Shandaken Pan Arts festival comes to a venue near you

Native Tongue Dance (Bill Barrett, lead singer, shown above with Maria Todaro at Mama's Boy in Phoenicia) headlines Saturday's Shandaken Pan Arts Festival kick-off. 

The Shandaken Pan Arts festival kicks off 10 days of music, art and writing in venues spread around the town of Shandaken with Native Tongue Dance getting things started this Saturday night at Phoenicia's The Arts Upstairs at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $5.

Highlights include studio visits, available by appointment all festival long (a complete list is available at the festival's website), a "bonfire rave" featuring a conch shell orchestra, and a performance by the Phoenicia choir to close the 10-day party, with events scattered in between that celebrate the area's history and prodigious creative output.

Correction: An earlier version of this story identified "Native Tongue" instead of "Native Tongue Dance" as the performers for Saturday night's festivities. Apologies for any confusion this may have caused.

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Bullet in classroom has Catskill school on lockdown

The Register-Star reports that Catskill High and Middle Schools were on lockdown this afternoon, after a bullet was found in a classroom.

The lockdown was initiated, and Catskill police responded to interview students and perform locker searches.

No firearms were found.

Students have now been dismissed from the school.

WNYT reports it was a .22 bullet, and may have been "hunting-related."

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Letter to the Editor: DEP's Paul Rush defends Ashokan releases

National nurse-in goes local at Kingston Target

Video of nurse-in at Kingston Target on Wednesday, December 28 by YouTube user mamakating.

When Texas mom Michelle Hickman was hassled in her local Target store for breastfeeding her infant, she turned to breastfeeding advocates who helped organize a nationwide "nurse-in" using social media. New Paltz lactation consultant Donna Bruschi picked up the ball locally and coordinated an event at the Kingston Target store, which drew about two dozen moms and a dad to the store's cafe area last Wednesday morning.

Official Target policy states that nursing mothers are welcome in all public and private areas of the store, leaving breastfeeding advocates puzzled as to why individual employees at various stores have raised a fuss on several reported occasions in the past several years. Bruschi praised the cooperation she got from management at the Hudson Valley Mall location, and passers-by seemed more supportive than not.

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Constantine Sidamon-Eristoff, champion of the 1997 watershed agreement, dies at 81

Prince Constantine Sidamon-Eristoff

Prince Constantine Sidamon-Eristoff, a former New York City highway commissioner, one-time head of the city’s Department of Transportation, and Environmental Protection Agency - Region 2 administrator, died last week at his home in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  The cause was esophageal cancer, according to his son, Andrew. He was 81.

Sidamon-Eristoff, known to friends and colleagues as Connie, is remembered around the region for his commitment to environmental preservation and land use planning. From the Mid-Hudson News:

Sidamon-Eristoff was the “patriarch of one of the Hudson Valley’s leading conservation families,” said Ned Sullivan, president of Scenic Hudson.

“For years, Connie has been a force for environmental conservation, for effective transportation and for good natured leadership of all kinds in the philanthropic community in the Hudson Valley and beyond,” Sullivan said.

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Watershed Post Half-Hour News Hour: Top Stories of 2011

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.

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Cuomo to give State of the State address today

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's State of the State address, delivered from Albany earlier this afternoon:

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Ballot box trumps party politics on Lexington town council

Lexington's new town council, left to right: John Berger, Dixie Baldrey (supervisor), William Pushman, Jo Ellen Schermerhorn, Lynn Byrne. Photo by Walter Severini.

Lexington, a small Greene County town that was the locus of some very strange political shenanigans after last year's election, has officially returned from the Twilight Zone.

As the first order of business as Lexington’s new town supervisor, Dixie Baldrey presented a motion appointing Lynn Byrne to the one vacancy still left on the town council.  The motion was passed unanimously at the opening session of the new town council on Tuesday, January 3.

Lexington has now filled both of the two open slots on their council.  The first slot was opened when Byrne, a Democrat, and William Pushman, a Republican, tied for a seat in the November election. The second was opened by the resignation of town councilman Glenn Howard, who recently moved out of Lexington. 

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Prattsville's new supervisor: Same as the old supervisor

The leadership of the flood-ravaged Greene County town of Prattsville has been in limbo since November, when Republican Alan Huggins won the supervisor's race as a write-in candidate, then promptly resigned.

But last night, the Prattsville town board re-appointed Democrat Kory O'Hara, who lost narrowly to Huggins in November as a sitting incumbent, to the post.

Town board member Bonita Chase said that the board met in a special meeting last night to make the appointment.

"The board felt it was in the best interest of the town to continue with current leadership, just because of continuity," she said.

At last night's meeting, another board member, Republican Steve Oliver, resigned, citing health reasons. The board appointed Greg Cross, former supervisor of Lexington, to fill his seat. Oliver had served two years of his four-year term.

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