Eh, what's a little rain?

Weather watchers are expecting moderate flooding this weekend around the Catskills region, but nothing massive. That's great news, considering the epic snowfall we got this month. A slow thaw over the past week has local emergency responders breathing a little easier.

From the Daily Star:

“We couldn’t have asked for a better scenario,” [Otsego County official Kevin] Ritton said. “There is quite a bit melting each day. It’s been melting nice and slow.”

The Daily Freeman forecasts "minor to possibly moderate flooding of area rivers and streams."

Earlier: Prepare to be inundated

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Spitzer speaks

Times Herald-Record reporter Adam Bosch shot video of former governor Eliot Spitzer talking about Wall Street regulation at SUNY New Paltz yesterday.

 

Former Spitzer aide Lloyd Constantine has a new book out about Spitzer's brief and rocky tenure as governor, Journal of the Plague Year. Newsweek's Sarah Kliff says Constantine comes off as bitter and self-serving, but delivers the goods.

School lunch goes local for a day

Public school lunch is generally a joyless affair: mystery-meat sloppy joes, frozen tater tots, canned string beans that last saw dirt and sunlight sometime in the Clinton administration. But for one glorious day this week, Delaware Academy students in Delhi got real food.

High school students sampled meatloaf, mashed potatoes, vegetable casserole, beet yogurt dip, apple crisp and maple yogurt, all made with ingredients produced within 50 miles of Delhi.

The lunch was presented by Farm Catskills, a not-for-profit membership group that supports and encourages local agriculture with the aim of “building sustainable communities in a working landscape.”

Beverage politics

Tea Party not your cup of, er, tea? The founders of a new organization dedicated to more civil political discourse have declared this Saturday "Coffee Party Day." Lots of New Yorkers are on board, says the Albany Project.

New York is playing its part in about a dozen fledgling organizations that will meet in the afternoon of Saturday, March 13, 2010.  From Downstate to Upstate, the Empire State is set to become one of the hot spots of the movement to cool down the rhetoric so we can once again speak to our common goals as Americans.

Here's Coffee Party founder Annabel Park, talking about the organization's goals in a reader Q&A on the Washington Post:

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Rolling stones

Millstones used to be critical to America's food chain. Until the late 1800s, when steel rollers began to take over the job, flour was made by grinding grain with heavy millstones turned by water or wind power. But before you could grind the grain, you had to make the millstone--a thoroughly non-trivial process. Steve Schimmrich, the Hudson Valley Geologist, enlightens us.

What amazes me about these millstones is that they were carved by hand!  The Shawangunk Conglomerate is composed entirely of quartz - quartz pebbles and sand cemented by quartz (silica) cement.  It's harder than granite.

Photo by Steve Schimmrich.

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WROX coming this summer

At last: Honest-to-God local radio in Roxbury.

As all of the final touches are getting done, the radio station plans on starting its testing in May with the hopes of filling a full schedule of programming but Labor Day.

The station's looking for volunteers and programming ideas. Interested parties might want to check out the upcoming meeting at 10am on March 27.

Photo of a 1959 RCA Victor Dual Speaker Filteramic Tube Radio. Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/roadsidepictures/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

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Blog Cabin 2010: Sullivan County

The DIY Network just announced that for 2010, Charles Petersheim of Catskill Farms is the builder on Blog Cabin, a DIY Network show that "asks Internet users to vote on the design features for a real cabin getaway." The DIY Network has some great photos of Catskill Farms' work up on the site.

The show will air in the fall, Petersheim says.

Can't say we will make it on TV (them damn editors always act like their guys are doing the work) but it should be huge publicity, which never hurts.

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The green, green hills of Margaretville

Being on the NYC bus route has its perks. Margaretville had a big story today in offManhattan, a site that features "car-free green getaways" within striking distance of the city.

When the warmer winds of March begin to wind their way around the skyscrapers, you know it’s time to spring forth from Manhattan, traveling in the direction of some small charming town surrounded by lots of green space. Margaretville might come to mind.

It's tagged "sponsored post," so it's clearly an advertorial. Pretty cool nonetheless.

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Horse people disgusted with Paragallo

Greene County racehorse owner Ernie Paragallo was found guilty today on 33 counts of animal cruelty, a year after a raid on his farm found 177 sick and starving horses. He faces up to two years in prison and $33,000 in fines--for comparison, that's less than the average price of a Thoroughbred at auction.

Blood Horse says Paragallo "hired the right attorney."

Paragallo claimed he had no way of knowing the horses were not being cared for.

His attorney, Michael Howard, was quoted after the verdict as saying, “This requires a horse owner to take on a very high level of burden.”...

...Anyone who doesn't want to assume that "burden" should neither own nor train a horse.

Thoroughbred breeder (and newspaperman) Glenn Craven says:

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