Tuesday's Elections: Some Results

-----In GreeneLand’s most closely fought election battles, two county legislators survived strong challenges in yesterday’s voting while one went down to defeat.
-----Forest Cotten, the lone Democrat among Catskill’s four county legislators, campaigning in a field of six candidates, survived with 1038 votes, behind Keith Valentine (1367 votes), Joseph Izzo (1328) and Karen Deyo (1307), but ahead of Linda H. Overbaugh (1003) and Robin DePuy (592). (Those unofficial figures were released at midnight by the county’s board of elections. For updates, click http://greenegovernment.com, then click Departments and then Board of Elections).
---Durham’s Sean Frey survived a tight three-cornered race, gaining a plurality of 385 votes to 353 for Elsie Allen (Republican) and 176 for Les Armstrong (Grass Roots of Durham).
Veteran Athens legislator Ray Brooks, however, was out-polled by challenger Chris Pfister, whose 674 votes gave him a winning margin of 57.
-----In partisan terms, those results add up to a victory for GreeneLand’s Democrats. They coincide with the unopposed re-elections of three other Democratic legislators-- Larry Gardner of District 7 ( Halcott/Lexington/Hunter), James Van Slyke of New Baltimore, Harry Lennon of Cairo--along with the unopposed re-elections of five Republicans: Charles Martinez and Wayne Speenburgh of Coxsackie, Bill Lawrence of Cairo, Jim Hitchcock of District 6 (Ashland/Jewett/Prattsville/Windham), and Mr Valentine and Ms Karen Deyo of Catskill. In addition, two Republican candidates, Kevin Lewis in Greenville and Mr Izzo in Catskill, won campaigns to succeed retiring Republicans. Numerically, the former Republican majority of nine seats to five has been reduced to 8-6.
-----Also heartening for Democrats was Kevin Lennon’s bid to join the Catskill Town Council. In a three-cornered race for two seats, Mr Lennon, with 1354 votes, out-polled both of the Republican incumbents: Robert Antonelli (1043) and Joseph Leggio (1000).
-----In other respects, the county’s elections yielded victories for Republicans. In Jewett and in Lexington, Democratic town supervisors were replaced by Republicans. In New Baltimore, while the Democratic candidate, Susan O’Rorke, managed by 14 votes to edge Republican Councilman Arthur (“Property Rights!”) Byas for the office of town supervisor (previously held by Democrat David Louis), the two Democratic candidates for Town Council went down to defeat. In Greenville, moreover, a strong, cohesive Democratic campaign for county legislature, town supervisor and town council seats went down to crushing defeat.
----------[More to come]

-----Republican campaigning in Greenville for town offices (as distinct from the county legislature) was waged with explicit reference to the national scene. Peter O’Hara, the Democratic candidate for town supervisor and principal author of a proposed comprehensive plan, was branded in Republican campaign literature as a local copy of a “control”-bent President Barack Obama. “At the national level," according to a mass-mailed Republican tract, the Obama-led Democrats "are pushing for control of business, banks, health care and even what you watch on TV…. At the local level they (Peter O’Hara and friends) are pushing for control of your very basic freedoms of choice with your personal property rights.” Greenville residents, by way of their votes, need to “Take back your country and take back your town.”

Local Elections IV: The Athens Case

ATHENS’s elections this year are distinctive in GreeneLand on account of a formidable challenge to a sitting county legislator, a tight contest over who shall succeed a retiring Town Supervisor, and a four-candidate, two-slates race to fill two Council seats. Among episodes and aspects::

----- *Press for Pfister. The Daily Mail’s editorial writer opined that the non-incumbent candidate for county legislator, offers to Athenians a desirable “new direction.” The paper’s endorsement went to Chris Pfister, 62, a retired technology professional and former Village Trustee (2002-09; deputy mayor during 2007-09) standing as the Democratic and Independence party nominee, over incumbent Ray Brooks, 69, a retired prison corrections officer and a prominent Mason, standing on the Republican and Conservative lines for election to a third term.

