Ice still thin, but fattening up
Ice climbers, take note: The guides at Mountain Skills say conditions are looking pretty sweet for this weekend.
Gunks climber Alex Deadpoint has some great photos from a recent trip to Sleepy Hollow.
Elk roaming the Catskills again: Maybe someday
Times Herald-Record outdoor columnist David Dirks gets wistful over elk, last seen in New York State in the 1840s.
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More on hospital flap from the Daily Star
The Oneonta paper has a story in today's edition about Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's crackdown on hospitals in the New York City watershed. Assemblyman Clifford Crouch (R-Guilford) raises the looming spectre of the hospitals losing their $1 million loans from the Catskill Watershed Corporation because of the A.G.'s actions:
“I am requesting that all of the consent orders and enforcement actions be rescinded and any fines or settlement be waived and/or reimbursed immediately,” Crouch wrote. “Implementation of these unnecessary stipulations coupled with the loss of such loans will not only create a fiscal crisis, but significantly increase the cost of health care at these facilities, and could result in a catastrophic health care crisis for those individuals who rely on them when these hospitals and nursing homes are forced to close their doors.”
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High water in the reservoirs: Too much of a good thing?
The debate between local pols and the NYC's DEP about how to manage high water levels goes on, the Daily Freeman reports.
From the vault, here's a NYT editorial from 2006 on the topic.
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Bacon: The great uniter
The Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin reports that pro- and anti-gas-drilling groups in the area sat down over breakfast recently to talk about what they have in common when they're not hurling nasty epithets at one another.
Dan Fitzsimmons, chairman of the landowners group, proposed the informal meeting of six to allow both sides to discuss mutual interests largely ignored in caustic exchanges at public events and rallies. A primary focus of both groups includes preserving and building a sustainable local economy.
Both sides discarded high-profile criticism and blunt rhetoric, and instead spent much of the morning listening to each other over coffee, toast, eggs and pancakes.
Let's have more of this, please.
It's Groundhog Day
Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning.
Translation: While the rest of the nation grouses about six more weeks of winter, here in the Catskills we'll be hoping the woodpile lasts til May.
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February is Black History Month
And we're celebrating it. (Maybe you thought there was no black history in the Catskills?)
Check out this find from the papers of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society: depositions from an 1822 trial in Catskill, Greene County in which "James Fox a negro" is accused of being a runaway slave.
Bard College prof Myra Young Armstead has written a brief history of African-Americans in Sullivan County from the 1930s to the 1980s, and you can find it here.
Also worth checking out: Honor to the Hills, a young adult historical fiction about the Underground Railroad, set in the Catskills in the 1850s.
Image: The Main Street Bistro in New Paltz celebrates the occasion. (There's another 's' in there somewhere, guys. But the pancakes sound awesome.) Photo by Lissa Harris.
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Nevele sale too good to be true
A couple of weeks ago, we celebrated along with the Long Island Business News and Times Herald-Record that the Nevele had finally been sold. Well, it was under contract, anyway. Which is just paperwork, right?
Wrong. The THR's Adam Bosch reports that a few things still stand in the way of the sale. Among them: a lawsuit from the current owner's partner, $5 million in debt, an email to local officials that smells like a shakedown, and empty-sounding promises of bringing the Black Eyed Peas to Ellenville.
The tenor of discussions between local officials and Tricon has county lawmakers wondering if the deal is real.
"I've seen tactics like this before, and every time it's turned out to be smoke and mirrors," said Legislator Joe Stoeckeler, D-Ellenville.
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Hudsonsbowie?
The NY Daily News gossips that David Bowie and Iman are looking at Annie Leibovitz's $11 million pad in Rhinebeck.
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The hills have eyes (for drilling)
Interest in the Marcellus Shale is heating up at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which just launched a tipline where New Yorkers can report sightings of illegal gas and oil drilling. The agency is asking residents of Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York and West Virginia to "report suspicious oil and gas well activity in the Northeast." And they have some pretty specific guidelines for what they want to know.
The "Eyes on Drilling" campaign has a hotline -- 1-877-919-4372 -- and an email address: [email protected].
Sue Heavenrich, a writer who has been blogging about gas drilling in upstate New York at The Marcellus Effect, explains why the EPA is interested:
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