The Catskill Chronicle

Story and photos by Ted Waddell

LAKE HUNTINGTON – The Upper Delaware River Valley is a scary place to live these days, as a lot of folks in these parts are haunted by the specter of gas drilling taking over the area.

On Saturday, October 31, the Damascus Citizens for Sustainability celebrated Halloween 2009 with “Fear-Fest”, a fund-raising event at The Nutshell, billed as “Be Very Afraid of Contamination, Secrets & Lies, Explosions, Chemicals, Radiation, Sickness, Poison, Toxins, and Fear,” just the ticket to make your hair curl if drilling for natural gas in the valley gets a green light.

The evening featured Pat Carullo as “DJ Boo”, along with a couple of glittering and scintillating belly dancers named “Sabah” and “Suraya,” horror movies and video walls.

Taking center stage was the talented poet Laura Moran, accompanied by musicians Dan Brinkerhoff and Kurt Kunuth, in vignettes from Moran’s performance work “Eden”, an exploration of desire.

“I’m cool as a cucumber with all my bling and discs, and we’re going to scare away all the drillers,” said DJ Boo, who in the real-world guise of Carullo, added that the event raised more than $2,000.

Damascus Citizens for Sustainability (DCS) is a grassroots nonprofit group from Damascus, PA “dedicated to protecting the Upper Delaware River Basin and beyond from the ravages of deep-shale gas extraction and the threat posed by the natural gas industry.”

Moran’s take on gas drilling?

“I think it’s an irreversible decision…if we go there, it will be very difficult to come back from that decision,” she said. “We have to be careful, we have to protect ourselves, and we have to think about the whole community…it can’t be done recklessly and dishonestly.

Setting down his fiddle for a second, Brinkerhoff said, “It’s all about education…I’m against it, and I think it’s unsafe.” “A great many people will lose, and a few people will win. It will completely change the valley, and a lot of people are being left out of the process.”

Folks from the local anti-drilling faction handed out a couple of in-your-face bumper stickers: “Don’t Bite The Land That Feeds You” and “Don’t Let The Gas-holes Destroy Our Watershed!”

To view more photos or to purchase prints from Fear This! visit the Chronicle on Zenfolio.