----- *Press for Lubera. Coinciding with its endorsement of the Democratic candidate for county legislator came a Daily Mail endorsement of the Republican candidate for county supervisor. Here the contestants, aiming to succeed incumbent supervisor Al Salvino (Democrat) are John Lubera, who has spent eight years as Town Councilor (including two as Deputy Supervisor) and Lee Palmateer, who is an attorney with an engineering background, a veteran school board trustee, and the bearer of a locally resonant family name. Both candidates, the editorial writer opined, “are impressive and would make an excellent supervisor.” Although they are “evenly matched” Mr Lubera's greater depth of experience puts him ahead.. (In addition, the author mysteriously anticipates that “If elected, Palmateer plans to take the unorthodox measure of developing the village.”)

- *Pro-Brooks mailer. Included in a campaign tract mailed to Athenians was a picture of Greene County Judge Daniel Lalor, presented in a way that suggested an endorsement. Judge Lalor responded with a letter to the Press, saying that the deed was done without his permission, and that if permission had been asked it would have been refused.Also contained in the mailer was language characterizing Mr Pfister, in effect, as a neophyte on matters of substantive policy. That line offered a counter of sorts to Democrats who kept harping on the multiple, time-consuming services rendered by Mr Pfister (and his wife Carol) to the community.

---- *Anti-Brooks Lines. Exemplifying the Democrats’ preferred lines of attack against Mr Brooks was a letter in The Daily Mail, accusing the legislator of excessive partisanship and of inattention to home town matters. According to Athens resident John McInerney, Mr Brooks habitually sticks uncritically to his Republican colleagues. (That accusation indirectly belittles passages that Mr Brooks included in his campaign statement to The Daily Mail, deploring “partisanship and divisive actions…. I will not participate n that activity,” and “I have the courage to equally represent all people with unparalleled energy and dedication.”

Mr McInerney also voiced the claim that Mr Brooks has never attended a session of the Town Council or the Village Board. This factual claim works rhetorically, in context, as an accusation. It draws accusatory force from two implied, unsupported, claims: (i) a functional claim, that attendance at those local council meetings is vital for solid legislative performance, and (ii) a comparative claim, that most other county legislators do, more or less frequently, attend local sessions.

*Deerslayer charge. In a letter to the The Daily Mail, Republican County Chairman Brent Bogardus dealt with the Pfister candidacy by way of a recollection that some Democratic leaders have made legal moves “trying to take your vote away from you.” “Why,” he asks, “would anyone do that?” “Well, “ he answers, “if you had candidates like Chris Pfister in Athens, who allegedly beat a fawn to death in his backyard with a hammer and then had the Village crew come clean up his handy work [sic],... you wouldn’t want anyone running against them either.” That bit of Bogardistry offers a memorable example not just of delivering a less-than-conclusive indictment, but also of rhetorically confounding what somebody allegedly said about what happened with what actually happened. (In Athens, BTW, deer hammerings hardly ever happen--and the Pfister case was not an exception).

*Cop-Outs. All Athenian candidates for office in Tuesday’s election were invited to a candidates’ forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters. The Democratic candidates attended. The Republican candidatesdid not attend. None of them gave to organizer Fawn Potash an advance notice of unavailability. None sent a post-forum apology or explanation.

Moreover, all Athenian candidates for Town Council, like Town Council candidates elsewhere in GreeneLand, were invited to fill in questionnaires and to supply candidate statements to The Daily Mail, for inclusion in its Election 2009 guide. Two of the four candidates accepted the invitation. They are Phyllis Dinkelacker (Democratic and Independence parties), and April Paluch (Republican/Conservative).

Local Elections III. Case Notes

LEXINGTON’s election can be of special interest to outsiders on account of an incident mentioned briefly in The Daily Mail (10/20, by Michael Ryan, a persistently lucid source of information about mountaintop matters).
-----What does “to represent” mean? What is the duty of an elected official toward her constituents? A reason to ponder those questions was provided on the occasion of controversy over whether the erection of a big cell tower—of specified dimensions, in a certain place, under specified conditions—should be authorized by Lexington’s governing council. Dixie Lou Baldrey, the incumbent Supervisor (and a candidate for re-election this Tuesday) voted No. She did so, she said, despite a “personal” judgment that the tower project, on balance, would be good for Lexington. Since most of Lexington’s people evidently were opposed to the project, she said, her negative vote fulfilled her duty to represent the people.
-----The episode deserves sustained classroom discussion.
-----Ms Baldrey is being challenged for re-election by Republican Greg Cross, who lost the supervisor’s office to her in 2007 by 48 votes.
-----Seats on Lexington’s Council are being contested by Democrats Maurice Nelson and Mary Cline, and by Republicans John Berger Jr and Glenn Howard, as well as Susan Jo Falke, on the Conservative line (along with Berger). In The Daily Mail’s “Election 2009” guide, only Ms Cline and Mr Howard are profiled (probably because the other candidates did not submit material).

