What to Feed Newburgh's Ducks

Sorry, kids: Turns out, bread is one of the worst things you can feed ducks. i know you love to go down to the river to throw stale bits of bread into the water and watch them flock (get it? “Flock?”) to you, but it’s actually bad for them when you do that. Here’s why:

1. It fills them up with non-nutritious food. They love it, though, just like we all love candy, potato chips and other junk food! But it expands in their stomachs so that they can’t get the nourishing food they need.

2. Too many handouts interferes with baby ducks’ ability to learn to forage for the stuff they need to grow and be healthy, and prevents them from being hungry for that nutritious food.

3. Uneaten pieces of bread turn moldy. Green mold causes lung disease in ducks, in addition to attracting rats, insects and other vermin.

4. Too much bread (which they LOVE, don’t forget) not only makes ducks sick and dependent on humans, but also causes them to become aggressive when large flocks see people at the river’s edge. They waddle on up to you and peck at you and won’t leave you alone.

   So, what should we feed ducks instead of bread, popcorn, potato chips and pastries of any kind? Here are some alternatives:

   • cracked corn, which can be bought online or at farm stores;

   • frozen peas or frozen corn, defrosted (cooking not necesary)

   • barley or rice (cooked or raw)

   • plain, uncooked oats

   • grapes, cut in half, so they don’t choke (ducks cannot chew)

   • mealworms, which you can buy online, in pet stores or the pet-food sections of some supermarkets — but they’re very expensive

   • natural greens like cut grass and weeds (these can be fed to ducks in any quantity)

     Bottom line: i’m hoping to talk our City Council into springing for a couple of duck-food dispensers to install down at the river. i’ve seen them in other cities; for something like a quarter, they dispense a handful of cracked corn or other nutritious duck-food. There’s one company that installs solar-powered dispensers. Cool, right? And good for our ducks!

No bread for this beautiful fellow, please! keep hudson-river ducks healthy!

Hurrah for Teensy Cokes!

Today, as I do about two or three times a week in good weather, i walked a few blocks to the nearest bodega and bought myself a can of Coke. Do i like or need all that sugar? No. I just like to have a “target” for my walks around the neighborhood. So i aim for the bodega and buy the cheapest thing they have. I’ve done it so often, i could locate that bodega’s 12-ounce Cokes blindfolded. Today, however, i had a shock. When i slid open the cold-case door, i grabbed the first small Coke in the lineup. They have 16-ounce cans on a higher shelf, but that is way too much Coke for a single human, in my opinion, and i would never buy anything in a plastic bottle.( See how ecological i am, as i pour sugar down my throat?) Anyway, I spun around and handed the clerk a dollar bill as i always do, only to have him hand me back a quarter.

“It’s only 75 cents?” i asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Seventy-five.”

Wow, i thought: The price went down! Only then did i notice: The can i’d grabbed, only two inches in diameter and four inches high, contained seven-point-five ounces of soda.

GOOD! i’m paying less, and, bonus: I’m drinking less crap on my way home. I mean, six swallows and i’m back on Bayview Terrace! That’s the American Way, friends. G-d Bless America!

Check out this teensy beauty!

"COMMON" Whitetail Dragonfly? Hah!

Saw this gorgeous creature on my front steps today, and found out, thanks to the App “Seek,” that it’s a “Common Whitetail” dragonfly. You call it “common”; i call it “beautiful.”

i hope they’re still common, and not disappearing like so many other species. stay around my house, little fellow!

The Furze and the Gloom

New hobby, at age 73: Re-reading all the books in my house i’ve had since … high school? College? … whose crumbling, yellowed pages have been gathering dust for decades on my shelves and whose plots and characters’ names i could not tell you at knifepoint. Today i finished “Return of the Native,” by Thomas Hardy, a prolix Victorian-era fellow who i believe was paid by the word. This 360-pager was an “abridged edition,” i noticed halfway through it. TIP: If you skip all the descriptions of the drear and the drip and the gloom and the furze as the protagonists walk along the heath, it woul make a good 20-page love story.

