SamPratt.com

R.I.P., John Fout

John Fout’s daughter Elizabeth wrote to say that calling hours for her father’s viewing at Bates & Anderson are from 5-7 pm tonight (the 26th) 110 Green Street.

John taught for many years at Bard (where he was until his death a Professor Emeritus, and known for founding the Journal of the History of Sexuality). He was well-known in Hudson for his sustained engagement with the community, including a brave run for public office in the 5th Ward when it was still highly conservative.

More than a decade ago, he and Claude Cherry bought and restored a long-neglected home on the corner of Columbia and 5th Street, which had for as long as anyone could remember been blighted by a giant sign for Phil Gellert’s Northern Empire Realty.

Brooklyn’s loss is the Valley’s gain

The celebrated Brooklyn record shop Dope Jams lost its lease on bustling Myrtle Avenue—and has decided to move its entire operation to Oak Hill, about a 30-mile drive from Hudson... (A friend reports stumbling upon “about 200 hipsters dancing in the street” of the sleepy Greene County village during their grand reopening a couple of weekends ago.)

Get directions to their new digs at 7811 Main Street via this Google maps link.

Open (Food) Studio

Food Studio, David Chicane’s Asian-inflected new eatery in the 600 block of Warren, held a well-attended (if warm) soft opening last Sunday night—which felt very much like the first official day of summer.

Hostess Erika Clark posted the starter menu, below, on Facebook. Our table enjoyed the pickled beet (shungiku) salad, sesame tofu, and diver scallops, each dish fresh and appropriately spicy.

 

 

Open Studio

Artist Paul Harbutt opened his Claverack studio this weekend to friends and neighbors unable to travel to Italy to see his latest mixed media show.

Feight left only a faint online trail

Yesterday’s news that a Stockport man is being held as a co-conspirator in a goofy-but-grotesque terrorism plot leaves Columbia County residents wondering: Who is Eric J. Feight?

Many people leave extensive traces of themselves online, but Feight’s web presence seems relatively slight. The highlighted photo above—found in a 2013 newsletter of the Kinderhook Elks Lodge #2530—is one of the only photos of Feight uncovered after an extensive web search.

Feight is listed as the Lodge’s “Leading Knight,” evidently the #2 position in the group.

Feight is, of course, innocent until proven guilty; and most experts seem to think that the crackpot device he and Glendon S. Crawford (reported to be a Tea Partier and KKK wannabe) allegedly sought to construct would not have actually worked.

The mustachioed and slightly-graying 50something man above appears to match a grainy photo of Feight being arraigned yesterday, published in the Times-Union.

Feight’s former employer, Smith Control Systems, no longer has his bio posted on their website, and denies any contact with him since he left in 2010. But an archive of that bio can be accessed via the Wayback Machine, indicating Feight’s technical expertise:

Eric Feight - Project Engineer

Engineering Manager - MCSE - Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer - Has over 19 yrs. experience designing control systems. Projects Include: Water & Waste Water Treatment Plants, Material Handling, Conveyor Systems, Extrusion, Coordinated Motion Machinery, High Speed Sorting Systems, Paper Processing. Software Experience: Cimplicity HMI, SQL Server, Access, Intouch, Texas Instruments, Red Lion, Emmerson, Allen-Bradley, Honeywell, PanelView, GE Fanuc, Quick Panel, Intellution and API.

Feight is listed currently as Vice President of a company called Genius Industrial Solutions. GIS’s website gives no physical address, only phone and email contacts; but other records indicate it is located in Cobleskill. Feight and GIS are included on a Hudson Valley Community College list of companies interested in hiring HVCC grads.

