disappear again. And now he might return – again.

Think back. Recall Rumsfeld as an alumnus of the Wiseacre School of Political Oratory with a major in condescension. In 2003 there were reports that some troops in Iraq had engaged in looting. Of course Rumsfeld was asked about this and sneeringly responded: “Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”

Got that?

There was always more when it came to Rumsfeld. Sure, his Pentagon might have misled Bush about the war and its progress. That’s one form of disrespect. But Rumsfeld dissed the troops themselves.

Do you remember this? Late in 2004, Rumsfeld paid a Christmas visit to U.S. forces in Kuwait. He praised the troops, and then took questions. Specialist Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee National Guard asked why he and his fellow soldiers had been equipped with light vehicles that lacked proper shielding. (Remember, this was a time when roadside bombings were killing and maiming troops regularly.)

Wilson also asked why, in order to protect their own lives, the troops were forced to scrounge through Kuwaiti landfills for scrap metal, fashion it into substandard shields, and attach them to their light vehicles.

Rumsfeld asked for a repeat of the question and you knew he had been snared. Wilson complied, adding, “We do not have the proper armored vehicles to carry us north.” The troops applauded.

Rumsfeld’s response will live forever as something you simply don’t say to the people who actually do your fighting. “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have,” Rumsfeld said.

Which was verbal trash.

Because if you plan a war for months before you intend to wage it – as the Bush Administration had – you use the time to supply your army with the proper equipment in big numbers. I noted in a column for The Record in 2004 that the only time you’re forced “to go to war with the army you have” is when the enemy is landing in the Bronx and time is precious.

There was more. Soon after Rumsfeld’s appearance in Kuwait, the Pentagon announced it was “aggressively” addressing Wilson’s complaint.”

But then the Associated Press reported it had interviewed another soldier who had expressed the very same complaint of substandard shielding to Rumsfeld – 15 months earlier – during the secretary’s visit with wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital. The soldier who spoke with AP recalled that Rumsfeld said at the time of his visit, around September of 2003, that he was working on the problem of the missing armor shields.

Which proves the old adage that I just made up: “You go to war with the secretary of defense who stands behind for his troops, not the secretary of defense who can’t equip his army properly and who sneers when he hears complaints.”

By Jeffrey Page

This is the story of how I scandalized some senior officers and non-coms of the 69thInfantry on a St. Patrick’s Day during the Sixties. The 69th is the military unit whose forebears have led the St. Pat parade every year since around 1766.

Not many people were aware of it in the Sixties, but there actually were two St. Patrick’s Day parades up Fifth Avenue every year. The second was the big one, the procession of bands playing “Garryowen,” “The Wearin’ of the Green,” and “Danny Boy,” of men in kilts playing the pipes, of soldiers of the 69th occasionally breaking ranks to shake an onlooker’s hand. It was floats and beer, and students from Catholic high schools striding behind their schools’ banners. It was some otherwise sensible young people with green hair. It was pins declaring “Kiss Me, I’m Irish.”

The earlier parade, which stepped off at 7 a.m., had no musicians but for a lone drummer who beat a steady rhythm so we could maintain a unified leftstep-rightstep-leftstep. There were no rifles, no steel helmets, no gas masks. And no onlookers, as we marched quietly from the 69th’s armory at Lexington and 26th to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where Francis Cardinal Spellman would conduct a military mass.

The battalion knew I was a newspaper reporter and ordered me to bring my camera and take pictures of the men on the march and of senior officers and non-coms being greeted by Cardinal Spellman. I told the major issuing this order that I was a writer, not a photographer, but he wasn’t listening.

And so, early on March 17 the two battalions of the 69th formed on Lexington Avenue. Sgt. Bates blew a whistle. The drummer began to drum. The sergeant major cried out “Forward march!” and we were off.

(Ahh, Sgt. Bates. When I enlisted three years earlier, having passed the draft board’s pre-induction physical, Sgt. Bates told me my obligations including marching in the parade every year of my six-year enlistment. What if I’m not Irish? I asked. This seemed like an exquisitely reasonable question. It was no such thing. Sgt. Bates, in words that live in my family to this day, declared in a voice you could hear in Hoboken, “Page, I don’t care if you’re a god damned Bolshevik, you will march in that parade.” And so I did.)

Now, three years into my enlistment, I tailed behind Lt. Col. Klauz – the battalion commander – into the cathedral and stayed for the mass to avoid missing the meeting with Cardinal Spellman. We were taken to a private room, and there was Spellman, the hawkish archbishop of New York, who had blessed Army weaponry and who had reduced the war in Vietnam to a battle between the North Vietnamese and Jesus Christ.

