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If you haven’t already, check out the Etsy page of Carole Clark (former proprietor of Charleston restaurant, and an early Hudson activist). In addition to her artwork, lately Carole’s been making jewelry—pins, head ornaments, earrings, vases and more—from elements found in nature such as preserved wild mushrooms, lichen, moss and bark.
Nature magazine reports that scientists at two universities, working with the New York State Museum, have turned up the fossilized remains of the world’s oldest forest floor—right here in our midst, up in the Catskills town of Gilboa. The existence of the forest has been known since the ’20s, but examination of the floor has given a better idea of what actually grew there:
‘The world's oldest fossil forest’, famously the subject of an innovative exhibit at New York State Museum in the 1920s, was discovered during stone quarrying for the Gilboa dam and reservoir in Schoharie County, New York. Palaeontologist Winifred Goldring undertook the scientific description and illustration of in-place Eospermatopteris stumps and speculated on their significance. Her original publications continue to influence views on the origin of forest ecosystems, including the roles they may have had in global dynamics and extinction. The quarry was backfilled and remained inaccessible for 90 years, but in 2010 Stein et al. located the original ancient forest soil surface and mapped part of the site. Instead of one kind of tree, they found three, with evidence of spacing and biotic interactions between surprisingly different plant forms. These discoveries should have a major impact on interpreting further fragmentary fossil evidence of these early forests.
The discovery has prompted other national stories and visualizations of what the mid-Devonian period—about 385-398 million year ago—might have looked like, including dramatic renderings of cladoxylopsid trees.
Below is an image from The Albany Times-Union’s website, of a display which evidently used to greet visitors at the State Museum:
Here’s an interview posted on YouTube with one of the Binghampton scientists responsible for the new excavation:
WikiCoCo, one of several web publications run by Will Pflaum of Stuyvesant, recently published a list of attorneys said to be employed* by Columbia County.
That list (which evidently was found on an unspecified local listserv) claimed that all of the County’s lawyers were registered Republicans. Pflaum says he cannot vouch for that, and has invited comments on the veracity of the unknown list-maker’s claim.
The party affiliations of registered voters in New York State are a matter of public record**, open to all. An examination of the current County rolls indicate that such a sweeping claim is almost, but not quite true. Most of those listed are registered Republicans... but not all of them.
15 of 19 of the attorneys whose affiliation could be definitely identified in the Board of Elections’records do appear to be registered Republicans. Four others among them are not. Two are not members of any party (“independents”). One is a member of the Independence Party, which many do not realize is a political organization. Finally, one is a bona fide Democrat.
The remaining three others could not be found in County records. (I’m not aware of any requirement that a County attorney be registered to vote locally, though one might hope that the County government would keep such business local.)
Below is this site’s annotated version of WikiCoco’s list, which shows each lawyer’s party current affiliation in County records, and the town where each is registered:
COUNTY ATTORNEYS
MISSING: No voter registration was found in the files provided for Barrett M. Mack.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEYS
MISSING: No voter registration was found in the files provided for Robert M. Gibson.
PUBLIC DEFENDERS
ASST. PUBLIC DEFENDERS
MISSING: No voter registration was found in the files provided for Jessica Howser.
Anecdotally, I am aware that a few of the above have changed their registrations in recent years, some into the Republican party, and some out of it. But the above is the most current info on file.
In a way, it’s a more powerful statement to say that “15 of the County government’s lawyers are Republicans, and only one of them is a Democrat,” than to assert bold but mistaken claims that they are “ALL” members of the GOP. Such easily-disproven assertions tend to undermine the credibility of those looking for more balance and fairness in County appointments. (One can’t help wondering who the source was for the anonymous listserv post, and which side they’re actually on.)
One might, however, reasonably say that the County’s hired legal guns are all Republicans, except the assistant public defenders, if the affiliations of the remaining lawyers could be identified.
* NOTE #1: The list of who is serving in these taxpayer-funded legal capacities does appear to match that posted on the County’s website, but it is of course possible that the list is out of date or incomplete.
** NOTE #2: Such information is readily available on CD or by email to anyone who asks for it by submitting a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request, which need only be sent to the agency as a plain-english email—“I want the voter files!”—though it’s helpful to mention FOIL.)
Image: The above photo is of Martin Van Buren’s son John, an attorney who among other things viciously prosecuted Smith Boughton and several other leaders of the Anti-Rent movement, which was trying to help farmers escape the feudal oppressions of the Livingston and Van Rensselaer families. The infamous trial, not much commented upon by local historians and hagiographers of those grand Hudson Valley families, took place right here in Hudson. According to one account of the trial, “Prince John” Van Buren later also gambled away the title to Lindenwald.
The Register-Star (which recently tossed a bright orange bag containing a sample paper on my property) apparently had "technical problems" in their pressroom which impeded some deliveries this morning. So they are directing subscribers who didn't get today’s paper to come into the offices at 364 Warren for one.
Subscribers will get a free donut for their trouble.
