14
Dec
A few pics I took from my front yard yesterday morning of the iced-over trees on Mt Beacon.
18
May
One of the reasons I love my town is the interesting art scene. There is a broken-down factory building toward the end of Main St. in Beacon. Someone had the inspiration to fill each of the factory’s windows with a mural. I have pasted a slideshow of some pictures I took of the art in progress. It was very cool to watch. I’ll have to get down to Main St. to take some shots of the finished work.
UPDATE–05/22/2008: If you want to see the finished product, you can look here. It looks fantastic.
Back in the comments of my previous NY-19 post, there is a debate brewing about the bona-fides of one of the candidates. I think the purveyors of take19 have some great advice:
If you want to see Ben and the other four candidates vying for Sue’s seat, they’ll all be at the Peekskill Democratic meeting tonight (12/15) which begins at 7 p.m. in a room at the Field Library in downtown Peekskill.
As a group — we formed Take19 last year to take back the 19th district — we’ve met with all five of the candidates and each has their plusses and minuses. Though we don’t plan to endorse anyone right now, we’re more than a bit concerned with some of the misinformation being pumped out into the blogosphere about Ben, primarily on DailyKos and primarily by some of the same people who have posted here.
So if you’re tired of being spun by a few posters, come to tonight’s event — there’s more info on the Peekskill Dems site — and make up your own mind about the candidates. Clogging the blogosphere with misinformation about the candidates only helps Sue Kelly. Many of us are working way too hard to see that happen yet again. (emph. mine)
I don’t think I will be able to make it tonight, but hopefully others will, and can see the candidates for themselves. I hope there are more events like this one.
One thing I would really hate to see is this primary become a circular firing squad resulting in a politically wounded Democratic candidate. Obviously, people are going to have primary favorites, and they should talk up the strengths of their preferred candidate, but attacks on the other Democratic candidates benefit no one. I think it would be better for people to keep the focus of the race on where it should be — defeating Sue Kelly. After all, each of the candidates running would be an improvement over the current congressperson.
Republican Sue Kelly has held my “new” Congressional district since, I believe, 1994. In fact, I do not believe she has ever faced a serious challenge. Well, that is about to change. Perhaps emboldened by the big Democratic gains in the area back in November, there are now 5 announced Democratic candidates vying for her seat.
They are:
I don’t yet know enough about any them to pick a favorite. I do know, however, that John Hall is/was the lead singer of the band Orleans. He took on the Bush Campaign last year when they attempted to use the Orleans song, “Still the One” at campaign stops. Aydelott, who was formerly a Republican, was the first to enter the race and, has raised $200,000 since Labor Day .
take19 is a blog that is completely focused on the race. They have the scuttlebutt on the dealings of Sue Kelly.
The DCCC has a Races to Watch site where you can find your own district. Interestingly they seem to be framing the overall congressional campaign strategy as a referendum on Tom DeLay. That seems like a good idea to me. Here is what they have to say about Sue and Tom:
Some facts about Sue Kelly and how tied up Rep. Kelly is with Tom DeLay…
- Sue Kelly has taken $12,020 from Tom DeLay’s ARMPAC. No surprise that Kelly voted with Tom DeLay 90% of the time between Jan. 1 2004 and March 31 2005.
- Sue Kelly voted to weaken the ethics rules in a move that many say served only to protect Tom DeLay.
- When Republicans realized it was “impossible to win the communications battle” over the gutted ethics rules, Kelly flip-flopped and voted to put the old rules back into place.
- When Democrats offered a solution to clean up the House by strengthening ethics rules, Sue Kelly voted twice to make sure it never even came to an up or down vote.
- Sue Kelly voted to allow DeLay to continue serving as Leader even if he is indicted.
With all these candidates, the primary should be interesting. I’ll update the blog as I learn more about the candidates.
[UPDATE 12/6/2005] It turns out that Ben Shuldiner was the first candidate to officially enter the race as Radha Iyengar notes in the comments :
Ben Shuldiner was actually the first candidate to enter the race, filing with the FEC long before Judy Aydelott.
Ben is the founder and principal of a public school in New York City. His school has had enormous success and for this he was named the Greatest Public Servant under the Age of 35.
I apologize for the oversight.
