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Highlands Current Audio Stories

Highlands Current Audio Stories

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The Highlands Current is a nonprofit weekly newspaper and daily website that covers Beacon, Cold Spring, Garrison, Nelsonville and Philipstown, New York, in the Hudson Highlands. This podcast includes select stories read aloud. Arte Política y Gobierno
Episodios
  • High Anxiety: Seniors

    High Anxiety: Seniors
    Nov 21 2025
    Everyone's brains seem to be on high alert in the digital age, although society has become more accepting of mental health struggles and treatment. In this, the third part of a series, we examine the challenges facing seniors.
    Tina is 94 years old and has attempted suicide twice this year.
    Once, she stuffed a plastic bag into her mouth. "I couldn't keep it in," said the Beacon resident. "If someone would have forced it on me, it would have worked. But I couldn't. I took it out."
    Another time, she took a scarf from her closet and tried to hang herself from a door in her apartment. But she slid to the floor.
    Her daughter called after seeing that attempt on a video monitor connected to her cell phone. "What are you doing?"
    "Resting," Tina responded.
    When asked if she was glad that her suicide attempts failed, she said, "Not really. I hated my life." Then she looked up at the ceiling and raised her hands like she was pleading. "Take me," she said. "I'm ready."
    Tina, who was willing to discuss her mental health struggles only if her real name was not used, is facing many of the typical health problems that come with aging.
    She and her husband, who is 91, used to enjoy driving to McDonald's in Fishkill for a meal before browsing at shops along Route 9. But a few years ago, her husband began showing signs of dementia, and her children insisted that she stop driving. "They said if there's an accident, we'll be responsible," she said.
    Dementia has taken a toll on her marriage of 50 years. "We hardly speak," she said. "Just little phrases like, 'Are you sleeping?' and 'You want to eat now?'" Her husband can no longer take out the garbage and is often puzzled by his electric razor.
    Tina has fallen several times. She traded in her cane for a rollator, a fancy walker with wheels, handbrakes and a seat.
    She was cheerful at a recent lunch. She enjoyed her food and seemed excited about her dessert, a chocolate bar. She was well-dressed, with nice jewelry. Her makeup and hair were impeccable. "I love to laugh," she said, adding that her life had improved recently with someone coming to her house to drive her and her husband to McDonald's.
    When it was suggested she seek help for her mental health, she said, "At this age, does it matter?"
    Tina's reaction is not unusual. According to federal government data, while people ages 65 and older comprise 17 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 22 percent of suicides, with men far exceeding women. One study estimates that a third of seniors worldwide experience symptoms of depression, although clinical depression is far less common. The key factors are well known: isolation, loss and physical infirmity.
    Dutchess and Putnam counties offer many resources to help older people with their mental health, including support groups and Friendship Centers where seniors meet, go shopping, have lunch and enjoy group activities.
    In 2023, Dutchess started a program called Friendly Calls, in which volunteers call seniors for conversation. This year, Putnam launched Putnam Pals, a program that pairs volunteers with seniors. "There's nothing better than seeing someone face to face," said Marlene Barrett, director of Putnam's Office for Senior Resources.
    Suicide Among Older People
    About 50,000 people kill themselves each year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those ages 85 and older have the highest rates, at 22.7 per 100,000, followed by those aged 75-84 and 35-44. The lowest rates were among those aged 65-74 and 15-24. Men ages 75 and older have the highest rates overall (42.2 per 100,000).
    A study in the Journal of Affective Disorders of adults ages 50 and older in five low- and middle-income countries found that older adults experiencing moderate food insecurity were 2.6 times more likely to attempt suicide, and older adults experiencing severe food insecurity were 5.2 times more likely.
    If you are facing mental-health challenges, call or text 988. Counselors are ...
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    12 m
  • Guarding Evil

    Guarding Evil
    Nov 21 2025
    Father of Cold Spring resident sketched Nazis at Nuremberg
    Eighty years ago this week, on Nov. 20, 1945, trials began in Nuremberg, Germany, for nearly 200 Nazis charged with crimes against humanity, including the killing of an estimated six million Jewish, Roma, gay and disabled people during the Holocaust.
    The international military tribunal is the subject of a new film starring Russell Crowe, who portrays Hermann Göring, the second most powerful man in Germany during World War II, behind Adolf Hitler.
    For Cold Spring resident Cassandra Saulter, the courtroom drama that unfolded at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice is more personal. Her father was among the U.S. soldiers assigned to guard the 22 major defendants, and he got Göring.

