About 400 elementary- and middle-school students taking part in the Shenendehowa Inventors program will display their inventions at the former Cotton Market store at Clifton Park Center from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.
It was an interesting night of boxing this past Saturday at the Time Union Center in Albany — interesting not so much for the fights as for the reactions of the fans.
I remember when Gov. Mario Cuomo adopted a policy of dispersing state offices to depressed cities like Schenectady and Troy so they might serve as stimulants to economic growth, which was a fancy way of saying office workers would buy coffee and sandwiches in those needy cities rather than in downtown Albany.
In case you’re wondering who I favor for the Republican nomination for president, the answer is Newt Gingrich. He wasn’t necessarily my favorite at the beginning, but after Sarah Palin declined to jump in and Michele Bachmann dropped out, he’s what I have left.
Just as Schenectady council members are mulling the need or non-need to supply the Police Department’s evidence technicians with Chevy Tahoes that they can take home with them as personal vehicles, out comes the list of the city’s top-paid employees for the year past, and lo, the three evidence techs are among the top 10.
Every time I lay down my pen after writing about matters supernatural, I say I’ll never take it up again. I’m going to let this business rest, as some of my readers urge, and confine myself to matters mundane, even municipal, like the purchase of Chevy Tahoes for the convenience of Schenectady cops.
The situation in the Schenectady Police Department is that there are four evidence technicians — guys who photograph crime scenes and pick up shell casings — and there are four vehicles for them, which they are allowed to take home even though only one technician is on call at any given time.
I don’t want to get everyone stirred up again, but I must say I’ve been overwhelmed by the response I got to my harmless little commentary on the soon-to-be saint from the Mohawk Valley, Kateri Tekakwitha, and on her supposed father in heaven, whom I irreverently referred to as the invisible man in the sky.
Four and a half months after the great flood caused by Hurricane Irene, you can walk through Rotterdam Junction and see house after house still standing empty, in some cases with waterlogged furniture and junk piled out in front as if the flood had been just yesterday.
So I have to revise my picture a little bit of the party last June in the Mont Pleasant neighborhood of Schenectady that ended with a 15-year-old boy being shot to death.
