Thank you to the students, parents, teachers and staff members of the Cahill Elementary School for the generous donations of pet food, cleaning supplies, toys, blankets, towels and other items to the Saugerties Animal Shelter. It took two persons to load the supplies into the back of the pick-up truck. Thanks to Bruce Fellows and John Finger, the supplies were picked up and delivered to the shelter.
But that was not the end of the donations. A few days later, a second trip was made to Cahill Elementary school by Mr. Fellows to pick up additional items plus a financial donation. Every Christmas season the students at Cahill Elementary remember the animals at the shelter. In addition to these gifts, Dr. Laurel Olexis and her students donated hand-made beds for the shelter animals. Not just one or two but sixteen wonderful, fluffy, colorful beds of all sizes from small for the littlest cat or dog to a wonderful lime color enormous bed big enough for a large dog. We do have “Buddy” at the shelter who is enjoying that particular bed right now.
Prior to the holiday season a donation was made by a donor from Riccardi Elementary school. That school always thinks of the shelter animals during the school year. We will not forget the generous donation of $3,600 from the Saugerties High School Key Club right after the Garlic Festival. That money is being used toward building a permanent wind breaker addition to the shelter building. Thank you Key Club members!
Residents of Saugerties, you can be proud of our students, teachers and staff members of the Saugerties school system for taking their time and effort to perform these unselfish acts. I am very grateful to them. God bless you all.
Marie Post
Shelter manager
Party of little consequence
It is shameful the Republican majority in Congress wants to take health-care protection away from millions of people. I hope the people who voted for those Republicans will come to see what a mistake they made. One of those millions is my 25-year-old son who could not get health insurance due to a pre-existing condition, an elevated body mass ratio. He is overweight. Thanks to a Democratic majority in Congress, effective Jan. 1, 2011 Ryan now has health insurance. His pre-existing condition still exists, but it does not disqualify him. If the Republicans conduct themselves as if the rest of us do not matter, they will end up as the party of little consequence.
Lanny Walter
Saugerties
Time for nasty tactics
We need a Pledge of Resistance now to defend Social Security from cuts to benefits, including raising the normal retirement age. If members of Congress know that if they refuse to pledge to vote against cuts to Social Security, their district offices are going to be occupied, that they and their staffs are going to be dogged at every public appearance, that their names are going to be mud in local media, support for cutting Social Security will evaporate.
Moreover, a pledge to resist cuts to Social Security will allow local activists to force a national discussion which traditional, establishment media have so far largely excluded: the one in which proposed cuts in domestic spending and proposed military spending are examined on the same chalkboard, so everyone can see and discuss the trade-offs that are implicit in the choices that are being proposed. This dialogue will allow antiwar activists to pursue the holy grail of antiwar activism: connecting the cost of the end. (This was taken from an article written by Robert Naiman. Jan. 6th, 2011, published in Truthout.) Sounds extreme, but it seems to me, this may be our only salvation. We have seen that trying to be nice does not work. Some of our elected officials only respond to nasty tactics.
Barbara Terwilliger Ambrosano
Saugerties
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