SamPratt.com

Another TCI debacle: 1987 explosion ‘rocked’ Greenport, injured worker

Not mentioned so far during the debate about TCI’s two fires (and desire to remain) in Ghent isthe company’s brief stay in the Town of Greenport during the late 1980s, after being kicked out of Ulster County.

And, as happened before with its mismanagement in Newburgh and later in Ghent, TCI’s Greenport activities resulted in a major explosion.

A front-page article in the June 22nd, 1987 edition of The Register-Star reported that a transformer blast that day “rocked an area within a half-mile” of TCI’s facility on the Industrial Tract.

The “blast” threw worker Louis Smith of Stuyvesant 20 feet, and landing him in Columbia Memorial Hospital with undisclosed injuries:

The explosion was audible at the Greenport town hall, according to Greenport Officer-in-Charge John Hawks... Greenport firemen were called to the scene [along with] Columbia County Sheriff Paul Proper and Undersheriff James Bertram.

EnCon officials were expected to arrive on the scene later this morning. Some transformers contain levels of PCBs. It was unknown this morning whether the explosion caused any leakage of the suspected carcinogens.

Detail of a Robert Ragaini photo of emergency workers tending to an injured TCI worker on the Industrial Tract in Greenport

A search of seven months of the Register’s back issues found no follow-up report on the cause of the blast or investigation of environmental fallout.

By 1988, TCI was reëstablished on Falls Industrial Road in Ghent, the blast apparently not having given that Town’s planning board any cause for concern. In March 1989, a young TCI worker (also named Smith, but no known relation) died after being overcome by fumes at TCI’s new plant.

The search for this article was prompted by a brief mention in a 1989 report on the fatality, alluding to the earlier Greenport explosion, spotted by Patti Matheney of GhentCANN.

Why this earlier explosion has never come up is anyone’s guess. Perhaps the barrage of major news of 1987—the Wiley Gates trial, a massive October snowstorm, the televised testimony of Philmont native Ollie North, the death of Jackie Gleason?—somehow blotted this event from local memory.

Explosive sodium found at TCI well before August inferno

Detail of a February 2012 report on an earlier fire at TCI, submitted five months before TCI’s calamitous, sodium-based explosions

Honoring the service of local firefighters ought to include taking every possible step to protect the lives that first responders put on the line every time they respond to a fire.

Unfortunately, in the case of the inferno last August at TCI of NY in Ghent, newly-uncovered evidence suggests that key officials may have ignored a direct warning which came well in advance of the company’s catastrophic August 2012 fire.

A report from February 2012 clearly demonstrates that the use of highly-explosive sodium metal at TCI (a processor of PCBs) was made known to multiple officials at least five months beforehand in a State Homeland Security report obtained by Patti Matheney of GhentCANN.

In the post-mortem discussions of the August disaster, it has been widely noted that scores of firefighters narrowly cheated death, withdrawing from the scene only moments before more than a dozen explosions rocked the Ghent night sky.

“We were only minutes away from bagpipes and flag-draped coffins,” Churchtown Fire Company 1st Lieutenant Nathan Chess wrote in a brave open letter to the community:

It is only based on sheer luck that a serious loss of life was avoided. It was only based on basic “off the cuff” comment by the company’s “keyholder” that the responding units were advised that there was a substantial amount of solid sodium stored in the plant. ... When exposed it creates an exothermic reaction and produces hydrogen gas (i.e.: Kaboom!).

Similarly, West Ghent Fire Chief Jim Cesternino praised TCI employee Tim Coons as a “guardian angel” and “hero” for rushing to alerting firefighters on the scene to the presence of sodium:

Coons was on scene and was able to provide us with information about some of the building contents. Providing that information to us saved firefighters lives.

However, neither luck nor guardian angels should have been needed that night, as the presence of sodium (and the danger it posed when doused with water) had already been reported to top County and West Ghent emergency managers earlier in the year. Nevertheless, documents show that water was sprayed into the building near this sodium, immediately touching off explosions.

Documents disclosed by The New York State Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services now show that several key officials were alerted to the use of sodium metal by TCI subcontractor Power Station Subservices (PSS). Moreover, the explosion risk posed by sodium was described specifically.