JEWETT on Tuesday could undergo, as journalist Michael Ryan says (Daily Mail, 10/30/09), a political “seismic shift.” Local Democrats refused at their August caucus to re-nominate long-serving Town Supervisor Michael Flaherty, their own chairman and a mountaintop party leader. So Mr Flaherty was forced, in effect, into retirement. His replacement as nominee for Supervisor, Georgette Kraus, falls short of the Republican nominee, Carol Muth, by every standard test of qualification.


CAIRO is noteworthy in the 2010 election season for what is not happening, namely, conflict. Both occupants of the Town’s two seats in the legislature, Harry Lennon and William Lawrence, are standing for re-election, are unopposed and, while being Democratic/Inde-pendence and Republican standard-bearers, are both listed on the ballot on the Conservative line. As for the offices of supervisor, town justice, town council and tax collector, each is a one-candidate election, most of the candidates are incumbents, and all the candidates appear on the Republican and Conservative lines.
-----The apparent political harmony is out of character. Cairo residents are seasoned political brawlers (intra-party, inter-party, extra-party). The absence of electoral competition this year can be traced mainly to a decision by the organized Democrats, under new chairman Mike Coyne, to pass up this year’s trials. That decision puzzled observers, and it caught Town Councilor Alice Tunison by surprise. Ms Tunison had announced her intention to not seek re-election, and had assumed that her fellow Democrats would endorse a replacement candidate. When she learned that there would be no Democratic candidate for Council, she opted back in, to the extent of launching a spirited write-in campaign. (See www.tunisonforcairo.com )
Mr Coyne’s puzzling decision to avoid the local fray in 2009 cannot be ascribed to a paucity of party spirit or combativeness. Mr Coyne is a veteran campaigner on the Democratic side, including salaried full-time operations. Stay tuned.

DURHAM shares with Greenville and Catskill the distinction of hosting a super-heated November election battle. At the same time, Durham differs from all other GreeneLand towns in that, while six kinds of offices are to be filled on Tuesday, only one is subject to contest; and that one contest is three-cornered.
-----Incumbent county legislator Sean Frey is standing for re-election while at the same time all the other elective local offices (now Republican-held) are uncontested. Mr Frey, as the Democratic and Independence Party nominee, is being challenged byElsie Allan, the Republican and Conservative standard-bearer, and by Leslie Armstrong, champion of the Grassroots of Durham Party.
-----Mr Armstrong ran for the seat in 2006 as the Republican nominee (in a three-way contest), but was edged out by Mr Frey by 11 votes. He sought to be renominated by the local Republican committee for this campaign, but was edged out by Ms Allen. He then circulated petitions aimed at bringing about a Republican primary election contest in September. Republican Party chief Brent Bogardus challenged the validity those petitions, and won the case. Mr Armstrong then collected signatures, with all procedural requirements observed, to establish his Grassroots candidacy.
----Among features of recent campaigning is an unsigned mailer attacking Mr Frey’s “record of fiscal responsibility” chiefly by citing his own parlous personal finances. The Frey campaign responded with a recorded telephone message damning the mailer and ascribing it, more or less explicitly, to both of his rivals. Mr Armstrong in turn put out a message dissociating himself from the mailer, imputing it to Allen headquarters (its mailing permit number, he noted, was the same as the number on an earlier ‘positive’ Allen mailer), and damning the Frey camp for implicating him in “this smear piece.”
-----For his part, Mr Armstrong has circulated a Durham Deserves Better tract that is most immediately an attack on the performance of recent Town Councils. The attack consists of drawing a contrast: “Durham taxes are higher and the services provided are lower then in comparable communities across New York State.” On behalf of that thesis, Mr Armstrong cites figures on local Durham taxes per capita relative to the “upstate New York small town average” and dollar outlays by Durham’s governors for various services (health, sanitation, recreation…) compared with averages for the other small towns.
-----Durham’s dismal record, Mr Armstrong argues, discredits the Frey and Allen candidacies. Mr Frey “in 2007 actively campaigned for the Town Board members who have been doing this to us -- and now in 2009 his party failed to give us a single candidate to run for a Town Board seat to deal with this waste and greed.” Ms Allen “is the chair of the [Republican] party that is responsible” for the history of misgovernment.
-----The figures cited in Durham Deserves Better are ascribed to the State Comptroller’s office, but they are not properly sourced and they can be faulted as indicators. What is more, making an incumbent county legislator and a local Republican chairman equally culpable for the alleged failures of local governance is a stretch. But the basic effort here—approaching candidates by looking at local government performance, looking at performance by comparing a community’s tax burdens per capita and services delivered per capita relative to other communities—surely is rare, and rational, and admirable.
-----Mr Frey has been endorsed by Daily Mail management, on the basis of the grants for Durham projects that he helped to procure, along with “some good ideas and a pugnacious style.”
-----Mr Amstrong’s presence on the ballot could prove to be Mr Frey’s political salvation.

