Upstream. A Mohawk Valley Blogzine.

Upstream Has Moved.

2007-01-02T08:58:00.000-05:00

Upstream will no longer be posting to this blog. Please go to our wordpress blog for new posts. Comments are no longer posted on this blog. It may take some time, but eventually we will move all of our links from this blog to the other one.

A Tale Of Two Alans.

2007-01-01T05:32:00.000-05:00

“I hurt for Hevesi. I know that many of you are with me on this. I pity those who are not.”--Alan Chartock

Upstream was right. The woman Glenn Heller alleges that Alan Chartock sexually harassed is Karen Perozi-Guistina. Heller did not let the cat out of the bag. A former employee of WAMC, Josh Cohen, left a comment on Upstream, stating that he was the person who left an anonymous comment recently on Glen Heller’s blog stating that Guistina was the alleged victim of Chartock. Furthermore, Cohen says in his comment on Upstream that he personally witnessed Chartock harassing Guistina.

Up until now, the news media have refused to investigate this story, claiming there was a lack of information, among other things. Now, however, we have the name of the woman who allegedly was harassed and paid $20,000 to keep her mouth shut, and we have the name of a man who claims to be a witness of the harassment. With these two new pieces of information, it seems to me that it’s time that the media investigate this story. (A FOIL request for financial records might reveal a $20,000 pay out).

Before I continue, I have to state my usual disclaimers. Other than a few e-mails back and forth and one telephone conversation, I don’t know Glenn Heller. Furthermore, I have no beef with Alan Chartock or WAMC. I listen to WAMC and feel that if the station did not exist, the Capital Region and the Mohawk Valley would be the losers. What I can’t abide is people in power abusing their power. If you have been a regular reader of this blog, I am sure you are aware of that by now.

One problem the media have with the above story is its source--Glenn Heller. They feel that Heller has an axe to grind, therefore, the story is not valid. But that didn’t stop them from covering and investigating State Comptroller Alan Hevesi’s alleged misuse of a state car and driver, even though the story’s source was Hevesi’s political opponent, Chris Callaghan. Talk about having an axe to grind.

Chartock himself discussed the other Alan in a recent Legislative Gazette piece that then appeared on his blog on October 10.

Alan Hevesi is now under tremendous fire for having used state funds to protect and escort his ailing wife. He knows that there is really no excuse for what he did. Rules are rules. Apparently when he was the New York City comptroller, the rules were different. The truth is that his wife is in bad shape and the poor guy has been worried sick over her. Worry, with its accompanying pain and anxiety, can sometimes cloud the reasoning process. Who among us can’t relate? Hevesi has tried to make it better. He has owned up to his mistake and repaid the money that was spent using his personal (not campaign) funds. It’s all made worse because as comptroller, he is the guy responsible for making sure that everyone else in the state plays by the rules. He has done that well and many of the people he caught did not get second chances.

Alan Hevesi has acknowledged his mistake and is desperately trying to move on. His opponent is doing what opponents do. He is trying to beat Hevesi in this election. That’s the nature of the beast. Elections are adversarial events much like trials where the defense and prosecution try to murder one another. The truth is that if you have any dirty laundry you proceed at your own risk. You just have to assume that any past sins will find their way into the public eye. It is refreshing to see gubernatorial and presidential candidates fessing up to having smoked pot in their younger days. Not too long ago, newspaper columnists would have murdered them for less.

I know that newspaper editorial boards are exasperated by this. They like Alan Hevesi, too, and want to endorse him. I think many voters find themselves in the same situation. They wonder how much slack they would be granted if they had found themselves in a similar mess. Now what should have been a runaway election victory for Hevesi will be a closer race. We’ll have to see what happens and what new developments emerge. But assuming it stops here and no new entanglements emerge, my bet is that Hevesi still manages to win in this Democratic tsunami year. But I do admit, from a personal point of view, my heart is heavy. The tabloids may love this stuff but I hate it.

I agree with Chartock’s assessment. I too pity Hevesi. I don’t believe he should do prison time if ever indicted and found guilty. On the other hand, I don’t think he should be our State Comptroller.

Do I pity Chartock? Not at the moment. But should the media ever investigate Chatock’s alleged sexual harassment and should Chartock ever come under the same pressure that Hevesi is now facing, I will pity him.

I’ve always found it hard not to pity the hare when the hounds are on his tail, even if the hare once ran with the hounds.