On February 29th, 2012, Investigations Branch Deputy Chief Randi Shadic forwarded a report on TCI’s previous fire in several trailers outside the building in January. That earlier fire caused some $300,000 in damages and led to an extensive investigation of its cause. Page 7 of this widely-circulated February report said that in the wake of the January fire, 

TCI staff provided Material Safety Data Sheets ... to the fire investigation team. The MSDS Sheets are for the products routinely handled, stored, produced and disposed of by both TCI and PSS. One of the products used by PSS identified as “40% Sodium Dispersion in Transformer Oil” is identified as being capable of “spontaneous combustion in moist air”. The same product is identified as “reacting violently with water.”

Copies of this report were sent by Homeland Security to West Ghent’s Cesternino, Columbia County Fire Coordinator James VanDeusen (now retired), and New York State Police Investigator William Mulren working out of the Livingston barracks on Route 9.

Again, this warning came five months prior to the much more dangerous and disastrous one in August. 

Still, NYS Homeland Security’s interviews suggest that on the night of the second fire in August, the presence and danger posed by sodium at TCI came as news to leadership on the scene.

In an interview with investigators, Cesternino notes that Coons alerted him to the sodium sometime shortly after 10 pm at the scene of the fire -- and that he asked for “more information” about it, and asked for another company’s foam truck to be called in.

Nevertheless, the West Ghent chief’s interview and those of rank-and-file firefighters from the many companies responding indicates that teams were told to “drown” the fire via the roof.

This led, in the narrative of one Stockport firefighter, to an almost immediate reaction:

“Once we got a truck we used a deck gun and were spraying it through the overhead door at the rear. Initially we had the stream pointed to the right. I had them move it to the left or west and when we did the building started to rumble. It sounded like a hundred people pounding on the metal building and the fire really took off. Then we heard what sounded like a propane tank exploding. We had to pull back and hide behind the roll off dumpsters

Despite the “news” from Coons that sodium was in the building, and the request for a foam truck, Cesternino reports that

The plan was to surround and drownd [sic] the fire. Claverack was able to spray water through the top of the overhead door of the loading dock.... As soon as they started spraying water things started reacting inside the building. I was out front and a big blast of smoke came out the front. I could see what looked like camera flashes going off inside. The crews in the back were reporting explosions on the radio and saying they had to get out. I ordered an evacuation...

It is thus doubly perplexing and troubling to read that in spite of the warning from Homeland Security five months before, plus the warning from Coons just after the fire was discovered, firefighters were sent to douse parts of the building with water. It is of course possible that the sodium might have started exploding anyway, had any wet materials in the building come into contact with it as the fire progressed .

But the direct cause-and-effect described in these interviews—pops, reactions and explosions resulting from water sprays—leads to the hard conclusion that the risk may not have been adequately communicated to those putting their lives on the line for the community.

Also of note from these documents: The Columbia County Fire Coordinator’s office had requested Shadic’s unit’s assistance with determining the “origin and cause“ of the earlier January fire in part because it occurred “in the general vicinity of what had been a series of suspicious or incendiary fire[s],” Shadic stated in a January 27th email.

County airport numbers: Pie-in-the-sky?

Chart from Columbia County master plan for the airport in Ghent

With news of a proposed six-figure purchase of additional land for the Columbia County airport, the question arises: How much actual use does the airport get?

Flight data from the FAA suggests at least one answer: Not nearly so much as officials would have us believe.

Take a look at the numbers. A decade ago, the Columbia County Board of Supervisors commissioned a long-range plan for the County airport in Ghent, in part to satisfy FAA safety and other concerns.

That 2003 report included the above chart, indicating that the airport handled some 37,000 flights per year. By 2020, the airport was anticipated to be handling 52,000 flights per year, or 1,000 per week.

Meanwhile, the 2009 Town of Ghent Comprehensive Plan stated as a fact that “at present, the volume is about 50,000.” The Town also projected that the airport could handle volume as high as a whopping 230,000 transits.

So how much use does the airport really get? Other evidence suggests it is nothing even close to 50,000 flights.

Data obtained via the aviation site FlightAware shows that in the full year between December 2011 and December 2012, only 1,586 takeoffs and landings were recorded. FlightAware says it gets these numbers directly from the FAA itself.

Not 50,000. Not even 37,000. Less than 1,600.

A more detailed breakdown follows below.

IMAGE: Bing.com

“My impression is that activity at the airport has gone down significantly since the 2008 recession,” said one experienced pilot who has used the County runways for many years.

Now, not every flight into and out of a County airport gets reported to the FAA. The numbers above do not appear to include many flight school trips, which can involve a lot of repeated takeoffs and landings. Under Visual Flight Rules (“VFRs”), during good weather and high visibility some other flights are not necessarily required to file a flight plan, either.