My favorite thing in finding this book was the inside front cover, where i had proudly written my name with the precious little circle above the “i” that was, when i bought it as a 14-year-old, the last letter of my first name (i have long since reclaimed my “e”). And to be sure that, if you found it in 1964 and thought perhaps it belonged to some OTHER Geni Abrams, i added, “Homeroom 105, Albany High School.” Today, as i consign this tome to the Purple Heart box, i smile, “Hello, 14-year-old self!” to the writer of that signature. And, “Goodbye.”

Finished this book today, 60 years after i bought it. loove some of hardy’s poems, especially “channel firing,” but this “abridged” version of “Return of the native” could profitably have been about 340 pages shorter. disagree? let me know!

A Great Day at Muchattoes Lake

Saturday, June 10 was a great day of kayaking, exploring our city and learning about a wonderful urban trail-in-the-making here in Newburgh. The Quassaick Creek Watershed Alliance, the Newburgh Rowing Club, the city’s Conservation Advisory Council and others organized this day to show off Muchattoes Lake as a fascinating site for recreation and outdoor adventure — soon (please, G-d) to be an important part of the Quassaick Creek Trail from the Hudson River to Crystal Lake.

For several hours

Hikers, joggers and birders, take note!

newburgh’s environmental justice fellows, thanks to the Greater newburgh parks conservancy’s kathy lawrence, took part in the festivities to get to know a little-known, wild and wonderful part of our city. Carol Lawrence, bottom left, greeted all attendees and registered them for activities including kayaking on the lake and walking the future trail around it,

Now We Know Where We Are!

Fast and excellent work by Newburgh’s Department of Public Works has resulted in a new, amazingly accurate street sign here. Heading north on Robinson Avenue, you can now arrive at the intersection of Robinson and South Street. Previously, you arrived at … who knows where? There was no sign at all for northbound travelers at this busy intersection, while, equally amusing: Southbound folks found that they were at the corner of South Street and South Street! (see “before” and “after” photos, and pardon my lousy photography.)

Many thanks to George Garrison and his Terrific Team for helping us all get our bearings.

“After.” THANKS, DPW!

“Before.”

Newburgh's Kai Wright, Live from the Apollo!

In case you missed it: Click here: https://www.wnyc.org/mlk2023/ to watch Newburgher Kai Wright lead a conversation last night, live from the legendary Apollo Theater, about the history of the racial justice movement in the U.S. and where we go from here. Kai interviews Imani Perry, professor of African American studies at Princeton University, and Chelsea Miller, the fearless young New York City activist who led the marches for justice in NYC after the murder of George Floyd. There are also amazing performances by a Washington, DC-area group singing “Young, Gifted and Black” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and more.

Catch Kai’s brilliant, nationally syndicated call-in show, “Notes from America,” every Sunday at 6 pm at WNYC.org, 93.9 FM or 820 AM.

Newburgh’s own Kai Wright. His nationally-syndicated radio show “notes from america” sometimes broadcasts from his own house here in the heights, in which case: be sure to listen for his neighbor’s dogs barking and the trains going by! Catch him sundays at 6 pm on wnyc.

Get Your ITINs here!

If you live in the City of Newburgh and don’t know Julia Elizabeth Colangelo … well, you should meet her. She’s a certified tax preparer who is ready, willing and able to get undocumented folks an ITIN.

What’s that, you ask? An Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN) substitutes for a Social Security Number on job applications and is also good enough to get you a checking and savings account at a credit union or bank. You can use it to apply for a driver’s license, as well. In other words, for people working for “cash under the table” like so many Latinos in Newburgh, it’s a ticket to a better life.

I went to Ms. Colangelo’s office with a friend last week and found her to be friendly, bilingual and super-competent. Give her a jingle and see for yourself … and then pass this info on to everyone you meet who may be undocumented.

Contact Ms. colangelo for effective, friendly service at a great rate, and to quickly obtain your Individual Taxpayer Identification Number!

Vote Blue! And while you're at it, Vote Green!

If you haven’t done so already: Vote the straight Democratic ticket to save our democracy, and then flip the ballot over and vote YES ON PROP 1, to save our environment!