Note: This post was written on October 30, 2006, but I have dated it a later date. I have done that so the post will remain at the top of this blog. Because I feel that it is time that the media looked more closely at these allegations against Alan Chartock, this post will remain at the top of this blog until I feel it‘s time to move on.

The Power Of Political Endorsements.

2006-11-08T05:42:00.000-05:00

We Need More Voters Like Matty N.

2006-11-07T08:21:00.000-05:00

What I like about Matty N is that not only is he going to vote today, but he has also carefully thought out whom he is voting for and why.

Symposium Misses Chance To Fully Explore Herman Melville.

2006-11-06T08:31:00.000-05:00

Note: The following article, which appeared in The Sunday Gazette on October 29, 2006, grew out of an earlier post that I wrote for this blog.

Nineteenth-century American author, Herman Melville, has a strong connection to the Capital District, but the Capital District has not capitalized on that connection like Pittsfield, Massachusetts has (where Melville spent the bulk of his creative years). Melville moved to Albany when he was ten years old. While there, he attended the Albany Academy for several months. Two years later, after his father died, his mother rented a house in Lansingburgh where the family of seven lived for the next nine years. While in Lansingburgh, Melville attended the Lansingburgh Academy, taught school and published his first writing, “Fragments From A Writing Desk,” in The Democratic Press And Lansingburgh Advertiser. Melville left Lansingburgh in 1839 but returned in 1843. During the winter of 1844-45, he worked on his first novel “Typee” in an attic room overlooking the Hudson River.

The Albany Academies are attempting to rectify Melville’s obscurity in the Capital Region by hosting a Why Melville Matters conference from November 17-19, 2006. Co-sponsor of the symposium is The Center for Humanities, Arts, and TechnoSciences (CHATS), State University of New York at Albany, and the event will bring together scholars, artists, historians, and others to discuss Melville through panels and the presentation of papers.

I applaud the Academies’ efforts to bring Melville to our attention. One of the events of the conference is a twenty-four hour reading of Moby Dick, which Pulitzer Prize winning Albany author, William Kennedy, will begin and which Albany Academy alumnus, Andy Rooney, will end. Moby Dick, thought by many scholars and readers to be the great American novel, is well worth reading and any activity that encourages people to read the book is worth doing.

I do have some concerns about the symposium, however--not so much about what it is including, but what it is excluding. According to the academies, Melville matters because “The questions he posed are the same issues that inspire contemporary writers, artists, and thinkers today—the vexed relations between humans and their environment, racial and social injustices, capital punishment, psychological alienation, and the new frontiers of science and globalism.”

Lists of suggested paper topics include Melville and environmentalism, Melville the ultimate eco-tourist, Melville and Pedagogy, Gender and queer studies: approaches to Melville’s short fiction, racial and social issues in Melville’s fiction, Melville and Science, cetology and herpetology, etc.

It doesn’t seem to matter to the supporters of this conference that the questions Melville posed most, especially but not exclusively in Moby Dick, were theological. Is God good or is he malignant? Does God exist? Do men and women truly have free will or is everything predetermined? Why do good things happen to bad people? Are people essentially good or are they basically evil?

Moby Dick has several hundred Biblical names, quotations and allusions, the first one showing up in the third word of its famous opening--”Call me Ishmael.” Ishmael, according to the Bible, is the first Arab and the ancestor of Muhammad. The Koran reveres Ishamel as a great prophet. These facts along with the chapter called The Ramadan could lead to a discussion of Melville and Islam. Now there’s relevance.

A brief sampling of Melville‘s comments on religion, either directly or through the mouth of a character in one of his books include "That greatest real miracle of all religions, the Sermon on the Mount." and “...all good Christians believe that any minute the last day may come, and the terrible combustion of the entire planet earth.” He once said, in an oft repeated quote, “That Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or another, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free....“

The absence of religion from the symposium is not only curious because of Melville’s obsession with it, but because when Melville attended the Albany Academy, while it was not a religious academy, religion was part of the curriculum. Depending on what department you were enrolled in, you were required to take courses in religious history, natural theology and evidences of Christianity.

On the other hand, the absence of a discussion of Melville and religion in the upcoming symposium is not completely surprising. Having graduated from the University at Albany’s bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in English, I know first hand how thoroughly secularized most English scholars are. It’s not that there is a conspiracy to avoid discussing a writer’s relation to religion, it’s just that the concept of God is so remote to the thinking of most academics, that it gets marginalized in most literary discussions.

