Above: Belleayre Mountain looking good on the first ski weekend of the season. The Catskills' three large ski centers -- Belleayre, Windham and Hunter -- all opened for ski season last weekend. Plattekill Mountain in Roxbury is slated to join them for the upcoming weekend, with a Dec. 7 opening day.
Season's greetings, Catskills. It's that time of year again: The Thanksgiving leftovers are all but polished off, the Christmas carols have begun in earnest, and if you've got a pair of skis buried in the attic, it's high time you exhumed them.
Looks like we're in for some snow and rain this week, as last week's frigid temperatures give way to comparatively balmy highs in the 30s and 40s. It's been snowing this morning at the Watershed Post HQ in Margaretville, although the weather may take a turn for the slushy as temperatures warm up later in the day.
Front-page news across New York State today: A Metro-North commuter train derailed in the Bronx on Sunday afternoon with about 150 people on board, killing four passengers and injuring over 60 more. It's the first fatal accident in Metro-North's 31-year history, the AP reports.
The Kingston Times' Jesse Smith wins our unofficial award for Holiday Feature Story Of The Season, with his account of spending Thanksgiving 1991 as a young Marine in Dubai. Go read it; unlike 99 percent of the holiday news stories you read this year, it may actually inspire an emotion.
Weather data geeks, rejoice: The New York City DEP and the USGS recently installed a new stream gauge in the Lower Esopus Creek at Lomontville, about six miles downstream of the Ashokan Reservoir. The new gauge, required under the terms of a recent (and controversial) consent order between the DEP and state environmental regulators, is tracking stream flow and turbidity in real time. City DEP officials say the data it generates will help with the accuracy of flood forecasting, and could improve the design of some of the agency's upcoming stream projects, also required under the consent order.
Hancock's hiring -- or at least, it will be soon, with a new call center expected to create over 400 local jobs in the next two years. Medical manufacturer Becton Dickinson once employed some 700 people in the Delaware County town. But over a decade ago, the company moved its production to Mexico -- and since then, Becton Dickinson's old plant has lain mostly empty. Last week, county economic development officials announced that the county and state have struck a deal with a subsidiary of Qualfon to move into the Hancock plant, with $600,000 in state grant funds to sweeten the pot.
A freakish, fiery accident struck in the town of Ulster on Sunday morning, when two cars parked in front of the Budget 19 motel were engulfed in flames after being hit by live electrical wires.
The village of Saugerties' ongoing search for a backup water supply has taken on a new urgency lately, as officials come to grips with the vulnerability of the Blue Mountain Reservoir.
An upstate New York landscape design blogger begs us all to stop planting Japanese barberry. It's a nasty invasive, it creates perfect "nurseries" for disease-carrying ticks, and let's face it, there's probably some on your street right now. (We've got a clear view of half a dozen of them from our office window.)
In a recent issue, Bon Appetit magazine deploys some seductive prose to describe a local dining establishment:
Lunch starts with a soup, a purée of heirloom tomato topped with oozing, melting chunks of goat-milk cheese from Acorn Hill Farm. It’s velvety smooth and delicious. The server then slides over a tortilla-shell BLT, with more of those heirloom tomatoes and locally grown greens springing forth from a golden-brown crown of crispy, flaky tortilla shell. The meal’s topped off with vanilla ice cream from a local creamery, smothered in sweet, ripe strawberries, picked from a field right up the road.
You won't find this place in Zagat's: It's the Queens Galley soup kitchen in Kingston. In the article, Bon Appetit profiles Queens Galley founder Diane Reeder, described here as "a food lover who knows what it's like to be hungry."
Queens Galley wasn't the only local stop on Bon Appetit's list. They also swung by Stone & Thistle Farm in East Meredith for a photoessay on how Thanksgiving turkeys are slaughtered on a small farm.
Someone -- or several someones -- apparently went on a glass-smashing spree in Palenville over the weekend, throwing a rock through the back door of the Circle W Market and smashing four windows at the Maetreum of Cybele, a Pagan religious center that recently won a long-running tax battle with the town of Catskill. It's not the first time the Maetreum has been targeted. Back in September, a visitor to the Maetreum posted on Facebook that she had witnessed a young man throwing rocks through the kitchen window and yelling "Goddamn f****t n*****s." Could it be the same perp?
Schoharie County emergency first responders are steamed up over what appears to be a decision by the state Department of Health to close down EMT training at the Schoharie County Ambulance and Rescue Squad Association. There's a petition going around to reinstate the classes, which has been signed by several local EMTs.
Got a hot tip or a photo for the NewsShed, Catskills news hounds? Email us at editor@watershedpost.com.
