The Cary Institute's newest faculty member, Amy Zanne, will discuss what happens to a tree after it dies during a lecutre on Friday, Oct. 24, from 7 fto 8 p.m. in the Cary Institute Auditorium on Route 44 outside Millbrook.
MILLBROOK — Nature lovers can explore the eerie yet essential world of decomposition in an upcoming lecture at the Cary Institute of Ecological Studies, just in time for Halloween.
Dr. Amy Zanne will speak in conversation with Cary President Dr. Joshua Ginsberg about the hidden world of dead trees. Topics will include the fungi that drive decomposition — like dead man’s fingers and glowing Jack-O’-Lantern mushrooms — and the termites that quietly shape the forest.
The lecture will take place in person and online Friday, Oct. 24, from 7 to 8 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
With a Ph.D. from the University of Florida, and having traveled and studied on every continent, Zanne has accumulated an extensive network of colleagues and a vast wealth of knowledge about the interactions among plants, microbes and insects that influence carbon cycling and climate change. And yet, she manages to distill very complex information and make it understandable — and exciting — to the masses. Her enthusiasm for ecology and biology is contagious.
Known for her collaborative approach, Zanne often brings together scientists who study different scales of decomposition, from enzymes to ecosystems.
“Only a small fraction of termites cause problems for people,” she said excitedly, mythbusting common misconceptions, “but most play a vital role in recycling carbon. I love connecting people who study these overlooked organisms to see the bigger picture.”
After studying at field sites in Australia, Brazil, Chile and Antarctica, her current home is the Cary Institute, where she studies how species’ traits affect carbon release and storage.
Today, Zanne focuses on how carbon moves through nature in areas like forests, grasslands and deserts. She examines what happens to carbon in plants and dead wood as they break down, and how factors like heat, moisture, fungi and termites affect that process.
Her love for science began in childhood when Zanne grew up on a farm in New Hampshire and developed a love of the outdoors. The bucolic upbringing allowed her to run through the hills, pick blueberries in the summertime and enjoy the surrounding landscape.
“I had a real comfort in being outside,” she said. “As kids, we had a big garden and were constantly digging in the rocky, granite soils of New Hampshire, always pulling out rocks and examining them.” She also enjoyed learning how the environment cycled on the farm.
Later, inspired in high school and college by a number of teachers and professors, Zanne knew she wanted to make science her profession. It was when she enrolled in biology and genetics classes that a spark was ignited.
Zanne reflected, “What makes that magic click in your brain? I don’t know — but whatever it was, I loved my biology classes in high school. That really set me on the path to studying biology in college.” She attended Dartmouth College where she took a variety of courses, including ecology.
Asked if she had a favorite place among her travels, Zanne joked that the question was like choosing a favorite child. “When you travel, you leave little pieces of your heart all over the world,” she said. “You’re never just one person anymore — you have many homes wherever you go. I’ve been so lucky to meet incredible people and see such beautiful places.”
Zanne’s upcoming talk at the Cary Institute will explore what happens after trees die — the “afterlife” of wood and the creatures that inhabit it. Drawing on her research in places as far as Antarctica, Brazil and Chile, she studies how carbon moves through ecosystems, and how it happens on a smaller scale with individual fallen logs, or in entire landscapes.
Her work connects the smallest processes to the global carbon cycle. “I’m interested in how the tiny things happening inside a log affect what’s happening in the atmosphere,” she explained. “It’s about connecting the micro to the global.”
Fittingly timed for Halloween, her lecture promises a “spooky” dive into death, decay and the hidden world inside and around dead trees.
For more information or to register for the lecture, visit caryinstitute.org/events.
John Coston
The following excerpts from The Millerton News were compiled by Kathleen Spahn and Rhiannon Leo-Jameson of the North East-Millerton Library.
MT. WASHINGTON - Mrs. Emma Isaacson, 78, has been issued a combination sporting license by Town Clerk W. A. Hunt. Being over 70 years old, Mrs. Isaacson is entitled to a free license which allows hunting and fishing but no trapping privileges.
