The New York Times has an article on increased food stamp use in America that delivers the staggering statistic that up to one-fourth of America’s children are currently being helped by the program. Food stamps mean different things to different people - for some, it’s something they chronically need [...]
The Post-Standard ran a story this past Sunday about the odyssey of a local Glock pistol, known to local police as “9 mm No. 1″ which was involved in 13 shootings and one armed robbery in the Syracuse area alone until its confiscation recently from its latest user, a [...]
The Post-Standard has a roundup of the intense outcry over the new New York license plates. Most of the rancor seems to be about the mandatory $25 fee that is supposed to raise up to $130 million for the state’s coffers, but I’ve talked to a lot of people [...]
Check out the “new” New York State license plates we’ll all be forced to buy starting in April 2010!
How appropriate… since we’re already headed back to the economy of the mid-1970s.
(I gotta confess: I’ve missed the blue and gold.)
Updated: BuffaloPundit is right…
Feel the excitement!
[...]As of this writing, it looks like Stephanie Miner is Syracuse’s new mayor. More girl powah in the O.C. (er, Onondaga County). Wondering if any Upstate counties have ever had a female county exec and a female mayor of the major city, at the same time? I probably should know [...]
Onondaga County’s second oldest “mallspace” is 50 years old today. It opened on October 28, 1959. It may also be the only area shopping center that has a band named after it. (That’s actually not so weird: back in the ’60s, live bands did play there occasionally.)
Fairmount Fair [...]
Must Hiram Monserrate resign? Must he be fired? It would be another sign of the apocalypse if running Monserrate out of town would result in a domino effect of girlfriend-hitting, paparazzi-punching and intern-interfering elected public officials also being toppled. That might be, like, giving people like Liz [...]
A few weeks ago I talked about the September wildflowers being a prelude to the “big October show” of the leaves. Last year around this time, I took my mom to Green Lakes State Park for a Saturday walk around the lakes on a really splendid sunny day when the [...]
Brian Cubbison of the Post-Standard has a new blog called Future News, which is going to look at ways that newspapers will be able to use things like RSS and Twitter and Facebook and other tools that will show great communications promise to generations of journalists yet unborn. He [...]
Harrison’s on West Genesee (across from Sacred Heart) is 60 years old this year. There is simply not much to the place, and there never has been. It’s basically a small lobby with three glass cases filled with goodies. Nothing else seems to have changed since (what I imagine [...]
This is the result of the Eva M. Walsh Memorial Experimental Potato Station, 2009.
I’m astounded at Mother Nature’s capacity to take my abuse. I honestly thought someone was screwing with my head when I dug these up, and had bought potatoes at the store and secretly buried them when [...]
Name Brand Deals, the Oneida-owned enterprise that moved in to the spiritual space of the old Genesee Theater (I refuse to talk about Pep Boys any more), shut its doors recently. I’m not surprised. Even for a discount outlet, the place was a real dump. I went in there once [...]
A Chronicle of Higher Education article on emptying small towns in the Midwest sounds awfully familiar (may be behind a paywall):
Our year and a half spent interviewing the more than 200 young people who had attended the town’s high school in the late 1980s and early 1990s led us [...]
Well, this was going to be a post about Obama, Paterson and racism. Thanks to recently reported political events, it’s going to be about more than that.
We live in a marvelous Internet age where we don’t even have to let on what color or gender we are if we don’t [...]
There is no better time to check out the flowers than this time of year. One last explosion of color amid all the serious business of going to seed and dying. I like to think of it as the pre-game special before the big October show.
[...]Everything worth reading about is on Wikipedia by now, right?
Well, no. You still can’t find anything on Wikipedia about Stanislaw Kaszynski, the municipal official who was executed by the Nazis for trying to tell the world about what was going on at the Chelmno death camp in his jurisdiction.
Nor [...]
I don’t usually talk about movies here on the blog. My usual shtick is to link everything back to a Syracuse-centric POV here, and with most movies that’s kind of hard to do. But this isn’t difficult to do with a discussion of the new sci-fi movie DISTRICT 9, a [...]
There’s a story in the NY Times this weekend about the rise and fall of a California cul-de-sac, a victim of the economy. It’s an interesting read but what jumped out at me was the following:
But as always in California, boom times came again. During the 1990s, Moreno Valley [...]
I can’t believe the news today: yet another CNY motorcyclist is the victim of a driver who turned into his path. This comes on the heels of two fatalities last week. If you know someone who rides a motorcycle, you might have had the experiencing of reading the breaking [...]