Yet even if you triple the FlightAware numbers—adding 1,600 training flights and 1,600 VFR flights—you still wind up with total yearly activity of less than 5,000 trips in and out. That’s only about 10% of what is stated in the Ghent Comp Plan  and the County’s projected master plan numbers.

In other words, 90% less that the official line.

Indeed, both basic math and interviews with neighbors suggest that there is nothing like 50,000 flights per year out of the County airport. As the comparison chart below shows, 50,000 compute to just under 140 per day... And given that Richmor Aviation made a handshake deal with neighbors about 25 years ago to limit flights to the hours between 7 am–11 pm, that would mean roughly 9 takeoffs or landings per hour, or one every 6-7 minutes.

Anyone who has driven along that section of 9H, or lived in that area, or visited friends there, knows that planes are a rarity, not something which occurs every 6 minutes. Just sit in a car in the Kozel’s parking lot, and you can verify that doesn’t happen. Or, surf over to FlightAware’s live dashboard, and see for yourself how few arrivals and departures are scheduled on a moment-to-moment basis.

Moreover, small airport use tends to be heavier in warmer months, so the average in summertime would likely be more like every 3-4 minutes, if the County and Ghent numbers were in fact real.

Using the same basic math, the projected maximum capacity of 230,000 flights cited in Ghent’s Comp Plan seems as ridiculous as it would be dangerous: 230,000 transits per year would mean almost 20,000 per month, 4,500 per week, over 600 per day, and 25 per hour around the clock including the wee hours of the night. Limiting activity to the 16-hour community noise abatement deal, there would be a plane zipping in or out every 90 seconds or so.

If such official numbers were at all accurate, living near the County airport could begin to resemble life near LaGuardia.

The question of how much the airport is really used becomes all the more relevant now that the County has voted to a approve a $629,000 offer to the owners of Meadowgreens to expand the airport and bring it more into FAA compliance. (Few were there to witness the vote, in part because the local paper of record, The Register-Star, published the wrong date for the meeting.)

Given how out-of-sync the County’s planning numbers appear to be with reality, this could pose a problem with FAA funders. When the County submits this $629,000 expansion plan to the Feds for approval, it will be interesting to see what numbers it claims.

$23 million in damages at TCI, but no smoke alarms

An official report on the catastrophic fire last summer TCI in Ghent reveals that despite an estimated $23,000,000 in damages, the PCB processor did not have smoke alarms, sprinklers or standpipes installed in the building.

The $23 million estimated loss is doubly surprising given that the property was only assessed at less than 2.5% of that amount. According to Ghent’s final 2012 assessment roll, TCI’s assessment was just $564,259, resulting in less than $5,000 in Town and County property taxes.

The report’s existence only came to light due to a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request and subsequent article by John Mason for The Register-Star on January 26th.

Chief investigator Randi Shadic of the NYS Office of Fire Prevention and Control forwarded the results to the County Fire Coordinator, West Ghent Fire Chief, and State Police Investigator in charge, but requested that they “not release the report or related documents unless it’s pursuant to a subpoena or Freedom of Information Law request.”

Among other things, the report reveals that:

