February 16, 2010

Molinaro gets Sacked

Bob Sacks of Copake shared this letter-to-the-editor he recently sent to the Register-Star... And as ever, those submitting letters to any area paper are encouraged to email copies here as well. --S.

Disappointed in the ‘No’ vote of Marcus Molinaro

I am greatly disappointed in the ‘No’ vote of Marcus Molinaro on simplifying absentee ballot forms.
I would have expected Marcus, a life-long politician, to go out of his way to respect the rights of voters and his constituents. I would have expected him to understand that simplifying the voting process is what our strong democracy is built upon.
I’m not sure what is more disturbing–the fact that it seems like Marcus Molinaro has joined Greg Fingar’s group who want to disenfranchise voters by making it difficult for people to vote, or that Marcus thinks an open absentee ballot process is a bad thing, when he says, “I think this just confuses the matter even further. . . You need a note when you’re home sick from school… This would negate the necessity of a note.”
Yes, Marcus, in some states an open absentee ballot process is where anyone can file for an absentee ballot for any reason. In fact, you don’t even need a reason. And what is wrong with that? The important fact should be that you vote, not where or how you vote. We should encourage people to vote by making it simple and easy, not confusing and complicated.

I find the whole story sad, sad for all of us. At least there were only five Assemblymen who voted no. So perhaps I should be looking on the bright side, where a vast majority of Republicans and Democrats have come together on this important issue in a constructive and bipartisan way. I do understand Tedisco’s sour grapes on this subject, but I admit that I am mystified that Marcus, who originally signed onto the bill, has changed his mind and aligned himself with a disgruntled few.

Perhaps we can use this no vote to galvanize the press and the public to do the right thing and get this bill passed in the Senate. Senator Saland, where do you stand on this important issue?

ROBERT SACKS
Copake

February 15, 2010

“Buttery Jager Nipple”

The Turnpike Inn, Ghent (NY)

NOTE: This phrase apparently refers to one of these mixed drinks. Ah... I ... did not know that.

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Trouble in the Garden

The intrepid Carole Clark—a longtime local volunteer, activist and former proprietor of the pioneering Charleston restaurant—has sent the following letter in response to this recent article in the Register-Star. (And there’s more to come soon at this site on the latest Boys & Girls Club controversy.)

Re: “Scalera Wants to Uproot Garden” by Jamie Larson

If Rick Scalera’s stated desire to dismantle the garden at the Hudson Youth Center is realized it would be a significant loss for the children of the Hudson Youth Center.

Since the raised-bed garden was installed last spring, through a generous grant from the Columbia County Healthcare Consortium, it has been a magnet, giving the Youth Center’s children a chance to grow and cook with fresh produce and to sit down together to a meal of their own making.

Ideally located outside the front entrance to the Youth Center, it is where the children are, and where the city has installed a kitchen so that the children can learn about food and cooking (This was also partially funded by the Columbia County Healthcare Consortium.) The garden served both the Oakdale Summer Day Camp and the Youth Center’s programs in the spring and fall of 2009. The kitchen was used by two afterschool programs: Healthy Baking and Kids in the Kitchen/Yoga Buddies, as well as a holding facility for the Senior lunch program.

When the garden was put in last May, there was great interest in participating in its planting by the children at the Youth Center. No one had to sign up in advance, anyone who was interested was able to participate, learning how to plant seedlings and seeds and understanding how plants grow.

Children enrolled in the Center’s Oakdale summer camp carried on with the care and harvesting of the garden. They saw the different ways that vegetables grow, (some as the fruit of the plant, and some underground), many were introduced to vegetables and herbs they had never heard of, and all became savvy gardeners picking from the plants without harming them. The garden’s produce was used in the menus; when additional vegetables and herbs were needed the children easily stepped outside to gather more and also snack on some cherry tomatoes.

In the fall, the much recognized, popular Kids in the Kitchen/Yoga Buddies program continued to tend, harvest and cook from the garden. Once per 6 week session the children produced a meal to which they proudly invited their families and city officials. On November 16, several weeks before the December 22 family dinner the youth commissioner visited the kitchen and announced that this program as well as the other enrichment programs were being terminated. He did agree to allow the session to continue through its last scheduled week,so as to include the family dinner.

In the cooking programs, vitally linked with the garden, the kids learned how to cook with, and eat unfamiliar fruits and vegetables, prepare a meal as a group, set a table, serve a meal, and enjoy eating it together. Having a mealtime conversation was a new experience for many children. Reading, simple math, nutrition and socialization skills were an important part of the learning. The garden was the lab and the source of fun, discovery, pride and excitement.