This past weekend I took a camping trip down to Bowman Lake, a remote state park in the middle of Chenango County. There really isn’t much to see at Bowman Lake, which makes it the perfect place to relax and do nothing. Nowhere is usually a challenge [...]
An article worth reading, although it’s not a new complaint: Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood.
Though the wilderness available to me had shrunk to a mere green scrap of its former enormousness, though so much about childhood had changed in the years between the days of young George [...]
Revisiting an old topic — the late, lamented Genesee Theater: Cinema Sightlines has recently updated its page about the theater with even more amazing old photos of the film-promotional efforts of George Read. One of these photos has the theater’s big glowing clock pictured in it (alas, only [...]
Anyone wanting to read in-depth analysis and opinion about Syracuse city elections for this upcoming November (including the mayoral election) should go straight to Phil at Still Racing in the Street, who is holding forth on these and other topics this week. He is the best (only?) blog source [...]
I am sorry to report that one of my tater tots has died. I don’t know what caused the problem, but it doesn’t look like the dreaded late blight (especially since the one right next to it is doing fine). It all started after a heavy rain which flattened the [...]
Quick link: Fairmount Glen Miniature Golf has a website (”I did not know that!”), with a history page that has some pictures of its old course at the current location of West Genesee High School, and some old pictures of its current location circa 1960.
(Sorry for the [...]
The New York Times has more information on a story I first saw in the Plattsburgh newspaper a couple weeks ago:
A highly contagious fungus that destroys tomato plants has quickly spread to nearly every state in the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic, and the weather over the next week may [...]
Why is this story talking about Yonkers when it should be talking about Syracuse?
Cities Rediscover Waterways They Paved Over
(Oh, I know why. It’s because Syracuse has no Seoul. ba-dump-bump.)
[...]
This evening, my black raspberries — running more than a week late this year, as you might expect — yielded the peak harvest of their (all too brief) season. Starting tomorrow, the daily take will grow steadily smaller.
This means that summer is now exactly half over.
[...]I have no idea whether systemic sexual harrassment is going on in the athletics fundraising department at Binghamton University… but I have even less of a clue as to why anyone would get excited about Binghamton University athletics. (I guess it doesn’t excite too many people, so they seek [...]
This news story about the scaling back of a massive Texas wind farm project is only the latest whiff of how the recession/decession/depression is affecting the potential for lengthy transmission lines. However, those who have been following the NYRI issue are probably already aware of being “saved by the [...]
Andy Arthur writes about an accident on the Northway and the larger issues it reminds us of.
The system is broken. Many of those people now in prison should not be there. They should be getting treatment. Instead of spending so much on incarceration, we should be spending more mental [...]
The front page of the Syracuse Herald-American, from Sunday, July 4, 1976.
Click for full page.
(Discovered last week during cleanout of cellar)
[...]It’s been 40 years since Richard Nixon declared war on cancer. Why haven’t we won yet?
Below the flip are a few thoughts on technology, apple picking, space travel, the State Senate crisis, DestiNY USA, the Connective Corridor, backyard gardens, physics, and youth and old age. Proceed at your own [...]
The passing of two high-profile figures on the same day (Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson) reminds me of another such day: November 22, 1963. Everyone can tell you immediately who the most famous person was who died on that day, but while many people know who C.S. Lewis was, few [...]
This is Jacks Reef. I almost grew up right here (just outside the frame) - on the banks of the Erie Canal.
During this time of turmoil, let’s close our eyes and imagine New York as it once was, and could someday be again… a murky, stagnant breeding ground for [...]
This is apropos of nothing, but I have been meaning to link to these for some time and want to do it before I forget again… Filmmaker Errol Morris has been writing at the NY Times in a fascinating occasional series where he takes a single photograph or image and [...]
Hey kids! Have you heard about the trouble at the State Senate? Is it making your mom and dad confused? Would you like to learn more about how your state government and democracy works? Don’t worry… Johnny the Friendly Senator is here to explain it all for you. Gather [...]
Wilmers quits ESDC (HT Buffalopundit)…
Just one year after becoming the state’s economic development czar, Robert Wilmers is stepping down from the post, the latest in a growing line-up of officials departing the Paterson administration.
Wilmers, who is also chairman of the Buffalo-based M&T Bank, made his resignation known in [...]
John DeFrancisco can spin the coup as “necessary for reform” all he wants, but in the end it was all about personal power and perks.
If anyone with money can set up their own government in New York, people without money should be able to do it as [...]
WTF?
