COMMUNITY
In Search of Progressive Putnam
Queer community takes on MAGA culture a Metro-North ride away
BY EILEEN MCDERMOTT
Putnam County, New
York: you may know it
from Broadway’s “The
25th Annual Putnam
County Spelling Bee” or perhaps
you’ve gone apple picking here
recently. Putnam is just north
of Westchester, and you’re most
likely to have visited Cold Spring,
which is on the Hudson River at
the western end of the county,
about 20 minutes south of Beacon,
the Brooklyn of the Lower
Hudson Valley. Cold Spring is
near Breakneck Ridge and other
popular hiking trails accessible
by Metro-North from Manhattan.
But it’s less likely you’ve heard of
communities farther east in Putnam
— Putnam Valley, Mahopac,
Carmel, Kent, and Brewster. These
are actually the more populated
villages in the county, but they are
less of a pull for tourists and decidedly
more conservative than their
counterparts on the Hudson. The
particulars of their location and
history have created a progressive
desert of sorts — even as Manhattan’s
ongoing ejection of its middle
class and swiftly-rising costs in
Hudson River towns sends more
progressives, including those of
us in the LGBTQ community, to
the eastern reaches of Putnam
County.
My wife Laurie and I moved
to Brewster, located at Putnam’s
east edge, next to Danbury, Connecticut,
in 2016. I had lived in
Manhattan since 2001; she since
2005. Our individual love affairs
with New York City had enjoyed
good runs but its many wonders
had begun to pale in comparison
with its many inconveniences and
a growing sense of angst. And as
a couple we don’t shun clichés:
we hike, snowboard, and have a
pit bull, so we looked northward
in our search for a new home, anticipating
woods, more space, less
traffi c.
After months of searching in
the usual Gay Flight meccas of
Beacon, Cold Spring, Peekskill,
Cortlandt Manor, and other Hudson
Eileen McDermott with her wife, Laurie Doppman, and their dog, Colby.
The Metro-North station in the village of Brewster, which gets passengers to Manhattan in an hour.
River spots, our realtor forced
us to face reality — we could not
afford or handle a fi xer-upper, and
the prices and taxes for move-in
ready houses in Westchester and
Putnam’s riverfront communities
were beyond us. So, she showed
us a house in Brewster — wherever
that was.
It was perfect.
It was a modest ranch — but
we’re only two people and a dog. It
LAURIE DOPPMAN
LAURIE DOPPMAN
had a decent sized yard, the taxes
were low (around $8,500 compared
to $10,000 and up in most
Westchester towns), there were
state-protected woods across the
street, and — most importantly
— the house had just been gutrehabbed
to be fl ipped. We didn’t
have to do a thing, and that was
good, because after 15 years of depending
on supers, neither of us
knew an oil tank from a hot water
heater. Brewster is a little further
from the city than we would have
liked, and we knew little about the
town or surrounding area, but the
village was quaint, the house four
minutes from the Metro-North
Harlem Line, and only an hour
from Manhattan.
How different could it be?
Six months after we moved, we
would fi nd out.
On November 8, Donald Trump
won the presidency, and at 3 a.m.
the next morning, we were awoken
to a celebratory booming bass
— our neighbors were elated. I
had gone to bed hours earlier after
sending off an angry Facebook
fuck-you to no one in particular.
Stirred by a party in our midst, I
felt crushed, angry, and actually
scared — where was this place
that I now lived? For weeks leading
up to the election I had seen the
Trump banners, bumper stickers,
and lawn signs, but I wrote them
off as the desperate rantings of a
few local good ole boys. Turns out,
there are a lot of those up here.
Five of the six offi cially-defi ned
“towns” that make up Putnam
County voted Trump in 2016.
Philipstown, which includes Cold
Spring, was the only one that went
for Hillary. Trump won nearly 56
percent of the vote countywide —
and 61 percent in the town of Carmel.
Compare that to Westchester
County — a fi ve to ten-minute
drive away — where Trump got
about 31 percent of the vote.
Looking at the racial makeup
of Putnam County, this really
shouldn’t have come as a surprise
— according to the Census Bureau,
the population is about 78
percent white, 16 percent Hispanic
or Latinx, and just 3.7% black.
Yet Brewster has a large migrant
worker community — in the
village of 2,360 residents, Hispanics/
Latinx make up 63.4 percent
of the total. As of the 2010 Census,
Brewster Village, which is within
the Town of Southeast, had the
highest concentration of Guatemalan
residents in all of the US,
➤ PUTNAM COUNTY, continued on p.24
November 28 - December 4 18 , 2019 | GayCityNews.com
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