Thanks in part to a push from the Daily Freeman, the web service SeeClickFix is getting a lot of use in Kingston lately. The Freeman lists activity from a day in the life of the service, from complaints about potholes to barely-veiled calls for vigilante justice.
As if you hadn't heard enough from the DEC this week, the Times Union ran an interview today with Wallace "Wally" John, the special assistant for natural resources to Pete Grannis and a West Shokan resident. No mention of, oh, gas drilling in the Catskills, but there is an interesting discussion about the futility of bringing elk back east:
We picked the Catskills, and started holding public meetings. And then in 2002, chronic wasting disease hit the deer population outside Rome. And that put the kibosh on everything. The federal government shut down the transport of elks across state borders. If New York ever becomes CWD-free, that would open the door for us to resume.
Gas prices in New York really did jump by 5.4 cents last week. For no real reason, since the national average has stayed flat, according to the Daily Freeman.
Anna and Robert Dioguardi of Catskill Retreat are looking for some enterprising caprines to help keep their lawn under control.
Naturally, there's a Goat Rental directory on the Internet. Alas, it has no New York State listings. Surely it's only a matter of time.
The Daily Yonder tipped us off to this: In Kentucky, poet and newspaper columnist Constance Alexander recently lampooned the state's perpetually tardy budgetmakers with a mocking bit of verse modeled after "Casey At The Bat." An excerpt:
The outlook isn't brilliant for the Bluegrass State today.
Tomorrow's not much better and the landscape's gloomy gray.
No budget passed in Frankfort after sixty days in session.
The void in leadership is vast enough to cause depression.
Sounds familiar. The Syracuse Post-Standard is reporting today that New York is set to run out of money by June, and there's still no budget in sight.
In the spirit of Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and Calvin Trillin, we're calling on New Yorkers to take up their pens on the state's budget disaster. Here's a limerick to get you started.
Don't get mud on those $114 "Dry Aged" jeans from Barney's, guys. (What do they do, hang them from meathooks?)
Though I admit: That orange enamel cookpot is totally classy.
Catskill High School and Middle School went on lockdown on Thursday after the superintendent heard what she thought was a gunshot. Turns out it was actually a tree limb crashing, she later told the Daily Freeman:
The schools immediately went into lock-out mode, meaning that no additional people were allowed inside the buildings. School officials then contacted village police, who scouted the area and set up a perimeter. “They advised us that there was tree removal work being done in a place very close to the area. They believed when the tree was felled, it gave off the sound of a gunshot,” Farrell said.
Despite a statewide burn ban that prohibits any burning of brush until May 14, town fire departments are still allowed to burn brush as part of their training exercises. But towns looking to kill two birds with one stone by having the fire department burn their waste could face legal problems, says the Adirondack Daily Enterprise.
"I know it's a legitimate fire training and can be done," [Wilmington supervisor Randy] Preston said. "I'm just trying to find out, before we make any move, what DEC would be planning on doing. I guess it's going to be up to us whether we're going to push the envelope or not."
Richard Reeve, the head of the Family Foundation and a Catskills blogger in his own right, caught this shot of a ruined castle on the Hudson this week. It's near Beacon, on the eastern shore of the river, so not quite the Catskills, but we couldn't resist. It looks just like a Thomas Cole painting, doesn't it?
Flickr photo used with permission: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccseed/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
For folks in search of sources for raw cow and goat milk, Pure Catskills helpfully posts a list of local farms.
Photo of raw milk being skimmed by Flickr user Chiot's Run. Posted under a Creative Commons license.
