When you throw it away, where is ‘away’?

A load of “recycling” on the tipping floor of the Dover Plains transfer station, on Friday, Aug. 25.
Photo by Deborah Maier
A load of “recycling” on the tipping floor of the Dover Plains transfer station, on Friday, Aug. 25.
Part 2 of a series on recycling in Millerton
COUNTY — Millerton’s recycling goes directly to the Harlem Valley Transfer Station, south of the Cricket Valley fracked-gas facility on Route 22.
The main part of the facility consists of a single tipping floor, a cavernous room high enough to accommodate tractor-trailers, where one side is reserved for trash and the other for recycling. On the recycling side, Welsh Sanitation supervisor Scott Cale gestured to a jumbled pile of items perhaps 30 feet wide and 10 feet high.
As one would expect, there were sheets of cardboard, water bottles, milk jugs, detergent jugs, some egg cartons, cans and empty jars. But in this load on Friday, Aug. 25—not from Millerton but typical, Cale said, for a day’s residential recycling haul in the region—there were also at least two wire refrigerator shelves; a large, new-looking metal frame from a four-wheeler; plastic film galore; plastic bags holding recycling; and even bags of what was clearly trash. Maybe 30% of the heap was actual recyclable material, and much of that was contaminated.
“We see this all the time,” said Cale. “About 65% of people care, and recycle the way we’re supposed to. But some people don’t distinguish between the orange-lidded and the blue-lidded cans, or they just don’t think, and you get this.”
Items that are usable or bulky enough to cause problems, like the four-wheeler frame, are set aside in a corner for possible reuse or donation. But otherwise, those piles of what seem to be random trash will be loaded into tractor-trailers without further sorting and sent to Republic Services in Beacon, where they will be processed for sale to recycling brokers or sent to landfill or incineration facilities.
This way of dealing with recyclables, known as “single-stream,” was a viable operation when per-ton prices were higher, Cale said, but is less so now.
Welsh Sanitation, a division of parent company Royal Carting, has a good reputation in Millerton, with some drivers of the four weekly trucks on friendly terms with residents. They are merely haulers, though, and their responsibility ends with Republic Services’ high-tech sorting facility, where Welsh pays by the ton to dump loads.
Members of Millerton/North East’s Climate Smart Communities task force have requested a hard-hat tour of the Beacon facility.
Complexities
of recycling business
In telephone and email conversations, Dutchess County Deputy Commissioner of Solid Waste Kerry Russell explained some of the complexities of the recycling business.
Russell is also executive director of the Dutchess County Resource Recovery Agency, “a public benefit agency that was established by the New York State Legislature in 1982 to oversee the construction, financing and operation of the Resource Recovery Facility (RRF), which opened in 1989,” according to its website. RRF is the huge waste-to-energy incinerator complex located on the banks of the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie.
Recycling Education materials highlighted by Russell are found on a Dutchess government webpage of that name with seven teacher resource links and six “general educational resources.” Some of those originate with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. School- and college-focused materials are from an organization called New York State Association for Reduction, Reuse and Recycling (NYSAR3). NYSAR3 offers grants of up to $1,000 to schools for recycling education, favoring “disadvantaged schools.”
Recyclopedia,
a potentially useful tool
“Recyclopedia” is a New York State web initiative intended to help consumers sort the items in their waste streams and to figure out what can be recycled and what must be put in the garbage or taken to infrequent Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) or Electronic Waste (E-waste) events. The website is colorful and visually appealing, and promises to help with more than 300 items. Incomplete but still informative, it is at recyclerightny.org/statewide-recyclopedia
Dutchess’ proposed new 10-year plan and its opponents
Dutchess County’s proposed solid waste management plan adds some composting elements to the current mix of strategies, and posits the building of another incinerator. But not everyone agrees that this is the best way forward. Even with advanced filters, the toxic emissions and carbon footprint of such facilities are reasons to opt for landfills instead, they say, as well as robust composting, reduction and reuse programs.
At a recent Zoom meeting of a coalition of citizen organizations arranged by former Dutchess County legislator Joel Tyner, now an Oregon resident, radically different solutions were proposed. Neil Seldman of Zero Waste USA, veteran environmental warrior Manna Jo Greene, representatives of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Energy Justice, and Dover’s efforts against the proposed Transco substation and others including the campaign manager for county executive Tommy Zurhellen brainstormed on how to present their case against the current incinerator and further buildout.
SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.
Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.
Sharon’s lifelong love of learning and the arts shaped both her work and her passions. For decades, she served as a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and the Asia Society, sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with countless visitors. She also delighted in traveling widely, immersing herself in other cultures, and especially treasured time spent visiting her daughter and grandsons in Europe and Africa.
She was also deeply connected to her hometown, where in retirement she spent half her time and had many friends. She served as President of the Sharon East Side Cemetery until the time of her death, where generations of her family are buried and where she will also be laid to rest.
She is survived by her husband, Harvey; her children, Jennifer and Marc; and four beloved grandchildren.
Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”
There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”
“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”
Garland Jeffreys never quite became a household name, but he carved out a singular place in American music by refusing to fit neatly into any category. A biracial New Yorker blending rock, reggae, soul and R&B, he used genre fusion as a kind of rebellion — against industry pigeonholes, racial boundaries and the musical status quo. Albums like “Ghost Writer” (1977) captured the tension of a post–civil rights America, while songs like “Wild in the Streets” made him an underground prophet of urban unrest. He moved alongside artists like Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen but always in his own lane — part poet, part agitator, part bridge between cultures.
“I think what I tried to do with the film, wittingly or unwittingly, was just to show that we all have these lives and they don’t often meet our dreams of what we think we’re entitled to, we’re talented enough to get or whatever,” said Claire. “We all have these goals, but we’re sort of stymied. Often, it’s partly circumstance and luck, but it’s also very often something that we’re doing or not doing that’s impeding us.”
This is not the typical rock-and-roll redemption story. There are no smashed guitars, no heroic overdoses, no dramatic comeback tour. What we get instead is something quieter and more intimate: hours of archival footage that Claire spent years sorting through. The sheer effort behind the film is palpable — so much so that, as she admitted with a laugh, it cured her of any future ambitions in filmmaking.
“What I learned with this project was A, I’m never doing it again. It was just so hard. And B, you know, you can do anything if you collaborate with people that know what they’re doing.”
Claire worked with the editing team of Evan M. Johnson and Ben Sozanski and a slew of talented producers, and ended up with a truthful portrayal — a beautiful living document for Garland’s legions of fans and, perhaps most importantly, for the couple’s daughter, Savannah.
“She’s been in the audience with me maybe three or four times,” said Claire. “The last time, I could tell that she was beginning to feel very proud of the effort that went into it and also of being a part of it.”
Savannah pursued a career in music for a while herself but has changed tracks and become a video producer.
“I think she couldn’t quite see music happening for herself,” said Claire. “She was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to struggle the way I saw my dad struggling and I’m going to get a job with a salary.’”
The film doesn’t just track the arc of an underappreciated musician, however. The music, always playing, is the soundtrack of a life — of a man navigating racial, musical and personal boundaries while balancing marriage, parenthood, aging, addiction andrecovery. Garland and Claire speak plainly about getting sober in the film, a life choice that gave them both clarity and shows Claire as a co-conspirator in his survival.
“I did some work early on with a director,” said Claire. “He wanted the final cut, and I didn’t feel like I could do that — not because I wanted so much to control the story, but I didn’t want the story to be about Alzheimer’s.”
Diagnosed in 2017, Garland, now 81, is in the late stages of the disease. Claire serves as his primary caregiver. The film quietly acknowledges his diagnosis, but it doesn’t dwell — a restraint that feels intentional. Garland spent a career refusing to be reduced: not to one sound, one race or one scene. And so the documentary grants him that same dignity in aging. His memory may be slipping, but the film resists easy sentimentality. Instead, it shows what remains — his humor, his voice, his marriage, the echo of a life lived on the edges of fame and at the center of his own convictions.
The Moviehouse in Millerton will be screening “The King of In Between” on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. Peter Aaron, arts editor of Chronogram Magazine will conduct a talkback and Q&A with Claire Jeffreys after the film. Purchase tickets at themoviehouse.net.
The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival
For example, “Never Take the Rule of Law for Granted: China and the Dissident,” will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m. at the Norfolk Library. It brings together Jerome A. Cohen, author of “Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law,” and Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong King’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic” in dialogue with journalist Richard Hornik to discuss the rule of law and China.
The Council on Foreign Relations stated, “Few Americans have done more than Jerome A. Cohen to advance the rule of law in East Asia. He established the study of Chinese law in the United States. An advocate for human rights, Cohen has been a scholar, teacher, lawyer, and activist for sixty years.”
Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and director of its U.S.-Asia Law Institute, revealed his long view on China: “We are now witnessing another extreme in the pendulum’s swing toward repression. Xi Jinping is likely to outlive me but ‘no life lives forever.’ There will eventually be another profound reaction to the current totalitarian era.”
Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”Haystack Book Festival
In “The Troublemaker,” Clifford chronicles Lai’s life from child refugee to pro-democracy billionaire to his current imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party. Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. He was the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Standard (Hong Kong and Seoul).
Journalist Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.Haystack Book Festival
Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, will moderate the discussion. Hornik is the former executive editor of AsiaWeek, news service director of Time magazine, and former Time bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong.
Betsy Lerner, author of “Shred Sisters,” is giving the 2025 Brendan Gill lecture at the Haystack Book Festival.Haystack Book Festival
The Brendan Gill Lecture is a highlight of the festival honoring longtime Norfolk resident Brendan Gill, who died in1997. Gill wrote for The New Yorker magazine for fifty years. Betsy Lerner, New York Times-recognized author of “Shred Sisters,” will deliver this year’s lecture on Friday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. at the Norfolk Library.
Visit haystackbookfestival.org to register. Admission is free.