As noted by the website Heavy.com Feight used the sci-fi codename “Yoda” in his dealings with Crawford. According to conversations recorded by the FBI, Feight said was motivated to “act” by Obama’s 2012 re-election:

So, I mean I, I, I have to admit having never been involved in anything like this before, you know, at first it made me a little bit nervous...I don’t want to say apprehension, but nervousness about how much involvement I was gonna get in this kind of got outweighed, uh, quickly with, you know, when I started seeing how things, the direction things were going and then certainly after the elections. It's like well, ok, you know, that old saying is right. You know, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

Speaking of code words, the indictment indicates that the pair called themselves the “The Guild,” and referred to their intended Muslim targets as “medical waste.”

Feight left this question on a technical message board, looking for advice for getting a DRPAM interface to work. (No one replied.) It’s not clear whether this had anything to do with the control device he is charged with building for Crawford.

Feight is, of course, innocent unless proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; and in any case, most experts seem to think that the device planned was more fantasy than reality.

‘Fire Alley’ continues to generate news

A: Devastating house fire • B: Smith Control Systems, where Feight worked • C: Blaze at Amanda’s Fireplace • D: Two fires at TCI of NY • E: Feight residence • F: Structure fire at home • G: Shed/barn fire • NOT PICTURED: Meadowgreens fire

With news breaking of a bizarre terrorism arrest with connections to Columbia County, one can’t help but to wonder: What is it with the Route 9H corridor?

In a previous report, this site referred to a four-mile stretch of 9H as “Fire Alley,” with a series of major fires in just 2.5 years.

Five fires on 9H during this period included the May 2010 blaze which leveled Amanda’s Fireplace on 9H, between Falls Road and Falls Industrial Road. That fire was deemed an arson by investigators, though no one was ever arrested. Columbia County issued a $2.5 million stimulus bond to assist Amanda’s with rebuilding.

Just a stone’s throw from Amanda’s Fireplace on Falls Industrial Road one finds TCI of NY, the PCB handler/processor whose facility was devastated by a September 2012 fire. That inferno (and the overnight sequence of explosions) caused an evacuation of neighbors, with all residents within 15 miles told to stay indoors and turn off air conditioning for the day.

As also previously reported here, two additional fires (for a total of seven) occurred just a couple miles off Fire Alley in recent years, on nearby Knitt Road along the border of Ghent and Stockport.

A January 2008 structure fire at 28 Knitt Road forced a woman to jump from a second-story window to safety; and then a July 2011 barn/shed fire at 16 Knitt Road. Knitt Road turns into Falls Road as it heads east, coming to a T at Route 9H—the epicenter of Fire Alley.

And now, stories are breaking of the Federal complaint charging one Eric J. Feight as an alleged co-conspirator (with Glendon S. Crawford) in an outlandish plot to irradiate Muslims with a homemade X-ray device. Feight is listed as a registered Conservative in Columbia County Board of Elections records at 115 Knitt Road—several houses down from the barn and structure fires of 2008 and 2011.

As the Times-Union reports, the terrorism suspect

formerly worked as a computer software expert and “project engineer” for Smith Control Systems... A company official said Feight has not worked at the company since 2010.

Where is Smith Control Systems? Right next door to Amanda’s Fireplace on 9H. Smith Control is #1839, and Amanda’s is #1869.

Coincidence? Almost surely. (It should be noted, Mr. Feight and his accomplice are, innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.) That said, it continues to amaze how consistently one isolated area of a rural county manages to generate both news, and trouble.

In any event, the complaint alleges:

FEIGHT has designed, identified and received needed parts, built, and successfully tested a working remote initiation device to remotely control an industrial x-ray system - which CRAWFORD later demonstrated - and that remote initiation device is powered by a plug-in cigarette lighter electrical source, consistent with CRAWFORD's requirement to put the whole system into a truck so that it can be used against human targets. FEIGHT is aware of CRAWFORD's plan that the remote initiation device be used to remotely control an industrial x-ray system to injure or kill human targets deemed undesirable, and, on November 14, 2012, FEIGHT met with CRAWFORD, UCE #2, and UCE #3 near Albany, NY to discuss the purpose of the project, assign tasks, and confirm his capability to design and build a remote initiation device. 

