Seeing Greene blogger Dick May has the latest. Highlights: an upcoming county judge election is looking spicy, a local bank is raking it in, and the town of Catskill is gearing up for another big fiberglass cat festival this summer.

Among the catidates for adoption this time, as named and pictured by prospective makers, will be Ronald CatDonald, LepraCat (very Irish), lemony Sourpuss, Davey CrockCat, Cat-cher (masked and mitted) and Catman & Robin.

Capitol Tonight reports that a poll shows over 70 percent of New Yorkers in support of legalizing medical marijuana. (Click the link for a video report.)

Assemblyman Richard Gottefried, who introduced the bill, argues marijuana shouldn't be treated differently than any other drug used for pain management.

"New York and other states always have legalized the medical use of morphine and codeine and a host of drugs that are highly addictive and have a high potential for abuse. We understand that using drugs like that under a doctor's care is one thing, recreational use is another. It is just political correctness gone crazy that we don't apply that political correctness to medical marijuana," Gottefried said.

Congressman Maurice Hinchey just announced funding for a food business incubator project in the Hudson Valley. The goal: creating a strong Hudson Valley brand to market to NYC consumers.

Hinchey obtained $350,000 from Congress as part of the fiscal year 2010 appropriations process in order to help the non-profit, Hudson Valley AgriBusiness Development Corporation (HVADC), develop a "food corridor" along Route 209, running from Ellenville to Kingston.  HVADC, which serves farms in Ulster, Orange, Dutchess, and Columbia counties, will serve as an agriculture incubator service that offers business assistance programming for startups; centralized costly processing and marketing services and facilities; and financing services and client networking.

The NYT reports that the National Animal Identification System, a proposed program for tracking all US livestock with implanted microchips, has been scrapped. This is welcome news for a lot of small farmers:

...the system quickly drew the ire of many farmers and ranchers, particularly cattle producers. Some objected to the cost of identification equipment and the extra work in having to report their animals’ movements. Others said they believed the voluntary system would become mandatory, that it was intrusive and that the federal government would use it to pry into their lives and finances.

The Daily Yonder, an online rural news outlet, doesn't believe the NAIS is dead, just shifting focus.

The USDA plans to "convene a forum with animal health leaders" from the states and the Tribes to "initiate a dialogue" about ways to build a new NAIS. What does all this mean? Stay tuned.

The AP has a really good story on horizontal natural-gas drilling that's been making the rounds of many newspapers, both in and out of the Marcellus Shale.

Explained: why "fracking" creates more waste than conventional techniques, why getting rid of the powerfully salty wastewater is a far tougher problem in New York than it is in Texas, and why some bright entrepreneur is probably going to make a killing on recycling the stuff.