Another dream the night before last that featured my father. He seemed fine, although I recall an awareness that he was dead. I think Uncle Lou was in it too.

Unrelated. Considering firing up another destined to fail advocacy campaign: Save Our ShopRite. LOL.

This video is coming up as a memory post from three years ago on Facebook and a friend shared it this morning. It's still great, possibly even better now, because in the end, we won! We fought to the point of being a-holes. We tortured @garydake and @StewartsShops on the net -- and were rewarded by being blocked from their Facebook page. We boycotted. (No easy feat when traveling from Castleton-on-Hudson to Samsonville on the Thruway!). We took our protest to the Village, and used the momentum to grab two board seats 18 months later. Some people, even close friends and family, laughed at our intensity and thought we were crazy. But our advocacy caused Stewart's to lift their usual deed restriction of no convenience store, and three years later, we have a better privately owned shop at the location (as @chris_churchill announced in the Times Union) and Main Street is revitalizing!

In 2014, when Stewart's announced they would close, I dreamed of an article like this one in the Times Union. Pinch me.

I like this TU writer. He championed the village in the Save Our Stewarts advocacy and I am forever in his debt. However, I disagree with this column. A policy may have more than one goal, in this case supporting middle-class college students and keeping college graduates in the state. There will surely be consequences of this policy, and some may be unintended. One can debate the merits of the residency requirement, but trying to avoid being an exporter of our most skilled workers is hardly an evil justification. Making a deal that is palatable to both the Assembly and Senate is difficult. And, full disclosure, this will be good for SUNY, my undergraduate and graduate alma mater and where I have worked for nearly thirty years.

On a completely different subject, in honor of my father's 90th birthday, I am sharing this story I wrote years ago that was published by the Daily Freeman in 2006. Happy birthday to Daddy, one of the best storytellers I know.

 

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" kind of summs it all up at present!

We got a great story in today's Troy Record about our campaign!

Busy, busy, busy...Bob & I have decided to dive into politics, and we are running for mayor and trustee of the village, respectively. Visit our campaign website!

At 54 posts, 2015 was my lightest powting year so far. This is unrelated, but I'm having some annoying internet problems -- involving speed. The connection is stable, but SLOW.

Perhaps it's obvious from my last post, but I am pretty teed off about the state of the village. After the loss of Stewart's last year, I wanted to continue to work outside the system, but I got co-opted! I spent seven months trying to work inside the system, and was dissed, disregarded and disrespected for my efforts. Eventually I sent a FOIL request to DOT, and the results are at the following link: https://app.box.com/s/n5t5kivzeujrvb3lt1wlxg6mm3c2x0e2

Happy Halloween

L-R: Martin Eckert, Marty Giuliano, Elwyn Davis

 

The Diary of Elwyn Davis is finished! (*Pretty much.) I just ordered 1974-1975, the last volume. This is the cover, from an April 28, 1960 Onteora Record story, "Census Taker On the Job!"

Some more ephemera, from the 1990s. Had many good times here, when Main Street was admittedly blighted, but nothing like 2015.

^I do have some future tasks planned, but the big lift is over

I have a talent for investigation, and enjoy detective work. Toward the end of college, state troopers even tried to recruit me (that story is here). So I find myself very interested in the recent prison break story. I wish I could dig up some detail that would help to catch them. Something I was thinking today: seven days in the Adirondack woods can only result in being covered with black fly bites and Lyme Disease. They will wish they were back in prison.

I've been thinking a lot about ethical behavior (even more so than usual) and it seems to me that there is a shocking low level of ethics -- not just among the famous & well-known, but among the ordinary & little-known. It's depressing.

Somewhat unrelated, and it wasn't the spark for this post...

A reminder to continue to boycott!

Stewart's must groove with high-stakes tests.

Tomorrow's image for the facebook group, but I can't resist early posting here.

Spring break! I hate having it in March, but whatever. I just finished a big project and I have a batch of essays and a few other details to do, but I'm looking forward to some "fun." I have seeds to start indoors, and maybe I'll do an Elwyn's Diary volume. Also...reading!

Sometimes it just feels like a home run.

Not that it's any sort of real victory, of course. The building sits vacant, sad, abandoned. We all miss Stewart's. And Main Street generally? The long winter has erased any optimism I might have had about the results of all our efforts.