SamPratt.com

Strange

The above story appeared at The Register-Star’s website around 2 pm, but was gone a couple of hours later.

 

UPDATE: As of 6:30 pm, the story is back on the paper's website, at this link.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Plumb line

According to Hudson resident and stylist Peter Frank, only the exterior scenes of the Plumb-Bronson house seen in The Bourne Legacy were actually shot locally. The interiors were shot, Frank reports, on a “meticulous recreation” of the historic house on a Brooklyn soundstage. (No wonder Hollywood budgets are so ginormous.)

Art scenes

Scenes from this weekend’s art events in and around Hudson... First up, Abel Ramirez’s pop-up gallery of paintings in the 500 block:

 

Anton Ginzburg’s NADA installation, Flood, for Braverman Gallery at the Basilica Hudson:

 

Chair installation by Bill Stone at the inaugural exhibition of CR10 in Linlithgo:

 
Performance downstairs at CR10 by Rhys Tivey:

Site-specific building design (after Adolf Loos) by Polly Apfelbaum at A Native Hill in Hudson:

 

Laetitia Hussain’s open studio in Hudson’s 600 block:

Laetitia Hussain work at A Native Hill:

 

Performance at A Native Hill by Brian Dewan:

 

Monica Mechling sculpture opening at Henry Hudson Studios:

 

Back to the Sunday scene at Basilica Hudson:

Art installation, or furniture delivery?

Warren Street, Hudson (NY).

Quotable Dubois

One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over.

We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner... and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring.

The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect man and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.

— W.E.B. DUBOIS, BLACK RECONSTRUCTION (1935)

 

Saturday • 1 pm • Hudson

Links: Facebook event page | Native Hill tumblr page | Bing Map

Dan-ish MODern

Dana Wegener, whose previous Hudson restaurant MOD was abruptly closed when the landlord padlocked it earlier this year, has happily landed down the street. Her new breakfast-and-lunch place Relish will be open today until 3 pm at the former Strongtree location across from the Amtrak station, according to Rebeccah Johnson, who forwarded the above photo.

Follow the leader

Mark down yesterday’s date—Tuesday, July 24th, 2012—because in years to come we may look back and consider it a watershed in the evolution of local media.

On that date, the three top headlines in the County’s only daily paper, The Register-Star, all were stories previously reported on a “micronews” blog, Carole Osterink’s The Gossips of Rivertown.

The Gossips of Rivertown’s Carole Osterink

Their first top story on Tuesday concerned a vote by the board and members of Acres Co-op to continue their pursuit of establishing a local food market, despite repeated setbacks. The second reported the decision by Premier Brands to abandon plans for the former Emsig button factory building. The third updated the mistaken debate about the location of shacks at the Furgary Boat Club.

Osterink beat the Register on each of these stories on the previous Sunday, Friday and Monday, respectively, forcing the paper (which did not publish online until late 2002, and does not publish a print edition on Sunday or Monday) to play catchup.

“Most of the time, it’s just a case of us both attending the same meeting and me getting my story up sooner,” said Osterink, a former Hudson alderman, in an interview on Wednesday. Clearly, Osterink is faster to the punch when it comes to leaving a meeting and typing up her account. But in some instances, such as the Premier Brands revelation which came as a result of a question asked solely by Osterink at a sparsely-attended commitee meeting, the scent from blog to print is easy to track.

Reflecting perhaps its sense of embattlement, and the frequent criticism it receives from independent media, the Register has rarely if ever recognized area bloggers’s existence—let alone crediting them with breaking stories the paper later picks up. (In this site’s case, the Register even has stopped authorizing my rare posts in its comments section.) When serious news organizations such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post piggyback on each others’ leads and stories, they consider it good form to acknowledge who got there first.

Now, given its far greater infrastructure, resources, and coziness with official sources, The Register does still get stories first sometimes, and it reports many events not covered by any area blogs, however cursorily or shabbily. Moreover, many posts on blogs like Gossips are reactions or simply “of interest” links to stories and opinions posted in the Register. Furthermore, it can be beneficial for local news sources to duplicate efforts when they ask different questions or present different points of view. The relationship between traditional and independent media can be, at its best, symbiotic.

But the striking sequence of the paper’s top Tuesday headlines is at minimum a strong indication of the ability of independent online media to beat traditional media in both thoroughness and timeliness. If every Columbia County town had as much blog coverage as Hudson, the public would be far better informed, and both the media and politicians would be held more accountable.

Bronson’s Legacy

As first noticed by Jamie Larson on Facebook, the latest Bourne Legacy trailer includes a couple of brief shots of the interior and exterior of the Plumb-Bronson House (a/k/a the Dr. Oliver Bronson House), located on the grounds of the Hudson Correctional facility. Scroll ahead to around 1:56 for a brief shot of a gunman falling down the historic house’s spiral staircase, and leaping up the side of its clapboard walls.

Below is a screenshot of the staircase scene; this confirms a rumor reported here last August:

A fourth Bourne sequel, The Bourne Legacy, is said to be coming to shoot scenes in Columbia County, allegedly in “an old mansion close to Hudson” (but it may not star Matt Damon, so don’t rush off to look for him eating pastry on Warren Street).

 

National Grid Outage Map

I’m probably the only resident of Taghkanic who was excited about the power outage late this afternoon: at last, the generator I had installed last year is getting some exercise. (The hail that just started is a little less welcome.) Anyway, below is the link to National Grid’s outage map for the area:

https://www1.nationalgridus.com/PowerOutageMap-NY-RES

Hudson and Greenport are also showing a handful (less than 20) customers without power as of 5:15 pm.

Typo Phile: Gun show edition

Guest peaker, speaker, or peeker?

SOURCE: A Register-Star news item on a Churchtown “holster” fashion show which featured models carrying concealed weapons, and drew enormous crowds.

An offer Hudson can’t refuse

 

Some Hudson leaders are already salivating over the prospect of an additional $25-$30,000 in new parking revenue, if lower Warren Street were metered… To put that paltry figure into even sharper perspective, check out some other estimated City budget items, from Hudson’s 2012 worksheet:

• $1,000 — Rodent Control
• $1,500 — Bingo Inspector
• $6,000 — Physicals & Shots   
• $105,000 — Cemetery Hospitalization (?)
• $115,000 — Gravedigging
• $131,359 — Attorneys’ fees*
• $170,000 — Lighting Expense
• $190,049 — Planning: Personal Services (?)   
• $1,250,000 — Sales Taxes
• $1,422,000 — Hospital & Medical Insurance

Now, if the City really wants to save $30,000, I’ll gladly take over gravedigging duties for the low, low price of just $85,000 a year. (To sweeten the deal, I’ll even keep an eye out for woodchucks stealing flags.)

---

* NOTE: 2011 actual as opposed to 2012 estimate