Our Savior!

This opinion piece appeared in the Townsman, March 12 edition

It should go without saying – and indeed outside the confines of Woodstock it is – that Woodstock probably would have died in 1989 had Ed Sanders not been our town supervisor. How easy it must be for one to remember the peril that faced our town a mere twenty years ago, since the youngest person in Woodstock is now 59 years old. Well, actually, my brain is somewhat faded and brittle, as we can expect of any antique, and the fact is I don’t remember, but I am often reminded that Ed Sanders saved us from something. I am often reminded of this by him.

His gentle reminders used to come weekly in his self-published Woodstock Journal, that splendid little sprout of verbiage that would shoot up from the manure right around the time of local elections to warn voters off those who would pave over wetlands and install Wal Marts on all our corners, and sprinkled among its civic discourses were the charming figments of Ed Sanders’ latest verse. Who can ever forget his meter on President John F Kennedy, which went:

“He was a man more amorous
than Thomas Jefferson any day
and if you believe the sources in
Seymour Hersh’s book
The Dark Side of Camelot
He liked quick trysts
By the side of the
White House swimming pool
In the midst of swirly duties”

How swirly duties got in the White House swimming pool perhaps is a question for Seymour Hersh, but it is a tribute to Sanders’ intellect that what he appears to resolve actually raises far more interesting, if not lurid questions.

But I’ve digressed. Since the Woodstock Journal has been on its long hiatus the gentle reminders now come on Saturday nights through our local public access channel. It is one of Woodstock’s many blessings that in a world of collapsing economies, compiling gasses and depleting resources we can again be reminded by Ed Sanders that he “wrote the 1989 zoning law” during that golden period he served as the un-elected town supervisor.

In the 1989 zoning law he wrote with respect to the Residential 1.5 District, “Where central water and/or common sewer is provided, an increase in permitted density may occur.”

To make the point even clearer, later in the 1989 zoning law he wrote, “For lots with Town-provided central water and common sewer in the R1-5, HR and HC Districts, four units may be built on a lot meeting the minimum lot area per dwelling unit requirement, provided that all other requirements of this chapter and other applicable laws, rules and regulations are strictly met. For each additional unit after the first four, 25% of the per-dwelling-unit density shall be required.”

It is exactly on these words that the RUPCO application to build 53 units of affordable housing on seven of the twenty-eight acre parcel behind Bradley Meadows shopping center is predicated.

You would think the RUPCO application would thrill Sanders, for he has often risen from his swirly duties to pay great lip service to the need for affordable housing. You would be wrong.

Last Saturday he informed us, darkly, that RUPCO is not on the up-and-up. Results of Sanders’ investigation disclose that RUPCO has not filed the proper forms for its tax-exempt status. Let’s hope that he delivers this information, along with information regarding the Committee For Woodstock’s Future (the shadowy political committee that uses Ed’s post office box) to Congressman Hinchey, who, according to RUPCO papers filed with the Town, will help the RUPCO project with federal funding provided “applicable laws, rules and regulations are strictly met.” Those with great trust and faith in Sanders, no doubt, are eagerly waiting with bated breath for the delivery of his report on the unsavory RUPCO to the congressman.

I have to think it was coincidence that during his Saturday broadcast, Sanders echoed the opinion expressed a week earlier by councilman Chris Collins to the effect that the Woodstock town board could ultimately scuttle the RUPCO project by denying it hook-up to “central water and common sewer.” I have to think this because even the most superficial reader of Sanders’ verse would recognize a mind of such supreme uniqueness and individuality to preclude invasion by a mind generally suspected to be ordinary and mundane. The idea that a town board, which by unanimous consent had given the responsibility of Lead Agency in the environmental review of the RUPCO project to the planning board, should later seize responsibility for its final disposition can only spring from a mind inured to swirling duties. Lest one think by this that I accuse Collins of plagiarizing the idea, you should know how improbable anything so complicated could be attributed to him, and therefore comprehend my conviction that it must have been a coincidence.

* * *

Warning: Pretentious Music Review!
I am generally remiss in taking advantage of the many cultural events common to our town, but this sin was greatly atoned by my audience at the March 1 piano recital at the Kleinert Gallery. The recital, which was a benefit for the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, was introduced by the at-first unsettling announcement that featured pianist, Ilya Yakushev, had been replaced by Asaf Blasberg. I would love to possess the erudition to differentiate a Yakyshev from a Blasberg, but I am too deficient to even try and fake it. I’ll just tell you that Mr, Blasberg may have been a trifle condescending to Mozart’s Sonata in C major, K330, but he executed the Brahms and the Chopin pieces with an adoration and conviction that almost persuaded me to a new religion. BRAVO, Mr. Blasberg, and BRAVO the Guild for such a gift!