Anyway, some good will come out of this symposium, even if Melville’s life long quest to resolve religious issues raised during his religious upbringing has been relegated to the category of irrelevant.

Maybe hearing parts of Moby Dick read aloud will inspire some people to read the novel for the first time, and they can decide for themselves if Melville thought Ishamel and Queequeg were a gay couple, or if Starbuck had survived the sinking of the Pequod, whether or not he would have been the founder of Greenpeace, instead of lending his name to a coffee company.

2006-11-05T07:38:00.000-05:00

"If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?"

From The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

An Epidemic Of Stupidity.

2006-11-03T08:21:00.000-05:00

Stupidity is the leading epidemic in America. Take the Schenectady DA’s office as an example. Yesterday, The Daily Gazette reported that a man entered a house unlawfully in order to steal copper pipe. He took a mentally handicapped teenager in with him. He was caught and arrested. He was not arrested for trespassing or attempted theft but for child endangerment because the house had no electricity. Following that logic, the Montgomery County DA would be obligated to arrest every Amish parent in the county.

My daughter came home from school yesterday and said that if you get caught throwing a snowball on school grounds, you get suspended for a day for the first offense and for each additional offense you get longer and longer suspensions. Over in Massachusetts, a school has outlawed tag on school grounds because it is dangerous and creates liability issues. If we keep denying kids wholesome ways of having fun, we should not be surprised if they end up experimenting with unwholesome and even more dangerous ways of having fun.

My last example of stupidity is the Times Unions refusal to publish a woman’s obituary because it violated the TU’s guidelines.

Here is the original wording that the TU objected to.

"She left strict instructions that there be no schmaltzy sentimentality of mourning, urging that in lieu of expressions of grief people should send urgent messages to their legislators to force U.S. signing of the Kyoto Protocol, then vote in such a way as to send Bush a strong message of disgust with his policies and politics."

Here is the same portion after The TU edited it.

"she left strict instructions ... urging that in lieu of expressions of grief, people who wish to remember her continue to support the Kyoto Protocol and oppose the Bush Administration."

So instead of publishing the obituary, the TU turned their refusal into a news story, then allowed the woman’s minister to publish the original obituary on his TU blog. The TU managed to cover all bases here. They stuck to their policy by refusing to publish the obituary, but at the same time they can claim they are still advocates of free speech by allowing the reverend to publish it on his blog, and to boot they got a news story out of the whole thing.

One Year & Still Blogging. Part 3

2006-11-02T06:28:00.000-05:00

I often ask myself, “Why do I keep blogging?” I can hardly justify the time I spend doing it, when I have so much else to do. Efforts to reduce my blogging to three days a week haven’t worked. That’s just not me. It’s either all or nothing.

There’s no money in it, no fame and who am I anyway to broadcast my opinions to the world.

Blogging is not just writing my blog, but it’s reading other blogs as well. And to understand why I keep doing both, you have to understand the place where I live. I love Montgomery County--it’s rural, it’s beautiful, it has lots of history. But it is also a vast cultural, artistic, literary and intellectual wasteland.

The blogging community that I am part of has become some sort of virtual salon for me--an unorganized, on-line club of sorts for people who are interested in the same things I am--politics, literature, history, art, film, historic preservation, family, religion, justice, education, etc.

The attitude of a lot of people in Montgomery County toward the things I care about can be summed up in the following anecdote. I called a man to come give me an estimate on installing a new septic system. The first thing he said when he walked into our pre-Revolutionary War, post and beam house, was, “If Ida bought this place, I woulda bulldozed it and put up a doublewide.”

One Year & Still Blogging. Part 2.

2006-11-01T04:59:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I wrote about the high points of my first year of blogging. Today I want to point out the low points. Most disappointing to me has been the failure to establish a communal blog, representing many voices in the Mohawk Valley, not just mine. I have come across a number of blogs to which two or more people make contributions on a regular basis, but for some reason I have not been successful in my attempts to create that kind of blog.

(My offer is still open to any current or former Mohawk Valley resident who would like to contribute occasionally or regularly to this blog. Contact me at upstreamblog@yahoo.com if you are interested.)

Another low point is knowing that some of my posts are not up to snuff. Its hard to always produce quality posts if you blog everyday or almost everyday.

