Goings &

On the subject of Comment management, we are still collecting and sifting ideas. Meanwhile, news & stuff about GreeneLand:

GOING into history, at the end of this school year: middle school education at St Patrick’s Academy. The decision, says Principal Rita M. Kunkel, was prompted by steady decline in enrollment in the higher grades. In addition, there will be no 6^th grade schooling during 2006-07; but instruction in that grade probably will be restored in 2007, judging from the size of current 4^th grade enrollments. Get it?

GOING into retirement, at the end of this school year, from Catskill Elementary School:: grade 3 teacher Barbara McEneny. And rumor has it that she will not be replaced. Con-sequently, Grade 3 classes will be reduced from six to five, and number of pupils per classroom will balloon beyond 30.

GOING to Albany, in May, after passing rigorous test upon test, to become a State Trooper: Catskill police officer Paul Rosenblatt Jr. It’s a rewarding accomplishment. Salary difference between starting village police officer and trainee trooper is almost $30,000.

GOING to foreclosure auction: an exceptionally pricey property; at Sleepy Hollow Lake, at 5 Gunpowder Road, defaulting mortgagee being one Jacqueline Upright. Her telephone is disconnected. Amount of lien is said by the plaintiff (Deutsche Bank) as $331,779; and 88 cents; plus interest and costs.

NOT GOING to Baghdad, to train police officers: Athens police chief (and former Catskill chief) Roger Masse.

GONE, from Catskill’s Home Depot outlet: Mark Ashley, first manager when the place opened in 2004. He has moved on to the company’s Wappinger Falls outlet. Acting manager is another here-from-the-opening operative, Amanda Todd.

GONE, from public school teaching in Catskill, after 37 years, on account of ill health: Barry Hopkins, artist and foster father of the splendid Greater Sense of Place program. Barry received, and well deserved, a fine write-up by Jim Planck in the Daily Mail of Jan. 27.

GONE, from Lacy Ford (& Lincoln & Mercury & Subaru): J. C. Berzal, erstwhile manager of the used car department. His successor is veteran salesman Jerry Landi. Hence the banner headlines on newspaper advertisements: “Under New Management.” The Lacy boys are still in charge, or will take charge when they get back from winter quarters in Arizona.

GONE from the boys’ locker room Catskill Middle School, since last September, according to a story-sniffing Seeing Greene correspondent: one toilet. It has not been replaced. And the pipe (says our story-sniffing reporter) has not been capped. Equally odious, we are told, is fact that urinals in the boys’ toilet don’t flush. COMING: Movies. “ NancyMcPhee”or “Match Point” at Catskill Mountain Foundation theater in Hunter (263-4702). “Doogal” or “Date Movie” at Community Theater in Catskill (954-2410).

MAULING. “Calendar of Events” published last Saturday (2/18/06) in GreeneLand’s foremost daily newspaper listed events of the previous day (2/17). And in another recent issue, readers were invited to ponder the news that “police were continuing to vehemently search for the suspect….”

APPRECIATING. On this very date, 171 years ago, an adoptive GreeneLander responded to wintry weather with these words:

“My soul dwells in a mortal tenement, and feels the influence of the elements. Still I would not live where tempests never come; for they bring beauty in their train.

I sign not for a stormless clime,

Where drowsy quiet ever dwells;

Where crystal brooks, with endless chime,

Flow winding through perennial dells.

For storms bring beauty in their gtrain:

The hills below the howling blast,

The woods all weeping in their rain,

How glorious, when the storm is past.

So storms of ill, when pass’d away,

Leave in the soul serene delight:

The gloom of the tempestuous day

But makes the following calm more bright.

--Thomas Cole