New York Media Guide is your one-stop shop for links to New York newspaper websites (both daily and weekly). Seems like a highly useful resource, even if it does bear somewhat of a visual (not political) resemblance to the Drudge Report. Take a look.

Syracuse B-4 is a blog that digs up old Syracuse news stories and looks at them in hindsight. An interesting concept, and I hope there are more posts to come.

Meanwhile, Gatehouse Media, a company that owns many newspapers across the country — including the Utica Observer-Dispatch — is in serious financial trouble, and CNY Snakepit is following the implications of this with several posts.

The Joe Bruno era ends today in completely anti-climactic fashion as the old man exits stage right stage left through the trap door with all of the hefty retirement benefits that New York State employees have come to know and love. Blogging about Albany just won’t be the same without him. His righteous indignation. His stupid quotes. His slight but nagging resemblance to All My Children’s David Canary. Am I the only one who always wondered if he was Adam, or if he was Stuart? Indeed that was probably the reason for his great longevity in office. You could never be quite sure if he was a scheming Machiavel at heart, or just your dotty old uncle.

His constituents are left with “The Joe” and with the delicious memories of pork picnics to which they will probably never be invited again. The rest of us above Westchester are left to wonder what the hell happened. It all seemed so clear last year at this time. Sure, the constant sniping was unproductive, but at least it was familiar. Now there’s no Eliot and no Joe. No Upstate Czar, no President Hillary Clinton, and it feels dangerously like no one is in charge of this vast outback. Just a few “Wall-E”’s left behind to compact the trash and stack it.

Maybe in 700 years, something wonderful will fall out of the sky. Until then, maybe we’ll just have to cannibalize each other for spare parts as we break down one by one.

This in-depth, well-researched New York Times story about problems with public toilets in Seattle and other cities states everything but the obvious: You can have safe, clean, convenient public toilets in big cities if you have attendants working at them who are decently paid. Apparently nobody in Seattle is willing to work as a public toilet attendant; or, the city would prefer not to pay such people, and finds a $1 million outlay per toilet (!) to be less expensive. I’m trying to figure out why affluent cities overrun with homeless, out-of-work people need toilets that clean themselves.

Now that the economy is really looking peaked, and we’re all supposed to have spent our stimulus checks on cool stuff already, I thought I’d take a quick look back at the select handful of electronic appliances/gadgets/doohickies that I once lovingly unwrapped, yet still find useful or cool. I am not a huge purchaser of electronics, but I have bought my share of the usual kinds — and some of them just lose their appeal faster than others, or wind up forgotten in a cabinet somewhere. These are ones that have stood the test of time (youngest to oldest):

5. Digital SLR camera (Nikon D40). I can’t ever see myself getting bored with it or wanting another one although I might want a different lens kit in the future.

4. Mac Mini. Pound for pound the best home computer out there. It’s a shame that Apple is apparently abandoning this line. I’ll be with this one until it conks out.

3. Handheld GPS unit (Garmin eTrex Legend). Incredibly useful for so many things, from navigation (if you have a co-pilot to read it) to mapping Erie Canal ruins, to planning and timing walking/jogging routes.

2. Don’t laugh: Keychain digital camera. They sell these for $20 now at Wal-Mart, but when I bought it years ago, they were kind of a big deal (and I blush to say how much I paid). Still a kick though, and can double as a webcam, for spying on naughty pets during the day. The pictures are tiny, crude and interesting. A little indestructible wad of plastic.

1. RCA 13-inch color TV. Bought in 1992. Works fine. I do not need, or want, another one - one which probably will break after 6 months anyway.

Well, this story doesn’t give the reasons (I think we know them well enough) but it does confirm the obvious, which is that Upstaters are feeling very grim.

The Siena Research Institute Poll released Monday finds just 15 percent of upstaters say they will never move out of the state. Twenty-two percent of New York City residents make the same claim. Almost 30 percent of upstaters say they may move after they retire, compared with 19 percent of New York City residents.

Well, that’s OK — we don’t want those un-energized old folks anyway? (How about energized young folks like this guy? I’d say he’s got what it takes to make it Upstate — a Samurai sword and a smile.)

I wonder if anyone has ever done a similar poll about Syracuse or Central New York, though. Or would we be too afraid of the answers?

