Lakeville Journal Editorial

It took eight months for the Entomological Society of America to come up with a new name for the invasive “spongy moth,” which is widespread in the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. It was introduced in  Massachusetts in the 1800s, according to the Society, and today racks up a damages in the millions of dollars.

This week The Lakeville Journal is pleased to print a special section for readers that serves as a rich resource guide for our towns and villages. The supplement, included in this edition, comes with a special focus on libraries in our communities, but it also provides a valuable and convenient listing of other resources.

You might think of Troutbeck, the hotel and wellness center in Amenia, New York, as just a lovely destination spot for weddings and other fancy family gatherings. But in fact it has a distinguished history as a meeting spot for intellectuals and political activists who were trying to revive a stalled civil rights movement.

At Sharon’s Board of Finance Budget Meeting last week, more than half the time allotted for discussion was devoted to the Connecticut statute everyone loves to hate, Minimum Budget Requirement, or MBR.

"It’s a climate change problem, of course, because all that trash needs a whole lot of fuel to move it. It’s a social justice problem, because the trash ends up in poorer communities, and it’s an economic and financial problem because it’s expensive to move all that stuff. The good news is, there is something we can do about it.”

Earlier this month at Indian  Mountain School in Lakeville students conducted a trash audit to see what was thrown away over the course of a few days. Of course, the sorting of garbage and refuse revealed a lot of plastic waste, including one-time food items in permanent plastic wrapping.

Last week this newspaper reported that our state representatives had made some progress in their efforts in getting state and town officials together with the Housatonic Railroad to discuss its herbicide spraying along the train tracks that pass through Northwest Corner towns.

The local newspaper can be greater than the sum of its parts. Today, people can find out what will happen with the weather by reaching for the phone in their pocket.