Tuesday's Election II

GO FISHING?

---- Voting is a civic duty, right? Every vote counts, right?

---- For residents of five GreeneLand towns, however, voting on November 3 would be an irrational act. In Windham, Ashland, Halcott, Hunter and Cairo, there are plenty of offices to be filled. They include, just as is the case in the other Towns, legislator, supervisor, council member, town clerk, justice, highway superintendent and tax collector. But for every one of those offices in those towns, Tuesday’s ballot offers just one candidate. The only choice presented to voters in those towns will be a choice between candidates for Supreme Court Justice in the State’s multi-county 3^rd Judicial District. (The contenders are Jill Dunn, Republican, and James Gilpatric, the Democratic, Independence, and Conservative [!] candidate).

----- In other GreeneLand towns, voters will actually settle some contests, but contested elections are abnormal events. Thus, 12 of GreeneLand’s legislators are seeking re-election, and seven of them cannot fail; they face no opposition. In the 12 Towns where the office of Justice is subject to election this year, there are 12 candidates. (All of them are incumbents). Of the eight Town Clerkships that come up for election on November 3^rd, two (in Prattsville and New Baltimore) are subject to contest. Of the nine Highway Superintendent offices, three are subject this year not only to election, but to electoral contest. (They are in Coxsackie, Greenville and Lexington). Of eight Tax Collector races, seven are one-entrant affairs. (The deviant case, offering a choice between candidates, is in Prattsville).

This plenitude of choice-free elections does not attest to system health. In cases where the sole candidate is the incumbent—that is to say, most cases—the absence of a challenger does not attest reliably to general, informed satisfaction of voters with services received. It does not betoken excellent performance by the incumbent, or the opposite. With regard to most kinds of local elective offices, it attests to ignorance of what these office-holders do and of how to evaluate their work.

That ignorance is shared among office-holders. Town Supervisors and Town Councilors can scarcely monitor, much less control, the work of local judges, tax collectors, highway superintendents, and clerks. Some arrangements (such as mandatory outside audits) shed light on the performance of those officials. But direct popular election gives these officials a basis for independence from the legislative ‘branch’ of local government. Election without contestation fortifies that independence. Town highway superintendents do not file periodic reports that are open to public scrutiny and shed light on cost-effectiveness of performance. A tax collector who runs up needless expenses, or who collects selectively, cannot be fired--if, perchance, her malfeasance or nonfeasance were known. A town clerk who thwarts the will of town council members (even with regard to keeping the minutes of council meetings) cannot be fired.

Our superabundance of choice-free elections can be blamed in good part on bad laws. The offenders are the peculiar New York State laws creating our superabundance of types of local offices that must be filled by direct popular election. The intention may have been to facilitate popular control. The effect is the reverse.

Tuesday's Elections I

THE PROSPECT
-----Voters in GreeneLand on Tuesday could change the county legislature’s present Republican 9-5 majority into a bigger majority, of 11 to 3, or into a minority of 6 to 8. Those arithmetic possibilities, and limits, are grounded in the facts about alignments, contests and the absence of contests.

----Of the Town of Catskill's four seats on the legislature, three are currently held by Republicans and one by a Democrat. Six candidates are vying for those four seats. Four are Republicans (including two incumbents) or proto-Republicans. One is an incumbent Democrat. The other is a proto-Democrat. Thus, the Republicans could lose one Catskill seat, or gain one.

-----Elsewhere in GreeneLand, four seats are currently occupied by Republicans who are standing for re-election and are unopposed. They are the two Coxsackie seats along with one from Cairo and one from the four-town Ashland-Jewett-Prattsville-Windham district.