ALBANY – Republicans seized control of the New York State Senate on Monday, in a stunning and sudden reversal of fortunes for the Democratic Party, which controlled the chamber for barely five months.
A raucous leadership fight erupted on the floor of the Senate around 3 p.m., with two Democrats, [...]
I watched part of ABC’s Earth 2100 last night. It struck me as this generation’s version of The Day After… soon to be distributed on DVD with study guides to cowering junior high school classes nationwide, although with wind farms and skyscraper-top gardens filling in for “duck and cover.”
In the [...]
Dick Case’s Post-Standard column today is about Route 81:
Syracuse’s historical response was different from many cities’ responses. Goals of “slum clearance” and redevelopment in town converged with national planning that included money for transportation to eliminate congestion and improve mobility. Urban freeways were seen as vehicles to achieve those [...]
Last spring, residents of the near western burbs of Onondaga County had a little problem with something they called “The Noise.” After many months of forum-based fretting, angry phone calls, e-mails, and media coverage, the annoying sound finally disappeared (for the most part). Syracuse Energy Corp. (Suez), the co-generation [...]
The long-anticipated $2 million restoration of the Nine Mile Creek Aqueduct at Camillus Erie Canal Park is a “go.” This was what it looked like on Saturday. They are now just starting to place the watertight layer of boards on the floor. When it’s finished in [...]
NYRI won’t stay dead.
Phil posts on gay marriage. He thinks some Democrats are batting for the other team.
Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation is trying to get the Syracuse Common Council to adopt a Resolution of Respect for and Reconciliation with the Onondaga Nation.
Wolfram Alpha is a new site that advertises itself as a new way to search for data in a computational manner. You can input natural-language queries in a variety of subjects, including Census data. Since secession is all the rage these days, I thought I’d plug some questions into [...]
On New Year’s Day 2008 I posted about what sort of young people might be coming back to the Syracuse area in the future. In yesterday’s New York Times was a revealing look at what is happening to real families during a real economic fading, and what it’s [...]
First it was the Upstate Republicans making their noises. Now the grunts are being heard from Long Island, as you might expect. There are three New Yorks, after all. (Or perhaps 19 million New Yorks…?) The MTA bailout has proven to be gasoline on this flickering little flame.
Article IV [...]
The state Senate has a snazzy new website (same old address). It’s a big deal for the new Senate Democratic majority, with some new features - but what about the minority senators? Are they getting the same bells and whistles on the site?
Judging from John DeFrancisco’s section on [...]
The Post-Standard has an important and very welcome front-page story today about elevated levels of lead and arsenic found in some community gardens in the city of Syracuse. (One of the beneficial side effects of the paper’s shrinkage: a front-page story really stands out and focuses the attention.) Although [...]
The Syracuse International Film Festival finished its latest run this past weekend and there is good news!
The whole goal of the Syracuse Film Office is to get more films made in central New York — and it’s already making progress. “We had a Hollywood group, they were looking [...]
People have written me to ask a question or two. ‘When is collapse going to happen?’ Well, I do not want the economy to collapse before everyone gets a chance to purchase this book, so let us hope for the best. ‘What do I plan to do?’ Well, I am [...]
The nasty Feds won’t let New York put Niagara Falls on its next state quarter:
The selection process requires that images chosen for the quarters must be national sites “under the supervision, management or conservancy of the National Parks Service, the U. S. Forest Service, the U. S. Fish and [...]
Does it make me a complete nerd if news of a possible global pandemic makes me want to link to this?
Not that I’ve ever read it — but if by some chance we all get confined and quarantined, I should have plenty of time to do so…
But [...]
Over the past five years, NYCO’s Blog has gone through a couple of databases, some of which are now offline. This is a former post which is being restored to the database via public reposting. An update is below.
* * *
Richard Brodsky gets a big endorsement for his attorney [...]
A few weeks ago, the New York Regional Interconnect finally threw in the towel on their plans for a monstrous power line running from Oneida to Orange counties. This marks the end of a three-year battle by a consortium of citizens to turn back the project. EveAnn Schwartz and Chris [...]
A few good comments I’ve read lately, hidden deep in other people’s blogs:
Our friend Robinia writes at TAP on local higher ed as entrenched interests, and also wonders who died and left Robert Wilmers boss.
Celebrating the recent tea parties on Fault Lines, a funny and telling exchange about [...]
Over the past five years, NYCO’s Blog has gone through a couple of databases, some of which are now offline. This is a former post which is being restored to the database via public reposting. An update is below.