My single date records for number of visitors have also been disappointing, not because the numbers were low, but because so few of those people have become regular readers. After a one day record of 7,087 visitors to my wordpress blog, I am down to 200+ a day. Even then I can’t be sure I am actually getting that many visitors because I am not sure how wordpress compiles statistics. My blogspot blog had a high of more than 1400 visitors in one day, but now is averaging 60 visitors a day.

It’s disappointing that even now, months after the trial is over, more people come to Upstream to read about Chris Porco than any other topic. It’s not that the Porco Trial was unimportant, but so much else that I’ve written about is more important. I wish I could get the same number of people interested in reading about and preserving the Ingersoll-Stanford Home in Niskayuna. (I will be writing more about that in a few days).

One Year & Still Blogging. Part 1.

2006-10-31T09:22:00.000-05:00

It has been a year since I started blogging in earnest. If you look at my archives, you will see that I began blogging in January of 2006, but that was a false start. There are only seven posts during the first three months of 2006. Then I quit, thinking no one was reading it.

I began blogging again at the end of October of 2006 and since that time have written over 400 posts. On May 14, 2006, I wrote a post about why I started blogging in the first place and on January 15, 2006, I wrote a post about why I chose the name Upstream for this blog.

Here are some highlights of my first year of blogging. (Tomorrow, I will look at the low points, followed by a third post on why I continue to blog and where this blog is going in the future.)

The Guardian, one of England’s largest newspapers, picked up and re-published part of a post I wrote on the Amish school shooting in Pennsylvania.

Power Cruising Magazine purchased a photo I took of the flood damage at Lock 10 on The Mohawk River and commissioned me to write a brief article for the magazine.

Ernie Tetrault interviewed me about this blog on his television show.

Thanks to some great sources, Upstream managed to actually publish some news, rather than just comment on the news. Our series on New York State Department of Corrections Officials misuse of their positions of authority is one example. Here is one post from that series.

I learned how to add photgraphs to the blog, most of them original, not stolen from other web sites.

Wrote a series of posts on Ralph Tortorici. This is one of my favorite series. Here’s one post from the series.

One of the most satisfying aspects of blogging is to be recognized by other bloggers, especially other Upstate New York bloggers. Thanks go to Albany Eye, Albany Lawyer, CNY Underground, Chris Rooney, Dave Lucas, Fault Lines, I-Saratoga, The Judge Report, Mohawk Valley View, NCO Blog, Northview Diary, Roman Hokie, The Troy Polloi and York Staters (hope I haven’t missed anyone) for recognizing the existence of Upstream at one time or another during the year.

Upstream had a one day record of 7,087 visitors to our wordpress blog site when I was posting about the Chris Porco Trial. Tomorrow, I will explain why this was a failure.

We had a one day record of 1,400+ visitors to our blogspot blog when I posted the now infamous Muslim cartoons. Tomorrow, I will explain why this was a failure.

Finally, I am happy that Metroland did not recognize Upstream as the area’s best blog. I’m inclined to think that it was in the pages of Metroland, not on the internet, that the Capital Region Skin Flute Band, which practiced regularly in the Macy’s restroom in Colonie until they were recently disbanded by the Colonie Police, found each other.

And The Beat Goes On.

2006-10-29T07:56:00.000-05:00

"I’m not a beatnik. I’m a Catholic"--Jack Kerouac.

(From the New York Times obituary of Jack Kerouac).

When The Big Cheese Is Away, The Mice Will Play.

2006-10-27T07:01:00.000-04:00

Update: The link in the last paragraph was to a bogus Glenn Heller blog, created by someone who obviously does not like him. The blog disappeared off the internet, shortly after this post appeared.

We wrote once before about WAMC employees vandalizing Wikipedia entries while at work. WAMC employees continue to work on Alan Chartock’s Wikipedia entry from the studios of WAMC.

On Oct 10 from 6:05-6:06pm, someone using a computer with IP address 66.109.42.140 was working on Alan Chartock’s bio. Click here to see what organization this IP address belongs to.

On Aug. 15 from 1:13-1:22pm, on Aug. 16 from 3:29-3:30pm, and on Aug. 23 from 5:44-6:12pm someone using a computer with IP address 66.109.42.130 was working on Alan Chartock’s biography on Wikipedia. Click here to see what organization this IP address belongs to.

