March 23, 2011

Spring activities blossoming; American "in-fracktion"

Yes, there's plenty of snow coming today, but Cathy Wakeman is also right that the pulse of Dryden activities is picking up. She notes not only flowers, but a craft fair, lasagna dinner, roast beef dinner, jazz desert night, youth lacrosse and track and field registration,grant application season at the Dryden Youth Opportunity Fund, a session about New Roots School, and the Dairy Day theme: "Dairy Through The Ages."

Joanne Cipolla of Freeville writes a letter on the mysterious New York institution of "compulsory integration". To me, compulsory integration takes the worst use case of eminent domain - property seizures for private benefit - puts it underground, and hopes no one will notice. One of these days I have to figure out how our legislature passed such an insane law. (It was even in the late 1990s, not that long ago.)

Housing sales in Tompkins County seem to be off to a slow start in 2011, and county bridges need a lot of work.

At the state level, there's renewed talk of separating Upstate and Downstate New York. As always, I think the odds of it happening are tiny, but can't help supporting it overall. Upstate needs to address its own problems, and hanging on to Downstate stifles those conversations.

Posted by simon at March 23, 2011 6:36 AM in , , , , ,
Note on photos