Some weeks ago, there was a nice column by Sean Kirst in the Post-Standard about the lessons learned (and apparently forgotten) from the Great Depression. My grandmother (on my mother’s side) was in her early 20′s then. Recently, I just happened to notice an old tablecloth that she made that’s been in the family ever [...]

Maybe having a visually impaired governor is not such a bad thing after all when it means that occasionally he will dial a wrong number and wind up chatting with an ordinary citizen. However, the wrong number that Albany keeps dialing would seem to be the budget. Or rather, the deficit, which has somehow ballooned [...]

A lot can happen in two years; just ask Eliot Spitzer. It is a little premature to be talking about David Paterson’s re-election, but then again maybe not. Eager to prove he’s not an accidental governor, Paterson is may be the only person in the world who wants to be responsible for New York State [...]

Much of the year I pretend that there is no politicking going on at other people’s blogs, that it is just Upstate Uber Alles and that political parties and candidates are irrelevant. Now with just a little more than a week to go before the Big Night, it’s time to rip away this veneer of [...]

Last night’s Channel 9 newscast and this morning’s Post-Standard both had stories on the big doin’s up at the Port of Oswego. The TV report focused on the increased current traffic at the Port, and the PS story was about how Oswego has been selected for one of the first container-shipping terminals in the Great [...]

Just when I think I haven’t got the energy (pardon the expression) to blog about NYRI, they makes another silly statement… NYRI president Chris Thompson says he expects this type of “limited” opposition with any major project. “Limited”? Just about the only thing the residents along the proposed line route haven’t done is to threaten [...]

Word to the wise: When running a blog, thoroughly back up your data. My web provider had a server failure yesterday, which had the unsettling effect of wiping my account with them clean. Fortunately they do keep backups, and I do too… just not in one easily accessible piece. (While briefly contemplating the apparent loss [...]

Shuffling through my photos for the past summer, I realize how spoiled rotten New Yorkers are when it comes to the great outdoors. This year I finally got to Letchworth (wish I’d gone in the fall, though) and spent a fabulous if rainy week in the Adirondacks. Letchworth is so fabulously outfitted with roads and [...]

The federal government has ruled that the remains of 180 Native Americans dug up in the Southern Tier during the construction of Route 17 should be returned to the custody of the Onondaga Nation by the New York State Museum. Naturally, New York is protesting, along the lines that nobody can agree when the Onondagas [...]

Traditional Syracuse performance art: the sound of people talking past each other.