How Urban Renewal Destroyed Buffalo, NY

    
Below is a picture of the population of Buffalo, New York from 1830 to 2017. In 1949, Congress passed the American Housing Act. According to Wikipedia, "It was a landmark, sweeping expansion of the federal role in mortgage insurance and issuance and the construction of public housing."

The Housing act was supposed to be a support to cities. It was the chief "urban renewal" law.  Encyclopedia.com adds:

Sites were acquired through eminent domain, the right of the government to take over privately owned real estate for public purposes, in exchange for "just compensation." After the land was cleared, local governments sold it to private real estate developers at below-market prices. Developers, however, had no incentives to supply housing for the poor. In return for the subsidy and certain tax abatements, they built commercial projects and housing for the upper-middle class.

Robert Moses was a leader in eminent domain actions going back to the 1930s. The sponsor of the law was Moses's friend and fellow Yale graduate, Senator Robert Taft. Taft had alerted Moses as to the passage of the law, and Moses saw a state law passed that increased his own power to oversee the urban renewal programs in New York.

The year before urban renewal went into law, signaling increased federal government involvement in the economy, Buffalo's population peaked. Its population, along with most other upstate New York cities, has declined ever since the law went into effect.

Scott Harrington Interviews Langbert and Marnell

Lincoln Eagle publisher Mike Marnell and I appeared on Scott Harrington's Speak Out show on WKNY in Kingston, NY.  It aired on March 29, 2014. The discussion concerned education and politics.  Scott's a great guy, and we had a ball.

Paradox inside an Enigma: Engage Mid-Hudson's Puzzling Kickoff

I submitted this piece to The Lincoln Eagle early this morning. 

Newburgh, NY, July 30--Lincoln Eagle exclusive.  About 200 people, mostly town-and-county-level politicians and bureaucrats, descended upon the Newburgh campus of Orange County Community College to participate in Engage Mid-Hudson's kickoff.  Engage Mid-Hudson is one of 10 regional sustainability groups that Governor Andrew Cuomo has funded through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). The mid-Hudson region extends north from Westchester through Rockland, Putnam, and Orange, to Dutchess and Ulster Counties.  Co-chairs David Church, planning commissioner of Orange County, and Thomas Madden, commissioner of community development and sustainability for the Town of Greenburgh, led the meeting. 

Assemblyman Frank Skartados, representing the Newburgh (100th) Assembly District, offered a few opening remarks. He thought that Engage Mid-Hudson is out to streamline government.  A paradox became evident a few minutes later when Mr. Church divulged that Governor Andrew Cuomo had spent $100 million to fund the 10 regional sustainability groups (according to NYSERDA's website the booty was split evenly across the 10 regions).  I asked Mr. Church whether the aim of streamlining government is consistent with eight-digit slush funds.  Mr. Church's answer was that the endowment reflects the voters' will, even though the senior elected official present, Mr. Skartados, had just expressed a preference for streamlining government. Also, since the majority of New York residents in my lifetime have fled the state because of excessive costs and mismanagement, it is difficult to know whose preferences Mr. Cuomo has in mind: waste's victims or its progenitors. 

A second paradox followed.  Engage Mid-Hudson bills itself as open to public opinion, but a number of pro-freedom activists were present, and they called out questions during Mr. Church's talk.  Mr. Church handled the disagreement well, but several members in the audience began to berate the pro-freedom activists.  One, whom one of the freedom activists alleged is the owner of a green development firm that stands to profit from Engage Mid-Hudson, suggested to Mr. Church that the freedom activists be banned from future meetings.  It would seem that owners of businesses that stand to directly profit from Engage Mid-Hudson should be required to identify themselves at the beginning of meetings.  It seems as likely as not that Engage Mid-Hudson is just one more Democratic Party scam, like Maurice Hinchey's green development follies and Barack Obama's bailouts.   

