Above: Work begins in earnest at the Phoenicia Library this week, gutted by fire in March of 2011 and currently occupying a temporary space on Ava Maria Drive. According to a newsletter from library director Liz Potter, restoration work on the building is slated to take 8 to 10 months before the library can move back to its old digs.
The young ones are the most voracious. A revenant reveler at the 2012 Rosendale Zombie Festival; photo by Debora Lyons.
Rosendale will be one dead festival town this Saturday afternoon -- the walking dead, that is. Residents and visitors will don their morbid best, gather in Willow Kiln Park, and shamble down Main Street on a collective quest for fresh brains, returning to the park afterwards for a hideous frolic at the Fourth Annual Rosendale Zombie Fest.
George A. Romero has remarked that zombies are the blue-collar monsters, and they’re much beloved in the People’s Republic of R-dale. Expect to see whole families of zombies. Senior zombies. Infant zombies. Canine zombies. Last year there was a zombie Jesus.
It's that time of year once again. Photo taken in Monticello on September 18 by John of Catskills Photography; shared in the Watershed Post's Flickr group pool.
Sunday marked the official arrival of autumn, and brought some cooler weather along with it. Tonight, look for clear skies and temperatures in the 30s with a chance of frost, says Hudson Valley Weather; the rest of the week is shaping up to be fairly glorious September weather.
Above: A video produced by Sean Eldridge's campaign, announcing the 27-year-old Democrat's bid for New York State's 19th Congressional district. Source: Eldridge's campaign website.
With the release of a campaign video Sunday, 27-year-old Democrat Sean Eldridge officially joined the 2014 race for New York's 19th Congressional District, currently represented by Republican Chris Gibson.
The video highlights Eldridge's support of the local business community through Hudson River Ventures, an investment firm Eldridge founded in 2011.
"I love the Hudson Valley," Eldridge says in the video. "It's where I’m building my family, my home, and my business. Right now the voices of everyday New Yorkers are being drowned out by the special interests and party politics causing gridlock in Washington. We need an independent voice who will fight for us. And that’s why I’m running for Congress."
This weekend, get in on the jokes as the first Woodstock Comedy Festival lights up the town with three days devoted to the art and science of laughter. Stand-up, films, and a closer look at how comedy is created will all be part of the picture, presented by folks like Dick Cavett, the Upright Citizens Brigade, and Bobcat Goldthwait as well as some of our most hilarious local wisecrackers. And every ticket sold represents a pie in the face of violence.
Founder and executive director Chris Collins learned early that humor can help. "I came from a large, anxious, hilarious family," he said. "We made fun out of hardship. I teach at SUNY Ulster, and I try to do fun stuff there too. I finally decided it was time to get off the proverbial pot and combine that love with charity."
In choosing causes to target, Collins got very serious. "I started studying domestic violence and human trafficking because most of the victims are women and children, and that’s over half of the world’s population.
The Internet: It really is a series of tubes. Photo of data cable by Flickr user Arild Nybø; published under Creative Commons license.
A long-awaited project to bring high-speed broadband internet and cable televison to some of the most rural towns in the Catskills got underway earlier this month. By 2015, the project will make broadband service available to over 1900 homes and businesses in Conesville, Gilboa and Halcott -- all deeply rural towns that currently have no access to broadband -- and remote areas of Middletown and Roxbury that have not yet been reached by broadband service.
Above: A document showing a roughly 1,200-acre parcel acquired by the state in Big Indian, near the Belleayre Ski Center. Source: DEC website.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation has announced that the agency has completed a proposal to reclassify about 940 acres of a 1,200-acre state-owned parcel in Big Indian near the Belleayre Ski Center, which was acquired by the state in 2011 as part of a deal with the developers of the proposed Belleayre Resort.
In a press release about the proposal -- released on Monday -- the DEC announced that a public hearing would be held the next day to get public input on the reclassification. The hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, September 17 at 7pm at the Belleayre Ski Center's Overlook Lodge.
Coming in November: The Catskills Food Guide. Today, we're unveiling our cover, which features photography by Accord photographer Richard A. Smith, who captured local farms and restaurants for us, as well as a tableau of Catskills food products styled and photographed by food stylist and part-time Roxbury local Toni Brogan.
Take a look and see how many local products and dishes you recognize. (Bonus points if you can guess every local farm, producer or restaurant that's represented on the cover.)
We're proud to announce that the Catskills Food Guide is being sponsored by Spillian: A Place to Revel; and Agriforaging, Inc., a farm and food consultancy. We'll be showcasing Spillian and Agriforaging's food-themed events, classes and feasts throughout the guide and the year.
Photo illustration. The reservoir in the background is the Pepacton in Delaware County; photo by Timothy Cox, shared in the Watershed Post's Flickr group pool.
Since 9/11, the number of Department of Environmental Protection police officers in the watershed has more than doubled to include 221 officers, as part of the agency's post-9/11 efforts to boost security around its upstate reservoirs.
Yet for eight years New York City has refused to include the agency's Environmental Protection Officers (EPOs) in the same category as the New York Police Department and other uniformed employees. That means that the officers aren’t entitled to benefits like increases to night-shift wages, allowance to buy required uniforms, and “line of duty” leave for injuries that happen on the job. And they haven’t seen a raise since 2005.
Above: Deputy John Demeo and K-9 Osman "Ozzie" Steele, the Delaware County Sheriff's Office's newest drug law enforcement team. Ozzie is the namesake of a famous Catskills officer of the law: Undersheriff Osman Steele, who was the only casualty of the Anti-Rent War in Andes, shot by protesting tenant farmers on August 7, 1845. Photo courtesy of the Delaware County Sheriff's Office.
Just one day out of the academy, Delaware County's newest "officer" was already making arrests.
Osman "Ozzie" Steele, a young German shepherd who recently joined the Delaware County Sheriff's Office, graduated from K-9 Narcotics Detection School on Friday, September 6, along with his human crimefighting partner John Demeo. Just over 24 hours later, in the wee hours of Sunday morning, Ozzie and Demeo made their first arrest: A drug bust in the village of Walton.
