Message from the Mayor: Candidate Forum, Election Transportation, Volunteer opportunity, Quarry history

Mayor
Message from the Mayor: 
 
Fellow Residents
 
We head into one of the more decent snowstorms of the season - you know what to do – keep off the streets until they are plowed and treated, get your car off the street, and dig out any sidewalks or fire hydrants on your property immediately after the storm.
 
A few items worth an update, and a great bit of local history I can’t help but enjoy passing on.
 
Candidate Forum
===============
While the upcoming elections for Mayor and two Trustees are uncontested, the three candidates (Trustee Armacost, who is running for Mayor, and Trustees Leaf and Lemons, who are running for re-election) will be featured at a forum where they will describe their positions and answer questions from the public.  This forum, 8:00PM this Thursday, March 7th, at the Community Center, is sponsored by the Hastings Democratic Party Committee and is free and open to all.  The election itself is on Tuesday, March 19th.
 
Election Transportation
===================
We will be trying out a new service at this upcoming election – the Senior Bus will transport residents to the Community Center to vote, free of charge. We are hammering out the details (when the bus will be available, and how the trip planning will be managed) and will announce well ahead of the election the mechanics of how this will work. Local elections are typically lower turn-out than either midterm or national elections, so it is a good time to give this a trial run. (Thank you, Bryan Healy, for this idea.)
 
Hastings Immigrant Outreach
========================
There is a group of Hastings residents who formed to do immigrant outreach in the local area. Their effort, “Hastings Welcomes the Stranger”, has carried out a wide range of activities benefiting local immigrants and refugees. This includes working with the remarkable Neighbor’s Link, toy and school supply drives, and directly assisting several local families.  They’re looking for additional volunteers to help out on their programs – this is deeply satisfying work that salves the soul. If you are interested in helping or have questions, please write me at mayor@hastingsgov.org and I will make sure it gets to the local volunteers.
 
And now a bit of Quarry history
==========================
My previous mention of the restoration work about to begin on the old Quarry provoked the submission of a bit of history that was the icing on the remarkable story of this park. (The Quarry was the location of Hasting’s first industry in the mid 1800’s that produced the marble that clads the Marble Collegiate Church in NYC as well as several other noted buildings, and then was turned into a lovely park with a watering hole and thousands of plantings. It changed hands, eventually became a Village dump (!), and was finally shuttered.) 
 
So, this true story starts with Daniel Ellsberg, famous for his release of the Pentagon Papers, who was in hiding from the FBI after leaking the Papers to the NY Times and Washington Post (as detailed in the great recent movie “The Post”).  Ellsberg had turned over for safekeeping a box of secret government papers pertaining to US 1950’s and 1960’s nuclear strategy (purloined while Daniel had worked for the government on these very issues) to his brother, Harry, who lived here in Hastings, and who buried it in the compost pile in his back yard. When neighbors reported what they believed were FBI agents poking around the backyard, Harry promptly moved it to the dump, then located at the Quarry and buried it there.  In a twist that sounds unlikely outside of a bad novel, Tropical Storm Doria hit shortly after and part of the bluff looming over the location where the papers were buried collapsed.  Poor Harry spent weeks digging throughout the dump trying to locate the papers, even renting a backhoe and surreptitiously operating it in a frantic attempt to dig up the lost documents. (You can only imagine his desperation.) Ellsberg detailed the story in his book “The Doomsday Machine” about these very papers and the work behind them, and added further color in a conversation with local resident author and activist Micah Sifry, who shared this with me.  It’s been fifty years, so the documents have probably long since decayed, but it makes for an unlikely and fabulous addition to the cold war history here in Hastings, and to the storied history of the Quarry.
 
It’s hard to top that, so on that note I’ll bid goodnight. And remind you, if you have sidewalks – don’t forget to shovel them out after the storm tonight.
 
Sincerely,
 
Peter Swiderski
Mayor