One by one, he blessed the officers and non-coms, and all appeared pleased. I kept snapping pictures of these small meetings, praying that they would come out well.

At the end, Spellman gestured toward me and asked, “Who is this young soldier?”

“Our photographer, your eminence,” Col. Klauz said.

Spellman waited a moment and then stuck out his hand to me. I guess I should have noticed that it was palm down.

I extended my hand and said, “Nice to meet you, Cardinal Spellman.” Silence for a moment and then the sound of 15 or 20 officers gasping slightly.

Spellman smiled and departed. One of the non-coms – I think it was the sergeant major – grabbed me by the arm and demanded to know what the hell I thought I was doing, which didn’t sound like the kind of talk you’re supposed to hear in a church.

“You do not shake hands with a cardinal of the church,” he said in a military lockjaw that was pure sputtering rage, “you kiss his ring. And you do not call him ‘Cardinal Spellman’ you call him ‘your eminence.’ And you do not say to a cardinal of the church ‘Nice to meet you.’ He’s not exactly your new drinking buddy,” he explained as he growled.

I guess I should have known, but I didn’t. How I was expected to know all this was beyond me, I said in a voice devoid of sputter – one does not ever sputter to a sergeant major – adding that I was Jewish. At which point his face turned a deep shade of red I have not seen since. It was much like the color of a beet – a bleeding beet.

All was forgiven, although with three years left in my enlistment, they never again asked me to shoot pictures of the parade. Funny how things work out.

By Jeffrey Page

First, she sideswiped a tractor trailer truck on Route 684.

Then it was the sight of her driving with one flat tire that caused several people to call the state police to report someone driving dangerously.

The case eventually went to trial in Westchester County and she was found not guilty of driving under the influence.

It was Kerry Kennedy, 54, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and ex-wife of Governor Andrew Cuomo, at the wheel. I’m inclined to believe her explanation that her erratic driving was the result of mistakenly taking a potent sleeping pill instead of her thyroid medication. I have no sympathy for drunken or drugged drivers but as far as intent is concerned, I still buy Kennedy’s story of a mistake and think the jury reached a fair and correct conclusion.

Now, incredibly, Kennedy says she thinks the district attorney is a little too aggressive in bringing drunken driving charges, and she went on television to offer a critique of the justice system in Westchester County. In this, like a Ringling Bros. clown, she stepped in a bucket.

Appearing on the Today program, Kennedy told Matt Lauer: “I think in Westchester County they have a policy of pursuing every single case of driving under the influence whether the police think the person’s innocent, whether the D.A. thinks they’re innocent.”

(Well, if the district attorney thought Kennedy was innocent, she could have declined to prosecute. But she’s the official who runs the criminal justice system in Westchester – and she decided to proceed.)

“And,” Kennedy continued, “this is a terrible policy because it means a lot of people who are innocent get caught up in the criminal justice system.”

It also means that a lot of people who are guilty get prosecuted. A terrible policy? I think rules that might make people think twice before driving home while blind drunk is a pretty good policy.

What is Kennedy saying? That district attorneys ought not pursue DWI cases? Or not prosecute the one against Kerry Kennedy? Or that we should do way with the criminal justice system altogether unless we can establish a defendant’s guilt or innocence without the inconvenience of seating a jury?

Since incidents of drunken drinking, crashes, deaths and injuries are so random – any of us could be a victim – the district attorney who pursues “every single case of driving under the influence” gets my vote.

Meanwhile, maybe what Kerry Kennedy and all of us need is a clear picture of what is meant by use of the word “injured” in most newspaper stories about DWI incidents. Does it mean a cut on someone’s face? A broken arm? A sprained ankle? Worse? Newspapers usually don’t follow up and discuss the “injuries.”

So let me tell you and Kerry Kennedy the story of Barbara Rokas, whose encounter with a drunken driver occurred in 1990. I became aware of her in 2001 when she contacted me at The Record of Hackensack to tell me what happened to her. (Long-time readers of Zest of Orange may recall some of this information from a column I wrote in 2009.)

Kennedy ought to read the complete inventory of injuries inflicted on Barbara Rokas before she complains about the D.A.’s office being too aggressive, too persistent, too determined in its prosecution of drunken drivers.

Barbara was driving through Kearny, N.J. on her way to pick up her husband. A car came speeding down Chestnut Street and smashed into her car. One estimate at the time was that the kid driving the other car was doing 75 mph. It was also revealed that he had been drinking since 7 in the morning; he encountered Rokas at 3:30 p.m. His blood alcohol level was 0.19; the legal limit was 0.10.