Vote the straight Democratic line on Nov. 8 if you haven’t done so already, and don’t forget to flip your ballot over to VOTE YES on PROP 1!

New Ice Cream Store in Newburgh!

Well, it’s not just an ice-cream store, and it’s not really new, but since I recently discovered it, it’s new to me:

The wonderful G&H Deli, at the corner of Liberty and First streets, has terrific hard and soft ice cream in cups and cones, as well as fresh, hot chicken and rice, greens, gravy, oxtail, pork and a wide variety of other Soul-Food and Caribbean-influenced dishes to go. You may remember (as i well do) getting hot food there, passed from a little window on the Liberty Street side of the building. i could never find the name of that shop; the front door (on First Street) was covered with chicken wire, and it always appeared to be dark inside, like a small bodega. Now they have ice cream in an amazing array of flavors — my favorite so far is the rum raisin, $2 for a very generous cupful — as well as other sweets and the same great food as always, in their beautifully renovated building. No more “little window!”

It was a blow to the whole city when Nancy Colas’s Simple Gifts and Goodies closed, and then Dairy Island as well, leaving Newburghers with no ice-cream shops. To make matters worse, our only swimming pool will be closed for the next three years, turning summers into a sad season here. But: G&H Deli has come to our rescue! All ice-cream lovers (as well as lovers of fresh, hot, Caribbean-style and Soul Food) should drop in to this hidden gem, in ANY season.

Call to order: 845-420-6175. They cater, too!

Here’s Who to Vote For ... In Case You're Wondering

A message from Kevindaryan Lujan, Orange County Legislator and 2022 Orange County Latinos Leadership Awardee:

 An extremist group has been pretending that Orange County Latinos support Colin Schmitt’s bid to replace Congressman Pat Ryan. Nothing could be farther from the truth. As the first Latino elected to the Orange County Legislature, I want to set the record straight: Latinos absolutely DO NOT support Schmitt. In fact, we strongly support the fearless and effective Ryan, who is endorsed by the Democratic and Working Families parties.

 

As an Assemblymember, Schmitt’s deplorable positions are a matter of public record. He championed the expansion of Trump’s expensive, failed “Wall,” and applauded children being separated from their families as he held a photo op at the Mexican border. Locally, he tried to use immigrants as political pawns, claiming that families passing through could be a threat to Orange County residents. The most notable thing Schmitt has ever done was to stir division and hatred by cheering a busload of people who were on their way to protest against legitimate election results. Schmitt and his extremist pals are a danger to the very fabric of our democracy. He opposes affordable housing, he opposes healthcare for all, and he definitely does not care about the struggles of Black and Latino working-class families.

 

He also opposes a woman’s right to reproductive choice, even in cases of rape or incest. The only lie bigger than “Latinos for Schmitt” are his pink signs reading, “Women for Schmitt”. No one who actually cares about the rights of women or minorities would support Colin Schmitt for higher office.

 

Congressman Ryan’s leadership is already making a difference for millions of Americans. He supports women’s right to choose, and he will stand up against Big Pharma, gun lobbyists, and billionaires looking for more tax cuts for themselves. Finally, he will make the environment a priority, not a talking point.

 

We Latinos are smart, and we love this country. We’re voting for Pat Ryan.

 

Vote for Julie: We Need Her Truly!

Ever Paid Your Newburgh School District Bill Online?

For the first time ever, our Newburgh, N.Y., school-district tax bill arrived with no return envelope. i thought: Maybe they want us to pay online from now on; that's why they've omtted return envelopes. And yet: The bill itself arrived via snail-mail. And also: There was not a word from the District enouraging us to pay online, nor explaining how.

Anyway, I've been trying to do this for 45 minutes, my master’s diploma snickering on the wall. Apparently one or more of these: Name, Street Number, Property location, SWIS Code, Tax Map Number, and Tax Bill Number, all of which i assiduously copied from the bill, is incorrect. No matter how cleverly i adjust the case, font, punctuation and spacing of my responses, this screen screams back, “There are no properties that match your search information.”

I shall now return to my regularly scheduled life. But if you have any clues about how to do this, please let me know.

The Party of Lincoln is Now the Party of Stinkin'.

