Summerizing Greene

DEPO$IT$ of GreeneLanders in First Niagara Bank accounts will be given to the State Comptroller unless properly claimed soon by appropriate persons. Named as missing depositors in an advertisement (whose author confounds principle with principal) are people who, in several cases, should not be hard to find. The names are Howard Dunn (Catskill), Beth Finch (Catskill), John and Mallory Schlenker (High Falls Road, Catskill), Craig Huther (Coxsackie), Regina Peterson (Coxsackie), Kevin Wiley (Coxsackie), Brandon and Eric Lafever (East Durham), Katie Riley (Palenville), Carl Zoccola (Round Top) and—we saved him for last--Frank McDonald. His address is given as 125 Water St, Catskill. In fact he lives at 18 Livingston St, Catskill, and is so listed in the telephone book. Also listed in the directory and at the addresses named in the ad, are Dunn, the Schlenkers, and Zoccola. And there’s a P Finch at the address of Beth Finch. Can’t the bank find these people?

RIP RUNS. GreeneLand has acquired a new public transit bus. Replacing a seven-year-old vehicle which has logged 200,000 miles, the new Rip Van Winkle Express will continue to do the regular work of transporting needy clients of county agencies such as Veterans Services, Office for the Aging, Health, Social Services, Community Action and ARC. But, as County Planning Director Warren Hart says (as reported in The Daily Freeman, 8/24), other passengers are welcome. A route schedule is accessible at www.greeneplanning.com . Meanwhile, the county legislature has launched a survey with a view to devising cost-effective improvements in private, public and human services transportation in GreeneLand.

HAILED in Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel as one of America’s “coolest” small towns, in company with Port Jervis NY, Yellow Springs OH, Mazomanie WE, Belfast ME, White River Junction VT and Truth Or Consequences NM: the GreeneLand county seat, Catskill. Author Laurie MacNeil dwells on the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, and observes that “after a period of neglect…, Catskill is attracting artists again, as much for its affordable Victorian homes as for its surroundings.” She erroneously names Albany as the town’s nearest city, and gives special mention to a gallery that has closed.

LIFELESS is the condition of Real Life Imaging, Dan Agosto’s once-thriving computer sales and servicing enterprise at 399 West Bridge Street (intersection of Route 9W and Route23A) in Catskill. Mr Agosto fell far behind on mortgage payments to vendor Orestes Vincent, and has not responded to successive notices of foreclosure. The property (with its contents?) will be put up for auction September 17^th at the interim county courthouse. For a short time this year Mr Agosto occupied a shop on Main Street in Catskill, but soon fell behind in rent payments to Catskill Mountain Housing. The shop’s contents, we understand, were put out on the sidewalk.

ALSO GONE:

--from the West Bridge Street intersection with Maple Avenue (Route 9) in Catskill: the upside-down Sawyer Motors billboard. They knew about the reversal. Decided to just go with the novelty.

--from Route 23 in Cairo: Birch Hill Power Products. In this case, the business had been flourishing, but proprietor Kurt Yates decided to move to Florida (near his ailing father) and return to the hospitality trade, which he learned when his family ran a hotel in Freehold. Locals remember Kurt as “a fine man with a heart of gold” and with a “a princess of a wife.” Kurt’s head mechanic at Birch Hill, Wayne Winnie, has opened his own repair operation (tractors, ATV’s, snowmobiles; 518 622 0578) in Acra.

--from 32 West Bridge Street, Catskill: the eponymous 32 West Kidz, a mostly-for-kids, mostly-shoes store that opened a year ago. Proprietors Sandy and Bill Beck IV closed it for good yesterday (8/28) after a prolonged half-price closeout sale. Then they started to pack the remaining inventory for trucking to the gigantic Labor Day weekend flea market in Stormville NY. With new inventory they’ll concentrate solely, says Sandy, on their thriving Internet business: www.32westkidz.com.

NEW BUSINESS. A B S (for Always Best Service; 943-7073), run by electrician Ernie Root, will open Monday at 358 Main Street in Catskill. The location is immediately below furniture restorationist and landlord Mark Cooper.

IN PROSPECT is a new, staff-less kind of workout center. According to a Daily Mail reporter, it would be a franchise operation run by Sandro Cagnin in an “ecumenical entity” (he means eleemosynary) across from the county courthouse building in Catskill. That would be the former Full Gospel Tabernacle, which began life as the First Baptist Church. Members would be given keys. Monitoring of their activities, part of the time at least, would be done by remote camera. Although opening date will probably be in December, says the reporter, “fitness gurus [sic] can apply for membership online now.” www.snapfitness.com/catskillny )

ALSO IN PROSPECT is a new telecommunications tower in East Durham, on McCafferty Road, 90 feet high. Information about this Independent Towers company project is available from EBI Consulting, 21 B St, Burlington MA (sic) 01803 (845 313 1217); project 61084703-AMG.

PARTY TOMORROW (8/30) will mark the opening of GreeneLand campaign headquarters of Alexander (Sandy) Treadwell, Republican challenger to Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The site is on Main Street, Catskill, most recently occupied by the ephemeral Mountain Buddies store. Ms Gillibrand’s county headquarters also will be in Catskill, at 362 Main Street. She’ll make an appearance after returning from the Democratic Party’s national convention.

NEW POSITION. According to a news release that was published verbatim in our daily newspaper (8/16), the winner of the 2008 Caruso International vocal competition held in Round Top at the Altamura Center for Arts and Culture is Lawrence Harris, baritone and “former NFL offensive linebacker.” He played for the Houston Oilers. Will we next be hearing about defensive wide receivers?

“FEELING BETTER,” says a GreeneLand woman, “since I shed two hundred pounds.”

Referring to her dopey husband.

NOETIC NEWS. According to a report that appeared in two GreeneLand newspapers, Michael Habering and April Hannah of Coxsackie won first prize, worth $1000, in a

contest sponsored by the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Responding to IONS’s call for entries that will “help to change the world one minute at a time and help to shift the viewers [sic] level of consciousness,” they submitted two 60-second videos. Their winning entry, composed of segments of interviews with Carol von Kaenel and Brenda Jenks, “holistic practitioners” from Saratoga Springs, “focuses on the global shift in consciousness,” says Mr Habering, and it “reminds people that every thought, word and action that is expressed has great impact on others.” As for IONS, it was founded by astronaut Edgar Mitchell in 1973 and it “sponsors leading-edge research into the potentials and powers of consciousness, including perceptions, beliefs, attention, intention and intuition.”

“SCHMIDT HAPPENS…AGAIN”= our pick for headline of the fortnight. It heads a Greenville Press story (8/24; Linda Fenoff, p. 1) about renewed strains between Durham town council members and their code enforcement officer. He is accused of failing to perform assigned tasks, of making decisions that exceed his authority, and of making false claims about tasks performed.... His first name is Al.