To the Editor:
Iam writing in response to your October story regarding Michael DiTullo and Mid-Hudson Pattern for Progress ["Collaborative Regionalism," 10/04].

I am a fan of Mike DiTullo's, and think he has done a great job at Mid-Hudson Pattern for Progress. There is a part of the story, however, that needs some gentle correction.

The story says that the Hudson River Valley Greenway arose out of a Pattern Committee. In fact, the Greenway was the product of two different attempts at creating a sense of region within the Hudson River Valley. The first was the brainchild of Klara Sauer and Scenic Hudson and a series of meetings over several years among the Valley's not-for-profit communities and state agencies to try and determine what kind of regional approach would best serve the Hudson Valley. The second was an effort by the late Laurance Rockefeller and Historic Hudson Valley to create a cultural tourism effort and economy within the Valley.

Under the guidance of Henry L. Diamond, a former Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation, the two efforts came together and produced a report calling for a Greenway that was presented to then-Governor Mario Cuomo. The governor created a Greenway Study Council and two years later the Greenway emerged from the Legislature with near unanimous support.

Pattern has been a longtime friend of the Greenway effort and deserves credit for much of the progress being made today in advancing smart growth and regionalism. But the Greenway as a concept saw first light in the offices of Scenic Hudson and Historic Hudson Valley.

—David S. Sampson

Sampson was the Executive Director of the Hudson River Valley Greenway Council and the first director of the Hudson River Valley Greenway Communities Council.

To the Editor:
Admirable as Ms. Mellor's letter, "Searching for Dan," [1/05] was, her attack on "organized religion" leaves one wondering whether she remembers 1989 and the key role that one "organized religion" and a Polish pope played in the downfall of Soviet Communism and its empire of gulags. An empire that took more lives in its 72-year history than even Hitler's. Nor does she seem to remember that members of that same "organized religion" rescued more Jews from Hitler's concentration camps than any other "organization," according to respected Jewish historian Pinchas Lapide. He puts the number of those saved at 800,000. Not only that but a member of that same "organized religion," Claus Von Stauffenberg, led the attempt on Hitler's life and paid for it with his own.

Ms. Mellor seems to have the same contempt for "organized religion" displayed by that anti-organized religion Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin when he rejected the British and American suggestion that representatives of the Vatican sit in on the Yalta and other World War II conferences. He shot the suggestion down with the disparaging comment: "How many divisions has the Pope?" Apparently the saving work of the Church and the sacrifice of Von Stauffenberg don't count as "divisions" with her. The sweet irony in all this is that 45 years later, that same displaced "organized religion" helped bring Stalin's own Communist empire crumbling down and the sounds of sledgehammers on walls. Some record: two of the worst tyrannies in history, Nazism and Communism, and one "organized religion" had a hand in the demise of both. Not bad!

"Organized religion has the same relationship to divinity as a blocked pipe has to water," the forgetful Ms. Mellor wrote. Perhaps, in spite of Ms. Mellor's opinion, "organized religion's" pipeline to divinity is not as clogged as she thinks.

—Dick Murphy, Beacon

To the Editor:
Glen Scherer paints a frightening picture in his article on the capture of the right by religious fringe elements ["The Godly Must Be Crazy," 1/05]. This is a development that leaves the nation floating in a sea of war hysteria and threatens many of our basic freedoms as well as the health of the environment.

The only way to counter this new theologically oriented right is for liberals to create new innovative political alliances. Foremost among these alliances would be one with moderates fleeing the extremism of the new right. These people can be referred to as Neo-Liberals. They are frightened by what they now see on the right and now seek sanctuary in the tenets of traditional liberalism. One cannot underestimate the impact of these voters, especially when one considers the impact the Neo-Conservatives had on the political landscape when they as former liberals defected to the right in the 1980s.

Neo-Liberals and their adherents must be welcomed with open arms lest our civilization continue its downward spiral into a dark age of war and environmental catastrophe.

—Michael Boyajian, Beacon