Upstream has been unable to determine whether or not a WAMC employee created this blog.

Advertisement.

2006-10-27T04:55:00.000-04:00

Arcadia Publishing has just released its Images of America Series book on Amsterdam. It contains 128 pages of old photographs of Amsterdam. I have a number of copies on order that should be here in a day or so. I am offering them at a 10% discount on my website. Just enter the word upstream in the coupon box when you check out, and you will get the discount.

Order a copy of Amsterdam by Kelly Farquhar Yacobucci.

I also have copies of Kelly Yacobucci’s Images of America Series on Montgomery County, New York. Again if you enter the word upstream in the coupon box, you can get a 10% discount.

If you want to order both books, you can get 15% off by entering upstream15 in the coupon box.

Order a copy of Montgomery County by Kelly Farquhar Yacobucci.

Arcadia Publishing has published Images of America Series on most New York State counties, towns and cities. E-mail me at info@thebookhound.net if you are interested in obtaining copies of other titles. These books make great Christmas, Hanukah, and Winter Solstice presents.

If you don’t want either of these books, you can still get a discount on other books by entering upstream in the coupon box for an order of $19.95 or more to get 10% off or upstream15 to get 15% off on any order of $39.90 or more.

Coupon offers valid through December 25, 2006.

Shipping starts at $2.50.

Gift cards available.

Bill Clinton Visits Upstate New York.

2006-10-26T07:16:00.000-04:00

Rensselaer County DA's Office Faces 52 Million Dollar Lawsuit.

2006-10-25T05:19:00.000-04:00

I told you the other day that I thought the Rensselaer County DA’s office was about to be sued. I was right. Attorney Warren Redlich is holding a press conference today to announce a 52 million dollar lawsuit against Patrica DeAngelis’s office for “malicious prosecution and wrongful extradition” of Jeremy Phillips, a former Pittsfield resident who was arrested for allegedly stealing from his Rensselaer County employer.

Mr. Phillips spent 28 days in a Chicago jail before being extradited to New York State. A Rensselaer County grand jury recently refused to indict Mr. Phillips.

More details about the lawsuit and Mr. Phillips experiences with the Rensselaer County DA’s office will be forthcoming at the press conference. I was hoping to go to the conference, but I have to take my car to the garage this morning. If you are in the media, the press conference is being held at Attorney Redlich’s law offices at 255 Washington Avenue Ext. #108 in Albany at 10:00 this morning.

A Rape Is A Rape Is A Rape.

2006-10-24T08:49:00.000-04:00

I wish the fourteen year old girl who was raped by seven men in Schenectady could get the same press coverage as the University at Albany co-ed who was raped by three men. Both are horrible stories, but I guess when you are a fourteen year old runaway, you don’t count as much.

Besides your fourteen year old friends haven’t learned how to get press coverage by holding protests, how to talk about the culture of rape in group homes or the lack of security in group homes or how the New York State Office of Children and Family Services has failed to respond to parents’ concerns about lack of security in adolescent group homes and adolescent treatment facilities.

Shame on the media for not even reporting the name of the group home the fourteen year old ran away from and for failing to delve into the constraints put on group home workers (i.e. they are not allowed to restrain teens when they attempt to run away).

Then there are the secure facilities where adolescents can’t run away, but they are still subjected to sexual abuse. Human Rights Watch recently did an expose on these facilities, focusing on Tryon School in Fulton County.

Human Rights Watch lit into New York State’s Office of Children and Family Services in their report on secure adolescent facilities. It’s time an investigation was done into the way the Office oversees group homes and residential treatment facilities.

Blogging For Congress, Nasty Comments & Did Alan Chartock Sexually Harass Karen Perozi Guistina.

2006-10-23T08:42:00.000-04:00

One New York Congressional candidate is blogging instead of running for congress.

The same candidate was subjected to a nasty comment on Capitol Confidential’s blog which claims that it moderates all comments. I‘d hate to read comments on their blog if they didn‘t moderate them. Here‘s the comment.

“Redlich why don’t you take your sorry butt and comments over to the 21st CD Blog.
Oh that’s right, there isn’t one!!

Gestapo On Patrol”

Speaking of nasty comments on blogs. Glen Heller, Alan Chartock’s nemesis, does not moderate comments on his blog. The comments left there don’t say much for the level of intelligence and decorum on the part of Chartock’s supporters. While I am still somewhat baffled by Heller’s seeming obsession with Chartock, I am also baffled by the level of hatred that Chartock’s supporters express toward Heller.

