History

Today at 1pm and 3pm on the Watershed Post Half-Hour News Hour, we come back from a winter vacation with the stories you may have missed while snoozing in front of the fire. Also: A look back at our top stories of 2011. 

CLICK TO LISTEN LIVE to today's show at two times:

1pm: WIOX 91.3FM

3pm: WGXC 90.7FM

The ARCHIVE of the show is available at the bottom of this post.

The Watershed Post Half-Hour News Hour airs live at 1pm on Wednesdays on WIOX 91.3 FM in Delaware and Ulster counties and at 3pm on Wednesdays on WGXC 90.7 FM in Greene and Columbia counties. 

You can listen to past editions of the show by clicking here.  Read more

Window display at the Phoenicia Pharmacy. Photo by Flickr user Lori_NY; published under Creative Commons license.

When I think of historic places, I think of roadside markers. I think of heroic conflicts and memorable people long deceased. I think of villages restored to resemble the way they looked a long time ago, with actors reenacting the way folks lived in the distant past. I think of old machines on display that few of us have ever seen actually used, all from a bygone era. These are places set aside intentionally. They have velvet ropes to keep us from sitting on the chairs, and signs warning us not to touch the machines. The reenactment scenes stay confined within clearly defined borders, separate from the modern world.  Read more

Ellen Verni has been writing "Home Cookin'," her column of Catskills recipes and rumination, for 24 years. She is sharing some of her archived columns with the Watershed Post. You can get more of Verni on her blog, at homecookincolumn.blogspot.com.

In a reminder that devastating flooding has hit the Catskills before, we're running a column that Verni wrote on January 24, 1996, a week after floodwaters innundated the town of Middletown and the village of Margarteville in Delaware County. At the time, Verni was working at the Catskill Mountain News, the offices of which were damaged by floodwaters. Above is a photo of damage in Margaretville caused by yet another flood, one that hit Margaretville in 1950-51. That photo is from the Delaware County New York Genealogy and History website, and was taken by Donnie Kelly.

Standing on Main Street looking down toward what used to be Bridge Street on Saturday morning my first thought was that this isn’t supposed to happen to people like us. We’re good people. We work, we pray, we obey the rules. We go about our business. We watch and read the news and tsk tsk at the plight of the homeless and unemployed, the despair of those on welfare and the suffering of the people in Bosnia. But then our world turns on a dime, grabs us by the seat of our pants right out of our comfy chair in front of the TV and places us in tomorrow’s telecast. And now someone else is tsk tsking at our condition, our misfortune.  Read more

Dispatch from Shandaken #3: This is not a test. This is the real thing. Clementine is missing and probably is very scared, and her people, including two children, are worried sick over her. A $500 reward has been posted for her safe return.

This is also an example of how an online newspaper can be very useful in ways that normal print media cannot replicate. Above is the flyer being circulated now in the greater Phoenicia area to help bring Clementine home. You can help in two ways. Please keep an eye out for this shy and frightened dog, and also, if you can, print out a few copies of the flyer by downloading the picture above, and then distribute them yourself wherever you think it might help.  

I don't publish these dispatches everyday so please remember in the future that you can post lost dog notices in the Watershed Post yourself by using our announcement feature. (Click "Post an Announcement" in the top righthand corner of the Shandaken town page.)  Read more