    Howard Saulter grew up in Queens and joined the Army at age 19. A private first class, he fought in late 1944 in the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium's Ardennes Forest. Germany surrendered the following spring, and that fall, Saulter was assigned to guard the accused in court and its adjacent prison.
    The guards worked every other day on a rotation of two hours on duty followed by four hours off. Initially, each man monitored three prisoners. But after Robert Ley, a labor leader who once received a gift of a million Reichsmarks from Hitler, committed suicide on Oct. 25, each guard was assigned to one prisoner.
    The trials riveted people around the world, but for the guards, it was tedious. Saulter began drawing the defendants in their cells out of boredom. Interviewed in 1946 by The New York Times, he said: "I hated the job. I decided to sketch a few of the prisoners in their cells, and it helped a lot."
    "He thought he might sell the drawings to raise money to attend the Art Students League," said his daughter.

    Göring may have been one of the most infamous of the Nazis on trial, but Howard Saulter remembered him as a model prisoner. "Göring was the most pleasant on the whole, the best behaved and the best sense of humor," he told his daughter. "Every day, when he returned to his cell after exercise, he'd say to me, 'Well, here we are home again.'"
    But when Saulter asked the German for his fine leather boots, saying, "You're not going to need them where you're going," Göring was not amused. "He usually had a sense of humor - that was the only time Göring blew up," said Cassandra. "Usually, they had interesting conversations."

    The walled court of justice building in Nuremberg on Oct. 26, 1945. (AP)

    A cell in the Nuremberg Prison, photographed in August 1945, before the first defendants arrived. (AP)

    The first day of the trial, on Nov. 20, 1945 (AP)

    Wilhelm Frick, left, eats lunch with Arthur Seyss-Inquart, from Army mess kits in the Palace of Justice on Nov. 29, 1945. (AP)

    Goring (left) eats stew from an Army mess tin at Nuremberg on Nov. 29, 1945. (AP)

    In this photo, the defendants are seated in front of the row of guards. (AP)
    Göring was convicted of war crimes but swallowed a cyanide pill the night before his scheduled execution. It was never clear how he got the poison, but Cassandra said her mother, Lillian, had a plausible hypothesis. "My father used to fall asleep, especially when bored - he had narcolepsy," Cassandra said. Her mother wondered if Göring's lawyer waited until Howard nodded off, then passed the pill to his client, possibly inside a pencil, and Göring hid it in the toilet.
    Saulter never sketched Göring, to his regret, but he did draw Baldur von Schirach (the former leader of the Hitler Youth and commandant in Vienna who was sentenced to 20 years), Franz von Papen (a former vice chancellor and ambassador who was acquitted but sentenced by a civilian court to eight years), Wilhelm Frick (the interior minister, who was hanged) and Arthur Seyss-Inquart (the commander of the occupied Netherlands, also hanged). Only von Papen realized he was being sketched. All four autographed their drawings. Saulter also sketched Albert Speer (the minister of armaments and war production, who w...
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    6 m
  • Democrats Take Majority in Putnam Valley

    Democrats Take Majority in Putnam Valley
    Nov 19 2025
    Win supervisor, town board seats
    With mail-in votes counted, Democrats appear to have won the supervisor's seat and an open council member spot in Putnam Valley, giving their party control of the Town Board.
    An unofficial tally posted by the Putnam County Board of Elections shows Alison Jolicoeur defeating the incumbent Republican supervisor, Jacqueline Annabi, by 23 votes (1,477 to 1,454) for a two-year term.
    Another Democrat, C.J. Brooks, was leading a Republican incumbent, Stacey Tompkins, by 31 votes (1,536 to 1,505) for a two-year term on the Town Board. Christian Russo, an incumbent who ran as a Republican and Conservative, was re-elected to the other open seat with 1,550 votes.
    Jolicoeur and Brooks join Sherry Howard to give Democrats a 3-2 majority on the five-member board, which has four Republicans, when they take office in January.
    In other close races in Putnam County, Tommy Regan, the Republican candidate for the seat on the Legislature that represents Southeast, defeated Thomas Sprague, the Democratic candidate, by 31 votes of 2,388 cast. Regan will succeed Paul Jonke, a Republican who did not seek a fourth, 3-year term.
    The Board of Elections will certify the vote on Nov. 29.
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    2 m
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