Here is a sampling of comments by Chartock supporters:

“You are a true wingnut.”

“On the whole your ramblings seem nonsensical and deranged. You probably need some kind of psychological help in all honesty as I don't see how anyone could spend so much time on a misguided and futile task.”

“no posts lately...maybe this asshole has finally gotten a life.”

“"Comming"? Nice spelling, ass pirate.”

“Get your muck straight before you rake it, loser.”

“Who is running this site, Rush Limbaugh? Take some Oxycontin (sic)and shut up.”

People often leave comments to a post many months later. These often don’t get read. Sometimes its fun to go to an old post and look at the more recent comments. Here is an interesting comment posted on Glenn Heller’s blog by an anonymous person on Oct. 14.

You see most board ops make less then 25K per year, Guistina is another situation, you see he is married to Karen Perozi-Guistina, the former fund drive director that Alan Chartock sexualy harassed, she threatened a lawsuit and Chartock (WAMC) settled out of court by paying her some part of her annual pay.

So it becomes logical that Chartock does not dare touch Guistina, should he fire Guistina there would be no reason not to expose the sexual harassment - and that the payoff came via WAMC funds. If this became public via Guistina Chartock would be finished.

So Guistina works the board most mornings, in part to keep him as far away from Chartock as possible, it must be tense for Chartock, knowing full-well if he does not take care of Guistina then the truth about that whole situaton will come out.

For Guistina is is a form of job security, he has the key in his hand and Chartock knows it.

But I've got news, there is much more Chartock is going to be answering to that will make the Guistina-Perozi issue seem minor.

Senior staff of WAMC know full well of Chartock's activities, they are withholding evidence of all kinds of crimes, mostly tax-related, so they might be in for a tough time as well.

Heller has never released the name of the person he claims that Alan Chartock sexually harassed, but hints have been left on his blog by people, including the initials K. P. in one comment. In my opinion this is the most serious charge that Heller has raised against Chartock. If this issue is to ever be resolved, it seems like the person who claims Chartock harassed her should be named, and Chartock should be confronted by her claims. I can’t say with certainty that Karen Perozi Guistina is the person, but all signs seem to point in that direction.

Trish Gets Trashed Again.

2006-10-20T09:18:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, New York State’s highest court, The Court of Appeals, ruled that Robert Gorghan, will have to stand trial again in Rensselaer County on rape charges. Gorghan had argued that a second trial would constitute double jeopardy. While Gorghan lost his bid to quash a second trial, the ruling was as much a defeat for Rensselaer County DA Trish DeAngelis as it was for Gorghan. The Court called DeAngelis’s behavior in the first trial “deplorable.”

Chief Justice Judith Kaye begins the decision by stating, “In the context of this troubling case of a trial prosecutor’s misconduct...” and then goes on to state “... the prosecutor continuously flouted these and other rulings by attempting to place excluded evidence before the jury, repeatedly referencing matters not in evidence, making unsupportable assertions and calling upon the jury to draw improper inferences.”

Read the entire ruling.

Here’s another story about the Rensselaer DA’s office that as far as I know did not make the news, but it should have. I found it on Warren Redlich’s blog, and it shows once again why blogs are important.

It seems that due to incompetence on the part of the Rensselaer County DA’s office, a man spent 29 days in jail in Chicago for allegedly stealing from his employer in Rensselaer County. A few weeks ago, a Rensselaer County Grand Jury refused to indict the man, essentially believing he was innocent.

The old saw is that a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich. Redlich explains how easily it is for a grand jury to return an indictment. Alan Dershowitz says in his book Taking Liberties, that normally when a grand jury refuses to indict, it is because the prosecutor doesn’t want the person indicted. In this case, however, the Rensselaer County’s office did want this man indicted. Grand juries rarely go against what a prosecutor wants, so when the grand jury refused to indict Redlich’s client, they were essentially slapping DeAngelis in the face.

Reading between the lines of Redlich’s blog, I see a lawsuit coming up.

Read the original story on Redlich’s blog.

Read the follow-up story.

How To Say No In Troy.

2006-10-19T07:02:00.000-04:00

Here’s a letter from a book published in Troy in 1850. The book is full of model letters that you can use to answer a variety of people in a variety of situations. This letter is a sample of how to say no to a friend who asks to borrow money from you.