Barbara’s blood was all over the pavement. First aid responders thought she was dead and covered her face. But she was alive.

She needed about 500 stitches to close the cuts on her head alone. She was in a coma for 22 days. She suffered serious brain damage. She had a fractured thighbone and collarbone. She was paralyzed on her right side. She was deaf in one ear. She had double vision. She had severe memory loss. She was confined to a wheelchair. She had slurred speech.

Then came lawyer talk. “[She] has also suffered, and will continue to suffer, loss of the pleasures and pursuits of life and a diminution and impairment of her capacity to enjoy life,” her attorney said in court papers.

That was 24 years ago. Barbara is now 72. Life hasn’t gotten much easier.

Kennedy could learn a lot by talking with Barbara, who is the unfortunate stand-in for all of us: you, me, your mother, your sister, your kid, your husband, your wife. She could be Kerry Kennedy.

And so it brings a profound sense of relief when I read a story in the paper about a tenacious prosecutor presenting a case to a jury and a judge who understand the misery drunken drivers cause.

That, incidentally, would be unlike the judge who sentenced the man responsible for reducing Barbara Rokas’ life to – her word – “a zero.” The penalty was two months of weekend home confinement. That was 1999.

Barbara Rokas still struggles to get dressed every morning.

By Jeffrey Page

It took long enough, but Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, after several days of contemplation, finally found the need to veto a piece of legislation that would have set civil rights statutes in the morning trash.

As you probably know, State Senate Bill 1062 would have restored some of the odious Jim Crow laws of decades ago – not that its sponsors would agree. Briefly, SB-1062 would give shopkeepers and business people the right to refuse to serve gay men and lesbians. Arizona knew just how to talk up SB-1062. It wasn’t anti-gay, Arizona said, it was pro-religious freedom.

Arizona has good practice in describing certain travesties. It’s Arizona, after all, where police officers are required to check the immigration status of anyone who looks like he might be in the U.S. illegally. Can you take a guess who the state has in mind? Clue: It’s not Poles, Lithuanians or Canadians.

SB-1062 might have reminded you of the south before the Sixties, but its supporters say it was really a matter of ensuring religious freedom. Take a grocery store owner, for example. If he can show that selling a can of tomato soup or a pack of English muffins to a gay couple would violate his “strongly held religious beliefs,” he could point to the door and tell the two not to come back.

Question: Where in the Bible does it note that God would be greatly offended if he ran a luncheonette in Phoenix and two lesbians walked in to order tuna sandwiches on rye and coffee?

Question: Where in the Constitution of the United States did the framers define marriage?

And if SB-1062 – approved by the Arizona State Senate by an anemic vote of 17 to 13 and by a less than overwhelming Assembly vote of 33 to 27 – had become law, how easy or difficult would it be to allow shopkeepers with “strongly held religious beliefs” to refuse service to certain other people who don’t hold those same beliefs.

In considering undoing what the State Senate did on Feb. 19, Governor Brewer consulted with politicians and business people who feared that SB-1062 would harm the Arizona economy. She most likely was pushed along the road to veto by the National Football League’s starting talks on yanking next season’s Super Bowl game out of Phoenix if SB-1062 was enacted. It could be said that in Arizona, the economy trumps “strongly held religious beliefs.”

The NFL, several corporations, politicians from around the country, and Arizona’s two U.S. Senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, all appealed to brewer to make SB-1062 disappear.

They were joined by three of the state senators who voted in favor of SB-1062 and who were now looking for a way to kill it. Their reasoning for introducing the bill was misunderstood, they said.

In their letter to the governor, the three state senators said: “We must send a clear message that Arizona is a state that values religious tolerance and protects and values each individual’s ability to follow the dictates of their [sic] own conscience.”

That’s about as close as they ever got to the word “gay.”

Next, the measure went to Brewer for approval or veto. It took her seven days to kill SB-1062. It should have taken seven seconds.

By Jeffrey Page

Grossinger’s was gone. The Concord was gone. The Brickman, Brown’s and scores more as well. But Kutsher’s, with its more than 400 guest rooms, soldiered on before finally giving up the ghost. Earlier this month, the auction sale that seems to accompany all dying Catskill resorts, was held.

This was the last of the great ones, the place where Helen Kutsher, who died last year at 89, used to greet returning guests with “Welcome home.” Recently, Kutsher’s, facing the humiliation of a break in its roof and snow on its floor, slipped away after bidders bought all matter of Kutsher’s stuff. Plans call for the hotel to be razed and replaced by a health spa and resort, reportedly a $90 million venture. Why do I think that herring, lox and cheese danishes will be replaced by quinoa, kale and tofu?