My Dad was a Republican. I wouldn’t say he was a “proud” one, especially after Goldwater became its presidential nominee in 1964, but rather a “loyal” one, working hard for his boss, New York State Sen. Thomas C. Desmond, in the 1930s and doing his best to see that Desmond got reelected again and again.

Albert J. Abrams was a classic “Rocky Republican,” admiring the policy positions of our liberal Governor Nelson Rockefeller and flying with him (and their colleague Jackie Robinson) to the Republican National Convention in San Francisco in 1964 in a doomed attempt to prevent Goldwater from getting the GOP nod. Dad looked upon Desmond, Rocky, Jackie and other Republicans of his day as smart, good-hearted, forward-thinking and open-minded, and optimistically believed they represented the “silent majority” of their party.

Hear that buzzing sound? That’s Dad, spinning in his grave.

Shrew on a Shoe!

Kudos to @NYSDEC for the amazing photo by Rhyan Maier on the back cover of the Aug/Sept issue of the Conservationist. It inspired me to pen a commemorative poem:

A day so mild, and a sky so blue, / But look! Something weird is on your shoe. / Now just one photo, then shake that shrew, / ‘Cause those things have venomous spit! (Who knew?)

Good job, Rhyan Maier! We may never see a photo like this again.

With a Flier Like This, How Many People Do They Expect to Vote?

Good old Newburgh Democratic Committee (I’m guessing they’re responsible for this) strikes again: Today was the last day to vote in the primary for our new Congressional District, NY-18. At my usual polling place, South Middle School, I went around back. It was there, during the Early COVID Period, that we started having to enter through the gymnasium doors to vote, instead of the doors we had always previously used — the front doors, facing Monument Street.

Doors locked! No one home! i peered; i knocked. Silence and darkness inside! No sign at all was on the gym doors. Did i have the wrong day? No; impossible. A former City Council member, i don’t know much, but i know how, where and when to vote. Or at least, i thought i did.

Annoyed, i went around to the front of the school, thinking that voting was now back in its “regular” place — the hallway just off the school’s Monument Street parking lot. But again, i found the building dark and all the doors locked. NOW, WHAT THE … ???

Then i noticed a single, yellow sheet of paper, taped to a window pane. I attach a photo of it here, as i find it to be a classic of its kind (that kind being, “Screwed-Up Newburgh Communications.”) A few questions about this flier:

1. Could they make the “headline” any smaller? “POLLING PLACE CHANGE” should fill the entire sheet, left to right, no? i ask you.

2. What are the words, “CITY OF NEWBURGH” doing there? The City of Newburgh has nothing to do with this … or if it does, it’s for some “Inside-Baseball” reason that no one cares about. And look: They used a new typeface, too! Someone must have been having some fun with this.

3. In the fourth and fifth lines, we finally get to a sentence* that seems as if it’s going to be important: “Your polling place has been changed for only the … “ and then, right there in the middle of the sentene, they switch to Spanish.

4. OK, so, “only the” WHAT? Only the “second time in history,” maybe? In tiny type, the next line reveals the finale of this cliff-hanger: “August 23, 2022, Primary Elections.” Except there’s no period at the end, so it’s not really a “sentence” (see #3 above). Does no one around here know an English teacher, or a good 6th-grader, who could proofread this stuff?

5. Yay! Now we know that our polling place has been changed. But we had kind of figured that out when we found all the doors locked. The question remains: WHERE DO WE GO TO VOTE? Over the next three lines, they give an address. It would have been nice to precede that address with a few words to the effect: “TO VOTE TODAY, GO TO…” Instead, they just left that address hanging out there, in the middle of the page. (Nice big type, though!) WHY, OH WHY, couldn’t they just print a flier with these words in huge type:

   TO VOTE TODAY, GO TO 401 WASHINGTON STREET.”

6. They then took three more lines to tell us that we won’t have to go to 401 Washington Street to vote anymore, after today. Again, there’s no period after that three-line “sentence.” (The Spanish version beneath it has one, though!) Anyway, to all those who took a cab to South Middle School to vote today: i pray you didn’t dismiss the driver before you read the sign on the door.