A third paradox became evident when Mr. Church announced six working groups, including one for economic development.  Herb Oringel, an IBM retiree and chair of the economic development consortium, claimed that Engage Mid-Hudson could bring jobs to the region. Activist Glenda Rose McGee asked what kind of jobs could a tax-based bureaucracy like Engage Mid-Hudson create.  The question was a good one.  Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson explains why the broken window fallacy, an economic fallacy that has re-gained currency under the Bush and Obama administrations, is incorrect.  Government cannot make work by breaking windows.  The reason is that to pay for the broken window repair someone must be taxed.  The taxed money reduces private sector demand.  By advocating government spending and higher taxes, groups like Engage Mid-Hudson destroy legitimate jobs, jobs that satisfy legitimate market demand, and replace them with jobs that reflect the needs of politicians and special interests.  

Mr. Oringel's response to Ms. McGee was not reassuring. His chief example of jobs creation was the turning of Sing Sing Correctional Facility into a tourist attraction.  I would feel better if a private developer were to take the project because Mr. Oringel's IBM experience has not prepared him to assess market risk of this kind. For example, might Steve Wynn be willing to take gambling up the river? Engage Mid-Hudson and Governor Cuomo don't know. Since they are not going to invest their own money, they don't care in the same way that Steve Wynn would. There is little difference between Mr. Oringel's project and window breaking. 

In a question-and-answer period Ms. McGee raised a further point: regional sustainability plans are likely a pretext for more intensive intervention and regulation. In particular, the Towns of Woodstock, Olive and Saugerties have seen proposals for the construction of unneeded planned housing projects tightly linked to sustainability plans.   

I raised a question as to Engage Mid-Hudson's identity.  I asked whether it is a government organization or a non-government organization.  Mr. Church said that it is neither. This was a fourth paradox because if Engage Mid-Hudson is neither a government nor a non-government organization, then it does not exist and it cannot cash NYSERDA's $10 million check. Tsk, tsk--a Zen-like conundrum any green business crony can ponder.

Rife with paradox the meeting was unpersuasive.  What is the purpose of Engage Mid-Hudson beyond providing funding for crooked, green businesses?  In Canada and elsewhere NGOs have been used to subvert republican governmental structures and regulatory authority. In the tradition of New York's honest graft, are we to expect just one more deal in the Plunkitt tradition or a more serious incursion on republicanism?

The Arrest of Dr. Longmore

The Woodstock Times carries an article this week that says that Dr. Wayne Longmore has been arrested for prescribing excessive amounts of hydrocodone, a controlled substance.  The article suggests that patients were re-selling controlled substances that they bought with Dr. Longmore's prescriptions and that the doctor has been under investigation for two years. Woodstock, New York is a century-old arts- and-music colony famous for the Woodstock concert and many of its residents. Dr. Longmore has treated me; I think highly of his practice.

His arrest renewed my interest in the drug laws.  It is possible to live in a country and not believe in its laws or its values.  I have written the following letter to The Woodstock Times:

Paul Smart’s “Doctor Derailed” (March 29) upset me in four ways.  First, Dr. Longmore is a fine physician--one of the finest who has treated me.  Second, a reasonably priced practice like Dr. Longmore’s, which does not rely on insurance, contributes to the community.  Its closing is a loss. Third, his federal persecutors  contribute nothing to  the public good on any level.  They do not heal, they do not make the community safe, and they do not protect the community’s morals.  Rather, the drug enforcement industry is a cancer on the common weal and the public purse.  Fourth, those of us who believe in liberty are reminded of America’s totalitarian drug laws.  A nation that imprisons men like Dr. Longmore is not free.  Thoreau said: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”  Today, anyone who fills in a bubble for a candidate--Democratic, Republican, or other--who supports America’s drug laws bears responsibility for the FBI’s and the federal government’s criminal violence toward Dr. Longmore. 

Update: Paul Smart's article in the April 5 Woodstock Times about Dr. Longmore's arrest quotes the above letter. 

Hudson Valley Focus Interview Re Agenda 21

Tom Sipos interviewed me on Hudson Valley Focus concerning the Town of Olive's adoption of an Agenda 21-driven master plan.  Hudson Valley Focus airs on nine Clear Channel stations in the Hudson Valley.  The interview is about 25 minutes.  HV Focus airs on Saturday mornings between 6:30 and 8:00 on WRNQ, WBPM, WKIP, WGHQ, WPKF, WRWD, WLEG, WBWZ, and WRWC. The interview is linked here:

An Environmentalist Rant

The Kingston Freeman published my letter on August 28.

