letters to the editor

Letters to the Editor: Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024

Amenia fire thank-you

On Sunday, Nov. 17, the Amenia Fire Company sponsored our monthly Pancake Breakfast. We were pleased to have a crowd of 163 people in attendance for our monthly meal. We rely on the breakfasts to raise needed money for general operations and we always appreciate the support of the community. We thank everyone who attends our events and we will return again on December 15.
Andy Murphy,
on behalf of the
Breakfast Committee
Amenia Fire Co. and Auxiliary
Amenia

Northwell’s Sharon Hospital pledge

Thank you for last week’s front-page article reporting on the public hearing held by state regulators considering the proposed affiliation between Nuvance Health and Northwell Health. If approved, the affiliation would put Sharon Hospital under Northwell’s umbrella. A few weeks before the hearing, Northwell executives travelled to Sharon to meet in person with Save Sharon Hospital members to discuss the future of Sharon Hospital. After those discussions, Mark Solazzo, Northwell’s Chief Operating Officer, signed a letter committing to several of our requests. I would like to highlight some of these promises:
1) Maintain Sharon Hospital as a full-service community hospital, including 24/7 surgical capability and a full-service emergency department.
2) Sustain Labor and Delivery services at Sharon Hospital, with a dedicated effort to grow volume by attracting new patients within the existing service area and expanding the communities currently served by the hospital. To fulfill this commitment, Northwell will recruit and otherwise engage staff and physicians, provide competitive, market-appropriate compensation to staff, and offer competitive and attractive engagement vehicles to community physicians, including payment at competitive rates for the provision of on-call coverage services.
3) Implement a public relations and marketing campaign intended to affirm the status of Sharon Hospital and its Labor and Delivery services to the wider service area.
4) Coordinate with the local medical community to introduce a new provider workforce in support of practice expansion and ongoing succession planning, including in the areas of obstetrics, pediatrics, primary care, family medicine, and general surgery. Northwell Health also will recruit for other medical subspecialities such as urology, neurology, and pulmonology.
5) Establish ongoing community relationships to bridge and bring together various local constituents, with regular town hall or community meetings open to the public.
6) Promote broad representation of various constituencies on the local community hospital advisory board, which would include a representative from SSH and enable the goal of establishing a diversity of voices and community member participation.
Because Northwell was willing to put these commitments in writing, Save Sharon Hospital used our status as an intervenor in the CT Office of Health Strategy (OHS) hearing to support the affiliation between Northwell and Nuvance, requesting that OHS include Mr. Solazzo’s commitments to our community in any resulting settlement between the hospital organizations and the State of Connecticut.
Lydia Moore
Save Sharon Hospital
Sharon

letters to the editor
The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Millerton News and The News does not support or oppose candidates for public office.

Latest News

Juneteenth and Mumbet’s legacy

Juneteenth and Mumbet’s legacy

Sheffield resident, singer Wanda Houston will play Mumbet in "1781" on June 19 at 7 p.m. at The Center on Main, Falls Village.

Jeffery Serratt

In August of 1781, after spending thirty years as an enslaved woman in the household of Colonel John Ashley in Sheffield, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Freeman, also known as Mumbet, was the first enslaved person to sue for her freedom in court. At the time of her trial there were 5,000 enslaved people in the state. MumBet’s legal victory set a precedent for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts in 1790, the first in the nation. She took the name Elizabeth Freeman.

Local playwrights Lonnie Carter and Linda Rossi will tell her story in a staged reading of “1781” to celebrate Juneteenth, ay 7 p.m. at The Center on Main in Falls Village, Connecticut.Singer Wanda Houston will play MumBet, joined by actors Chantell McCulloch, Tarik Shah, Kim Canning, Sherie Berk, Howard Platt, Gloria Parker and Ruby Cameron Miller. Musical composer Donald Sosin added, “MumBet is an American hero whose story deserves to be known much more widely.”

Keep ReadingShow less
history

A sweet collaboration with students in Torrington

A sweet collaboration with students in Torrington

The new mural painted by students at Saint John Paul The Great Academy in Torrington, Connecticut.

Photo by Kristy Barto, owner of The Nutmeg Fudge Company

Thanks to a unique collaboration between The Nutmeg Fudge Company, local artist Gerald Incandela, and Saint John Paul The Great Academy in Torrington, Connecticut a mural — designed and painted entirely by students — now graces the interior of the fudge company.

The Nutmeg Fudge Company owner Kristy Barto was looking to brighten her party space with a mural that celebrated both old and new Torrington. She worked with school board member Susan Cook and Incandela to reach out to the Academy’s art teacher, Rachael Martinelli.

Keep ReadingShow less
community

In the company of artists

In the company of artists

Curator Henry Klimowicz, left, with artists Brigitta Varadi and Amy Podmore at The Re Institute

Aida Laleian

For anyone who wants a deeper glimpse into how art comes about, an on-site artist talk is a rich experience worth the trip.On Saturday, June 14, Henry Klimowicz’s cavernous Re Institute — a vast, converted 1960’s barn north of Millerton — hosted Amy Podmore and Brigitta Varadi, who elucidated their process to a small but engaged crowd amid the installation of sculptures and two remarkable videos.

Though they were all there at different times, a common thread among Klimowicz, Podmore and Varadi is their experience of New Hampshire’s famed MacDowell Colony. The silence, the safety of being able to walk in the woods at night, and the camaraderie of other working artists are precious goads to hardworking creativity. For his part, for fifteen years, Klimowicz has promoted community among thousands of participating artists, in the hope that the pairs or groups he shows together will always be linked. “To be an artist,” he stressed, “is to be among other artists.”

Keep ReadingShow less
exhibit

Matter and memory: The mixed media art of Sophie Eisner

Matter and memory: The mixed media art of Sophie Eisner

Sophie Eisner in her studio in Kingston, New York.

Hannah Vaughan

Sophie Eisner is a mixed media artist working in steel, fabric, concrete, silicone and other materials. Her solo show “Holding Patterns” at the Norfolk Library will be on view through July 1.

Thematically, “Holding Patterns” explores the energy of potential and how the human body holds emotional experience. Her work often depicts empty vessels and uses negative space to explore tension between objects.

Keep ReadingShow less
exhibit