At the end of the growing season the garden was “put to bed” for the winter, cleaned out, planted with rye seed and covered with straw. Since the intention was to keep the garden attractive with seasonal displays as well as a source of creative fun for the kids, thematic scenes were created with the help of the Kids In the Kitchen/Yoga Buddies and Youth Center staff.

When the Kids in the Kitchen/Yoga Buddies program was terminated by the mayor and the youth commissioner, (along with all the other structured, content-rich educational programs at the Center) no one at the Youth Center took responsibility for the garden. In the absence of Youth Director Trudy Beicht, who was out on sick leave, the winter display was left to deteriorate. A commitment from the Center’s morning manager to have the staff clear the garden and store the decorations was not followed through on. In the interest of the neighbors and the Hudson business community as well as the children, why didn’t the city cooperate immediately and not allow the display to break down? Was this an attempt to make a case for the removal of the garden?

During the growing season the garden elicited many approving smiles and signals from motorists and admiration of passersby. The children took pride in their garden outside their “building.” Losing the garden at this site will be a loss for these children whose importance to the mayor is secondary to that of a parking space. Is this the message the city wants to send to its children and those who care for them?

Why, if the mayor is so against this garden, did he agree to accept funds for it to be built in the first place? Why are this garden and the other beneficial, successful children’s programs at the Youth Center being targeted?

CAROLE CLARK
Livingston

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Walker Evans in Claverack

Claverack’s own Sedat Pakay will show his film about photographer Walker Evans this coming Sunday (February 21) at 3 p.m. at the Claverack Library, located at the intersection of Route 23B and 9H/23.

Evans, among many other things, took photos in the 1930s of Claverack, Hudson, Millerton, Copake and other area towns. Above are two well-known Claverack houses along Route 23B; his shots of Hudson (examples below) are more evocative of the era. All of these can be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website by clicking here.

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February 14, 2010

The Onteora Range

a/k/a the Catskills, as seen from Stockport (NY)

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February 13, 2010

Marquee values

Community Movie Theater, Catskill (NY)

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Crude and unrefined

Some recent postings here prompted a longtime local resident to share a copy of an old 1984 Hudson Valley Magazine article entitled, An Oil Refinery in our Backyard (There May Soon Be One in Hudson, on the River).

Its authors, Mary Beth Pfeiffer and Robert Miraldi, could not have imagined the extent to which their piece would underscore for future generations how the more things change in Hudson, the more its politics remain crude and unrefined.

First proposed in 1983, the Octane Petroleum project would have entailed a refinery, some 22 storage tanks holding up to 25,000 barrels of oil, and the discharge of some 2.6 million gallons of wastewater annually—all sprawled over 9 acres at the Waterfront, including parts of the river itself, 1.2 acres of which would have been landfilled.

Here are just a few of the more eerily familiar factoids and quotations which have been repeated, in so many words, in later and current controversies:

Then-Mayor Mike Yusko riffing on the then-ubiquitous Rolaids commercial, saying “Relief would be spelled O-C-T-A-N-E.”

Refinery opponents arguing that amenities such as “a restaurant, park or public boating facility could generate money for the city without the same risks.”

Officials of a foreign-owned company arguing that “this stretch of the river is good for little else but industry.”

HCDPA chairman Art Koweek stating that the oil refinery would “save this city” and was “a matter of economic survival for Hudson.”

Koweek adding that the refinery would “put out less pollution than the local hospital”; that those who want access to the river should “go out of town”; and that anyway, the Hudson is “not a recreational river.”

Initial promises of 300 jobs dropping to 146, and then to 43, and then down to 32, even with the State promising to loan $3.6 million to the company for job creation.

Activist John Cody of SHOW (Save Hudson’s Only Waterfront) noting that “the city has been unresponsive to their legitimate concerns.”

City officials trashing Cody’s 300-member organization as “a local vocal group that wants to live in the past.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department noting that a false choice was being presented to the citizens, with no justification for “the conclusion that only two alternatives are available.”

The same Federal agency expressing “concern for the effect of the project on South Bay Wetlands, a sprawling marshy area that would be cut by the facility’s access road.”

The NYS Department of State writing to Mayor Yusko that the refinery “would have a significant adverse effect upon the neighboring historic district,” into which $12 million in public funding had been invested in the previous 15 years—with the city seeming “ready [...] to give up on the revival.”

The Department of State also writing to the Mayor that the (now-endangered) American shad is active nearby, for example using the shoals of Middle Ground Flats “for spawning and nursery grounds.”

Fast-forward to 2010, and we have the New York State Department of State again contemplating a deeply-flawed new Waterfront plan for Hudson. That plan has been in the works since about the time the Octane Petroleum project was finally shelved in the late ’80s, with Hudson officials such as Linda Davidson acting to the bitter end as if the refinery idea was still viable and in play.

