State parks are taking a huge fiscal hit in the Governor's budget. The Albany Times-Union has a full list of state parks the Paterson administration is recommending closing or scaling back. It's a long one.
On the list: the Robert V. Riddell State Park near Oneonta, which was donated to the state by the late Riddell's family just a few years ago.
A tractor-trailer carrying concrete crashed into a house in Davenport around 5am this morning, killing an occupant, the AP reports.
Congressman Paul Tonko (D-NY 21st) was on the Truth About Trucking radio program yesterday, talking up a bill he's sponsoring to increase trucker safety. Named for the late Jason Rivenburg, who was killed while sleeping at a gas station last spring, Jason's Law seeks to fund more parking and rest areas for trucks throughout the federal highway system.
Here's the OpenCongress page for H.R. 2156, where you can track the bill's progress and follow news coverage on it.
The Catskill Chronicle profiles Plunk, a new art/consignment shop on Main Street in Livingston Manor.
On Saturday, February 6, The Plunk Shop held its grand opening featuring “Realer Than Real – A Collection of Lenticular Images and 3-D Photo Wonders” an exhibition by M. Henry Jones and Mark Friedlander.
“We spent two weeks painting it with all the colors left over in our basement,” said [Claire] Coleman of getting the new store ready for business, as they worked day and late night shifts preparing for the grand opening celebration.
Steven Schimmrich, writing at Hudson Valley Geologist, remembers Rosendale's Dietrich Werner, who died in December.
What affected me the most about Dietrich's death was that the week he died I was working on a project having to do with the Rosendale Cement industry and I was thinking of calling him the following week to get together to discuss it. He knew more about this topic than anyone I know. Researching local history was a labor of love for him and a lot of local knowledge passed away when he did.
Shortly after Werner's death, Ulster Logic published a tribute written by state assemblyman Kevin Cahill.
I'm not sure when Dietrich became a Rosendale police commissioner, but many of us took great comfort that someone from the counter culture could assume such a position of responsibility. For me, it affirmed my faith in our legal system.
Kingston Citizens has the details.
Kingston Natural Foods, an organic food store and provider of local artisan products, is opening in the Rondout Spring 2010! That means that Jennifer McKinley-Rakov will not only host one of the biggest organic and natural foods buying clubs (in the NATION!)
Congratulations, KNF!
Earlier: Good news for Kingston Natural Foods
Tony Fletcher finds an unexpected treasure trove of '70s music history in his basement.
It’s not like I don’t already have several boxes full of cassettes in the storage room behind my office, including tapes of my pre-pubescent bedroom band from back in the late 1970s, mix tapes from the 80s and more promo tapes than I’ll ever know what to do with from the 90s. It’s that those tapes don’t tell the whole story, that of the obsessive future music journalist who practiced for taping John Peel shows on Radio 1/2 by frequently recording the Roger Scott show on Capital Radio as early as 1975; a kid who often seemed intent on taping every single track that ever came out and who, naturally, catalogued his cassettes along the way.
“The governor's proposal would directly harm taxpayers and businesses at a time when we can least afford it,” Assemblyman Kevin Cahill said in a statement issued Wednesday. The state should be encouraging people to file their returns early, he said.
Ulster County legislator Mike Madsen reflects on county executive Mike Hein's recent State of the County address, and is a little frustrated about not hearing more about forward progress.
But I'm a realist. It's not so much who was giving the speech as much as what the limited options are in 2010, and the task is huge. Hein and my fellow Legislators know that we need to provide life support to Ulster County in-spite of what the state throws at us in unfunded mandates, increasing health costs, anaemic sales tax revenue and unrelenting tax increases.
We got a call from Peter Manning at the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development on our recent item on a fed/state tussle over the color of Adirondacks and Catskills road signs. It seems that while the Adirondacks will get to keep their iconic brown-and-yellow signs, the issue isn't settled yet in the Catskills.
We've updated our earlier post, and we'll continue to keep an eye on the story as it unfolds.
