| Watershed Post

Phoenicia rings in the holidays

A pair of medieval fiddles built by John Bromka, half of the Bells and Motley duo who will be playing at the Empire State Railway Museum this Saturday.

Something magical happens when a community actually celebrates together; when it’s  not just going through the motions because that’s what you’re supposed to do, or simply  what you have to do in order to make a few additional sales. That is not to say that  shoppers aren’t being seriously courted here right about now. Merchants in Phoenicia,  just like everywhere else, do need extra sales around Christmastime to keep their  businesses solvent for the year.

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Fokine Ballet performs the Nutcracker in Oneonta

Wherever in the world you find ballet, you'll find the Nutcracker -- and the wilds of upstate New York are no exception. This Friday and Saturday, the Fokine Ballet Company performs Tchaikovsky's most popular ballet at the Goodrich Theater at SUNY Oneonta.

The Fokine Ballet Company features professional dancers from Poland, Russia, and the NYC metropolitan area as well as local students at the Decker School of Ballet. For a glimpse of what Oneonta theatergoers are in for this weekend, check out the video below: A clip from a 2008 Fokine Ballet production of the Nutcracker, featuring Russian dancer Eugene Petrov as a soloist in the Russian Variation.

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dance

ballet

Fokine Ballet Company

Nutcracker

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Arts

And then there were three: Lexington town councilman resigns

For a town of less than 1000 people, Lexington has some pretty exciting politics. The latest development: Glenn Howard of the Lexington town council has abruptly resigned, midway through a town meeting held last Tuesday, December 6.

Michael Ryan for The Daily Mail reports that Howard's resignation was tied into his residency. Residency has been a contentious issue in town government; both town supervisor Greg Cross and town board member Keith Mellott have come under fire for residing outside of Lexington while serving in office.

From today's Daily Mail:

Howard said he was resigning midway through his first 4-year term to “squelch any rumors” circulating in the community about his residency, noting he has “moved to another address” outside town due to a “personal issue.”

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Government

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Greene County

Lexington

Dashing Through the Snow Weekend

Winter Solstice Concert with Happy Traum

Watershed Post Half-Hour News Hour: WYBN

This week on the Watershed Post Half-Hour News Hour, we talk with Dan Viles, the owner of Cable Ad Net, a cable television advertising company that has launched a brand-new over-the-airwaves TV station, WYBN TV 14, from the top of Windham Mountain.

Listen live to today's show at two times by clicking the links below, or hear the archived Mp3 at the bottom of this post:

1pm: WIOX 91.3FM

3pm: WGXC 90.7FM

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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Watershed Post Half-Hour News Hour

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How "public access" came to DEP lands

Above: DEP Deputy Commissioner Paul Rush at the Ashokan Reservoir this summer. Photo from the DEP, via Flickr.

The relationship between the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and the upstate communities who live in its watershed is usually a little tense. Locals tend to think of the DEP as a bunch of outsiders; city people who are out to buy up all available land in the Catskills so that Manhattanites can drink pristine unfiltered water.

The DEP used to help that perception along by keeping its upstate lands largely inaccessible to its upstate neighbors. Not so long ago, you couldn't take a step on most of the extensive lands the DEP owns in the Catskills without getting a special permit from the agency itself.

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NYC Department of Environmental Protection

Catskill Mountain Artisans Guild Winter Showcase

Watching ice freeze in East Meredith

Today, the Hanford Mills Museum in East Meredith, Delaware County, did its first "ice check" of the season. It's a winter ritual that culminates in the annual Ice Harvest, a festive occasion each February that involves kids wielding traditional ice-cutting saws, a couple of very large draft horses, and hot cider all around.

There are probably more exciting things to do than watch ice freeze. (Even in Delaware County.) But the narrator in the video above is genuinely excited about the first inch of solid ice on the pond, and it's a little bit contagious.

In all seriousness: If the museum keeps taking detailed notes on when the pond begins to freeze and the thickness of the ice on various days of the year, in a hundred years, they'll have a pretty impressive data set with which to document local climate change.

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The truck that chicken dinners built

Top: The new tires on "The USA," Olive's vintage fire truck. Above: A slideshow of photos of "The USA" on Flickr, courtesy of Ralph VanKleeck Jr. Click the photos to view the captions.

Bringing a vintage 1936 Holabird fire truck owned by the town of Olive back to life has been Ralph VanKleeck Jr.'s mission ever since 2008. Four years later, after many hours spent in the garage tinkering with the truck itself and many more hours spent fund-raising for its restoration, VanKleeck got his wish. The Holabird, which the fire department affectionately calls "The USA," made its public debut during West Shokan's Memorial Day parade this past May.

"The USA" was Olive's first fire truck. Bought by a group of private citizens in 1947 from a US Army surplus sale, the truck was there when the fire department was founded. It was used until 1959, when it broke down.

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Olive Fire Department

Ralph VanKleeck Jr.

The USA

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