To the Editor:

I see around here in the area where I have lived for close to 60 years as an immigrant, in recent years, schools and churches are closing because there are not enough believers and financial supporters for the continuity and well-being of the community.

But new businesses are coming here near the areas with schools, churches, and sparsely populated neighborhoods. Drinking bars and nightclubs with the free use of marijuana and other drugs and also large casinos. The legislators and rulers of the state have no objection to all that is happening in the surrounding world here for the future of the generation that will rule the country tomorrow.

I do not see things well – are we marching towards the destruction and disappearance of the family, the warmth and love that our ancestors have built?

Now I remember the prophetic words of Saint Kosmas the Aetolian who said that when you open a school, a prison closes. Thank you.

Kyriakos Stratigakis

Yonkers, NY