These hotel auctions are attended by people wanting a piece of the old Catskills, which thrived during their now-ended Kosher Century. At the height of their popularity with primarily Jewish clienteles there were close to 500 such resorts in Sullivan County alone. Bidders want menus, furniture, kitchen equipment, memorabilia, anything actually, and all the better if it bears the name of the dead hotel. But such named pieces aren’t always available.

A number of years ago, when the Concord had gasped its last, we attended one of these sales and went home with an enormous metal mixing bowl. It was battered and dented, emblazoned with nothing identifying it as from the Concord. But we knew its origin. Once, it might have been used to mix potato pancake batter. Nowadays we use it to catch rain water from a leaky chimney.

At the Kutsher’s sale some people were interested in a walk-in refrigerator, which eventually went for $650, according to a compelling story in The Times Herald-Record. Others bought sports goods, perhaps remembering the late Milton Kutsher’s love of all games, but especially basketball. And so, the Record said, a basketball signed by Bob Cousy went for $250. Same price for a baseball signed by Sandy Koufax.

Milt Kutsher – Helen’s husband, and one of the nicer guys in the hospitality industry – died in 1998. But there are people who’d swear Kutsher’s the institution could never die. After all, it might have been the first kosher resort in Sullivan County and lasted a century. It opened in 1907, seven years before the storied Grossinger’s, which always seemed to get more publicity than Kutsher’s.

But there were quiet, unreported stories of Kutsher’s, the kind that families love to tell and re-tell. In New York around 1915, Mr. Elias Blau was to be married to Miss Rose Weicholz. Mr. Blau believed Miss Weicholz was simply too skinny and so decided that in order to get her to gain some weight, he would send her to Kutsher’s to do some serious eating. The resort, run in those days by Max Kutsher and his brother Lou – Milton’s father and uncle – did the trick for Rose and whichever family member it was who accompanied her to the mountains. Rose was happy. She ate enough so that when she returned to Brooklyn, Elias was happy.

Milt Kutsher was delighted when I told him this story roughly 60 years after the fact. “The kitchen did it every time,” he said.

Kutsher’s guests had a never-ending appetite and that kitchen was designed to keep them happy, and sated. Something else that kept guests coming back was the sight of Helen or Milt patrolling the lobby and greeting vacationers by name and asking about their trip up from the city.

Milt Kutsher, who took over the place after World War II, always seemed to be the prescient owner who understood what the public wanted. He booked top name entertainment, created a sports academy whose instructors’ names were usually found on the sports pages, and made his hotel the home court for the annual Maurice Stokes basketball game. Stokes was the NBA all-star who died of a brain injury at 36. The game was a fundraiser to make Stokes’ last years bearable and affordable.

One view of the downfall of the resort industry held that some hotel keepers failed because they didn’t keep up with the competition. One owner, for example, believing there was money to be made as a winter resort as well as a summer place would install an indoor pool, and woe to the hotels that didn’t keep up.

But there were other causes. There was the much quoted line – often attributed to Milt Kutsher, but not necessarily his own – about the fate of the industry. “You want to know what killed the mountains? Air conditioning and airplanes,” he told me sometime during the seventies, a time when the bigger hotels were still hanging on.

All of a sudden, the hot summers of New York could be tamed, and all of a sudden, a summer trip to Paris or Rome seemed more exciting than playing Simon Says in Monticello.

Then, it was only a matter of time.

By Jeffrey Page

Pete Seeger on the banks of his beloved Hudson River.

I never met Pete Seeger, but of course this didn’t stop me from reaching certain conclusions about him. One such was that anyone who could sit down and write an anthem like “If I Had a Hammer” had to be a pretty great individual. Another was my sense that Seeger was a man who defined modesty.

Clearly I’m not alone in my appreciation of the life and music of Pete Seeger. Now, in the 11 days since he died at the age of 94, there have been calls by some of his admirers that the Tappan Zee Bridge be renamed in his honor. After all, they argue, Seeger lived in Beacon overlooking the Hudson River, which, farther downstream flows under the TZB and which will flow under its $14 billion replacement, whose construction has begun.