23
Nov
Sometime in March or early April, a new member of the get donkey! family will be arriving. We are very excited. Right now, with an early assist from my folks, I am wrapping up the process of preparing his chambers. Can I just say that I hate wallpaper? Mrs. gd! and I have made some initial voyages to Babies R Us to look at baby gear and have come a away with headaches. There is so much baby stuff out there! Anybody have any advice on what is necessary and what is not?
Buddy the spazzhound is already getting into adjustment mode. He and Bailey (who could care less) have been banished from sleeping with us in the bedroom since August. He is being trained to sit in his “house” on command and stay there, until we tell him he can leave. I think he’s starting to get it. On the advice of a veterinary behaviorist, he also is being trained to wear a basket muzzle (which, for some stupid reason, I call his “treat hat”) for about 30 minutes a day just in case he doesn’t accept the baby as one of the pack (he has been strange around kids in the past). He isn’t crazy about it, but it doesn’t really seem to bother him after a few minutes. We bought some treats that we can slide into the slots in the muzzle and he actually figured out how to drink with it on his head.
I hope that I will have more to write about as it gets closer to his arrival (did I mention the baby is a boy?). I also want to start writing more about the local area here in the mid-Hudson valley. To be honest, I get my fill of national politics on kos and atrios, so I don’t feel a pressing need to cover that here anymore. There is an excellent blog about the town I live in, but it is the site of the monthly town paper and is only monthly. I have been unable to find any other websites or blogs up here that cover the culture of the area, the politics, and, especially, the adjustments of moving from a large city (aside from here, there are many transplants from NYC) to a small city. It’s an interesting situation as there is some palpable tension between people who have lived here for their entire lives and the people moving in. This town used to be solid “red country”. That changed on election day, however when the city council went from a 4-2 GOP majority to a 6-0 Democratic majority. The only Republican left on the council is the mayor. Things should be getting interesting.
Anyway, it’s Thanksgiving time in these parts, so, if you celebrate it, have a happy Turkey Day. If you are interested, here is a link to my Thanksgiving Prayer from last year. I still like it.
18
Feb
Big news in the get donkey! world. Mrs. gd! and I just got back from our recon trip out east and we have found a house! We spent a couple of days looking in around in CT and NY. As I mentioned before, I was interested in looking at Beacon, NY, but it was more out of curiosity than anything else. We got to Beacon on Sunday morning and drove down Main Street. We immediately liked what we saw. Based on the available listings our Realtor had sent, however, we were not really expecting to find anything available that met our criteria and price-range. In fact, we had pretty much settled on a house we had seen the day before in Oxford, CT. About four houses into our trip, however, our Realtor drove us up in front of this great-looking, old house on top of a hill. It had been on the market for less than a day. As we went inside another couple was coming out. It was the first time on the entire trip that someone else was looking at the same house we were. We soon knew why. The house was beautiful inside. Everything we had wanted in our current Houston home was in this house. It far exceeded both of our expectations. Actually, it was the first house we looked at where I didn’t immediately come up with a mental punch-list of the things I didn’t like about it (Hey, I’m picky). The couple selling it was there, which I have since found out is a no-no with Realtors, but these people were so nice that it was an absolute pleasure meeting them and made the house even more attractive. It was obvious that they loved the place and had put a lot of themselves into restoring it.
After we were done looking, Mrs. gd! looked at me and said that we should suspend the house hunt, go back to the office and submit an offer. We did. We found out that there was another offer that had just come in (we suspect it was from the couple that was leaving as we arrived), so we would have to wait for the current owners to decide which offer they wanted to accept. Sunday night was suspenseful. In fact, I don’t think either of us slept much. The next morning we went up to Poughkeepsie to look around for some back-up properties. As the morning went on, we were getting a little more pessimistic about our chances. We called the Realtor and she hadn’t heard anything yet, so we asked her to schedule some appointments in Poughkeepsie. A few minutes later, the cell phone buzzed. It was the Realtor and she had good news. Our offer was accepted! We sat and cheered in our rented Malibu Maxx while the other folks in the strip mall parking lot stared at us. It was turning out to be the best Valentine’s Day in a long time!
Thanks to the kindness of the current owners and the, I don’t know, awesome-ness of our Realtor and her recommendation for an inspector, we had the house inspection on Monday evening. The next step is the contract (BTW, buying a house in NY state is a very odd undertaking compared to my experiences in TX and IL, but I’ll save that for another time).
Now we have to sell the famous casa del burro here in Houston.
For the first time I am really excited about the move.