   PS: Are you wondering why the voting location was changed? Me too.

Here’s the one and only sign at South Middle School tellng us where to vote today. Note the glare, which added to the fun!

Poem After my Vacation Out West

The air is airier out West.

The light is lighter, and longer.

The days are drier.

No matter how high you get,

you can always get higher.

To the Force that revealed these mountains,

redolent of the glorious glaciers

that carved the rivers, leaving rubble, runnels and rivulets

for eons, and for us all:

Thank you.

Yeah. Tim and I took the famous Rocky Mountaineer train trip from Vancouver to Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. Then stayed overnight and hiked up Tunnel Mountain. Yeah. This photo is one of about 500 i took along the way and in Banff, which i believe is the consensus “Most Jaw-Dropping Place in North America.”

Three Black Girls

I’m watching birds from my glass-enclosed front porch on a late June afternoon, binoculars and tea on the table before me, when here come three Black girls, about 13 or so. They’re walking in the middle of the street, talking all at once, loud and fast, laughing, shoving and clutching one another, enjoying their lives and their lives-that-could-be, the possibilities that are floating like colorful soap-bubbles all around them, just out of reach.

The sight of them reminds me so much of myself at 13 that my heart is pierced and love for them leaks out of my eyes. When you’re 13 and school’s out for the year, the whole city lies before you: new neighborhoods to be explored, new people to meet, new teachers to love or hate, new opinions and personalities to try out, new games to play, new things to learn -- a whole new person to become, with new strengths and skills to be famous for. The sentences you’ve never said or written before; the jokes you’ve yet to tell! There are new friends to make and new enemies to imagine. You’re becoming you; you’re making yourself up and writing your own story. Every moment is an adventure.

Now the girls are drawing very near to my house. One of them, trailing a bit behind the others, surprises me by pausing to yank from my front garden a tall, perfect coreopsis, sun-yellow petals circling its cinnamon-red center. I lower my binoculars, grab my gardening shears and rise, angling to the door so I can call to her to wait, and then quickly pick an armful of flowers as a way of saying, Here, these are for you; welcome to my block; welcome to your lives.

From the corner of her eye, she sees an old white lady with long scissors, coming for her! Because of the stolen flower! She dashes off like a star sprinter, yelling to her friends, “Run! Run!” They all look back and see me outside now, confused at the top of my steps, binoculars still hanging from my neck and a metal thing in my hand. Maybe it’s a gun! They take off, all yelling, “Run! Run!” The neighbors’ dogs start barking, and the girls dart diagonally across the street: “Hurry up! Quick! Go! Go! Go!”

They never slow down. They disappear around the corner, and that’s the last I see of them.

What an adventure they’ve had! A whole exciting story, waiting to be told, about how they barely escaped with their lives from Bayview Terrace! And the lady with the gun who sent her dogs after us, because of the flower!

But if you’re reading this, girls, please know that I, alone again on my porch with my tea and memories, am sending all three of you a prayer for lives filled with joy, flowers, and many exciting adventures.

I still have plenty of coreopsis out front, if you want some.

Thanks, Northside Auto Body!

If you ever hit a deer in Dutchess County and you don’t know what to do (hey, that sounds like the start of a country-music song, doesn’t it?), don’t hesitate to drive or drag your now-crumpled wreck over to Northside Auto Body on Parker Ave. I had to go there to get the plates off my daughter’s car, and they treated me like i was Kitty Wells.

They took off the plates for me and gave me a cold bottle of water and a Miky Way in this cool bag.

They took the plates off for me and gave me a bottle of cold water, a Milky Way and this cool cloth bag!

Scenes We've Already Seen

Lately I have begun re-reading books that either I never read in high school and college, or did read but didn’t appreciate. I donate them as I finish them, blithely telling myself that thereby I also am making progress on my Great Project of banishing from my house thousands and thousands of things I don’t need. This week I plucked from a shelf a yellow-paged paperback edition of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel “King, Queen, Knave,” published in 1968 (cover price: 75 cents).

Well, the year 1968 gets an asterisk: It was published in 1968 in English. It was published in Russian in 1928. It’s a richly detailed psychological thriller, replete with the same kind of Nabokovian literary allusions and linguistic gymnastics that grace “Lolita.”

Finishing the book, I went straight to Wikipedia, to find out when “Psycho” came out. The Hitchcock movie “Psycho,” based on a 1959 novel by Robert Bloch, came out in 1960.

What does that have to do with Nabokov? Well, here’s what: At the end of the movie, there’s that scary-as-hell scene in which a woman is sitting in a swivel chair, with her back to the camera and only her wigged head visible, and then the chair is turned around and in the chair is no woman at all. Instead, it’s demented Norman Bates’s mummified “mother” (which I recall as looking like a desiccated apple with a wig, stuck on a stick and “clothed” in a shawl).

To me, that was just as spooky as the famed “shower scene,” after which, you’ll recall, protagonist Marion Crane did not need a towel.

And here I quote from the next-to-last paragraph of Chapter 11 of “King, Queen, Knave,” (published, don’t forget, in 1928):

“He … knocked hurriedly at the landlord’s bedroom door. No answer. He pushed the door and stepped in. The old woman whose face he had never seen sat with her back to him in her usual place. “I’m leaving; I want to say goodbye,” he said, advancing toward the armchair. There was no old woman at all — only a gray wig stuck on a stick, and a knitted shawl.”

YIKES! Somebody call Alfred Hitchcock: Forty years later, this will make a really scary movie!

Or, in a rare non-snarky note, I could point out that Nabokov’s son Dmitri, who did the 1968 translation of his father’s novel, may have seen that 1960 movie, and been inspired to add that scene to the book. Since I don’t read Russian, I guess I’ll never know.

The cover ironically relates to recurring references to a steamy movie of that name that’s showing in Berlin. The book is anything but a bodice-ripping romance novel: It’s an erudite Nabokov offering that does, however, share one scene with a very famous movie.

Suggestion for All "Action-Adventure" Movies

Recently my husband and I watched, on Netflix, an old movie called “Casino Royale.” I had mentioned to him (I forget in what context) during dinner that I had never seen a James Bond movie. Tim was scandalized, and we repaired to the livingroom to watch Daniel Craig driving, shooting, fighting and playing poker. Nearly three hours later, it mercifully ended. (The movie, not our marriage.) Tim thoroughly enjoyed it, and sat another 20 minutes watching the credits.

As for me: I’m proud to say that I had heroically stayed awake for some of it.

The experience, though, gave me an idea that I hope will be implemented by producers of movies of the kind that are usually called “Action-Adventure.” It would save them millions in production costs and bless viewers with many free hours in which they can do more interesting and useful things, like working on the Wordle, or sleeping.

Here it is: Instead of filming scenes of the Good Guy jumping from one rooftop to another, or running to the end of a steel I-beam that’s being swung to the top of a skyscraper and leaping off only to land unharmed in a dumpster that apparently is filled with feathers or pillows or feather-pillows, or being shot at by the Bad Guy who keeps missing until the Good Guy finally falls and lands, oddly, on his back but gets off a clever line while the Bad Guy, snearing, goes to shoot him while standing practically right over him but it turns out he’s out of bullets so he just throws his gun at the Good Guy but the Good Guy rolls away so now it’s a fair fight … instead of all these, movies should just stop and instead put onscreen the words, “[“FIGHT ENSUES. GOOD GUY WINS/LOSES.” or, “CHASE ENSUES. AFTER MUCH CLINGING TO ROOFTOPS, HANGING FROM PLANES’ LANDING GEAR, FALLING INTO DUMPSTERS, NEARLY DRIVING INTO AMBULANCES OR INTO PLANES ON RUNWAY OR INTO WOMEN PUSHING STROLLERS, AND AFTER CAUSING MANY NOISY CRASHES, FIRES AND EXPLOSIONS, BAD GUY ESCAPES/IS CAUGHT.”] What do you say, producers? You can have a little soft music while this screen is shown, or not — your choice!

Here the movie can resume, with 90% of the cliches, 70% of the production expenses and half the running time excised from it. And to the world’s moviemakers and movie goers, I now say: You’re welcome.