And:

CRAWFORD and FEIGHT both have used the phrase "sterilize medical waste" to refer to the harming and killing of human beings, and stated that the purpose of their device is to kill human beings. From time to time, however, they each have expressed a reluctance to be the one who actually triggers the device to kill.  

Local man implicated in bizarre terror plot

The Albany Times-Union, Wall Street Journal and others are reporting that a Columbia County resident is one of two men accused of hatching an outlandish “terror radiation plot.

The duo’s goofball idea supposedly had something to do with using a homemade X-ray gun to help Israel and/or the Ku Klux Klan to irradiate Muslims—giving the alleged plot a comic-book sense of implausibility. A prototype is said to have been built, but (surprise, surprise) did not work, though the plot’s purported, um, mastermind may be employed at G.E. as an “industrial mechanic.”.

UPDATE: Phone records indicate that the “Hudson” man actually lives along the border of Stockport and Ghent. (The press often makes this address-based mistake, lumping all 12534 residents, into the City, as when they used to say Gillibrand was from Hudson.)

UPDATE #2: The T-U reports that the alleges accomplice was Eric J. Feight of Knitt Road, who worked at Smith Control Systems on 9H in Ghent. Coincidentally, Smith Control Systems is right next door to two other businesses in the news in recent years: Amanda’s Fireplace, which was felled by a 2011 fire deemed an arson by investigators; and TCI of NY, which of course made national news when the PCB processor’s building exploded last summer.

Power line hearing underway in Ghent

The Article VII public hearing on the proposed power line from Ghent to Stockport is underway as of 4 pm, at the West Ghent firehouse. Judging by the large turnout already, it seems likely the comments will continue well into the evening. The firehouse is located just off 9H near the Commerce Park entrance (a little south of Kozel’s).

$500,000 paid for Allen Street School

Last week, this site reported that property owner Eleanor Ambos was selling the Allen Street School to Eric Galloway, and was also rumored to be negotiating to sell some or all of her other properties as well. Ambos disputed the report, but did not respond to a request to specify about it she deemed incorrect.

There is, however, no longer any question that Ambos has sold the Allen Street School. The document pictured above turned up during this site’s periodic review of public sales records (RP-5217s) at the Columbia County Real Property Department.

This document clearly demonstates that the Galvan Initiatives Foundation paid $500,000 for the property, with T. Eric Galloway and attorney Mark Greenberg representing Galvan as its agents. The transfer was recorded on May 30th, 2013.

TCI already in hot water at the Port of Coeymans

According to an Albany Times-Union report, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has told TCI of NY to “to stop operating because they never got state permits” at its temporary location at the Port of Coeymans:

Officials from the state [DEC] told TCI of New York to immediately stop removing mineral oils and PCBs from electrical equipment for later recycling, DEC spokeswoman Lisa King said Thursday.

The firmness and alacrity of DEC’s response in Coeymans stands in stark contrast to their handling of the PCB handler’s catastrophic fire last summer in Ghent.

Nearly 10 months since that disaster leveled the company’s Ghent facility, there is no evidence that DEC has taken any enforcement action against TCI. That apparent inaction is set against a backdrop of excuses from the State for canceling planned dioxin tests, and DEC inspectors declining neighbors’ pleas for them to analyze samples of oily debris which fell on their yards, homes, decks and pools.

The disparity suggests either a welcome change in DEC’s attitude, or else that somebody with pull in Albany must have a home near—or across the River—from Coeymans.

Local, organic, both, or neither?

My piece on the farm-to-table dining trend in our area—referencing  restaurants such as Crossroads Food Shop, Grazin’, Luna 61 and more—is now live at this link at Rural Intelligence.

Quotable Neiman

Consider what you mean when you tell someone: be realistic. It’s another way to say: lower your expectations. It’s also connected with a view of maturity that holds growing up to be a process of becoming resigned.

— PHILOSOPHER SUSAN NEIMAN (IN THE BOSTON GLOBE, 2008)