----In all of GreeneLand's legislative districts, the only incumbent Republican who is seeking re-election is being challenged directly; he represents Athens. On the Democratic side, two incumbents who are seeking re-election are being challenged; they represent Catskill and Durham. Meanwhile, in Greenville, retirement of the Republican incumbent has given rise to an intense two-party battle.

-----If the two embattled Democratic incumbents survive, if the two open (Republican-held) seats go from Republican to Democratic, and if the one Democratic challenger to a Republican incumbent were to win, along with the three unchallenged incumbent Democrats, then next Tuesday’s GreenLand election would, with regard to party affiliations, be transformative. It also would be, to all knowledgeable observers, astonishing.

----Meanwhile, voters on Tuesday could bring about a modest change in the Republican and Democratic shares of Town Supervisor offices. Larger swings are precluded by the absence of a supervisorial election in one town (Catskill's election comes at another time) and of electoral contests in most others. In all but five Towns, the incumbent Supervisor is seeking re-election and (whether Republican or Democratic) is unopposed. Actual contests are being waged in Greenville, whose current Republican supervisor is seeking election to another office (county legislator), and where a Democrat and a Republican are competing for the succession; in Athens, where a Republican and a Democrat are contesting an open seat; Prattsville, whose Democratic incumbent is being challenged by the Republican who lost the seat to her (by 6 votes) in 2007; Jewett, where a Republican and a Democrat are vying to succeed the Democratic incumbent, who was not re-nominated by his co-partisans; and New Baltimore, where two candidates are contending for the open seat.

THE SELL
----The foregoing sentences, while delivering information about an impending bunch of elections to public offices, also deliver a sales pitch. They steer receivers in the direction of a judgment about what is most important, most portentous, about election results. They prod receivers to believe that, of all ways of appreciating the significance of the present election contest (and perhaps all public elections), the foremost is party affiliation.

----That suggestion is arbitrary. It is no less arbitrary than other categorical choices, such as gender ratio, race, turnover rate, religious denominations, national origins, occupations or hairstyles of contestants. It is no less arbitrary, and it is probably more insidious, because it is journalistically conventional.

----My treatment of the GreeneLand legislature and Town Supervisor races reflects standard practice. I have given it extra emphasis by means of surgery: dwelling on party affiliations while stripping away every other aspect of the matter, including even the contestants' names.

-----Party affiliation-focused accounts of popular elections reflect common practice, and they reinforce it. They also promote an illusion about intelligibility. By dwelling descriptively on the party affiliations of candidates they endow that variable with primary importance on and with seemingly clear meaning (for town and village and county elections as well as State and national elections). Thus, a change in the party affiliation of the majority of county legislators would be transformative—and the nature, the legislative meaning, of the transformation is self-evident.

----Such miseducation can be blamed in part on bad laws. The electoral laws of this State, and of many others, prescribe that every candidate whose name appears on the general election ballot (for clerk or tax collector, for judge or highway superintendent, for town or village or county legislator, for Representative or Senator or Governor) must be listed on a party “line.” To earn placement on a party line, a candidate must round up a prescribed number of signatures by voters who not only endorse her candidacy but also, specifically, endorse his Republican, Democratic, Conservative, Independence, Working Families, and/or Common Grass Voice Sense candidacy. Thus, focus on party affiliation is imposed on the voters by State law.

----For voters and for news-givers, this irrational, costly regime is treacherously convenient. Citizens want to make rational voting decisions, but it would be irrational for them to spend big resources for that purpose. They welcome informational shortcuts. They are receptive, accordingly, to suggestions that a bit of readily available information-- party affiliation--serves to differentiate candidates (local, regional, national...) and may differentiate them in a substantive, programmatic way. That bit of information could yield a rational vote--a choice that is the same as what wouild emerge from arduous study of candidates' positions on various issues, in relation to one's own arduously determined preferences.

----Voters look to the media for help in shaping their choices, and news providers want to help. But they too are constrained by information costs. Rarely can they afford to make deep studies of candidates' background and positions. They dwell on readily available, low-cost information: : name of candidate, age, home town, occupation, family ties, office-holding experience, and party affiliation. The latter information differentiates the competing candidates.It is uniquely highlighted on the ballot. It enables reporters to group together many candidates for many offices, and thus to generalize about election results. It appears to be impartial and objective (in contrast to "liberal" and "conservative," for example. It gives the voters a basis for choice that appears, however wrongly, to be a basis for rational choice.

