Staff and attorneys for Adirondack nongovernmental organizations must be close readers of "Bleak House," Charles Dickens' indictment of a legal system that encouraged endless legal proceedings until all financial means were exhausted.
When one of the characters learned no settlement, only bankruptcy, was coming he died of apoplexy, an archaic term for a stroke induced by frustration or outrage.
The principals of the Adirondack Club and Resort project in Tupper Lake spent seven years winding through a labyrinthine Adirondack Park Agency permitting process, informed and delayed by agency fears of negative publicity and litigation. Those fears, and the fears of the developers, were realized this year when a permit was granted to the resort and a lawsuit producing further delay was filed.
A large proportion of hamlets in the Adirondacks are dying. I suspect apoplexy.
ANN MELIOUS
Director, Hamilton County Economic Development and Tourism
Lake Pleasant