Leading Ladies

  In higher education, American women now out-number men.  And for the first time, according to U.S. Census figures, the ladies’ numerical superiority applies to Masters and higher degrees as well as to Bachelor (!) degrees. 

   That situation is eminently consistent with what has been reported persistently about performance at the secondary school level.  Girls evidently rule.  Thus, at Catskill High School in the last term, 16 seniors achieved High Honors; 10 were female.  At Hunter-Tannersville High School, one boy scored high honors, along with 12 girls (and congratulations to Nicholas Tripsas). 

    Those GreeneLand results conform to what is reported elsewhere in the mid-Hudson region as well as the nation.  According to figures supplied by school administrators and reported in newspapers, girls out-numbered boys in the ranks of High Honors achievers at Rondout Valley High School by a score of 18 to 10.  At Red Hook High, the female edge  was 46 to 25.  At Kingston High, 27 girls achieving High Honors in grade 12 were joined by 14 boys.  At little Germantown High, girls who reached the top bracket of achievers in the 12^th grade out-numbered boys by 6 to 3. 

     Such figures shape eligibility for admission to college and, particularly, for admission to the more selective colleges.   

     They also shape rates of employment.  According to U.S. Labor Department figures, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, the unemployment rate among men who are classified as members of the work force is currently 9.4 per cent, down from 10.5% in 2010.  For women the figures are 8.4% and 8.6%. 

SCHOLARSHIP NOTE.  The Kiwanis Club of Catskill annually offers two college stipends of $500 to GreeneLand high school seniors.  Selection is related to service as well as scholarship. Applications from Cairo-Durham High School numbered zero.  For the second year.  

PAWED.  According to regular news media reports, on April 14^th a GreeneLand lady disturbed a black bear that was sifting through garbage outside her house Round Top.  The bear knocked Joy Bayer-Mozynski down, held her down with one paw while finishing its repast with the other, then departed in peace.  Authorities subsequently set a trap for the bear, but soon removed it.  People who live along traditional bear trails, especially in during the weeks when ursine hibernating has just ended, are warned to keep garbage cans indoors, to forego bird-feeders, and to feed pets inside.

SEX, FAITH, TAXES.  What is a religion?  GreeneLand Judge George Pulver Jr, sitting as a State Supreme Court judge, will soon take on the task of ruling on that question.  The need for a ruling derives from a dispute about the status, for property tax purposes, of a property in Palenville.  That property, once known as the Central Hotel, now is depicted by its primary occupant, Cathryn Platine, as the Phrygianum of the Maetreum of Cybele and “center of the world wide Cybeline revival,” or worship of a particular ancient pagan goddess.  Ms Platine’s claim for ecclesiastical exemption from taxes levied on her Phyrigianum has been rejected by Catskill’s town council.  Judge Pulver has ruled that the rejection was poorly rationalized.  He is calling for a more comprehensive treatment of qualifications for exemption.

   (Ms Platine’s movement—see www.gallae.com -- differs substantially from a London-based “world wide” Cybeline revival. Whereas Palenville’s pagans offer shelter and durable fellowship (so to speak) chiefly to persons who have achieved female status by means of surgery, the alternative Cybelians are militant gynocrats.  They cohabit with men on the condition that their partners accept a position of absolute toilet-like subservience.  The prescribed position is dramatized by means of a most extraordinary marriage ceremony.  www.cybelians.com )

SEPARATING: law partners Eugenia Brennan-Heslin and Edward Kaplan, based in Hunter.  Scheduled for a May 27 hearing before Supreme Court Judge Roger McDonough is Ms Brennan-Heslin’s contention that “it is not reasonably practicable to carry on the business…since it is no longer carrying on the purpose for which it was formed and has become dysfunctional….”  She asks that a receiver be appointed to make an accounting of the partnership’s assets and liabilities and to distribute them.  In addition to practicing law, Ms Brennan-Heslin stood for election, back in 2005, on the Democratic and Working Families party lines, as county judge.   She currently works for the State of New York. 

“BUY 1, GET 1 HALF OFF!”

     --Kohl’s advertisement for “perfect bra.”

AS FOR THE MEN, GreeneLand is now home for Major League Baseball’s official Historian.  John Thorn, a Catskill resident since last October, was appointed to the office (vacant since 2008) by Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.  Mr Thorn’s latest book, Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, pushes the true history of the sport far back beyond its reputed origin at the hands of Abner Doubleday.  (Could it be that local Little League organizers need a suitable season-ending speaker?). 

MOREOVER, GreeneLand is home, so to speak, for a man who has chosen to waive his right to a service that would cost the taxpayers about $800,000. According to an Associated Press story (Daily Mail; Daily Freeman, 4/27), Kenneth Pike, who is serving a long sentence in Coxsackie Correctional Facility for raping a 12-year-old relative, decided to forego getting a heart transplant at public expense, even though relevant laws, plus expert medical diagnosis, make him eligible.  The 55-year old inmate already has undergone, at public expense, triple bypass heart surgery and the insertion of a pacemaker. 
AND for a forthcoming division meeting of Kiwanis Club members, one of the dinner entree choices is  “Chicken Franchise.”   

REMINDER REMINDER REMINDER:  Tuesday (5/17) is school board and school budget election day.