MILLERTON — Mayor John Scutieri has made what many may call a surprising decision after serving 14 years on the Millerton Village Board, six of them as mayor. He’s decided to call it quits and not run for re-election come March.“It took me a long time to decide this,” he said during an interview with The Millerton News. “It’s bittersweet.”Scutieri has done much during his tenure, as a village trustee, deputy mayor and as mayor. A resident of Millerton since the age of 10, he said he decided to get involved in politics to follow the lead of a “few good people” who were involved themselves.“It took me a while to say yes,” he reminisced. “Anybody that’s not involved always answers no, and asks, ‘Why would anybody want to do that?’ I really needed to talk to a few people to make up my mind.”And he eased into it, filling an appointment initially before deciding to run for a two-year term as trustee. He said he immediately joined the Recreation Committee, which was one of his interests, and that it “started from there.”Pleased with playgroundIn fact, one of the projects Scutieri said he’s most proud of is the handicapped-accessible playground at Eddie Collins Field, which is one of the few American with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant playgrounds in the region.“That was a phenomenal project,” he said, making a nod to donor and volunteer Sharon Will for making the playground a reality. “That was just an amazing project for this community, there’s not another playground like that for hundreds of miles. Some of the wealthiest communities would like that, and that’s for everybody to enjoy.”Other accomplishments Scutieri said he was pleased to take part of included “getting a better grip on new sidewalks.” Sidewalks have been a hallmark of Scutieri’s administration. His long-range plan included replacing many of the village’s deteriorating and damaged sidewalks to help improve the business district and village proper.“The community and village have grown tremendously; our infrastructure is in such terrible condition,” he said. “We’ve got to have a long-range plan for sidewalks, it’s really important and I’m really pleased to see it started.”About four years ago the village started aggressively pursuing Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) from the county to help with sidewalk improvement projects. The mayor said this year alone it plans to receive $200,000. It’s received not only CDBG funds, but also CHIPS funding and other grant awards, all to the tune of an estimated $500,000. Some of that money has also gone toward street lighting.Though rewarding to see such projects progress, Scutieri said he thinks his time to step aside has come.“I’m a strong believer when it comes to federal politics to term limits, and I really feel the first term and second terms it’s easier to get things done because you’re excited,” he said. “But once you’ve done something too long it gets stagnant, and you’re not as motivated to move and act on things as quickly as when you first came to office. So that’s part of the reason.Likes big projects“But what really had me convinced is that I truly enjoy these big projects ... and when you start taking on positions on Rudd Pond and the supermarket, it requires a lot of time, so with the limited amount of time I have to operate the office of mayor it’s very difficult for me to oversee that position as far as the police department, the highway department, the water department, the office of the clerks, payroll, recreation, everything. It’s a tremendous responsibility, and to still work [a full-time job],” he said. “My strong suit is getting involved in these major projects, so I’m not going to disappear.”Scutieri said he’s hopeful one of the three village trustees remaining on the board will decide to run for the mayoral position; he said all three are eminently qualified. The three remaining trustees include: Yosh Schulman, Debbie Middlebrook and Marty Markonic. Scutieri said one of the advantages of having a veteran elected as mayor is that he or she will be familiar with the village budget, which the board will be in the middle of constructing come election season.While stepping away from the position will free him up to focus on specific projects, as well as allow him more time for his “regular” job and more time with his family, Scutieri said he wanted to stress that he’s really enjoyed his stint as mayor.“I love being mayor,” he said. “It’s been a really rewarding position. And to have helpful people on all of our committees and boards has been a huge asset. I think one of the most rewarding parts of the position has been the incredible amount of friends I’ve made and the people I’ve gotten to know that otherwise I would not have. The friendships I’ve made are the most rewarding part of the position.”
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Adamah Farm crew members planning out the day’s tasks on a late September day.
Janna Siller
Over my 15 years of growing vegetables in Falls Village, I’ve exerted my will over all kinds of conditions, from drought to humidity to crows with a taste for cantaloupe. That’s what farming is all about. You zip around the field, hopping on and off tractors, moving hoses and chasing weeds, all in an effort to arrange conditions in favor of your crops. It is the crops’ job to gulp up sunlight and move water through their stems, to transform solar energy into your next pesto or ratatouille or butternut squash soup. It is the job of the farmer to irrigate just enough but not too much, to slice dandelion leaves without damaging delicate cabbage roots, to pander and pamper and stay in tune with what plants need to thrive.