Today is Earth Day. I was surprised to read recently that Onondaga [...]
CNY Speaks has an article today inviting the community to critique an action plan that touches on crime, economic development, the arts and (of course) parking.
Also highlighted recently in the Post-Standard was the Sibylline TXT SYRACUSE project. This is a deal where you take your cell phone, go [...]
I recently started a little side project, a Twitter stream called @OutdoorsNewYork. It’s an outgrowth of my camping hobby (it includes news about the state park system and the DEC). But I’m also interested in reporting items about our increasing awareness of and contact with wild animals in New [...]
And probably next year, too.
A few years ago, a friend explained to me that there really wasn’t a State Democratic Party. There were several: one for the Assembly, one for the Senate, another for the Governor, and then others focused on Senate races. Any [...]
“What do they call people who use Twitter - twits?” That’s my sister, the social media Luddite, talking. The video below is probably something she would enjoy (I found a link to it via, um, Twitter):
Funny - though it does repeat the misconception people who use social media somehow [...]
I watched and read the news yesterday about the rampage shooting, and along with the horror of watching the death toll go up, there was the sorrow that this was such a terrible way for the world to hear about Binghamton. It should not have happened this way.
I also [...]
On any other day, this might have been big news for Upstate New York: NYRI is probably dead.
I’ll write more about it later, but today I just don’t have the heart to.
[...]Surveillance towers planned for Detroit, Buffalo
The U.S. Border Patrol is erecting 16 more video surveillance towers in Michigan and New York to help secure parts of the U.S.-Canadian border, awarding the contract to a company criticized for faulty technology with its so-called “virtual fence” along the U.S.-Mexico boundary. The [...]
It’s never a good time for a post about horrors. Especially not springtime. However, I had wanted to do an inversion of this past popular post, The 7 Wonders of…, for some time but had never gotten around to it. Halloween would have been maybe too facetious a date [...]
Oops, they did it again. Five GOP state senators have introduced a bill calling for a statewide referendum on separating.
Some Democrats are outraged, pointing out (rightly) how cynically Republicans have grandstanded in the past with such fantasy talk, often dragging out the false old “NYC Welfare Queens” canard. [...]
A quick note on the AIG/New York State pension fund affair… in case you hadn’t heard:
A two-year investigation by state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Albany County District Attorney David Soares and the federal Securities and Exchange Commission has concluded that Hevesi’s top political adviser and the pension fund’s chief [...]
I’ve been using Twitter since last summer. I mainly use it as a pleasant time-waster (as if I don’t waste enough time!), but over the last couple months - weeks even - it has ramped up into a national mania. You might have noticed that I’ve already incorporated two different [...]
The City of Syracuse has put up a large photo log of the renovations to Westcott Reservoir. If you’ve ever wondered about its mysterious interior, check out these pictures. Hard to believe this desolate landscape is located in the middle of a dense suburb.
[...]A year ago today, David Paterson was sworn in as New York’s so-called “unelected” governor (though last time I checked, he was elected lieutenant governor). After a wearing year and a shocking week, it was a happy day. His sense of humor was a relief, his success through his handicaps [...]
Slumdog Millionaire, the Oscar-winning little-film-that-could, might have been well received here in the U.S., but in India it produced a huge uproar. It has reignited the debate in India over whether that country is doing enough for its desperately poor, or is ashamed enough, or should be ashamed. The New [...]
And you thought the Westvale Plaza sign was bad… A few weeks ago, Benderson decided to whisk us all back to the rockin’ ’80s and replace the old Fairmount Fair sign with this orange beauty. (Yes, that appears to be plaid or some kind of waffle [...]
For years, when I would talk to people who weren’t from around here and who expressed shock or disgust at how much it tends to snow in Syracuse, I would reassure them that Central New York had the best snow removal infrastructure in the world. Heck, I would brag about [...]
29 years ago today…
This is footage from ABC’s broadcast, but the audio was taken from live radio coverage (the game was not broadcast on TV live), so it’s a different ending than the famous “Do you believe in miracles!” but no less exciting. Check it out.
[...]It’s hard to believe, but it’s getting on to three years since the New York Regional Interconnect project, the notorious NYRI, began to face resistance across a wide swath of Upstate New York, from Utica to Orange County. There was every reason to think that a divide-and-conquer strategy would work [...]
You can hide the fire, but what you gonna do with the smoke? You can close Guantanamo Bay, but what are you going to do with the prisoners? Someone’s afraid that Attica is the new Gitmo:
Chautauqua County Legislator James Caflisch, R-French Creek, sponsored a motion in recent days that [...]
