| Watershed Post

Kebabs in Greene County

Douglas Kalajian, one of the two writers behind The Armenian Kitchen, has fond memories of the once-large Armenian community that vacationed in the Catskills:

Maybe you think of the Catskill Mountains as the Borscht Belt, but I remember when the heights around Tannersville, New York, echoed with the sounds of kebab sizzling on the grill and dice skipping across a backgammon board.

He used to spend summers up there with his family at the Washington Irving Hotel, which, he says, was a popular Armenian vacation spot:

I remember eating with all those Armenians in the dining room: Big platters of dolma or kebabs passed around family style as people visited from table to table. It was impossible to get through a meal without at least one serious pinch under the chin from some old person I didn't know but who was just so excited to see me.

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Washington Irving Hotel

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Rosendale in the New York Times

Peter Applebome's Our Towns column made a foray upstate to see how the Rosendale Theatre Collective was doing in its quest to buy the town's much-loved theater. Quite well, he reports:

And almost immediately, as if by osmosis, the idea rose for the Rosendale Theater Collective to take it over and run it as a nonprofit institution. This was not startling. Such things exist. But they don’t necessarily exist in a rural town of 6,400 where $380,000 is needed to buy the local theater and perhaps $600,000 to fully restore and upgrade it. Nor do they necessarily work with an arty collective some of whose members have names like Fre Atlast and f-stop Fitzgerald.

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No, that wasn't pixie dust

Ron Lopez, who has a home between Andes and Downsville, saw snow on the ground yesterday. He has a photo to prove it.

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Budget pain hits Catskill schools

The final numbers will be decided on May 18 at a Board of Education meeting, but it looks like Catskill plans to cut teachers and raise taxes 2.75 percent. The Daily Freeman has the story.

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Imaginary windmill will cost $7.5 million

Updated: SCCC President Mamie Howard Golladay disputes the Sullivan County Democrat's (and the Watershed Post's) take on the windmill debacle. See the email below.

Sullivan County and Sullivan County Community College are trapped in a contract that allows a Saratoga Springs company, Atlantic Energy Solutions, to take a bunch of public money without even building the windmill that they were once supposed to construct. The problem, according to the Sullivan County Democrat, is that the college president didn't read the documents she signed. Because they were blank:

[C]ollege officials did not realize what they were signing – binding documents signed without the aid of their own attorney and at least twice without the review of the County Attorney’s Office. Indeed, Yasgur said SCCC President Mamie Howard Golladay at one point signed blank closing documents given to her by the Bank of New York.

Turns out that the contract says that AES can bleed the county and the college dry without actually building anything:

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Atlantic Energy Solutions

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Government

People

Life before Roe v. Wade

Nearly 50 years (and four grandchildren) after the fact, a Woodstock local reflects on her 1962 illegal abortion:

They brought me to another doctor to verify that I had just had an abortion. Then they put me in a jail cell in the Bronx with a box of Kotex. I was happy that I had been able to have the abortion. I thought that if they really thought it was murder they would have broken in to stop it. I lay in my jail cell and sang Joan Baez songs to myself.

...We thought that once we had won the right, it would always be ours. Now they are trying to take it away, bit by bit. Over the years I’ve spoken at rallies, colleges and once on Oprah to tell what it is like to lose the right to choose. It means going to jail for planning your own family. I’m sorry, but this should not be the function of a free society.

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Bob McCarthy, philosopher-king of Sidney

It's common knowledge around town that Sidney's town supervisor, Bob McCarthy, doesn't care if he gets re-elected. Indeed, one of his first acts as supervisor -- an especially plum job in Delaware County, in which the supervisors rule local government at both the town and county level -- was to vote against all his fellow supervisors in the January election to fill county leadership slots:

McCarthy was the only vote against [Harpersfield supervisor James] Eisel.

...McCarthy also voted against Bill Moon's reappointment as commissioner of social services for a five-year term.

After the meeting, McCarthy said he had not spoken to Donnelly before nominating him and said he offered the nomination "just to be a pain."

McCarthy said he did not support Moon because, "I hate the welfare system, and half of (the recipients) are in my town."

He added: "I am just basically here to break up what's happening -- the same regime. I can do anything I want because I am never running for office again."

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A thousand tea parties bloom

Tea, coffee, and outrageous signage (“You shoved it down our throat March 21st. We’re going to shove it up your ass Nov. 2nd”) were spotted across Upstate New York yesterday, as part of the national Tea Party protests that used Tax Day as an opportunity to protest the current Democratic regime.

Over 100 people protested in the Town of Ulster, according to the Daily Freeman, which has scads of video. (Commenters on the Freeman story are saying that the Freeman underestimated the attendance, which they say was more like several hundred.) Our favorite was this lady:

Graceann Lamberta of Germantown attended Tuesday’s event with a sign that displayed a woman’s pink slip and the phrase “Dems pink slip in November.”

The Times Herald-Record, which was at the same protest, pegged the attendance at more like 350. Their best man-in-the-crowd encounter was this one:

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DEC's review of gas drilling delayed

Looks like staff shortages at the DEC are delaying the completion of a review of the agency's plans for Marcellus shale gas drilling until at least late summer right in the middle of campaign season. From the Ithaca Journal:

"As with every agency, we are understaffed," Grannis said. "Men and women at the DEC are putting in collectively about 50 hours a day, all told, in going through the comments and writing up the responses. I guess if you had to pick a time, I think late summer, early fall we'll be nearing the end of the review process."

Earlier: Governor's race a forum for NYS gas drilling?

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Air slowly hisses out of second-home bubble

In the New York Times today: Catskills vacation home prices are dropping.

Although sellers have not all lowered their list prices to meet buyers’ expectations, brokers estimate that the price for the typical weekend retreat has dropped at least 20 percent since its peak in 2007. That has lured some city dwellers to take the plunge on a getaway home, even as economic worries, snowstorms and tighter lending standards provided a chilling backdrop for the real estate market this winter.

Even in overheated Ulster County vacation-home strongholds like Woodstock, the article says, things are cooling off a little.

“The $300,000 to $500,000 price range, which is the bulk of our dual-residence market, is very, very quiet,” [Harris] Safier said, adding that buyers are looking more in the $250,000 to $300,000 range now.

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