America is an amazing nation. It’s the only place where people with more money than sense can count on being defended by people with neither. Continue reading

Word spread on Thursday that Joe Fiero of American Glory had applied for a permit to shut down the entire 300 block of Warren Street for yet another car-and-cycle show today. This ignited a firestorm of protest, with nearby business owners taking stock of a City code stating that the Mayor will consider whether such events “unreasonably interfere with the rights of the neighbors.” Strong indications are that virtually no neighbors were approached by Fiero or Mayor Bill Hallenbeck for their opinion, and efforts to convince Hallenbeck to reverse his decision fell on deaf ears. As of 1:30 pm today, the 300 block was virtually empty, as seen in the photograph above. A small cluster of five vintage cars near American Glory was joined by only two more cars over the next half hour, plus a few ordinary motorcylces. Below are some additional notes from early this afternoon... • There... Continue reading

This sign on Route 9 south of Bell’s Pond announces the Livingston Colonial Mall, a concept with... possibilities. Say, hot-colored tricornered hats at Old Navy, happy hour Sazeracs at Hooters, and a musket section at Gander Mountain? Continue reading

There’s a town-wide yard sale day today (Saturday the 18th) in Germantown—and it’s turned Main Street into Midtown. Continue reading

My preview of Fish & Game, Zak Pelaccio’s new Hudson restaurant which officially opened this week, went live at The New York Observer (not to be confused with The Hill Country Observer) on Thursday—link here. Below are some bonus pictures by Laetitia Hussain: Chef Zak Pelaccio, builder Peggy Anderson, Jason Wyckoff, jewelery designer Shana Lee Architect/designer Michael Davis, headhunter Kevin Delahanty, bassist Melissa Auf der Maur Bartender Kat Dunn serves producer (and Fish & Game backer) Patrick Milling Smith and filmmaker Tony Stone of Basilica Industria Peter Heilman, who built Fish & Game’s tables, bar, carts, stools et al., dining with his wife at last Friday’s preview dinner View of the dining room, second fireplace, and carnage. View toward the lounge, showing the old walls maintained as a ruin, Red Light District wallpaper, and staircase to an upstairs private room. Continue reading

Lost in the endless AM radio ranting by Glenn Beck and lesser Tea Party fanatics about “tyranny” and “protecting the Constitution” is an uncomfortable bit of 1980s history. Wingnut hero—and most famous Philmonter—Oliver North was credibly alleged to have co-authored a 1982 plan to suspend their beloved Constitution. While researching yet another TCI explosion in a microfilm archive, I stumbled upon the July 1987 United Press International report pictured above, and excerpted here. Described as a “contingency plan” to be enacted “in the event of a national crisis,” a June 1982 memorandum “called for the suspension of the Constitution and imposition of martial law,” according to UPI. The news agency obtained the memo authored by FEMA official John Brinkerhoff with the assistance of North, acting as the agency’s liaison to the National Security Council. Under the right conditions, “control of the United States” would be turned over to FEMA, which... Continue reading

Not mentioned so far during the debate about TCI’s two fires (and desire to remain) in Ghent isthe company’s brief stay in the Town of Greenport during the late 1980s, after being kicked out of Ulster County. And, as happened before with its mismanagement in Newburgh and later in Ghent, TCI’s Greenport activities resulted in a major explosion. A front-page article in the June 22nd, 1987 edition of The Register-Star reported that a transformer blast that day “rocked an area within a half-mile” of TCI’s facility on the Industrial Tract. The “blast” threw worker Louis Smith of Stuyvesant 20 feet, and landing him in Columbia Memorial Hospital with undisclosed injuries: The explosion was audible at the Greenport town hall, according to Greenport Officer-in-Charge John Hawks... Greenport firemen were called to the scene [along with] Columbia County Sheriff Paul Proper and Undersheriff James Bertram. EnCon officials were expected to arrive on... Continue reading

An article in the Business Review indicates that Bacon Fest, which left some attendees feeling burned last year in Hudson, is joining the Troy Pig Out. It’s not clear from the piece, however, whether this means they are abandoning Hudson, or just adding a new venue. Continue reading