A series of child health consultations to be conducted under the direction of Mrs. Mabel Rus-sell of Dover Plains, Dutchess County nurse, have been arranged for communities in the Harlem Valley. Pre-school children between the ages of six months and six years will be administered toxoid for diphtheria and will receive a physical examination at the Hose House in Millerton next Tuesday afternoon from 2 to 4 o’clock daylight saving time. Dr. A. F. Hoag will give the innoculations [sic] and examine the children.
AMENIA - Pupils of the nine district schools in the Town of Amenia are competing in a tent caterpillar eradication contest. Mrs. Joel E. Spingarn is in charge of the contest which will close the week of May. A prize will be awarded to the school collecting the most egg masses.
After a long and heated debate at the annual school meeting Tuesday night, voters of the North East Center School District decided to contract with the Board of Education of the Millerton school to have the children transported here next year. Benjamin Booth was elected trustee of the district, succeeding William M. Sadler who was not a candidate for re-election. Mrs. Nettie Milton was re-elected collector and Mrs. Stella Willson, clerk.
ALBANY - New York led all the States of the Union in tree-planting in 1934, according to figures compiled and released today by Lithgow Osborne, Conservation Commissioner. This State planted 40,564,282 trees and of this total 37,882,432 were planted upon reforestation areas alone. The remainder was planted on State lands in the forest preserve.
The continued operation of the Taconic State Park at Rudd Pond still hung in limbo this week.
The facilities at Rudd Pond in the Town of NorthEast and at the Taconic Park at Copake Falls will be closed for the summer season unless money is restored to the budget of the New York State Office of Parks and Recreation (OPR), according to State officials.
MILLERTON — “This is news,” said Partners for Children Director Karen Kisslinger during a speech at the North East Community Center (NECC) on May 4. “So often you read about horrible events, but wonderful things like this happen every day.”
Ms. Kisslinger was referring to the presentation of 20 desks, constructed by students at Webutuck High School, to children graduating from the Partners for Children Program and the Astor Center.
MILLERTON-Private First Class Lamay was recently promoted to Lance Corporal. Lcpl. Lamay joined the United States Marine Corps in July, 2000 and is stationed at Camp LeJune[sic], North Carolina. While at Camp LeJune[sic], Lcpl Lamay continues training with the 3rd Battalion 2nd Marine Division India Co.
Peter Riva
I have been increasingly concerned over AI and questions of originality of journalists’ work, authors’ manuscripts, plagiarism.A new manuscript submission as agency made to a publisher was rejected because they ran the author’s text through an AI detector and claimed it was mainly AI generated. The manuscript was an anthology of short stories and true histories the author had written and compiled (about the history of dogs) over more than 10 years. The author claimed that most of the text was written before AI was around. The only editing he has done has been within the confines of MS Word (grammar and spell check). He has “NEVER used AI, ever.”
So I ran portions of the dog book text in Grammarly and Pangram and it came back “42% appears to be AI-generated” and “49% AI-generated,” respectively. Incredible.
So, as a test of these and two other AI detection systems, I ran 15,000 first (unedited) words of a manuscript I wrote in 2018 and was published in 2022 (Elephant Safari) and this was the result in a third AI checker: “75% of your text has signs of AI.” Considering I wrote this thriller on the dining room table in the dark of night without any copy and paste whatsoever, I knew this AI plagiarism was misleading, to say the least.
So I went further back and chose text from a book written in 1990… delivered in Nov. 1990, edited by Victoria Wilson at Knopf and still in print: Marlene Dietrich: By Her Daughter Maria Riva Result? On “JustDone” AI checker: “82% AI content.” This manuscript was handwritten on yellow legal pads.
So, the question we all have to ask is this: If AI memory already contains many of the materials, texts, of published books in AI memory… are they all now considered AI owned/generated? Or is AI actually saying that the material is not new to AI and therefore labels it as plagiarized?
