On the heels of the recent Rondout Valley budget proposal failure, it is very clear that education spending, and educators' union contracts, have become a prominent and provocative set of issues in our area. As residents strive to find solutions to rising financial pressures � with State government floundering, and largely ineffective � an undertone of contentiousness has become more and more prevalent. In the face of widespread recession, and Rondout's declining enrollment numbers, public discussion here has often become heated of late.

Combining this tension with the free public forum of the Internet can, and has been, a recipe for an even more incendiary dialogue. Case and point: last week, Elizabeth Harrington, a Rondout Valley educator, elected to post a letter to the Kingston Daily Freeman expressing her disappointment with the culture surrounding the recent budget vote (that letter was also printed in the Shawangunk Journal, and can be found, online, at www.gunkjournal.com). Ms. Harrington's letter addressed her upset with what she perceives to be growing vilification of teachers, and some of the tactics used in campaigning against the recent budget. Some excerpts from Ms. Harrington's letter shows the tone of her opinions:

"What good can possibly come of the mean spirited, ugly and unnecessary attacks on teachers? Your anger and frustration regarding our high taxes is understandable. What I vehemently disagree with are your tactics... I urge community members to work together to try to get the state to change the way we are taxed. Attacking teachers and school staff is just wrong...What kind of message are you sending to the students you say you are trying to protect? That their teachers are greedy and lazy?"

Ms. Harrington chose to sign her name to the letter, and to provide an email address � a choice that elicited some very aggressive direct responses, beyond the online comments posted by readers. What she helped to foment, it appears, was further evidence of the same combative energy she was addressing.

Harrington shared a series of emails in which a Kingston man addresses her in an increasingly threatening way. In his initial email, the man confronts Harrington with her own salary amount, which he has researched online, accusing her of being responsible for ruining the local economy:

"You don't NOTICE all the kids FOCED (sic) out of your classes as their parents are FORCED from the area???...You have DECIMATED the local jobs with the taxes to support your REDICULOUS (sic) salary and benefits...My wife and I would like to tell you personally that you are a greedy CROOK!!!"

After engaging in a couple of messages back and forth, in one of which Ms. Harrington requests that the communication be ended, the accuser ends with what appears to be a personal threat:

"You really are vile and disgusting. And I am making it a point of meeting you face to face real soon so we can discuss that and leave NO doubt in your greedy pea brained mind about how much we ALL resent you!!! Actually HATE would be a better choice of words..See you real soon!!!"

Ms. Harrington then received a follow-up email from the gentleman's wife. This message strikes a more conciliatory tone, and a calmer attempt at the argument, though it, too, ends with some very provocative language:

"Let me begin by saying that although I don't entirely agree with my husband, I have to tell you that many people, especially in rural upstate New York, feel the way he does... I too feel that something has got to change or there will be nothing left up there to love � just wasteland, another Appalachia. People are scared and emotional about this. I suspect the change will start with the public school system's overhaul, followed by other public-sector organizations' overhaul. And let's hope that it happens peacefully. Let's both pray that it doesn't come to open rebellion (and perhaps you laugh at that, but I feel it, that tension), because then not only will people lose their homes but their lives."

At the time of this writing, Ms. Harrington has not taken any further action in response to these messages. What she did succeed in doing was to help exemplify exactly the kind of dissension she claimed to be opposed to in the first place � disunity that, should it continue, could well serve to prolong community problems, rather than solve them.