The GreeneLand Beat

“GREENE COUNTY USA. A local history of national importance” will screened for the first time tomorrow. The new documentary, compiled and delicately edited by deft hand Jonathan Donald, will be unveiled in Catskill’s Community Theatre at 4pm. A reception will follow, across the street at the Arts Council headquarters, which is undergoing an esthetic transformation.


“BEAT-UP” is the name used by journalists in many English-speaking countries to characterize a story or a headline that magnifies and sensationalizes an event. An example appeared in Tuesday’s Daily Mail, in the form of a banner headline across page one:

Realtors declare war over mortgage tax hike

The actual event, as reported, was that Ted Banta, president of Greene County Multiple Listing, flanked by a couple of other GreeneLand realtors, went before the county legislators (on Monday, 10/19) with a request for reconsideration of their recently adopted mortgage registration tax. Mr Banta read a statement (too rapidly for comprehension; but he’d been told to limit himself to ten minutes). The tax, he said, “distresses the real estate market,” “penalizes home owners,” and “exploits those who are in great financial need” to point of needing to refinance. Its terms put Greene County “on a par” with neighboring counties “whereby [sic] our economy and housing markets do not compare.” Various legislators responded, along with County Administrator Dan Frank, with remarks mostly about the need for revenue, especially at a timeof economic when demands for services from public agencies are abnormally high.

“GOOFY" could be the proper label for a news release put out on October 16th by the National Audubon Society. Under the headline “Give Birds a Break on National Feral Cat Day,” the release gave information about the menace of feral cats (an “epidemic”) and of free-roaming domestic cats, to birds and small mammals. With their growing numbers, these cats are having “untold and profound impact on bird populations already in steep decline.” They kill “hundreds of millions of protected birds” and “more than a billion small mammals.” Keep domestic cats indoors, says Albert Caccese, Audubon New York’s executive director. For more information and tips on keeping your cat healthy and happy indoors, visit the American Bird Conservancy’s “Cats Indoors!” website at: http://www.abcbirds.org/cats. Not identified in the Audubon story was National Feral Cat Day’s day.

PUBLISHED in the November issue of Guideposts. True Stories of Hope and Inspiration, is a true and inspiring GreeneLand story. It’s about the family quest last year that led to discovery, under a rock near Dutchman’s Landing, of the “Captain Kidd doubloon” that had been sought by GreeneLand treasure hunters for 19 years. The doubloon earned for the family a $10,000 jeweled crown. The determined hunt by “Team Ria” members was conducted in memory of a recently deceased sister.

COMMUTING by Amtrak from and to Hudson is going to become more expensive. Car parking in the big city-owned lot will no longer be free. In prospect, we understand, is a $3 daily fee, or a $900 yearly fee.

150 = years of age of Catskill’s St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church. That event, according to reliable sources, was observed last Sunday by means of a visit from Bishop Howard Hubbard as well as from the church’s former longtime pastor, now retired, Fr John Murphy. Because the church had to be closed last year, after chunks of plaster fell from the arched ceiling and costly repairs could not be funded immediately, the service was held in the former Bingo hall in the adjoining school’s basement. The church’s closing, along with the absence for two years of an assigned priest and with administrative problems, has generated a scattering of the flock. Some parishioners attend services at the Village’s Franciscan Friary, or in Athens or even Hudson. Local administration is handled by a nun, Sr Mary Mazza, while a chaplain from the Coxsackie prison system, Fr Rick Shaw, has been saying Mass. Bishop Hubbard assured the congregation that every effort was being made to effectuate a reopening, and he appealed for patience. He also shared a numerical recollection: When he entered the seminary in the 1950s, the Albany diocese encompassed about 600 priests. When he was elevated to Bishop in the 1970s, there were about 300 priests. Current trends indicate that when he retires in 2013, there will be fewer than 100. (How much more shrinkage must occur, we wonder, before the subjects of ordaining women and dropping the celibacy rule are revisited).

11=number of days left before November 3^rd voting for GreeneLand legislators and for supervisors, council members, judges, clerks, tax collectors, and highway superintendents in GreeneLand's Towns. Town of Catskill candidates have been invited--along with voters--toparticipate in a candidates' forum tomorrow. Organized by the League of Women Voters, it starts at 10am in the Community Center, and will stream-cast on our new community radio statiojn, WGXC.