Dear Editor:

The Town of Olive is considering a comprehensive plan.  The motivation, debate and the plan itself reflect Olive’s, New York’s and America’s moral and consequent economic decline.

Supervisor Berndt Leifeld told a packed town meeting  and a well-attended Town Board meeting  that the plan need not be taken seriously because its chief purpose is to procure grant money.

Starting with a lack of integrity, the plan was drafted by a politically correct consultant from Beacon who parrots the superstitious and ideologically-driven radical environmental claims of the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) and Agenda 21, the globalist United Nations manifesto beloved by Goldman Sachs and DuPont.

The plan should not be so called. It is an environmentalist rant that proposes expensive projects such as a new community center and a new town hall without considering costs, benefits or the effects on taxpayers and homeowners.

More broadly, the plan follows Ulster County’s general commitment to excessive construction costs at the law enforcement center and Golden Hill Health Care facility (which, if authorized, will host 1 percent — 250 -- of Ulster County’s senior citizens at a cost of between $1,000 and $2,000 per Ulster County household -- of which there are about 67,000).

Given President Obama’s parlous economy, it is astonishing that  Leifeld has chosen to propose a reckless spending spree and crackpot regulatory binge without considering that since Congressman Hinchey’s election in 1991, Ulster County’s economy has grown at one third the national average.  The county’s high school and college graduates have been driven to move to states that would not consider ICLEI’s superstitious radical environmentalist claims.

Benjamin Franklin said that America would be a republic — if we can keep it.  The voters of Olive, Ulster County and the United States do not appear to be capable of  keeping a republican form of government.

MITCHELL LANGBERT

Coprolite: A Good Vocabulary Word to Describe Congressman Maurice Hinchey

I found a good vocabulary word to describe Congressman Maurice Hinchey.

cop·ro·lite

   [kop-ruh-lahyt] 

–noun

a stony mass consisting of fossilized fecal matter of animals.

Country versus City: The Wall Street Journal Is Confused

My wife Freda stands outside our rehabbed cottage

A 1950s Levittown Family

The Ashokan Reservoir Is Two Minutes Away

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article that claims that life expectancy in cities is slightly longer than in the country and that the suburbs are still better for your health.  My wife and I spent about eight years rehabbing a cottage in a rural community, West Shokan, NY, in the Town of Olive, NY. About two years ago we moved here full time from New York City.  Besides the stream that runs through our back yard, we are two minutes from the Ashokan Reservoir.  The beauty in this region is remarkable. Many New Yorkers and New Jerseyites visit hotels in our neighborhood to escape for a few days or weeks and many more have weekend homes.  As an undergraduate I attended tiny Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY, formerly a women's college (I'm no fool), a college that caters to the rich.  At least three fellow alumni, one in my class, live in our tiny West Shokan hamlet. I wonder if their life expectancy is below the national average.

Nearby Woodstock, Rhinebeck, New Paltz and Kingston offer culture, from Dweezil Zappa's upcoming concert at Woodstock's Bearsville complex (which also houses The Bear, a restaurant that has been favorably reviewed in The Boston Globe and The New York Times)  to a Shakespeare summer stock theater about 3 minutes from our cottage to great restaurants like Le Canard Enchaine in Kingston.  Residents in West Shokan through the decades have included Mary Margaret MacBride, the first lady of radio (and friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, who used to visit her here), the left-wing lawyer William Kuntsler, and in neighboring towns billionaire Bruce Ratner, and the late William T. Golden,  financier and founder of the National Science Foundation.  My wife's Tai 'Chi instructor, who lives in nearby Saugerties, is a noted jazz musician with eight grammies.

We paid a huge price for our cottage: $77,000.  We spent a larger sum rehabbing it plus a lot of blood sweat and tears. But now we live mortgage free on a professor's salary.  

The problems that rural communities face, and the price they pay in mortality rates, are the direct result of big government progressivism. One of the few manufacturing firms left in our area has been under assault from the Department of Labor for years and may have to close because of pension liabilities that it is being forced to pay to employees of other firms under the Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act.  High taxes and the dollar's use as a global reserve currency (in lieu of a gold standard) have induced poverty in rural America.  A dismal educational system that brainwashes youngsters in left-wing ideology rather than educating them has led to the absence of employers interested in the region.  The public response here in Olive has been to expand government further, creating silly make-work jobs that destroy rather than create value, the failed nostrum still advocated in The Wall Street Journal's pages by crackpot economists with Ivy League pedigrees and nothing of importance to say.

