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“Who likes chocolate milk?” For the children in Greenville Central School District in upstate New York, the question is a no-brainer. Hands shoot up, and a chorus of eager voices cries: “Me!” “Me!” Duane Spaulding reaches into a cooler on the back of his maroon pickup truck, grabs a handful of whole chocolate milks and …
The winter light is just beginning to fade. On this brisk February evening, a half-dozen birders are bundled up and scanning an open expanse of state land in upstate New York. They’re waiting for the marquee attraction: Short-eared Owls, elegant raptors that fly with distinctive, mothlike movements in search of prey. This gathering place for owl-seekers is …
Conservation groups aim to cushion birds from a solar power boom Read More »
When I became a parent, I didn’t anticipate how completely Legos would capture my son’s imagination. Snapping the pieces together to build cars, houses and other fanciful structures came naturally to him. My husband retrieved a giant bin of his childhood Legos from our basement and relatives showered us with Lego sets. Hardly a day …
Legoland New York sure to keep little ones happy Read More »
In a darkened room at Indian Lake Central School District, six students sit quietly and at attention, eyes fixed on the two screens in the front. Using a mix of smartly edited video clips and live, online instruction, these screens immerse the teenagers in a subject not taught on their own school campus, or by …
As school enrollment shrinks, Adirondack districts get creative Read More »
From his earliest days, my son has slept and played by my side while I’m on my laptop and scrolling through my phone. I’m often working — writing articles, researching, sending work-related texts and emails. But sometimes, I’m simply surfing the web — listening to music, checking social media, reading whatever piques my interest. As …
On the banks of the Hudson River in Troy, NY, there’s an unassuming forest-green building, tucked between a used-car lot and towing business. This refurbished auto-body shop fits right into the neighborhood of commercial buildings. There are no open fields or garden beds thick with produce. But step inside and everything changes. You’ve found Collar City …
Albany was once a bustling riverfront city, where sloops, schooners and steamboats plied the mighty Husdon, laden with goods from around the world. A mile-long strip of shoreline was enclosed by a wharf of warehouses, coal yards and dockage facilities. This lively scene is but a distant memory, kept alive by a small historical marker honoring what was then known as the Albany Basin.
The Albany Basin was eventually filled in, with the construction of Interstate 787 perhaps the final nail in the coffin of a once-thriving waterfront. For decades, the city’s downtown languished, with retail, restaurants and other businesses finding it tough to survive in an area mostly sustained by state employees and other daytime workers.
The people who frequent the West Hill Farmers Market live in the neighborhood, usually just a block or two away. Many of them discovered the small-but-busy market while walking down the street, headed elsewhere. Perhaps they passed by a few times before opting to stop, curious about what it had to offer. “They’d been here for some time before I decided to come in,” said Tinesha Hooks, a West Hill resident who gets fresh produce from the market. “I get a lot of fruit here. It’s expensive at stores.”
Tucked between Clinton Avenue and First Street, the farmers market occupies a once-vacant lot on Quail Street. It’s a welcoming and relaxed enterprise, where friendly staff greet the many regulars who arrive each Saturday afternoon looking for healthy, nutritious food. The West Hill Farmers Market, now in its second year, is part of an ambitious effort to make one of Albany’s poorer areas into a greener and more entrepreneurial place, where residents grow their own food, eat fruits and vegetables harvested in the neighborhood and sell fresh produce from their own garden plots.
Nearly two decades have passed since Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain were arrested. They’re older, wiser, sadder. Years behind bars robbed them of the opportunity to see their children grow up. Now free, they have readjusted to life outside prison. They can reflect on what happened to them. But things are not, and will never be, the same. The long, strange and often maddening saga of Aref and Hossain, Albany Muslims apprehended in an FBI sting operation in 2004, is now the subject of a compelling documentary, titled “Witness.”
The film screened earlier this month at a well-attended, sometimes emotional screening at The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy. Hossain and his family were in the audience, as was Aref’s daughter. Locally, the details of the story are well-known: Aref, an imam at a mosque on Central Avenue and Hossain, owner of a nearby pizzeria, were sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2007, convicted of money laundering and terrorism-related charges. But the case against them was controversial almost from the start, with many observers – including this writer – coming to believe they were wrongfully prosecuted. Outraged Capital Region residents joined forces to support Aref and Hossain – a network of friends and helpers that exists to this day.
Bill Combs Jr. sees bald eagles where others see only trees or sky or banks of clouds. He’s driving on New York State Route 7 in the Schoharie County hamlet of Central Bridge when an eagle catches his eye — something most motorists wouldn’t notice, or even know to look for. He parks his truck on the side of the road, hops out and gazes upward intently. “I think that’s one over our heads,” he says, while watching the bird soar amongst the clouds, perceptible but barely. “Yup.” He pauses, tracking the swiftly moving speck. “He’s getting closer to us. He’s getting up in the blue now.”
Combs has a knack for finding bald eagles, and he’s also a fount of knowledge, with a storyteller’s gift for relating facts and anecdotes about the majestic, once-rare birds. He points to a small group of turkey vultures circling some distance from the eagle and narrates the drama unfolding in the sky. “Those four turkey vultures have found something dead, and the eagle knows that turkey vultures eat only dead things,” Combs explains. “So it’s flying around kind of like, ‘OK, what have they found? What have I found?’”