• During the fire, a 20,000 tank of mineral oil “suffered a catastrophic failure which caused the entire tank to become airborne, exit the structure through the roof and land a great distance to the north and east of the structure.”
• The structure at 39 Falls Industrial Road “is owned by KMOJ Acquisitions LLC of Kearney, New Jersey and is doing business as TCI of NY LLC.” Note: The 2012 Ghent tax rolls show the property as owned by TCI Realty of NY, LLC.
• Yet another company, Power Substation Services (PSS) of West Virginia, “had been operating at the TCI facility for approximately two years.” Note: Extensive records obtained via FOIL by this site from Ghent give no indication that TCI ever notified the Town of the presence there of PSS or KMOJ.
• The report says that “PSS is a business that processes transformer oils containing polychlorinate biphenyl (PCB's) at a level higher than that which TCI is allowed to handle.”
• Investigators were not able to make their first entry into the structure until September 6th, almost five weeks after the fire. Some materials had already been removed from the site by that time. Concerned about “the possibility of chemical contamination” in the building, they had to wear Level C hazardous materials suits, respirators and other safety gear to do so.
• The fire was discovered by a TCI employee who responded to a “motion alarm activation inside the building.” His first call was to a manager, who called the alarm company, who called Columbia County 911. Note: If you ever discover a fire, it’s probably a good idea to call 911 first.
• TCI had a burglar alarm system in place, which went off at 9:55 but was assumed by the alarm company to have been triggered by a bird or other animal. It went off again four minutes later at 9:59—at which point the company rep evidently went to see what was happening. The report attributes this motion detection to “the movement of smoke or possibly flames,” not a person. Note: State application materials submitted but apparently withdrawn by TCI earlier in the year appear to indicate that the building was also under video surveillance, but no mention of such records is made in this report.
• Firefighters entered the smoke-filled building through the front entrance and also by forced entry through the rear door, eventually spotting flames. Note: It is not indicated what masks or other breathing apparatus or chemical exposure protection were used, if any. 
• PSS was handling PCBs in “two mobile processing units,” a “process rig” and a “dehydration rig,” with “numerous 55 gallon steel drums stored under and immediately next to the processing trailers.”
• “The combustible portions of the trailers were nearly 100% consumed by fire,” with the steel drums also sustaining “extensive fire and heat damage.” Some collapsed, and others had “holes burned through the sides.”
• The steel beams, trusses and metal roof panels of the building likewise collapsed, testament to the extreme heat of the fire.
• The fire was not believed to have been “at floor level” initially.
• The report favors the hypothesis that the fire orginated “in the south/west portion of the warehouse area of the structure near the processing trailer units.” It discounts or rules out numerous other causes, from electrial wiring problems to a lightning strike.
• Repairs were made to PSS’s processing trailer on the day of the fire, specifically replacing a heater used to melt the sodium used by PSS to break down PCBs. A higher wattage heater (7,500 instead of 6,000 watts) was installed.
• This heater “was left on” overnight on purpose “to resume processing of oil” the next morning.
• The report states that the PSS employees reported the “operating temperature of this heater and mixer chest is 250 degrees,” while also noting that “the ignition temperature” of sodium is 239 degrees ... and 250 degrees. That suggests the sodium could have been ignited by the heater, as acknowledged in the report.
• Another possible cause cited is “the possibility of a chemical reaction or spontaneous heating of materials combined in [a] trash drum” used to dispose of oil-soaked rags and other materials alongside the trailer.

Endnotes: Ghent resident Patti Matheney spoke with a representative of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, who expressed surprise that PSS was handling PCBs of a concentration indicated in the report, and who requested to see a copy of it.

Neither the Feds, State, County or Town of Ghent are known to have imposed any fines or cited the facility for any permit, fire or other code violations related to the disaster last summer. The Town has, however, indicated that the West Ghent fire company will need to increase its budget by 10% as a result of costs incurred for fighting the fire.

Ghent planners to TCI: First, pay your bills

At last night’s meeting of the Ghent Planning Board, it emerged that TCI of NY is behind in payments to the Town of Ghent to cover engineering expenses related to cleanup of its Falls Industrial Road site, according to firsthand reports from attendees.

And until such payments are brought up to date, and until the company also puts $10,000 more in escrow for review, the Ghent planners do not intend to take up an application from the company to rebuild and resume operations.

TCI’s Brian Hemlock arrived with his attorney, Bill Better, as well as an engineer from Crawford & Associates and a representative of architect Dennis Wedlick, in an attempt to present an application—but ran into the stumbling block of past due bills and future escrow requirements. The application materials were dropped off, but not considered.

GhentCANN’s Patti Matheney reports: “It seems they have used up all of the escrow for the Town engineer to oversee the clean-up of the site and there are outstanding bills. The Board and [attorney] Ted Guterman were adamant they will not look at the new plans or ask the town engineer to review them until they put 10K into a new escrow account.”

Matheney also noted that a TCI representative “specifically stated that only non-regulated PCB's were dismantled at the plant and they do not handle any regulated PCB equipment. He made no mention of the DEC permit request from June of this year.”

However, that 2012 application indicated TCI’s plans “to store and consolidate regulated PCB wastes,” preparing them “for shipment to EPA approved and alternate disposition facilities,” an apparent contradiction.

Hemlock also circulated a heavily-massaged p.r. statement [ page 1 | page 2 ]. TCI worked with a public relations firm, Blass Communications, in the wake of August’s catastrophic inferno—its second fire of 2012—but it isn’t clear if they are still in the picture.