Progressivism has been great for affluent newcomers such as my wife and me, but has hammered people with roots in the region. Many retirees and their children have been forced to leave.  So much the better for millionaires who can buy houses on the cheap.  It is not surprising that forced sellers die young, victims of  economic quackery, the Federal Reserve Bank and the United States's depraved political and economic system.

I have lost some respect for The Wall Street Journal.  Throwing around statistics without grasp of particular circumstances is part and parcel of Progressivism's failure.

Taking Ideology out of Your Child's Education

The following article "Taking Ideology Out of Your Child's Education" appears in the Memorial Day issue of the Lincoln Eagle, a Kingston, NY penny saver.  Mike Marnell, the Eagle's crusading editor, does an excellent job in putting it together. It is the only freedom oriented paper in the area, as far as I know.  It does not have a website but it reaches at least several thousand people. 

Taking Ideology Out of Your Child’s Education

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.*

When I attended high school in New York City, my class was required to read Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto."  But we were not assigned to read any alternative view, such as Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations or Friedrich A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom.  Communism was extolled, freedom disparaged.  I was recently speaking to a friend whose son graduated from a high school in this region and she told me that the emphasis on Marxism has not changed one bit.  Her son had not been assigned any book that describes free market economics or how and why free markets work better than government-controlled ones.  However, he had been assigned to read Marx and his teacher repeatedly preached in favor of socialism. 

The debate between people who believe in government control and those who believe in freedom is not new.  However, there are many myths not only about the subject but about its history.  The myths come from relentless efforts by advocates of government control to spin the debate. This has led to a takeover of the educational system by left-wing ideologues.  Thus, what students learn in public schools is often socialist propaganda and more often than not ignorant nonsense.

For example, the claim that adding layers of government or regulation is "progressive" is not historically true.  Yet, the students are told that it is.  In fact, the Roman Empire was based on a state-controlled, mixed economy like that advocated by today’s "progressives." What happened to Rome?   

In modern times, the idea of free markets originated out of a debate that had been initiated by advocates of government authority and regulation.  The mercantilists, such as Lord Shaftesbury and David Hume, advocated the use of government force to open markets, print money and regulate trade. Adam Smith responded to the mercantilists' "progressive", state-based ideas later in the 18th century.  Free markets are progressive, not socialism.  Advocates of monetary expansion to stimulate growth, such as David Hume, wrote before the advocates of the gold standard and zero inflation.

This was true in American history.  The first socialist in the history of US government was the first man to conceive of our Constitution, Alexander Hamilton.  Hamilton favored the use of paper money to expand the economy; government owned manufacturing; a central bank, the ancestor to today's Federal Reserve Bank; the use of subsidies to stimulate shipping; and taxes to fund government debt.  The problem with Hamilton's ideas was in part that they had led to hyper-inflation during the earlier Revolutionary War.  The central bank led to the earliest examples of corrupt speculation, and the stock of Hamilton's First Bank was the object of among the earliest financial bubbles in American history.  The government owned manufacturing firm he tried to start was associated with the corrupt bank stock speculation.  Hamilton’s Keynesian ideas (140 years before Keynes) failed.

In reaction to Hamilton's big government, "progressive" ideas, Jefferson, winning Hamilton's former ally, James Madison, formed the Democratic Republican Party.   The response to the big government ideas of Hamilton and his Federalist Party was to emphasize freedom.  This reached a crescendo in the 1830s, when Andrew Jackson founded the Democratic Party and abolished central banking, putting the US on a gold standard.  The most rapid growth in American history occurred during the 80 years that there was no central bank and money was based on the bi-metallic and then the gold standard.  Establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank in the 20^th century has led to slowed growth and stagnant real hourly wages.  You are poorer as a result of increasing government involvement in the economy. Much poorer.

The problem with government intervention is that it didn't work. But that’s not what students are taught in school.  

