It’ll Make the Politicians Sad I Know

But 4,000 of our men and women, boys and girls, have come home in bags.

Here are some of their faces, courtesy of today’s Pravda NYT

Your 2008 Final Standings

If I get it exactly right everyone owes me $100. That’s each.

My next baseball post will the long-awaited return of my formerly annual “What the &@%# are you still doing in the league?” roster AKA Go away already, Brett Tomko.

AL East
Yankees	96	66
Red Sox	93	69
Blue Jays	89	73
Rays	70	92
Orioles	61	101
AL Central
Tigers	92	70
Indians	90	72
White Sox	84	78
Twins	75	87
Royals	72	90
AL West
Mariners	89	73
Angels	87	75
Rangers	76	86
A’s	73	89
NL East
Mets	93	69
Braves	90	72
Philles	88	74
National	72	90
Marlins	64	98
NL Central
Cubs	87	75
Reds	83	79
Cardinals	80	82
Brewers	78	84
Astros	72	90
Pirates	70	92
NL West
Diamondbacks	94	68
Padres	88	74
Rockies	81	81
Dodgers	78	84
Giants	65	97

Catching up with Tuxedo Park

The latest on the controversial viewshed zoning proposal is that it’s been sent back to the workshop for redesign. No word yet on when it’ll be brought back to the public.

I’m still trying to get a good copy of the map. As soon as I’m done with this post I’ll be sending an appeal letter to the village. I’ve tried three times to get an electronic version of the map. Here’s the map you can’t read.
Also, still waiting to hear when school negotiations will start up again. Maybe next week, but that’s a guess.

Meanwhile, I haven’t done a good job lately of checking in with my friends at TPfyi, so here are a few links to their latest thoughts on the goings-on in the village.

Here’s the latest on the village planning board and the town planning board.

And there are David DuPont latest published thoughts on the school negotiations. He’s something of a hard-liner.

But I Can’t Quote a Source Saying ‘Shit’.

Sunday brunch was getting a little boring, so Brenda Starr had a threesome.

A Steckler for Cake Details

OK, at last it’s time for another episode of “I send questions via e-mail to local and let’s hope interesting resident and said resident responds via e-mail, sometimes too late for this to stay on a regular schedule and I then edit responses for space and clarity and post them here, too often, regrettably, without a photo, and when that’s all done I come up with a pun title.”

I almost didn’t have one this time and thought about using  “Questions for WhoosieBritches,” which is the best title suggestion I’ve had so far.

This week’s subject is Barbara Steckler, owner of Cakes by the Lake in Greenwood Lake and head of the newly revived Greenwood Lake Merchant’s Guild. We talked about launching a business and the Guild at the same time, linzer cookie (whatever they are) and why you should give her money.

PS: Hi Barbara. Cakes By the Lake opened in May. Is this your first crack at running a business?

BS: I have worked in banking, secretarial and ran a self storage facility. I also worked at the Captains Table part time for 8 years. My dad started his alarm business when I was in my teens. I always wanted to start a business but it was never the right time or place. I started baking when I was 10 years old and learned a lot from my Grandmother. I always baked at holidays and stared taking classes and making cakes for my friends. It just took off. My daughters always said ” You should open a bakery” so one day I finally did.  

PS: Let me guess. You’re from Mah Wah?

BS: I’m originally from Mahwah, NJ. Moved to Washingtonville, NY about 20 years ago.

PS: You opened your first business last May, and a few months later you were the president of the Merchant’s Guild. How’d that happen?

BS: Creating the Guild was started by Barney at the Blanket Boss asking me if I wanted to have a Halloween party on the day of the Halloween parade.

I said, what if we get all the merchants to hand out candy since the kids were in costume the day before Halloween. So he made up signs and Irene (Labato – PS) and I went to all the merchants to tell them to come to a meeting and put the signs in their windows to let kids know who was involved, and everyone stayed open late.

It was fantastic. There were people everywhere! So at the meeting, we started the Guild and I was voted president. I opened my business in May 07 and was the president in Sept. 07. It was crazy!

Our goal is to make Greenwood Lake a place where people will come to enjoy the lake, shopping, concert events and much more which are on our village website.

PS: How are things going at the bakery? You have anything besides cake?

BS: Cakes by the Lake was named by my friend Holly when I told her I was opening in Greenwood Lake. She said, “we can come and have cakes by the lake” and I knew that was the name, but we do all sorts of baked goods.

Then I roped my sister Diane to come and work with me. We have a blast every day. Sometime Nicole (who had the bakery before I did) comes in to help and have some fun with us. 

PS: I’ve had one of your cakes and the jubilee dealie you made for Christmas. They were both great. What have been the big hits with your customers so far? 

BS:  Our customer favorites are crumb cake, linzer cookies, oatmeal lace (grandma’s recipe) and our unique cupcakes which change with the seasons and our moods. Our favorites, everything! We hope to grow so more of our customers can come in and sit and enjoy our great coffee, bagels and baked goods.

PS: What do you do when you’re not baking?

BS: For “fun” I go to the gym, try to go hang on Friday nights and listen to music. So cut me some slack on Saturday mornings,huh.

I am going to walk the 3 day cancer walk in August so I am training for that and I need to raise at least  $2000.00 to walk so….help me out and stop by 88 Windermere Ave. and donate some dough! 