I noticed the following confusing job title in a business roundup in the Post-Standard today: Director of Self-Directed Personal Services.
Just think about that for a second.
They’re “personal services,” but they’re also “self-directed,” so you’re apparently expected to handle them yourself, which implies you’re not exactly getting “personal service” (or [...]
Apparently, a lot lower than Syracuse…
Hunched on the eastern edge of the Monongahela River only a few miles from bustling Pittsburgh, Braddock is a mix of boarded-up storefronts, houses in advanced stages of collapse and vacant lots.
The state has classified it a “distressed municipality” — bankrupt, more or less [...]
Obama Signals New Tone in Relations With Islamic World
In a transcript published on Al Arabiya’s English language Web site, Mr. Obama said it is his job “to communicate to the Muslim world that the Americans are not your enemy.” He added that “we sometimes make mistakes,” but said that [...]
As the dust finally begins to settle from the senatorial pick, the truth becomes plain: Chuck Schumer is the lord and master of the Empire State. It took a while. He’s churned through the equivalent of the entire Adirondack Preserve in press release pulp… stepped in every cow patty in [...]
A new president… Caroline Kennedy drops out… Kirsten Gillibrand drops in… Joe Bruno indicted… what a week! Where to begin?
Herkimer County Progressive is happy at the choice of Gillibrand, although many would say she’s hardly “progressive.” Rochester Turning has a more nuanced view (with bullet points), which [...]
Now that Obama’s inauguration is over, criticism has inevitably begun — starting with the inaugural festivities on Tuesday. As has been reported locally, thousands of “lucky” attendees were inexplicably kept from their promised places — “silver” and “purple” ticketholders. This has produced an outcry — on the Internet, at [...]
President Obama would like to stimulate the economy by investing serious amounts of money into infrastructure projects. If he’s looking for a top-priority public works project that needs a lot of attention (and cash)… here’s one he can’t fail to consider: New York City’s aging water system.
Please. It needs help. [...]
New York State’s population loss rate has officially slowed.
In what may prove a silver lining in the latest economic black cloud, New York lost fewer residents to other states in 2007-8 than during any year in at least a generation… Between July 1, 2007, and July 1, 2008, New [...]
Last month, I came up with a list of what I thought were the top 10 New York State stories in the very eventful year of 2008. Item No. 7 concerned the State’s moves to collect taxes from Indian-owned businesses. It could have surprised no one that the Senecas [...]
This quote is just one small excerpt from another blogger’s much wider-ranging reflection on human civilization and achievement. But since Syracuse’s litter problems seem to come up time and time again, I thought it worth highlighting.
Almost every driver has carefully checked to see who’s around before thinking about innocently [...]
It’s ironic that Dave Valesky, a former aide to the ill-fated Michael Bragman (though not at the time of Bragman’s Assembly coup attempt), should now be the nominal No. 2 in the state Senate.
When Valesky was first elected in 2004, I thought the Democrats should have tried to make him [...]
My posts here will probably be light and sporadic for an indefinite period of time. Nothing new seems to be happening. We have successfully captured history, for the time being. I have ideas generally about what’s going to happen when it breaks loose again, but there seems little point in [...]
Upstate newspapers are running simultaneous editorials today about what a new senator needs to know about regional issues. Truth be told, anyone contemplating running for governor (or currently governor) should read these as well. Here are all the editorials compiled on one page. Areas chiming in include the Adirondacks, [...]
Here’s an article about the calculations that go into the choice of the senator that Paterson will inflict on us. It’s the first article I’ve seen which mentions Joanie Mahoney as a potential candidate for statewide office.
Some of Mr. Paterson’s advisers envision a Republican ticket headed by Rudolph W. [...]
Good for a chuckle, but of course not for the unfortunate people who invested with Bernard Madoff:
Bernard Madoff’s Bacon number is 1
Yes, even Kevin Bacon and his wife got taken in.
There is another angle to this story that is not at all funny. It has to do with the [...]
The week between Christmas and New Year’s must be the most unloved and unappreciated days of the year. They are especially weird for me this year because my employer, for the first time, is closed for the week. This is the longest vacation I have ever had in my working [...]
I saw the much-acclaimed film Slumdog Millionaire today — at a surprisingly well-attended matinee (Carousel really needs to move this film out of their basement suite of shoeboxes). For those who haven’t heard the buzz on the film, it’s about a desperately poor Muslim boy who has become a contestant [...]