Lastly, Matheney writes that Planning Board chairman “Jonathan Walters asked the Board to "do their homework" over the next month and come back to the Jan. meeting with questions for TCI.

Audio of the meeting recorded by another resident is expected to be posted online later today.

TCI pursued expansion permits from State and Feds, leaving Ghent out of the loop

Seeking to signficantly expand its operations, TCI of NY quietly filed hundreds of pages of applications in the past year with State and Federal authorities—without ever applying to agencies of the Town of Ghent to comply with local zoning.

Buried in a 440-page document, revelations of these planned changes by TCI in the year before their catastrophic August fire emerged after a long wait for a response to a Freedom of Information Law request to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

DEC finally coughed up the 440-page document three months after this site placed multiple reminder calls and emails. (FOIL requests are normally dealt with within 5-to-20 days.) The State application, which includes materials submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, was finally produced only once this site notified the DEC public relations office that a press release detailing the agency’s non-responsiveness was in the works.

The document obtained is eye-opening to say the least. TCI’s application materials reveal, among other things, that the company sought permission to begin:

• Handling regulated PCB waste of a much higher concentration than non-PCB or unregulated PCB waste;

• Installing a new 8,000-gallon PCB storage tank;

• Storing 280,000 pounds of untested, undrained electrical equipment which are assumed to have under 499 ppm of PCBs;

• Storing 70,000 pounds of undrained PCB-contaminated electrical equipment;

• Storing 60 drums of PCB-contaminated fluid; and

• Storing 40,000 pounds of PCB transformers.

Minutes of the Ghent Planning Board do not indicate that such major changes to the TCI facility were ever brought before them for review and approval.

At an August 1st Planning Board meeting held just hours before the massive fire was discovered, TCI’s representatives from Crawford & Associates presented minor amendments to a site plan for a 650-square-foot office addition, stating that “nothing new will be going on at the plant, only existing work.”

A request by one member to review any DEC permitting was noted in the minutes, but the request was “withdrawn” f0llowing these assurances by TCI as well as from the Planning Board Chair that everything was in order.

Legally, an applicant must seek permission from local authorities for activities covered by local zoning codes, even if they are permitted by other agencies. Indeed, that is just what scuttled TCI’s attempt to build a PCB incinerator in Ghent in the late 1980s; even though NYS DEC casually greenlighted the project, the Town (and neighbors) objected and stopped it from happening based on local rules.

Moreover, under the Ghent Zoning Code new activities and changes in use must be brought before the appropriate board(s) when their scope exceeds their original permit, and/or when changes are proposed after the date of changes to the Code.

The 440-page application submitted to the State and Feds also includes many eyebrow-raising statements. For example, a review of working conditions and worker qualifications concedes that while some employees would be working with materials such as explosives and toxic chemicals, it then goes on to say that these workers will not need any prior experience or training. A young employee died at TCI after exposure to freon gas in 1989.

The Ghent Planning Board meets again tonight at 7 pm at Town Hall, and TCI once again may be on the agenda, seeking to rebuild its facility, which also had a fire in January. NOTE CORRECTED MEETING TIME

A copy of the 440-page application (which is a very large file) is available upon request via email.

TCI finally not a no-show

After many meetings at which TCI of NY was expected to appear, but did not show up, the company finally sidled into a Planning Board “application night” meeting on Wednesday. They were accompanied by their engineers at Crawford & Associates. Ghent resident and realtor Chris Bishop captured the audio:

TCI is a no-show in Ghent—again

According to a resident who arrived early in Ghent for the Planning Board meeting, TCI is not coming tonight... No word yet on whether the company cancelled once the news leaked out, or anticipation of their presence was a mistake (sources on the rumor included one in Town Hall).

Either way, this leaves unbroken TCI’s streak of failing to show up for public questioning.

TCI files to rebuild (but screws that up, too)

According to well-placed sources, PCB handler/processor TCI of NY filed an application last week with the Town of Ghent to rebuild its facility on Falls Industrial Park Road. The company’s application is said to have been accompanied by a check which has been placed in escrow by the Town.

However, the application reportedly has been returned to TCI as incomplete, as it did not contain all of the required information. Some town officials have informally signaled that TCI would need to go before its planning board if it wished to resume operations

As it happens, the Ghent Town Board has its regularly-scheduled meeting tonight (Thursday) at 7:30 pm at Town Hall, located at 2306 State Route 66.