The issue here seems to me to be a definition of “original” – original to whom? If an author sends a Gmail with a manuscript to an editor, Gmail (Google) has the file and their AI can presumably read it. Also, if Google or other AI platforms have scanned a previously published magazine article or a book, I believe the very familiarity of what is in the AI memory will give the result that “AI is familiar with this text” and therefore leads to accuse an author of plagiarism.
As for me, I have no faith whatsoever in these so-called AI detection systems. They provided complete nonsense on something I wrote in 2018 and an author delivered in Nov. 1990! To further illustrate the point, I ran Act 1 of HAMLET: “Most of your text is AI/GPT Generated,” so Shakespeare is also a plagiarist? Teachers, professors, and editors everywhere are relying on these false readings and contributing to fake literature appraisal.
Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, New York, now lives in Gila, New Mexico.
Mac Gordon
Most of us tend to take food supply for granted. Our grocery stores and supermarkets are full of most everything we might wish to eat except for the occasional out-of-season fruit or vegetable—and even these have become more available. But there are some increasing signs that our food complacency may be short-sighted, that there may be trouble down the road.
Over the past eighty years, the world’s human population has quadrupled and still continues to grow. Just providing food for people in the less affluent regions is more and more difficult. All over the world forests are being torn down to make way for economically viable but strictly for export crops like palm oil trees. In many parts of the U.S., clean, fresh water, a basic requirement for agriculture is becoming scarcer thereby making agriculture considerably more expensive and food scarce.Drought caused by climate change is making more land around the world unsuitable for growing crops. Over-harvesting can devastate land; 2,000 years ago most of North Africa was forested and fertile but largely through poor management it became over the centuries nearly desert.
President Trump’s war in Iran has disrupted global commerce beyond expectations. The predictable closing of the Strait of Hormuz has limited trade of most everything coming to or going from the Middle East, the most obvious commodities being oil and gas which run most industrial (and agricultural)operations worldwide. The Middle East also supplies a major portion of the world’s fertilizer, both the finished product and the raw materials and that is for most of the world not just Europe and America. A significant reduction in world food supply is expected.
Currently before the U.S. SupremeCourt is a case regarding the legal liability ofMonsanto, now a subsidiary of Bayer, for its herbicide, Roundup, the country’s most popular weed killer. The suit concerns whether product liability warnings issued by a state agency are overruled by a differing federal ruling. While the state has a warning label on the container saying that the contents are “probably carcinogenic” to humans, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has said Roundup is not carcinogenic.Countless lawsuits and billions of dollars of possible settlements await the Court’s verdict.
To help diminish future lawsuits, a homegardening version without glyphosate, the key ingredient, has recently come on the market. Should standard Roundup actually be banished, the effect on conventional industrial agriculture would be huge. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has campaigned repeatedly for organic farming, has backtracked, speaking out forcefully against a ban on glyphosate saying that such a move would be “tooabrupt” (thereby infuriating most of his “MAHA” supporters). But a banning of Roundup’s glyphosate with no proven successor and a swift return from industrial agriculture to basic organic farming techniques would raise food prices enormously and probably cause a lot of political dissent.
Another looming problem comes from PFAS, often referred to as “forever chemicals” because of their inability to break down. In 1946, DuPont introduced nonstick cookware coated with Teflon. Today the family of fluorinated chemicals that sprang from Teflon includes thousands of non-stick, stain-repellent and waterproof compounds called PFAS, short for per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances.
Back in the 1970s I was involved in the creation of several community parks and gardens on vacant lots in New York City. To cover the crushed rubble ground surfaces, we located a large supply of special compost soil from a drug company’s corporate campus in the suburbs—free but for the trucking.Composed of company dining hall food waste, sewage sludge, mycelium from drug manufacturing, and other organic waste. The compost proved to be fertile, humusy soil, an excellent growing medium, a good prototype for rich planting soil (without chemical fertilizers).
Over the decades more and more farm fields have drastically cut back on their use of expensive chemical fertilizers and, at the same time and are providing disposal for municipal sewage and other composted waste. But a few years ago, a New York Times environmental reporter discovered that compost from many sewage treatment plants across the country were contaminated with high levels of PFAS and other dangerous contaminants. Subsequently, this widespread use of sewage sludge fertilizer is being restricted in many instances and will continue to be discouraged until the federal Environmental Protection Agency follows through on its earlier promises to mandate cleaning up public water facilities of PFAS and other contaminants.
In 1935, the Dupont Corporation came up with one of the most famous advertising slogans of the era:“Better Living Through Chemistry”.But the naive optimism of the original slogan now carries a more sardonic tone. Modern science has made great strides in agriculture as in so many fields but our problems feeding ourselves and keeping healthy are not behind us.The Green Revolution that came into being after WW2 doubled world food production but also left us with perhaps insolvable medical problems.
Architect G. Mackenzie Gordon, AIA lives in Lakeville, Conn.
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Nathan Miller
Voters will also decide on a resolution to purchase two new 72-passenger school buses.
AMENIA — Webutuck School District’s proposed budget marks the first increase to school taxes in five years.
Voters will decide on the budget on Tuesday, May 19, at a public vote in the Webutuck High School Gym on Haight Road near Route 22. The vote is set to take place from noon to 8 p.m.
Webutuck’s Board of Education first saw the budget in a public meeting on April 4. Business Amdinistrator Robert Farrier presented final tax numbers on May 5.
The tax levy is set to increase 1.35% to about $8.77cents per $1,000 of home valuation over last year. Farrier said homes valued at $200,000 should expect to owe about $2,036 in school taxes.
That tax bump accommodates a 4.45% increase in overall expenditures, largely driven by salary increases and health insurance costs.
Farrier said the district has multi-year agreements with labor groups that mandate increases to employee salaries, meaning those costs are predictable year over year. Salaries are set to increase by a total of $515,344 over last year’s budget, including special education positions that were added during the 2025-2026 school year.
Health insurance costs are projected to rise sharply next year. Farrier said he expects regular annual increases averaging 8% to 10% going forward.
Farrier reported the new special education positions will result in some savings, offsetting the cost of bringing those services in-house. Previously, some special needs students had to receive services through the Dutchess County Board of Cooperational Educational Services. Bringing the service in-house will save the district nearly $300,000 in payments to BOCES, Farrier said.
In addition to the budget, voters will also decide on a bus purchase and races for seats on the school board.
A resolution asks voters to approve the purchase of two 72-passenger busesand a Bobcat UW56, a side-by-side all-terrain vehicle.
Judy Moran, Amy Wesley and Jerry Heiser are all running for reelection to the school board. The three incumbents are running unopposed for an additional three-year term on the board.
Graham Corrigan
Administrators balanced Millbrook Central School District’s budget with staffing and program cuts after insufficient revenue and ballooning health insurance costs caused a deficit of about $1 million.
MILLBROOK — The Millbrook Board of Education has approved a budget for 2026-27 that includes program and staffing cuts. But they still need the public’s approval, and on May 19, voters will head to the polls at Millbrook Middle School.
The $37,992,751 proposed budget represents a 6.57% increase from last year. The district’s tax levies will rise in turn, up 7.02% year-over-year to $29,733,237.
After anticipated state aid, the budget still results in a deficit of $1 million. The district has proposed a combination of program and staffing cuts to make up the difference. Summer school and some athletic programs will be reduced, Board of Education contracts will be trimmed, and some professional development opportunities for teachers will be cut.
Planned staff reductions are also part of the equation — 14 in all. That includes an administrative position, two full-time teachers, and a combination of teacher’s assistants and school monitors charged with maintaining safety on school grounds.
“It wasn’t in any priority order,” said Superintendent of Schools Caroline Hernandez Pidala. “It’s because those things are not mandated…I built some of these programs that could be eliminated.” The superintendent’s own salary will increase 3.5% to $226,000.
Millbrook Central School District, which enrolled 782 students in the 2024-25 school year, has been challenged by a number of price increases this year. They include rising insurance premiums, higher costs for special education and transportation, and a capital fund transfer to help repair district buildings. Multiple schools have been suffering from persistent roof leaks.
One notable variable is the amount of state aid the district will receive this year. New York state has filed a number of extensions for its education budget, and has yet to release its final numbers.
Last year, the district received $4,808,735 in state funding, but Superintendent Hernandez says the numbers can be deceiving. “The aid that we get doesn’t reflect the students who go to public schools,” said Hernandez. More than 30% of the Millbrook student body qualifies for free or reduced lunch, due to their parents’ socioeconomic status.
If voters reject the proposed Millbrook Central School District budget, additional cuts of $1.5 million would have to be made to satisfy a contingent budget.
Two seats at the Board of Education are also on the docket: Chris Rosenbergen and Howard Shapiro are running for reelection. The last day to register to vote is May 14.
Graham Corrigan
PINE PLAINS — The stakes are high for Pine Plains Central School District this budget season. Faced with rising costs and declining enrollment — 791 students attended Pine Plains schools this year, down from a 2002 peak of nearly 1,500 — the board adopted a proposed budget of $40,778,791 in April that includes cuts to school programs.
That’s an increase of 5.34% in expenses from last year. Levied taxes would rise at a slightly lower rate, 4.43%, to $29,122,160. That increase puts the district over its allowed tax rate hike as set by the state.
Piercing the tax cap means the budget will need a 60% approval rating from residents to pass, a so-called supermajority rule that comes into effect when a district’s tax levy exceeds the state’s cap rate.
But the district’s board of education still saw it as the best option. An earlier plan to balance the budget involved closing the Cold Spring Early Learning Center. That faced fierce pushback from parents, and the board subsequently formed an advisory committee to explore other options. That committee will make its recommendation in September.
In the meantime, the district had to make cuts elsewhere. Chief among the eliminations are two 5 p.m. bus routes, new equipment purchases, and elementary school enrichment programs. Some parents are still frustrated about the process that led to those decisions.
“I’m concerned about the lack of outreach from the administration,” said Brooke Brown, a parent in the district and Board of Education candidate. “I think the community is just feeling pretty separate from the school system. There are many things that are out of the board’s control, but an explanation of that would really be helpful.”
Pine Plains’ declining enrollment has been echoed across Dutchess County, an exodus that leaves school districts facing hard choices about consolidation. When that’s compounded with new insurance hikes and climbing transportation costs, an “immediacy of need” is created, said Pine Plains board member Chip Couse.
“Some of the things that were being kicked down the road can no longer be kicked,” Couse said.“I think it’s going to be a rough budget year, not only for Pine Plains, but across the county…But I’m guardedly optimistic. I think that the community will support it, because the alternatives are a bit draconian.” Couse said that in the past, approval has been around 70%.
If the budget fails to pass, the board has two options: put the same plan up for another vote in June, or revise the budget up or down. Superintendent Brian Timm has hypothesized that the board would attempt to scale down to within the tax cap — an approximate $300,000 in further cuts.
If that second vote fails, the district would be forced to adopt a contingent budget with last year’s tax rate, necessitating a further $800,000 in cuts.
There’s more than just the budget on this year’s ballot: two Board of Election seats are open, and are contested by the incumbent James Griffin, Amie Buehler, and Brooke Brown.
The district is also considering the purchase of five new buses through funds previously approved in 2022. At nearly 140 square miles, Pine Plains is one of the county’s largest districts.
Voting takes place on May 19 at Stissing Mountain Junior/Senior High School in Pine Plains. Unregistered residents have until May 14 to participate — you can check your registration status at ppcsd.org.
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