THE NEVERSINK PRESERVATION SOCIETY

 A year into the pandemic. We've all got idle hands and itchy trigger fingers. As for me you can add frozen feet. When the temps remain in the 20's day after day my house, and therefore my legs below the knee never warm up. Today it's also snowing. The woodstove is roaring and a Dutch oven brimming over with venison stew is just beginning to boil. My quest to complete 1000 drawings during the pandemic, titled the Virus Suite is actually closing in on being realized- 799 and counting..... Which will come first the vaccine or the completion of 201 more drawings? It's a race to immunity. Until now I've been busy. But Spring seems a long way off. In the mean time I'm cold......and bored as fuck. I need a purpose in life. What kind of trouble can I get into?

     Last summer at a crucial point in the pandemic, just after the George Floyd murder and subsequent social and racial justice uprisings, I spotted a belching green pipe coming out of the river bank, across from GNJohn's Sugar Shack Swimming Hole on the Neversink River. I was aghast. Then a day or so later I spotted a girl flying the Confederate flag from the back of her Jeep. In a manic state I took on both issues simultaneously with direct actions. I hit the cracker girl with a Love Parade. The pipe I attacked through the proper channels, contacting various agencies, NGOs and elected political leaders. When faced with the parade the "Lost Cause" cheerleader changed the Stars and Bars to the Blue Lives Matter banner. Baby steps. The pipe remained belching into the river..... unresolved. It's less than three months before we gather again by the river. How we doing on that pipe?

   So, as I sit here watching the snow gently blow from the tree branches, I want to refocus a little energy on that nasty, green pipe. Today's first email went to Wes Gillingham of the Catskill Mountain Keeper. Wes showed up last Spring and saw the pipe for himself. At the very least, he had to admit that it was an unsightly intrusion into the bucolic beauty of this stretch of Neversink River. This pipe periodically belches mysterious liquid all afternoon long, as children frolic and the we adults fume over the obscenity. The liquid comes directly from a Deb El Egg Processing plant straight up the ridge. Is it benign, organic material of no danger to anyone or anything, plant, man or beast? I still haven't received a satisfactory answer to that question. 

  As I waited for Wes to return my email, I sent off a flurry of other inquiries-  NY Assembly woman Aileen Gunther, filmmakers Josh Fox and Aaron Weisblatt, among them. I can feel the outrage percolating again. My shins are beginning to finally warm up. The idea is to form the Neversink Preservation Society, a community effort to address this pipe. For the time being I'm resisting a recruitment group email. I know it will bring the usually calls for Zoom meetings, sub-committees and elbows thrown in the air over receiving a group email. If you are reading this consider yourself a member. The goal of the NPS is to preserve this particular stretch of the Neversink River (and the river as a whole) in a pristine state for the benefit of the community and future generations. The fight is on. Ahhhhhhh........I can feel my toes.