To date, the Town has not cited TCI for any of many evident zoning code violations which have been brought to its attention. Activities such as fuel and explosives storage, handling of high-concentration PCBs, safety precautions and hazard prevention, and the introduction of multiple tenants into a building, are all clearly regulated by the Town’s zoning code and State fire safety regulations which are the Town’s obligation to enforce. Records obtained via FOIL and from private legal files held by neighbors indicate that many or most of the company’s uses of the site have never been the subject of a permitting review.

TCI left Ulster County in the mid-1980s after a fire similar to the one in Ghent led  Newburgh fire and code enforcement officials, as well as State regulators, to cite the company for multiple violations. The company then attempted to set up shop again in Greene County, but were blocked among other things by stiff opposition from Athens firefighters, who noted that Athens did not have the equipment or resources to fight a major fire at such a facility. It was then that TCI came to Columbia County, representing themselves as an electronics recycler, and claiming that any transformers accepted onsite would be drained and contain at most scarce traces of PCBs.

In addition to having two fires at its plant in just the past year, TCI’s tenure in Ghent includes the death of a young worker on the job due to exposure to freon gas, and two failed applications (one to build an incinerator, the other to process household hazardous waste) which cost the Town enormous legal fees.

Bits & bites

Image from Star Chefs

It’s been a light week for posting here, due to other obligations, and also the fact that I don’t like to post just for the sake of posting... That said, here are a few regional tidbits worth reporting:

• Chef/author Zak Pelaccio’s much-anticipated upstate restaurant with Jori Jayne Emde on South 3rd Street in Hudson reportedly will be called Fish & Game, with renovations continuing at a fever pace in hopes of opening this winter.


• HUMP, a/k/a the Hudson Museum of Photography, opens this Saturday with a solo show by Stephen Johnson entitled Moonman. HUMP is located at 552 Warren Street.


• After a hiatus following the death of Don Blasko, his wife Mady has reopened the Turnpike Inn.


• In other Town of Ghent drinking news, longtime Kozel’s bartender Ned has stepped down to enjoy some well-deserved leisuretime after many years of solid service. It’s rare to find a real oldschool barkeep of Ned’s caliber around here.


• Laetitia Hussain’s recent three-story installation at John Davis Gallery, Sycamorphology has sold and is said to be headed to a publicly-accessible space in New York City.


• According to several sources the Laskin family is no longer involved with the operation of TCI of NY, the PCB waste company David Laskin moved to Ghent from Newburgh after a fire there in the 1980s. It thus presumably was just a coincidence that (as several other sources have pointed out) the 165-acre Laskin family compound in Old Chatham went on the market for $3,200,000 on August 3rd—just two days after the most recent and most catastrophic TCI fire.


• Also regarding TCI, Albany TV stations and other print outlets are reporting that the August 1st fire has been cleared of any suspicion of arson by the New York State Police, though their official report on the cause of the fire is not complete. The August conflagration was TCI’s second fire of 2012, and occurred in the context of a series of other fires in the Route 9H corridor—one of which was affirmatively deemed an arson. (Since the time of this site’s post on that topic, residents have noted several additional fires on roads just slightly off 9H.)


• It’s come to this site’s attention that several Hudson elected officials are unaware that the City has an adopted Comprehensive Plan, which can be downloaded in two parts via this link. The plan straddled the Cranna and Scalera administrations, being developed in 2000-2001 and passed in 2002. Due to the then-raging St. Lawrence Cement controversy, and the City’s decision to hire SLC’s own planning firm as its consultant, the final plan was greatly watered down, but it does include a few useful nuggets; more on that next week, probably.


• This Sunday will feature the last farmer’s market of the season in Philmont, according to Sally Baker of PB, Inc. The market’s hours are 10 am to 1 pm.

Raw video of Ghent meeting on TCI

Patti Matheney has posted on Vimeothis one-hour video

of last Wednesday’ Ghent Town Board meeting (9/20/12), in which the TCI fire was discussed.

High art in the hill country

Art openings in Columbia County in the past few weekends have included (click images to enlarge) ...

 

The “Vote for Me” group show at Art Omi in Ghent, including works by Warhol, Johns, et al.;

Brian Dewan’s performance at CR10 in Livingston;

Bill Stone’s installation at CR10 in Livingston;

Laetitia Hussain’s elevator shaft installation at John Davis Gallery in Hudson;

Georgia Elrod’s paintings at John Davis Gallery in Hudson; and

 

Kenny Polinskie paper works at Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson.