



so much infinity, so little time








He who begets something which is alive must dive down into the primeval depths in which the forces of life dwell. And when he rises to the surface, there is a gleam of madness in his eyes because in those depths death lives cheek by jowl with life. The primal mystery is itself mad–the matrix of the duality, the unity of the disunity, ..The more alive this life becomes, the nearer death draws, until the supreme moment when something new is created–when death and life meet in an embrace of mad ecstasy. The rapture and terror of life are so profound because they are intoxicated with death. As often as life engenders itself anew the wall which separates it from death is momentarily destroyed...Life which has become sterile totters to meet its end, but love and death have welcomed and clung to one another passionately from the beginning.





Lady Deborah Moody (ca.1583-1659), a wealthy, Protestant widow, left England for America in 1639, and in 1645, settled in Brooklyn. She founded the town of Gravesend, naming it after her hometown in the Old World. Lady Moody became the first woman in the New World to receive a land patent, to write the first town charter in English in New Netherland, and to established one of the first towns with a square block plan in the New World. Furthermore, Gravesend’s policy of religious freedom set it apart from most colonial settlements.
New Yorkers enjoy some of the cleanest drinking water in the country, but proposed industrial gas drilling could threaten the state's natural resources and the health of its citizens. In October, the Department of Environmental Conservation released a draft report intended to evaluate the potential risks associated with extracting natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, which lies under much of New York's southern tier and the Catskills, including most of the New York City watershed.
The state's draft report, however, contains many critical flaws. Some of the most egregious omissions in the report include the failure to properly consider the potential cumulative harm to water quality, air quality and other natural resources, the failure to consider alternative plans that would pose fewer risks to New Yorkers' health and environment, and the failure to provide any meaningful plan for treating and disposing of millions of gallons of wastewater contaminated with chemicals, heavy metals and even high levels of radioactivity. In addition, the draft plan would not prohibit drilling in fragile ecological areas, including the watersheds that collectively provide clean, unfiltered water to more than 15 million New Yorkers and millions more downstream.
Although the Department of Environmental Conservation is currently accepting comments on the draft report, this version should be abandoned in favor of a completely new one that would ensure a sustainable future for our state's water bodies and other ecological resources.