The easy part of farming is trusting plants’ resilience. I have seen bright green shoots barrel ahead out of a plant torn to shreds by hail. I’ve watched wilty, heat-stressed seedlings turn rigid overnight and greet the next morning with vigor. The hard part is letting go of what you can’t control. As our crops lapped up Friday’s gentle sunshine and I considered the weekend forecast, I imagined roots holding tight to wet earth and branches supporting each other in sideways, pelting rain. I made sure all of our storage crops were already harvested and tucked away. I battened down the sides of our greenhouses and wished the remaining field crops good luck.
The nor’easter didn’t materialize too dramatically in our corner of New England. A few broken branches and debris blown about, nothing like the July Fourth storm that sent half a tree crashing onto the deer fence and left crates of fresh veggies in coolers without power.
Fall storage crop harvests amid soil building cover crops at Adamah Farm in Falls Village. Janna Siller
Farming is an exercise in acceptance. To do it well and return year after year, you have to balance hubris and humility. The prize can often be a certain equanimity, a training in the art of moving into the next day even when the last one scrambled all your plans.
Epic change is not always about the unexpected. It also comes like clockwork on the seasonal calendar. As I type, the last of summer’s watermelons wait naively on the vine for a few hot days to finish ripening. Broccoli are holding their leaves wide as they did in June and July, only to find that the hours of sunlight decrease with each earlier sunset. Plants can’t pick up and go south or call the manager to order a bonus round of sunshine. Their growth slows and they get a resigned look to the hue of their leaves, so different from the frenzied growth of summer.
The release of fall is not tragic or gloomy. It is not an ending because so many fall tasks are about setting up for the new beginnings in spring.
We turn the vines that yielded thousands of pounds of fruit into the soil, where healthy microbes feast on their rotting stems. Then we plant cover crops — a mix of cereal grains like rye and oats and legumes like peas, vetch and clover. Cover crops hold the soil and its nutrients in place over winter, feeding the soil food web and adding organic matter that next season’s crops will need to grow.
We sort sprinklers and repair hoses. We inventory tarps. We take notes about which plants did well where and how we might try a new approach for this or that. We stack crates of cured garlic and onions and winter squash in a cool, dark room.
We save seeds from tomatoes and beans and lettuce, carefully labeling each variety for next season’s long, sunny days.
Janna Siller is the farm director at Adamah, a community farm in Falls Village offering CSA shares, educational programs and a food access program.
Pickett and Prueher on stage.
Provided by Found Footage Festival
Back in 1991, the duo found a discarded McDonald’s custodial training tape in their home state of Wisconsin, and since then, they’ve been collecting all the VHS tapes they could find and mining them for untapped comedic gold. Today, they are the undisputed champions of lost media, having collected and archived over 15,000 videocassette tapes.
The Found Footage Festival is a “celebration of the videos that time forgot.”Provided by Found Footage Festival
Prueher and Pickett’s brand of comedy values the missteps and accidents that come with amateur video productions more than it does the carefully crafted wordplay of the comedic superstars of our time. But it’s not just bloopers from birthday parties that they find. Some of the most popular clips come from instructional videos, taped religious services, fully produced movies, music videos and, of course, the ever-popular news bloopers.
For more than eight years, Pickett and Prueher have been hosting a video podcast they call “VHS Party,” complete with their own rabid fans who send them tapes and comment along online with the streams. Their YouTube page is chock-full of interesting clips, many of which are featured and discussed on “VHS Party” with their two co-hosts and occasional guests from the comedy world, including Jon Glaser, Jo Firestone and David Cross.
The duo started the Found Footage Fest in 2004 as a way to raise money for their documentary, “Dirty Country,” about a vulgar country music performer looking for a bigger audience than his garage. Since then, they’ve taken the show on the road, bringing new selections of their favorite clips and their signature comedic stylings to theaters around the world.
For tickets to the Found Footage Festival, visit thetriplex.org.
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