The examples of government failure get worse, though, when you fast forward in time to the early twentieth century.  The hyper-expansion of communism in Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea and elsewhere led to economic retardation and mass murder.  State-dominated economies were utter failures, and repeatedly so.  They failed so frequently and so thoroughly that one would think that anyone seriously studying them in universities would have tried to understand why they failed.  Yet, university professors throughout the communist era, until the 1980s, uniformly claimed that the performance of the Soviet economy exceeded that of the United States.  In other words, virtually 100% of university economic and social science departments ignored reality; preached ideological propaganda in favor of socialism; and excluded anyone who disagreed. 

When the Soviet Union fell in the late 1980s for the very reasons that the critics of socialism such as Ludwig von Mises and Frierich von Hayek had predicted in the 1920s to 1940s, you might think that university social scientists might have reconsidered their dogmatic, religious commitment to socialism. But that is not so.  The intolerance of anyone who disagrees with now obviously failed socialist and big government dogma has become even more extreme in universities.  Any academic who disagrees with the left is slandered and drummed out of universities.

Thus, it is not surprising that the local high schools are purveyors of ideological dogma. Having been educated by ignorant ideologues in universities, the teachers have been trained to be ideologues.

Parents have serious reason to be concerned about their children’s’ education.  The schools today are preaching socialism more aggressively than ever, even though historically socialist policies have repeatedly failed.  In order to counteract this tendency parents might consider taking the following steps:

1. Tell your school board that if the students are reading Karl Marx, they should also be reading Adam Smith.  If they are not reading Karl Marx, they should be reading Adam Smith anyway.

2. Ask you children for feedback about the claims being made by social studies teachers.  If the teachers are advocating socialism, they are incompetent.  If the school is encouraging the teachers to do so, the school board needs to be replaced.

3. Read your children’s social studies text books.  One parent told me that their child’s textbook’s discussion of the Second World War consisted of five pages on the internment of the Japanese (a terrible misdeed) and only one page on the war itself.  That is propaganda. It is not education.

Are your children being told of the advantages of freedom, or are they being propagandized as to the advantages of socialism?  I have worked in higher education for nearly twenty years.  I have repeatedly seen students who have been indoctrinated into failed, socialistic ideas in their primary educations.  I can undo some of the damage done by elementary and high school teachers, who in turn have been brainwashed by ideologues in universities.  You can undo some as well.

*Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D. is a member of the Town of Olive Republican Committee and is associate professor of business at Brooklyn College, CUNY.  He blogs at http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com.

Affirmative Action in the Village of Woodstock*

I just wrote the following letter to Brian Hollander, Editor of the Woodstock Times.

Dear Editor:

In response to allegations of racism in the local Tea Parties, I did an informal survey of the Town of Woodstock's representation of various minorities.  I counted the number of African-Americans, Native Americans, Mexicans, Asians and South Americans entering and leaving seven local stores.  My finding is that the proportion of minorities who live in the Town of Woodstock is not statistically different from the proportion of minorities in the local Tea Parties. It is, however, significantly lower than the proportion of minorities living in the State of New York and in Ulster County.  A fair assessment is that the Town of Woodstock is racist.

More than the Tea Parties, which do not use expensive house prices to exclude minority group members, Woodstock is a racist Town.  Fewer than five percent of the inhabitants are African American, Latin American, Native American or Asian.

My affirmative action plan is straightforward. The Town of Woodstock needs to mandate that all homes to be sold within its borders must be sold to minority group members until such point that the minority group members are proportionately represented.  This will force prices of many Woodstock homes to fall since such an ordinance would restrict demand.  However, in the name of equity, equality, affirmative action, and to redress the harm that the people of Woodstock have done to under-represented ethnic and racial groups, homeowners should be grateful for the opportunity to sell to them, even at a loss, to redress social wrongs that the people of Woodstock have perpetrated.   Anyone who does not support this proposal is a greedy and selfish racist.

Sincerely,


Mitchell Langbert


*Woodstock, NY is located about 100 miles from New York City.  It is famous for the Woodstock concert of 1969 (although the actual concert took place about 30 miles away); for artists' and musicians' colonies that go back for over 100 years; and as a weekend home center for Upper West Side "liberals."

Clintons to Move to Woodstock, NY?

