Flowers and the future: Sullivan Renaissance’s ninth year

By FRITZ MAYER

FERNDALE, NY — Sullivan Renaissance kicked off its ninth season with a packed house for the group’s Winter Conference and Expo. Like those held in the past, the event included exhibits from 19 organizations featuring everything from barn quilts to playgrounds. But this year, there was also a new feature-a chance to choose a county flower; attendees were invited to vote for their choice.

There were four to pick from: mountain laurel, daylily, daisy and sunflower. This effort is being coordinated by organizers of the county’s bicentennial celebration and has sparked some discussion among flower enthusiasts about which would be a more appropriate choice. Daylilies and mountain laurel are native to the county and are often seen growing in the wild. Sunflowers and daisies, on the other hand, are well known and grow in many gardens, but they’re not found in the wild.

By the end of the day, mountain laurel was far ahead in first place with 60 votes, sunflower had 24, daylily received 21 and daisy 18. (If you’d like to weigh in, send an email to editor@riverreporter.com and we’ll make sure your input gets forwarded to the people that are collecting the votes.)

Also at the expo, as in years past, Sullivan First Achievement Awards were handed out. Among the winners were the area grocery stores, such as Shoprite, Gary’s Great American, IGA and all Pecks stores, who were lauded for their bring-your-own-bag day at the markets to shine a light on the environmental harm caused by plastic shopping bags.

Callicoon supervisor Linda Babicz also received an award for her work on the Youngsville renaissance projects and for her effort to bring solar power to her town.

But the talk of many people at the event was the keynote speaker, James Howard Kunstler. He is widely known for predicting the end of suburbia and the diminishment of the automobile as one of the dominant forces in American life.

Kunstler repeated some of the assertions that he is famous for: that this current economic crisis marks the end of suburbia, because the country doesn’t have the money to build more suburbs and won’t have the energy to sustain new ones, let along the ones that already exist. He said builders, bankers, realtors and others who profit from the expansion of suburban sprawl are waiting for it to recover. But in his view, suburban sprawl is currently screeching to a halt, and the death of big box stores is not far off.

Kunstler also commented on a couple of topics of specific interest to people in Sullivan County. He said, “For those of you who are pinning your hopes on casinos, I would go so far as to say the shift in attitudes and values that you’re going to see in the United States in the next five or 10 years, are going to be so severe that we are going to once again exile gambling to the margins of social life.” He said normalizing gambling as part of life had been harmful to the country because it spread the notion that “you can get something for nothing.”

Kunstler also commented on the future of tourism, which he said is going to radically change in the near future because of the end of cheap fuel. He said, “In my town, Saratoga Springs, 100 miles from here, none of the businessmen and none of the civic leaders are thinking about the end of motor-based tourism. It’s going to crush them, but it’s not even on their radar screen. They haven’t done one damn thing to promote rebuilding a rail connection between Albany and Saratoga. And you’re probably not thinking about it a whole lot down here either. But if you think the tourists are going to be coming forever, you’re going to be waiting in vain. The future is not going to be about parking and driving.”