Link Seeger and the bridges? I think such a name-change would be a mistake. For one thing, we will probably never fully understand the extent of the disruption of the Hudson’s ecology during the construction and life spans of the two enormous bridges. Proponents of the Pete Seeger Bridge should remember that Seeger spent much of his life trying to achieve an unsullied, uncontaminated and unpolluted Hudson. I don’t believe he ever crusaded for the first TZB, or the one that’s being built now. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Moreover, I don’t imagine Seeger would feel especially proud of having his name superseding that of the Tappans, a family of Indians that lived in the areas surrounding Nyack when the Dutch arrived. And of course, his name would not include the word “zee,” from the Dutch for a wide sea. Unless they called it the Pete Seeger Tappan Zee Bridge, which would be ridiculous.

The Tappan Zee Bridge and its replacement span ought to remain precisely that.

But if we’re going to honor Pete Seeger by naming something for him, how about changing the name of the Hudson to the Pete Seeger River. After all, if it were not for him and the Clearwater project, the Hudson might be the same old befouled mess it was before Seeger and his friends decided to do something about it.

As far as Henry Hudson is concerned, he won’t be forgotten. There’s the Henry Hudson Parkway on the upper west side of Manhattan, the Henry Hudson Memorial Park in the Bronx, a 16-foot statue of Hudson atop a 100-foot column in the park, the Henry Hudson Bridge connecting the northern tip of Manhattan with Spuyten Duyvil in the Bronx, and Hudson Street downtown in the West Village.

We know Henry Hudson made four voyages to North America. He explored the river that would be named for him on his third visit. But the mystery of his fate developed on his fourth voyage, when he searched for northern passages to Asia.

He was in Canada, sailing on what would become Hudson’s Bay when his crew mutinied and took control of the ship. One account holds that the crew was weary and wanted to return to England but that Hudson insisted on continuing his exploration. The crew took the ship and set Hudson, his son, and seven crewmen adrift in a longboat. They were never heard from again.

Ultimately you have to wonder why the fuss about Hudson. After all he wasn’t exactly the first European to reach what would become New York. In fact, he arrived second, in 1609 – a full 85 years after Giovanni da Verrazzano.

“A very agreeable site,” Verrazzano wrote in his log as he entered the great harbor of the future New York, “located between two hills between which flowed to the sea a very great river.”

That would be the Hudson. Or the Seeger.

By Jeffrey Page

We loved his voice, we loved his banjo. We loved “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “If I Had a Hammer,” “We Shall Overcome” and all the others he wrote for us. We loved his sense of humor and his uncanny ability to get 3,000 people at Carnegie Hall – mostly strangers to one another – to open their mouths and sing with him. We loved the fact that he was always there. Whether the issue was Vietnam, civil rights, the environment, voting rights, sexism, or the inarguable right of the people of the Hudson Valley to have a swimmable river free of garbage and chemicals, he was there.

But now I go back to something else: a hearing room at the Federal Courthouse in downtown Manhattan 59 years ago, as the House UnAmerican Activities convened for another in its Communist witch hunts. It took extraordinary courage to tell HUAC, in a voice at once polite and defiant, to go to hell. But that is precisely what he did, and for this he would pay.

He was questioned about his political activities, and about the places and events where he had performed. He would not answer. Even more important to HUAC was who was at those meetings and performances. But he would not name names. He said he would answer any questions from the committee about himself or about his songs, but would refuse to discuss individuals.

At one point he was asked about an item that had appeared in 1947 in the Daily Worker. The paper, published by the Communist Party U.S.A., noted that he would be singing at an event called the Allerton Section Housewarming.

Was the Allerton Section part of the Communist party, a committee staffer asked.

“Sir,” he responded, “I refuse to answer that question whether it was a quote from the New York Times or the Vegetarian Journal.”

Francis Walter, the chairman of HUAC, directed him to respond.

And this was his response: “I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this. I would be very glad to tell you my life if you want to hear of it.”

This was the kind of answer to HUAC, and its like-minded friends in the Senate, that had cost countless people in and out of the entertainment industry their jobs and livelihoods.

HUAC members and staffers peppered him repeatedly with questions about the places he sang and the people who attended his music, and he refused to give in.

At one point he said: “I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known. I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent this implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, or I might be a vegetarian, make me any less of an American. I will tell you about my songs, but I am not interested in telling you who wrote them. I will tell you about my songs, and I am not interested in who listened to them.”

He defined what it is to stand on principle, on honor. His was the kind of declaration that ought to be hung in classrooms, right next to the American flag. He was cited for contempt of Congress for his refusal to talk about his friends and acquaintances, and sentenced to one year in jail. The conviction was tossed on appeal. But the damage was done, and he lost entertainment gigs and was barred from appearing on network television for several years.

We will remember this man for his music, his integrity, and his courage in the darkest of times.