It's that time of year once again. Photo taken in Monticello on September 18 by John of Catskills Photography; shared in the Watershed Post's Flickr group pool.
Sunday marked the official arrival of autumn, and brought some cooler weather along with it. Tonight, look for clear skies and temperatures in the 30s with a chance of frost, says Hudson Valley Weather; the rest of the week is shaping up to be fairly glorious September weather.
The weekend bought tragedy to several Catskills towns. A Hancock 18-month-old, who was fighting for her life at Albany Medical Center after a Tuesday fall from a second-story apartment window, died of her injuries on Saturday. A pair of car accidents on Sunday claimed three local lives: An 18-year-old SUNY Delhi student from South Kortright died when his pickup truck collided with a tree, and an elderly Hurley couple died when their minivan collided with a car carrier on Route 209.
A Middletown man was arrested on felony drunk-driving charges in Monticello on Sunday after he slammed his BMW into an electrical junction box, injuring himself and three passengers and causing a neighborhood electrical blackout.
Things are picking up on Catskill's Main Street, where a new international art gallery just opened. If they could only find a chef willing to open a new restaurant in the village rent-free, they'd really be cooking with gas.
Two little Central New York towns are throwing a monkey wrench into Cuomo's casino plan, with a lawsuit that challenges a related deal made between the state and the Oneida Nation. At issue: About 25,000 acres of land in the towns that the tribe is slated to put in trust as part of the deal.
Speaking of gaming: The creator of Numenera, a new Dungeons & Dragons-like RPG (that's "role-playing game," for the uninitiated), visited Kirwan's Game Store in Catskill recently, to the delight of local sci-fi and fantasy game fans.
It wouldn't be a Monday around here without complicated, controversial watershed news. Congressman Chris Gibson is joining his voice to Ulster County executive Mike Hein's more strident one on the Lower Esopus issue: The Congressman recently announced that he has read through the state's recently-released FAD for New York City, would like the city's land acquisition program scaled back, and wants the state DEC to release a long-delayed consent order governing the DEP's use of the Ashokan Release Channel. If any of this is Greek to you, you should read our August 29 story on the issue. (And learn to love acronyms: They're the Catskills' most abundant native species.)
The towns along the Lower Esopus are taking matters into their own hands and forming a new group, the Coalition of Lower Esopus Communities, in the hopes that together they may wield more clout in negotiations with New York City over the city's use of the Ashokan Release Channel. (Selfishly, we reporter types hope they get a website, where they do things like list their members and post minutes from their meetings. Looking at you, Coalition of Watershed Towns.)
The New York City DEP recently launched a page on their site that shows real-time data on how much water is currently being released from their reservoirs -- and, in the case of the Ashokan, how turbid that water is. It's a work in progress, says spokesman Chris Gilbride, and the agency is working on putting up some historical data as well.
Sean Eldridge of Hudson River Ventures -- and more recently of Shokan -- has officially thrown his hat in the ring as a Democratic contender for Gibson's Congressional seat in 2014. Bring your rain gear; the mudslinging has already begun.
Cannibals in the Catskills! The LA Times's Mark Olsen recently chewed the proverbial fat with Jim Mickle, director of a moody 2013 remake of Mexican horror film We Are What We Are, and found that Mickle drew much of his inspiration for the film from the "upstate New York town" where Mickle's house was hit by Irene. (That would be Margaretville.) Much of the film was shot on location in Delaware County -- where, if there are in fact families holed up in old houses eating human flesh, we have yet to report on it. To see Mickle's film, which is getting some rave reviews from critics, look no further than the Woodstock Film Festival, October 2-6; We Are What We Are screens on Sunday at 9:15pm.
NewsShed, our snappy little digest of Catskills news, weather and hot bloggy goodness, generally comes out on weekdays, God willing and the creek don't rise. Got a hot tip or a photo for the NewsShed? Send it to editor@watershedpost.com.
