The glorious sun-splashed weekend which led up to our partial eclipse this past Monday was of course but a feint of hand by the fickle weather god. Damp and cold have returned and it’s back to stoking the wood stove most evenings to keep things dry and cozy inside. All the same the awareness grows in early morning and later evening that each day is gaining length and strength at the rate of two or three minutes each circadian cycle. Soon it will be May, then June when the days begin to shorten again.

As the sun ducked behind the moon the other day, I was pushing geranium seedlings down into a row of orange clay pots. Minutes before maximum partial totality was achieved a large bank of dense grey cloud slunk into place from the west, settling over the exact spot in the sky where the celestial goings-on were going on. Grey-blue light bathed my garden; the temperature fell off: it was quite wondrous, really. The next time a total solar eclipse will visit these parts will be in the year 2399—375 years hence!—a year which will surely come along without you or me around to witness it and marvel at our smallness and the greatness of a cosmos wheeling and dealing beyond our ken. 

One has to wonder where Sullivan and Bethel will be in 2399. Be assured it will be a transformed and much warmer and wetter landscape. By then (and likely long beforehand) most of the Florida peninsula will have sunk beneath the waves of the Atlantic and much of the American West and South will resemble the Mojave Desert. Such things will happen if we don’t stop climate change, sure as night follows day and June follows May. Who knows about New York State in 2399. Millions of people may covet a high-floor condo in Buffalo overlooking the coast of Lake Erie whose pebbly shores run down to pineapple, banana, and rum plantations. New York City will live on behind and tower above her intricate Netherlands-like dyke system.

And here, inland, in Bethel? We can’t predict with quite so much plausibility. We can, however, say that some of the decisions we make in 2024 will lastingly impact whatever changed landscape exists here then. Right now the NYS Legislature is considering a new law (S7791/A8386), the ‘Faith-Based Affordable Housing Act.’  This law will allow developers to eviscerate all local zoning and environmental laws and throw up multi-family housing units of 30-50 domiciles per acre while completely sidestepping environmental regulations and all local zoning codes and regulations. Per the proposed law, NYS municipalities (think: BETHEL) would be REQUIRED to approve housing applications within 60 days of developers’ filing paperwork. This is a preposterous proposal masquerading as a proposed law. We The People have the tools to ensure the habitability of Bethel in 2074 or 2399, and that tool is our voice, yours and mine, folks. Smallwood’s own SmART (Smallwood Aware Residents Team) is helping organize opposition to the bill. I recommend you visit SmART’s Facebook webpage to learn more and sign a petition opposing this astounding legislative proposal. We must defeat it.