Reminder: This Is Not Normal
Where there's smoke there's fire. Watch the videos.
The picture you see above, taken by Eva Rizzi, is what the sky looked like in Ulster County Thursday morning.
That’s not normal.
It’s easy to move on and go about your day. On to the next horror that awaits around the bend.
But you really must pay attention to this one:
The Monroe Gazette is ad-free and paywall-free, covering local news in Monroe and surrounding towns as well as county, state, and national issues that impact those residents.
If you’d like to keep it that way, we’re looking to recruit 996 paid annual subscribers between now and June 24, 2027. Want to help keep the lights on? If you’re new here or already a free subscriber, press that beautiful button below to upgrade.
You might be wondering what you can do to protect yourself from the wildfire smoke. I’m glad you asked. Let’s go to my former home of Buffalo:
That’s the good news: That there are things you can do to help at home manage the smoke. (If that YouTube video doesn’t play, click here.)
Here’s the bad news about the wildfire smoke: In the words of one miffed Canadian scientist, “Get used to it.”
So.
I know there’s a lot happening. But if you want to make any sort of difference in your community, you need to keep your eyes on the prize. And the prize is making sure this planet is inhabitable for your kids and grandkids. Everything else, as scary as it may be, is No. 2 on the list of problems we face right now.
The climate emergency is No. 1. And the question now should be, if the American government has no plan to provide assistance to Canada to help manage these fires—because we have a death cult in charge that hates Canada and loves oil—what assistance can New York State provide?
And if these events are going to be more and more likely, why exactly did Kathy Hochul roll back important parts of our climate law?
That’s something you might want to get on the phone about to Mr. Skoufis and our assorted Orange County Assembly representatives.
This is not a hopeless situation. If we take the climate emergency seriously, we can stop this stuff from getting worse.
But it’s up to you to say something about it, because the truth is, not enough of us are..


