Twice each year Family of Woodstock's hotline offers its amazing training for volunteers. It's that opportunity time again, with a twist! Family's hotline volunteer training starts in late September and along with the essential listening and crisis intervention training for our phone and walk-in center volunteers we are adding a new piece — and a new service. It's time to start opening our eyes to the huge number of people who text as their major form of communication.

Text crisis lines are new, and have been incredibly busy and effective in the past two years. Family will launch TextMeBack in early 2016, but we need our volunteers trained and working now.

If you think about how you might be more useful in our community and don't know how, become a Family volunteer. If you want to truly listen to others with your mind and your heart, please call today to sign up for the next Family of Woodstock Volunteer Training!

Training covers the essentials of our new text line as well as the core of Family's hotline and walk-in services. Modules include domestic violence, child abuse, mental health and substance abuse, adolescent issues, suicide and homelessness. You will learn active, compassionate listening skills and ways to connect with people in need.

Family offers a way to overcome the feeling of powerlessness we feel when we read the news. It is as simple as answering a phone call or text message at the moment someone reaches out. It is as direct as offering a cup of coffee and a bag of food to someone who is hungry. It takes skill and the amazing depth of resources Family has gathered over its 45 year history.

Call 679-2485 to find out more and schedule an interview. Bring a friend. I've been doing this for 35 years, and it's still a treasured part of my life.

Susan Goldman
Woodstock

I've always wondered what life would be like with a man taking care of me. Now, I finally have a chance to know, since the DONALD said: "I'm going to take care of women." But since only one of his three wives was born in this country, I'm still not sure I would be included in the women he cares for. Since the Donald also stated "I was the ultimate insider," we can assume that he knows how money works and can manipulate it as much or better than all the bankers that he worked with to get his billions of dollars.

His comment on hedge fund guys in his speech on Sept. 14th was: "They're going to do just fine, because we're going to make the country so successful, they'll do just fine. They'll end up doing better. They'll end up doing better. But we've got to lower taxes for a lot of people. Corporations paying far too much, far too much. Middle income people are being decimated. They're being decimated."

Hmm. Does that mean he's going to help the decimated people? Or just admit they're being decimated and then help the corporation that are paying far too much, to pay less? Well, let's focus on his heartfelt beliefs. The Donald calls Climate Change a hoax. He is against wind and solar energy. To quote him from one of his tweets he said: "This very expensive Global Warming bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice."

I tried searching for the Donald's investments in oil and gas. At first it looked like his investments are only in real estate. But then I found his other investments in things like the Keystone Pipeline, and Black Rock.

A quote from Investment News says: "Mr. Trump, 69, displays an affinity for hedge funds and other similar alternative investments. His largest stake is in Black Rock Inc.'s Obsidian Fund, an unconstrained fixed-income product, in which he claims a stake of between $25 million and $50 million." If you haven't figured out what Black Rock's biz is from its name, just understand that anyone that thinks that climate change is a hoax probably has at least a few million invested in the oil and gas industry.

So, my fellow lovers of the Planet Earth, we are going to have to work very hard on this upcoming election. We can't just sit back this time, or we might just be looking to cross our border, going the other way.

Jill Paperno
Glenford

The reports of government abuses, attacks on individual liberty and politically discriminatory behavior seem never ending. I was discussing this with friends when one asked which of these is most concerning.

I replied that no single topic in the news is our greatest concern but rather the overall trend. We are each responsible for the injustices wrought upon us by the powers that be. We caused them by exposing ourselves to an illness...a highly contagious disease.

The name of that disease: Apathy.

We have come to expect and accept the deplorable actions of our leaders; that they will greedily take from us for their own gain. Worse yet, when we fall victim to this abuse we simply throw up our hands in resignation and ask: "What can I do?" while the pawns of their ambition fill the headlines with distraction and misdirection.

As we near the next elections I call upon you to make a resolution: Seek treatment for your illness. Look in the mirror and ask if you are truly content with the way things are. If not, get off the couch and get into the fray. No one ever won a fight without showing up to fight it. What's more important: an hour of "reality" TV or protecting the rights of your family? It's easy to ignore a single voice, but harder so, a chorus.

It's our fault people, and now it's time to make amends. Don't forfeit to apathy what you can win by attendance.

Michael De Luca
Salisbury Mills