Over at The Gossips of Rivertown, Carole Osterink reports that the debate about whether Standard Oil occupied a key parcel in the City of Hudson has been settled—with skeptical citizens fully vindicated. The City’s title searcher has belatedly conceded to Giff Whitbeck (who strove mightily to prop up his law partner Cheryl Roberts’ untenable claims) what resident researchers such as Tim O’Connor and Cheryl Stuart already knew. Namely, that the oil company most certainly did have a presence on the acreage in question. The immediate impact of this tardy and grudging acknowledgement should be for the City to stop dodging a full environmental assessment of the land they want to acquire. But don’t hold your breath on that due diligence. Given Roberts’ monomaniacal obsession with securing State approval for her deeply-flawed waterfront plan at any cost, it would hardly be surprising if some new rationale for ignoring potential contamination emerges.... Continue reading

Way back in the 1990s, a Hudson politician who also worked at the State DMV whispered to me: “You would not believe the number of prominent Hudsonians who are driving around town without licenses.” The last item in today’s Register-Star police blotter appears to confirm that whispered theory. Continue reading

The Claverack Planning Board is expected to revisit permitting issues tonight related to The Big Up. The outdoor jam/rave concert has proposed to move from the old Morris Levy farm in Ghent to Claverack, but apparently has already started preselling tickets—causing consternation among neighbors. The meeting is at 7 pm Monday at the Town Court on Route 217 in Philmont. Continue reading

Detail of a February 2012 report on an earlier fire at TCI, submitted five months before TCI’s calamitous, sodium-based explosions Honoring the service of local firefighters ought to include taking every possible step to protect the lives that first responders put on the line every time they respond to a fire. Unfortunately, in the case of the inferno last August at TCI of NY in Ghent, newly-uncovered evidence suggests that key officials may have ignored a direct warning which came well in advance of the company’s catastrophic August 2012 fire. A report from February 2012 clearly demonstrates that the use of highly-explosive sodium metal at TCI (a processor of PCBs) was made known to multiple officials at least five months beforehand in a State Homeland Security report obtained by Patti Matheney of GhentCANN. In the post-mortem discussions of the August disaster, it has been widely noted that scores of firefighters... Continue reading

The Register-Star reports that authorities “have tentatively identified the plane that crashed into the Hudson River near Germantown yesterday as a Grumman G-44A, an old amphibious military reconnaissance craft, that left a private air field in Copake at about 4 p.m. Thursday.” (Earlier reports had suggested that the plane took off from Richmor Aviation in Ghent.) Police are not releasing the assumed pilot’s name, but it is not difficult to ascertain what private airfields exist at that location. This website and others list a “Copake Lake Seaplane Base” and “B Flat Farm Airport” close by each other in the town, each operated by Michael B. Braunstein. The reference to a seaplane would appear likely to correspond to the “amphibious” craft specified in the article above. Braunstein has two Craryville mailing addresses, one on Golf Course Road, the other on Country Club Road. Continue reading

There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think. Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. — REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. Continue reading

A recent post (and one of the more eyeroll-worthy comments) at The Gossips of Rivertown brought to mind a drive down to Saugerties about 10 years ago, when I was on the board of Clearwater. Andy Mele was President, we went down to check on how repairs to the Sloop were going. When the boat-builder heard I was from Hudson he got a rueful look on his face. “Hudson,” he said, with some bitterness. “Strange place. I wanted to move this business there some years ago, but it fell through.” So what happened? “I thought I had a deal to buy some land from the City on the south end of the riverfront. But the City’s lawyer kept delaying the sale, and at the last minute they turned around and sold it to someone else.” Did he remember to whom Hudson sold the land instead? “Yes, it was St. Lawrence... Continue reading

A reader points out an article in The Albany Times-Union (linked below) saying that embattled PCB handler TCI of NY may be looking for a new home to the north. The T-U quotes “local officials” as saying the company, whose Ghent facility was destroyed in an inferno last August, is working with the Rensselaer County IDA—and has scoped locations in East Greenbush, Rensselaer and Schodack: http://www.timesunion.com/business/article/TCI-mulls-new-plant-4464861.php Many Columbia County residents would heave a big sigh of relief, much as Ulster residents did in the 1980s, when fires at TCI’s original Newburgh plant drove the company up here. Continue reading