As previously reported here, concerned citizens and activists were also subjected to an almost endless stream of press releases and abuse from then-HCDPA director Edmond Schorno, as well as other City leaders such as Cemetery Commissioner Mark Salomon—who pronounced himself “thoroughly disgusted” with refinery opponents, arguing that they “oppose everything” and nothing would “satisfy” those “not interested in the well-being of our local citizenry.”

The full Hudson Valley article may be downloaded in PDF format by clicking here..

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For a better Waterfront

Click here to download a 2-page guide to sending comments to State officials who have the power to revise and improve the City of Hudson’s deeply-flawed draft Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan. We can do better, and you can help. A more extensive site, featuring research and alternative visions for the South Bay, is in the works. [PDF]

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February 12, 2010

Pave (a slice of) paradise

Peter Meyer has submitted the following letter to the Register-Star (in response to their article headlined, “Scalera Wants to Uproot Garden”), and has given permission to reproduce an advance copy here:

To the Editor:

It says a great deal about Mayor Scalera's priorities and his “vision” for the City that he would rip up a garden for kids and replace it with two parking places for cars for adults.

Please, Mr. Mayor, lets have a Youth Center that is for the kids. There's a big City-owned parking lot fifty feet away for the cars.

PETER MEYER
Hudson

NOTE #1: Meyer is a Hudson City School District Board Member and former Hudson Boys & Girls Club director, though he is writing here in a personal, not an official, capacity.

NOTE #2: It’s interesting that newfound Scalera fan Linda Mussmann is cited in the article as being ready to scoop up the youth garden activity (and presumably some related funding) slated to be axed by the Mayor. As in some previous Boys & Girls Club controversies, there’s a sense that programs are being destroyed to consolidate political control.

NOTE #3: Readers are encouraged to email copies of any letters they send to area newspapers here as well, so that the public knows what is (and isn’t) getting printed.

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Virtual Graffiti: Hudson

A copyrighted feature of this website. Photosimulation: Columbia Street, Hudson (NY)

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February 11, 2010

Another view

Published today in The Register-Star.

Will ‘someday’ ever come to the city?

by Sam Pratt

It’s good to see that Rick Scalera is suddenly remembering his 1993 campaign pledge to make the Waterfront “one that we all can be proud of someday.” Seventeen years later, residents are still wondering if “someday” will ever come.

Rick’s 1993 Waterfront pledge is much like two others he made that year. On election night that November, the Register-Star reported that the newly-elected mayor “renewed his pledge to eliminate the city’s meter maids and to rid the city of its drug problems.” How’s he coming along with those promises?

I fully agree when Rick says that progress on the Waterfront “speaks for itself.” Even one look at the so-called “progress” there speaks volumes. But the words it’s speaking are: “Is that all there is?”

If only the Waterfront could talk, it would tell a tale of neglect, inaction, indecision and political shenanigans to fill a very long book.

But for someone who’s always boasting about how long he’s lived here, Rick sure has a short memory.

He’s forgotten, among other things, his spiteful move to derail the 1995 Vision Plan for the Waterfront. He doesn’t mention the more than $500,000 in Waterfront funding that was readily obtained when he was out office in 2000-2001. He’d like people to overlook his 1999-2005 support for a dry cleaning waste and a cement facility by the river, which made Waterfront planning pretty much impossible during those years. And then there were all the other years going back to 1993 when the LWRP process got becalmed under Rick’s “leadership” —until others jump-started it, again when he was again out of office in 2006-2007.

(And by the way: My own office is still in Hudson. Also, since Rick seems to think that proof of ancestry is necessary to have an opinion about Hudson, it happens that my great-grandfather’s grandfather used to buy quahogs from ships in Hudson’s South Bay, and peddled them along what’s now Route 23.)

A detailed review of the sorry history of the Waterfront’s snail’s-paced progress is too long for a letter to the editor, and this back-and-forth could no doubt continue indefinitely. But those interested in reading a full chronology of the missteps and evasions and obstruction which have taken place under the watch of the current and previous mayors can do so at http://tinyurl.com/hudsonwaterfront

At that link, readers will likewise find other detailed information about the more positive, forward-looking vision along the river that citizens have called for, but the city has thus far ignored.

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New Earl paintings

ABOVE: Spock and Buckwheat, $145 each.

Earl Swanigan’s new series of celebrity paintings opens this Friday evening, February 12th at Swallow (the coffee place in the 400 block) in Hudson. They’re actually already on view, if you can't make the opening.

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SamPratt.com