School Boards and Other Silliness

If I had one wish for the Times Herald-Record, it would be a lot more in-depth schools coverage. I don’t think we do nearly enough and I hope some effort to change that pays off soon.

Because there’s always a lot of craziness going on in the education world.

For example, the NYT op-ed page today was given over to the feral cats of the schools world – union bashers (not that there’s not a lot of union activity worth bashing, but this is all these people do).

From the the lefty side, here’s something to make the strict constructionist nuts – purely national school standards.

Let’s pause while I use that story as an excuse to trot out one of my favorite Mark Twain quotes, which may also be in the story:

“First, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”
A new charter in NYC is going to pay teachers $125,000 a year.

And in California, a court decision in a child welfare case could make most varieties of home-schooling illegal.

Sinning with Spitzer

Update: Best/Awfulest headline ever, courtesy of The Economist: Spitzer Swallows

According to the Pope, Eliot Sptizer is in the clear.

Spitzer may frequent prostitutes, but there’s no proof he’s guilty of any of the newest deadly sins, released today by the Vatican.

1. “Bioethical’ violations such as birth control

2. “Morally dubious” experiments such as stem cell research

3. Drug abuse

4. Polluting the environment

5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor

6. Excessive wealth

7. Creating poverty

There is already a lot of demand for his resignation, but it’s not clear he’s guilt of any of the old deadly sins, either, assuming, he’s hooking up with, um, hookers, out of boredom and/or loneliness.

Here are the old sins: lust, gluttony, pride, envy, greed, sloth and wrath.

Not a word about boredom or loneliness. So, as Spitzer said today, politics is about ideas, not individuals, no matter how idiotic or incompetent they prove themselves to be.

The Red Sox Deserve our Contempt

To the list of great labor agitators – Joe Hill, Upton Sinclair, Cesar Chavez – we can add Red Sox reliever Jonathan Papelbon.

Papelbon, one of several completely unlikeable frat boy redneck types on the Sox (Pedroia, Youkilis and Beckett being some of the others), may have raised the bar for out-of-touch athletes everywhere with these comments about his quest for a $100 million contract:

“I feel a certain obligation not only to myself and my family to make the money that I deserve but for the game of baseball.”

Read the whole story about Papelbon’s quest for social justice here.

For balance, here are a few likable Red Sox: David Ortiz, Jason Varitek. OK, that’s all I can think of

Primary Shuffle

All those states that moved up their primaries so they would “matter” seem to have made a bad choice.

Now it’s PA, OR, WV and MS that matter.

Here’s to delusions of grandeur.

Thoughts on Houston

Having a few hours to kill between the end of my investigative reporting conference and my flight home I walked several miles of central Houston Sunday morning and saw nothing. There’s nothing there.

The streets are clean because they’re empty, sterile, the buildings gleaming with the tall glass dreams of energy barons and financemen. In one intersection a halo of glass a story above the sidewalk loops three corner buildings together, so none ever has to go out into the street. The downtown core is a giant mirror. As you walk down the street your reflection constantly calls out, don’t you wish you were here?

 

It’s a place Jane Jacobs would call Radiant City.

The tunnels connecting the buildings below ground are to save people from the heat, but they rob the city of any life. Houston has no identity because, as Jacobs would say, it has no public characters, no sidewalk relationships, aside from a few stray down-and-outers, who appear to have the same friendliness that infects everyone when the weather is almost always pleasant, as it is there late winter.

Two night before a few characters panhandled my dinner companions as we sat out at an Italian restaurant, one of the few place trying to create a streetside ambiance.

 

I was eating with a colleague at the conference and a local couple, who I’ll call Connie and John, because those were their names. Almost no one came by. Connie told one of the panhandlers she would pay him if he sang a song. He said he couldn’t sing because he didn’t have any teeth, and she waved him along. That’s what passes for a sidewalk relationship in Houston.

Connie and John are Ron Paul fans. Here’s what Connie had to say about Obama, in so many words:

“His name scare me. He sounds like a terrorist.”

Really, she said that, and thank goodness CNN continues to flog the Hussein angle and give a platform to hatemongers and then “balance” that with token Muslim-Americans who are brought on the air to speak for every Muslim in the country. Gee, I wonder how it makes Muslim-Americans feel that the very mention of a name that may as well be Smith makes people like Connie – and there are lots of people like Connie – think a presidential candidate, who’s more Blue Blood than anyone in Texas, is maybe a terrorist? Thanks CNN.

Note to the media: Fairness, balance and objectivity is not giving a platform to people without integrity and no relationship with reality or the truth and then presenting the “other side.” A good reporter, a good news outlet, calls said hatemonger on said bs and then moves on.

John was more complex, a Libertarian who thinks the U.S. shouldn’t be in Iraq because the U.S. shouldn’t be anywhere, worries about immigration, doesn’t have a whole lot of positive things to say about the Bush Administration, doesn’t believe in global warming but does believe in energy conservation, because why waste food or gas, and supports building bullet trains to connect the state’s big cities and stop with the super highways already.

After all, it’s the car, or the planning around the car, that’s ruined Houston, just as it has LA, Phoenix and many other cities. John lives in a gentrified part of the city that sort of qualifies as downtown and rides the bus sometimes. He doesn’t think Sean Hannity is a journalist and has deep reservations about McCain. Of course, he’ll vote for him in November.