IF YOU don't join Cornell Cooperative Extension's “50 Mile Harvest” dinner on Saturday evening, featuring foods grown on nearby farms (622-9820 (www.agroforestrycenter.org) then the event of choice is a recital of music set for two harps. The performers are the renowned duo of Lynne Apnes and John Wickey, along with some of their students, at the Union MillsGallery, 361 Main St, Catskill. They will come over from Jared Aswegan's estate in Athens, where they are participatingin the HarpArts Fall Retreat. A wine & cheese/colloquium/student performance starts at 7, with the big show starting at 8. Information: 914-388=2822.

PEACE ranks, at cooking classes offered on Tuesdays at GreeneLand’s Peace Village, as “the magic ingredient.” (www.peace-village.org)

NEOLOGISM Dept. Vook = video book. Blawg = blog devoted to legal matters. Blook=object that looks like a book (paper pages, printing…) but isn’t. Diavlog=two-way video blog.

Honorifics

LOCAL HERO. A GreeneLander was honored this morning with the title Hudson Valley Hero. The title was conferred by leaders of Scenic Hudson, flanked by leaders of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission and the New York State Parks Commission. It took place at an outdoor site down in Highland NY in conjunction with ceremonial dedication of the new Franny Reese State Park. Receiving the hero’s mantle was Hudson (his real first name) Talbott. He was so honored in tribute to the book that he wrote and illustrated, River of Dreams, whose publication coincided with our Hudson-Champlain-Fulton Quadricentennial observances and gave rise to a musical show performed up and down the Valley by GreeneLand school kids. The book and the show, however, are not the sum of Mr Talbott’s Hudsonian heroics. There’s also his recent instigation and promotion of the recently unveiled Wall of History paintings on the warehouse at Historic Catskill Point. Plus active participation in the revival of downtown Catskill, in the revival of Catskill’s community center, and in the governance of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site.

ALSO RECOGNIZED: GreeneLand’s Mountaintop Arboretum, with top rank in Hudson Valley magazine’s list of “Fun Places You Didn’t Know About”; with the cover picture in the I Love NY guide to this region; and with improvement money from the county’s Soil and Water Conservation District.

JOBS. The rate of unemployment in GreeneLand, according to State Labor Department figures, went up a bit in September, to 8.4 per cent of the worker pool. That is an increase (“gain” would not be the apt term) over August’s 8.0% and over September 2008’s 5.9%. The job picture here is bleaker than in neighboring counties: Albany at 7.1%, Columbia at 7.7%, Ulster at 8.1%. It’s brighter, however, than the nation-wide figure (9.5%) and the State-wide figure (8.8%).

FUELING AROUND. In GreeneLand filling stations late this week, the low price for a gallon of regular gasoline was around $2.58. That is above the United States average, the East Coast, the Gulf Coast and the new York City averages ($2.49, $2.41, $2.32, $2.48), but slightly below the State-wide average ($2.64). It also is higher than in neighboring Saugerties ($2.49 up), Hudson ($2.51 up) and Albany ($2.52). Maybe the small change in composition of the county legislature that will occur at November 3’s elections will bring a more effective push against high fuel prices here.

RECOVERING? A local enterpriser, who runs a specialty store for home improvements, recalls that business in the first quarter of this year (January through Mach) was 42 per cent below the same quarter of 2008. But that was the bottom. Trade has picked up since then, to the point that by the end of the year, he expects a drop of no more than 10 per cent. Is that a representative story? In the meantime, we hear reports that the pace of real estate transactions in the past three months has picked up. That could be another sign of recovery.

REPORTING? Riders Fair Well Individually.

Suspicious Briefcase Brings Out Bomb Squad.

Hunter Mountain has only served to appease the populace of the world for a mere half century. But let’s not make mole hills out of mountains.

TV Pilots Shot in R.I Await Word of Fate.

ON THIS DATE. 1950 – Bill Grimes of the Green Bay Packers gains 167 yards on 10 carries in a 44-31 loss to the New York Yankees....

Last year’s budget welcomes a 10.5 percent increase.

Coxsackie residents gathered...at the Stacy Road site to break ground at the recently overturned community garden....

Christopher Agnello-Daly is suspected of stealing from Wal-Mart.a multitude of items including raving blade cartridges.