I woke up this morning to read a small item in the PS Local section about Holy Family Church being robbed yesterday in broad daylight, right after a service. It appears some punk with a BB gun stole the collection plate. Between this, the Burger King robbery and the rogue bear, maybe they’ll be rethinking Fairmount’s “27th Greatest Place to Raise Kids” ranking next year.

I had been walking near the church almost exactly 24 hours earlier. There are no houses on Chapel Drive, just the church and a few marginal-looking establishments behind the Eckerd’s Rite Aid Plaza. It’s pretty sleepy. You could rob the church, or any of those establishments, make a quick cut through a suburban street or two and be on Route 5 or Onondaga Boulevard within a minute. (Updated: The perp reportedly took off on foot down the hill from the church to Inwood Drive and up the hill to Kimberly Drive, using the shortcut trail, which probably only local people would know about. WSTM video)

Camillus isn’t far from the city, but it isn’t far from the country either. Theoretically, Camillus could be assaulted by criminals from either side. Typically, Fairmount’s only crime problems have been shoplifters at Fairmount Fair, and the occasional midnight spree of teenagers looking for unlocked cars to steal from. All of these recent intrusions (including the bear) had the sort of crazy audacity you usually see only in drug addicts, which makes me wonder just what the meth situation is in Syracuse’s outlying rural areas these days.

The New York State Fair has a lot of competitions for kids, from dance to animal husbandry to even a spelling bee, but I wonder why they don’t hold a New York geography bee for kids at the fair. (Couldn’t be any more boring than some of the other stuff going on!) I was looking over a state map the other day planning another trip, and wow, there are a lot of places that have “twins” in other parts of the state - lots of opportunity for trick questions and competitive geekery. For example: Rensselaer, Rensselaerville, and Rensselaer Falls all being nowhere near each other. There’s a Cohocton, and a Cochecton - again, nowhere near each other. There’s Cortland, and Cortlandt Manor. And West Fulton, which is actually east of Fulton.

There’s also the curious case of Michigan, which when it comes to placenames, is sort of like a Bizarro Upstate New York. In Michigan, Lansing is a large city, while Ithaca is a small town. Aurelius is directly south of Lansing, as is Onondaga. Central New York is made of largely of placenames cribbed from the classics; central Michigan largely has placenames cribbed from Central and Western New York.

The latest census enumerations show that the city of Syracuse’s population has fallen to a new low of 139,000. This, as Phil points out, leaves Syracuse dangerously close to “small city” status in New York. As a suburbanite, I think of “Syracuse” as the entire metro area, however. No doubt the metro area is shrinking as well. Josh wonders if we should concentrate on keeping the existing population and not just attracting new people. In that spirit, here is a purely speculative post. It may seem negative on its surface, but is not intended to be. It’s just a look at one person (me) as a theoretical “flight risk.” I may be a strange example, because I haven’t got any current plans to move — but if I can think of reasons that might possibly make me leave, these reasons probably would apply to some people who are actually going to end up leaving Syracuse before the next census.

First of all, what keeps people in Syracuse? A variety of reasons, but family connections and/or obligations are a biggie. We just don’t know how big that “biggie” really is, but it’s probably significant. Also, another big reason is that Syracuse is a conveniently located area for natural beauty that hasn’t been snapped up by the super-wealthy. Housing is affordable here, if you have a stable job (big “if,” for some people) and your personal lifestyle spending doesn’t outpace the ever-rising property taxes.

Let’s pretend the family or other personal connections are no longer there. Why then would someone like me — a “local yokel” if there ever was one — ever entertain the thought of leaving?
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In Defense of Curiosity, by Eleanor Roosevelt, blogger.

This issue doesn’t have anything to do with NYRI in and of itself, but it’s something different: The Delaware County Electric Cooperative, which has 5,000 members in some of the counties that happen to affected by the proposed NYRI line, has filed an application with FERC to build new hydroelectric turbines at four Catskills reservoirs owned by New York City. The project would provide electricity for 20,000 rural homes and businesses.

So, just in case you lost your scorecard, it goes like this: NYRI wants to build a freaking huge power line across upstate New York, connecting northern generation facilities with hungry downstate energy consumers; while the DCEC wants to build turbines at reservoirs serving downstate, to provide upstate energy consumers with juice — possibly, some of the upstate energy consumers whose land value would go down and and power rates would go up because of NYRI.

The more I think about this, the more I’m really kind of glad I don’t live in or near the Catskills… New York State’s water and energy war zone.