Last August Bill and Hillary Clinton interrupted my usual workout at the exclusive Emerson Resort and Spa in Mount Pleasant, NY, about 15 miles from Woodstock and about 10 miles from my house. Actually, I took President Clinton by surprise when he opened the door to the gym. He sent a secret service agent to scope out the gym instead. On March 13, the Kingston Freeman wrote:

Speculation has been growing around Ulster County in recent weeks that former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, are buying a home in the community known for its arts and history. The former first couple, whose home is in Westchester County, seems to be enamored of the area — evidenced by multiple visits here — but whether they plan to become local residents is anything but certain...An employee in the Woodstock town assessor’s office said she had heard talk on the street about the Clintons buying a house here but had not seen any deed to prove it....The Woodstock town supervisor’s office also said it had no information, nor did the public relations director at the Emerson Resort & Spa in Mount Tremper, where the Clintons have stayed on two occasions, most recently in December.

Casey Seiler of the Albany Times Union adds:

The Daily Freeman has a piece today about speculation that the Clintons are close to purchasing a house in or around Woodstock. No word from spokesmen at the Clinton Global Initiative or the State Department.

Could anything be more perfect that having America’s echt Boomer power couple — who named their daughter after a Joni Mitchell song, for heaven’s sake — ending their peripatetic late-midlife careers and retiring to the town that gave their generation its pop-cultural watershed moment, or at least the name for it?

Our question for today: Would the Clintons be good, bad or indifferent for the town?

Maybe the Bilderburg Group will start having its meetings at the Emerson. That should be good for the local economy but not so good otherwise! Maybe the Catskills will be become the headquarters of the New World Order...Nah...

West Shokan, New York 1-4-2009

Emerson Inn and Spa, Mount Pleasant, New York.

Melissa Morse of Roxbury, NY

My wife and I dined at a diner and pizzaria, Brio's, in Phoenicia, NY. The late Spalding Gray mentions Brio's in his HBO monologue Terror of Pleasure, which is about his purchase of a cabin in Phoenicia. Our waitress at Brio's was the extremely charming and personable Melissa Morse. Ms. Morse grew up in Roxbury, NY, the birthplace of financier Jay Gould(1836-1892) and no relation to the science writer Stephen Jay Gould, who was a Queens boy. The Wikipedia article on Gould states that Gould (of British and Scottish, not Dutch, ancestry) was famous as a financier associated with Jim Fisk and Boss Tweed. According to Wikipedia:

"Gould and James Fisk became involved with Tammany Hall. They made Boss Tweed a director of the Erie Railroad, and Tweed, in return, arranged favorable legislation for them. Tweed and Gould became the subjects of political cartoons by Thomas Nast in 1869. In October 1871, when Tweed was held on $8 million bail, Gould was the chief bondsman."

Wikipedia adds:

"In his lifetime and for a century after, Gould had a firm reputation as the most unethical of the 19th century American businessmen known as robber barons...He had no opposition to using stock manipulation and insider trading (which were then legal but frowned upon) to build capital and to execute or prevent hostile takeover attempts...Even so, John D. Rockefeller named him as the most skilled businessman he ever encountered...These biographers portrayed Gould as a parasite who extracted money from businesses and took no interest in improving them. Anti-semitism, in connection with Gould's name, motivated some of this hostility...More recent biographers, including Maury Klein and Edward Renehan, have reexamined Gould's career with more attention to primary sources. They have concluded that fiction often overwhelmed fact in previous accounts, and that despite his methods, Gould's objectives were usually constructive...At the time of his death in the 1890s, Gould, who was worth $72 million, was a benefactor in the reconstruction of the Reformed Church of Roxbury, now the Jay Gould."

Given Gould's bad reputation (possibly due to misguided anti-Semitism, according to Wikipedia) I had been, for many years, surprised that the Roxbury church was named after Gould, i.e., it is called the Jay Gould Church. I wonder if Gould funded it to prove that he was of a Protestant English rather than a Jewish background.

Melissa Morse told me that there are five large families in Roxbury, to include Morse, Gould, Hinkley and two others, and that she is related to several of them. I have met some of the Gould descendents through the years, for instance at a talk one gave in Andes, NY.

Roxbury, NY is a uniquely beautiful village. Although it is about 40 miles from my house, my wife and I frequently drive up there to Great Gorge, NY because of the striking scenery along NY 30.