Thanks to the vigilance of Riverkeeper—which filed a complaint about the facility at Cementon across the river from Germantown—Glens Falls Lehigh Cement has been fined $50,000 by the State for allowing leachate to seep into the Hudson River. The Kingston Daily Freeman reports, however, that the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation will forgive 20% of the fine if Lehigh takes steps to correct the problem within three years. Riverkeeper’s complaint goes all the way back to 2007. The Lehigh plant no longer manufactures cement from scratch, but rather blends portland cement produced elsewhere with imported slag, a waste from the iron industry. Residents banding together under the rubric of the Germantown Neighbors Association have challenged the facility’s permitting and management over the past decade. Continue reading

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Country Living magazine has posted a list of 50 places they think are must-visits in the Hudson Valley at this link; their more detailed version is here. Continue reading

Valley Alliance co-director Peter Jung today discovered a remarkable admission from Hudson City Attorney Cheryl Roberts buried in a stack of printouts of private email of correspondence. In arguing that Holcim should hurry up and sign an incredibly favorable (if legally sloppy) agreement the company itself proposed, Roberts reminded the... Continue reading

Local Ocean accepts a $250,000 check from National Grid in 2011, as Congressman Chris Gibson looks on. PHOTO: Michael Farrell for The Albany Times-Union Winner of the 2010 Crystal Apple Award from the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce just months after opening, Local Ocean recently lost its sweet PILOT (Payment In Lieu of Tax) deal with Columbia County. Welcomed with great fanfare and largesse by local development agencies, and much-celebrated in the regional press, Local Ocean has been bedeviled by two patent lawsuits—and laggard in making payments to the County. Local Ocean’s meteoric rise and fall from official favor is not a unique path. The tight-knit and often insular County development elite has a history of patting itself on the back, awarding its own most favored projects before they even get off the ground. Beaten out by Local Ocean, another 2010 Crystal Apple nominee was the rebranded and renovated Historic... Continue reading

In response to a recent post calling out The Register-Star for swiping a breaking news story and plagiarizing a sentence from this site, an apology has been received from Executive Editor Theresa Hyland for the “copying of your blog entry contents into our story.” Writing that she was “upset” by the reporter’s actions, which Hyland said “do not meet our journalistic standards and we cannot tolerate such behavior,” she also noted that “we have let the offending reporter go.” The intent of the post was to put a stop to the predatory use of local blogs as news-gathering sources without crediting them as sources, not to get anyone fired. Though plagiarism is indeed a cardinal sin of journalism—and this example was flagrant—it’s debatable whether it rose to a firing offense. The apology was appreciated and appears to be sincere. Not knowing what other factors and history played into the paper’s... Continue reading

SamPratt.com, Friday morning around 9:30 am, breaking the news that Lieutenant Richard Paolino is stepping down from the HPD: “This comes on the heels of the recent retirement of Hudson Police chief Ellis Richardson, and appointment of Ed Moore as the new Chief.” The Register-Star on Friday evening at 11:55 pm: “Paolino’s retirement comes on the heels of the recent retirement of former Police Chief Ellis Richardson, the appointment of new Police Chief Edward Moore and ...” Now, the Register routinely cribs breaking news tips from blogs such as my site and Carole Osterink’s without acknowledging the source. For example, when this site broke the story that Mid-Hudson Cable had returned a much-ballyhooed multimillion-dollar rural broadband grant to the Feds, the Register then reported the story without noting how it had come to light. Rarely, however, does the Hudson paper so flagrantly copy the specific phrasing of our items... At... Continue reading

Multiple (and credible) sources have told this site that longtime Hudson Police Lieutenant Richard Paolino has decided—others might say “agreed”—to step down. This comes on the heels of the recent retirement of Hudson Police chief Ellis Richardson, and appointment of Ed Moore as the new Chief. Continue reading

Photo from The Rogovoy Report, by Fred Collins Over at his must-read site, Seth Rogovoy has a good catch: a critique of the Hudson City School District’s apparent partnership with McDonald’s. An editor, writer, music critic, and fixture for years on the Berkshire media scene, Rogovoy moved to Hudson last year. Continue reading