Opinion: What Bears Can Teach Us About Unity and Success in the Catskills

CATSKILL MOUNTAINS — In full disclosure, I am remembering this opening story from memory. If the participants remember it differently, well, I think this is pretty close. I hope so.

Last year, during the monthly town council meeting, a couple walked in late, and did not wait to be placed on the agenda, or for the conclusion of the business already underway, but the man demanded of the chair, "Allen, WHAT are you going to do about all these bears?"

Allen looked up in surprise, "What about the bears?"

"Last night there were six bears on my porch!"

"Do you cover your garbage?" Allen Hinkley asked.

"I do, but my neighbors don't. But, Allen, where are all these bears coming from?"

In a fatherly voice, Allen began. "Well, when the Pappa bear and the Momma bear love each other..."

The man interrupted. "No! I think people are bringing these bears up here!"  

"What, in the back seat of their cars?" some wag in the room interjected."

"No", said another, "He's actually right! New Jersey and Connecticut dump their troublesome bears up here, because we're seen as underpopulated."

The point of this recollection is not a warning about Yogi Bear and BooBoo coming to a porch near you, but rather a reflection on a point made by Amy Warner at the most recent Delaware County Business Alliance breakfast. She spoke of the importance to our economy of Not For Profits and government funding, and her work walking miles on marble floors, lobbying Congress on our behalf. I know those halls and big thick doors well. I lobbied for years for the poorest Native American Nations and for other marginalized communities. I spent most of every year working on programs to save the Federal Government money by providing better services before those communities faced greater problems, caused by neglect, and programs to help the host nation benefit by the inclusion of these communities of untapped potential.

Now that many of those involved have died or otherwise moved on, I can tell you of a conversation that informed my lobbying.  An aide to Senator Ted Kennedy said, finally, " I see you year after year, and I understand the logic of your proposals. But, you are never going to get on the agenda, even here, because at the end of the day, the question has to be, "how many votes can your group deliver? "  Politics is not about truth, it is about power.

We get the bears, and bears don't vote. We get dumped on, because if we all voted as a block, there aren't enough of us to get what we need. So, what can we do?

Some of you may have noticed that I write about art and culture here in the Catskills. For an "underpopulated" rural region, we have more than our share of great restaurants, good music, breathtaking landscape and quaint hotels and bed and breakfasts. We have brilliant distilleries, cideries, vineyards and theaters, and more. We need to network our branding so that there is a return to the successful tourism of my childhood in the 1960s, when we'd go to big hotels with great big restaurants full of people, who would also go to the small shops and diners and coffee houses. We need to influence more people who care about us, because they visit - and they vote. They will vote on projects to preserve what they love about coming here. 

I'm writing about our special places and people in our great hard copy newspaper. But, I also want to reach out to my friends across the country and in other lands in which I've worked, lived and traveled. So, soon I'll be announcing a substack, where Catskill businesses and individuals can tell about their part of the culture of the Catskills and brainstorm on bringing visitors to help provide jobs to help convince young Catskill family members to stay and make lives here where they have lived generationally. Together, let's get the next chapter in Catskill success underway.

Find my substack here: https://substack.com/@lorcanotway