Monticello stabber indicted
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White Lake Mansion House to be torn down
The aging Mansion House in White Lake has a date with destiny, according to developer Pawel Efraimov, who is planning to tear it down as soon as he gets the final go-ahead from the Bethel's Planning Board.
The Times Herald-Record reports that Town Supervisor Daniel Sturm is on board:
The developer would tear down the deteriorating mansion, which was built in the 1800s. Sturm said it would be too costly to restore it.
The Mansion House has been the darling of those who love the look of decaying grandeur. There are several luscious photos of the structure on Flickr.
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Chasing the ghost of Levi Hill
A curator at the National Museum of American History has spent three years trying to answer a question that has perplexed scientists and historians: Was Levi Hill a fake?
Hill, a 19th-century Baptist minister in West Kill, claimed to have invented color photography. But he was unable -- or perhaps unwilling -- to back up his claims, and by the time he died in 1865, he had widely been dismissed as a fake.
The NMAH's Michelle Delaney isn't so sure. From a story in the current issue of Smithsonian magazine:
Hoping to resolve the question of what Hill actually accomplished, she teamed up with independent conservator Corinne Dune and experts from the Getty Conservation Institute and George Eastman House. They analyzed the Smithsonian’s collection of 62 Hillotypes, using the latest methods of spectroscopy to identify materials and pigments without damaging the works. What they found largely vindicated the inventive clergyman.
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Ulster County needs a math lesson
No matter how you crunch the numbers on Ulster County's new middle-management union contract, it adds up to a huge lump-sum cash payout the county can ill afford. The contract -- the subject of a contentious meeting of the county Budget and Finance Committee last night -- is proving a little too confusing for the county's elected officials.
Times Herald-Record reporter Adam Bosch helpfully breaks down the math that has legislators stymied, and notes:
No calculators were present at the meeting.
Mike Madsen says the union's 13% pay hike and $500,000 in retroactive pay could't possibly come at a worse time:
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Prejudice in the Catskills: Not what you think
That's filmmaker Jessica Vecchione, discussing the making of her flim "Bienvenidos a Fleischmanns" last night at the Foothills Performing Arts Center in Oneonta.
The screening of the documentary, which is about the village of Fleischmanns in Delaware County which boasts a population that is 40 percent Mexican, was packed to the gills. (Rumor has it that several professors required it, $7 admission and all, for course credit.)
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Vulture effigies don't work in Florida
Good citizens of New Paltz, take note: they've tried hanging dead vultures around to scare the live ones away in Florida, too, and the results were "mixed." From the Miami Herald:
The first few days they had it up there, oooh, it was eerie around here," recalled Hyde, who lost a windshield seal on her Ford Explorer to vultures. "The birds and crows were flying around them like crazy."
Sounds like this particulare pest-remediation method might just rile 'em up. So, does anyone know whether the New Paltz effigies work?
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Governor's race a forum on NYS gas drilling?
Looks like GOP hopeful Steve Levy wants to make it a campaign issue:
“The folks up here in this region I see like the potential of economic development and they are going to monitor this because this is their drinking water and lake systems. We've got to get moving and get the state's regulatory stonewalling out of the way so that Pennsylvania doesn't get all the benefits of tapping this major reserve. Upstate communities are dying and it's good for our economy and if you do it right, it can be good for the environment."
Earlier: NY Daily News digs up Cuomo anti-gas-drilling report.
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Kingston mayor: Stop sticking us with the county's welfare bill
The Daily Freeman reports that Kingston mayor James Sottile and legislator David Donaldson are pushing for Ulster County to take over all Safety Net payments. (Ulster County is the only county in New York State that bills individual municipalities for the program.)
Getting the county to take over payments will be a tough sell to towns that aren't currently on the hook for Safety Net. But recent revelations that Kingston has been signing some of its neighbors' welfare checks could help the effort to pass the buck to the county:
The county says those Safety Net clients in the Zip code who live outside the city will no longer be the responsibility of the city but the actual towns where they live. Some officials, including Ulster town Supervisor James Quigley, a Republican, say the change could cost their municipalities thousands of dollars.
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Kingston gumshoes track alleged Henry Street shooter to the Bronx
From the Times Herald-Record:
Kingston detectives on Monday arrested Curtis Williams, 36, outside his home at E. 168th Street in the Bronx. Williams was charged with reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon, both felonies.
Police had been searching for Williams ever since they said he fired a sawed-off shotgun at a crowd on Henry Street Nov. 21. His shot didn’t hit anyone, but Jarrin “Phat Boy” Rankin, fired back with a handgun and hit Williams in the neck.
Prosecutors say the November shooting was connected to the execution-style killing of Charles King in February, allegedly because King cooperated with a police investigation of the incident.
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"Gas Odyssey" premiers this Friday
Another fracking movie, this one called "Gas Odyssey," makes its worldwide debut this week in Binghamton. (See our calendar listing for details.)
From the trailer, which is sadly impossible to embed, it looks like the film explores why the people of Dimock, Pennsylvania, have chosen to embrace gas drilling. A few quotes from the townspeople who are interviewed:
"We have an opportunity here to put money in everybody's pocket," says the owner of a pizza parlor.
"If there was something else we could do, I'm all for it. I don't see anything else in the future, in the near future, that's going to save these communities," says an unidentified man.
"For the first time in 25 years I'm actually making money, and I think that's kind of nice," says another businessowner.
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