Dear Harry, (We changed the name from Jim to Harry to make the letter relevant.)

The fact is, that the poetry of life and the italics of the heart are entirely too etherial in their natures to be associated with the dross of dollars and cents. I go you the poetry and the italics, to the full extent; but I cannot consent to alloy the fine drawn sympathies and feelings of friendship by bringing it in contact with so common-place a matter as money.

Nor can I, dear Harry, when I remember the days of old, believe it would be paid to me in a week.

Yours truly

John

The title of the book that this letter came from is “American Fashionable Letter Writer, Original And Selected, Containing A Variety Of Letters On Business, Love, Courtship, Marriage, Relationship, Friendship, Etc With Forms Of Complimentary Cards, To The Whole Are Prefixed Directions For Letter Writing, And Rules For Composition.” Published by Merriam, Moore & Co. Troy, NY 1650.

Not only is the title of the book and its contents old fashioned, but letter writing has become old fashioned. Now if we could only get someone to write a book on e-mail etiquette.

Sailors Take Warning.

2006-10-18T04:52:00.000-04:00

You didn’t need a meteorologist to tell you it was going to rain all day yesterday. You just had to be up early enough to see the sun come up.

Assault Warrant Issued For Schenectady Cop, Darren Lawrence

2006-10-17T06:10:00.000-04:00

NEWS10 may have had the exclusive story about a Schenectady police officer’s bizarre crash and fight on the Northway, but they were unable to obtain the officer’s name. One of Upstream’s reliable sources has told us that it is Officer Darren Lawrence. Lawrence was picked up on a felony arrest warrant yesterday afternoon by the Colonie PD. Apparently, Lawrence has a temper and had an altercation with another Schenectady police officer a few weeks ago.

Here is NEWS10’s story:

A Schenectady Police officer is under investigation for his involvement in a bizarre crash on the Northway. NEWS10 has learned that the officer, who was off-duty at the time, could face very serious charges.

This all happened in Colonie, and police there are still trying to sort out exactly what happened.

NEWS10's John McLoughlin has this exclusive story.

It happened early Saturday morning, just north of Watervliet-Shaker Road. The vehicle, with a Schenectady Police officer, and another person inside, struck a guardrail on the Northway, sending the car airborne, then rolling over into a ditch filled with water.
Sources say the two occupants then got into a fight over whether to notify Colonie Police.

Read the rest of the story.

Schenectady’s Police Department has had serious problems for years. We have written about them before. Maybe Schenectady should hire Albany Police Chief, Jim Tuffey, for awhile to straighten things out.

Black Lawn Jockey Rides One Of Pataki's Horses.

2006-10-16T09:21:00.000-04:00

The following is an updated and revised version of an earlier post.

I haven’t seen a Black lawn jockey in probably twenty-five years, but I stumbled upon this one on a dead end street in a high class neighborhood in Amsterdam yesterday. Many sites on the internet attempt to dispel the racist, or at least stereotypical, overtones of these statues, but it appears that such attempts are simply part of revisionist history. The cover below of an African-American magazine seems to indicate that at least some Blacks find these statues offensive.

Anyway, I did a little more sleuthing and found that the owner of the house where this lawn jockey is located is Jeffrey Rosenthal, Deputy Counsel in the New York Governor's Office of Regulatory Reform.

The fact that Mr. Rosenthal has this statue on his front lawn does not, in my opinion, make him a racist. He may have bought the urban legend about these statues. In any event, he has the right to display the lawn jockey. On the other hand, I do believe that it shows a lack of propriety for someone who was once an assistant district attorney and judge and who is now an attorney for one of Governor Pataki's offices.

Clarissa Putman's House. Part 1.

2006-10-14T06:55:00.000-04:00

This photo shows our house just before we bought it in 2003. It had no working septic, no working furnace, no working well, hadn’t been painted in 35 years, had trees growing into the upstairs windows, etc. This house was built before the American Revolution and was a tenant farm for many years. Locally, it is known as the Clarissa Putman house. Putman was the common-law wife of Sir John Johnson, son of Sir William Johnson. After she bore him two children, he jilted her and married a socialite from New York City. Putman moved out of Old Fort Johnson and to this house where she lived for the next two years. She then moved to Schenectady where she spent the rest of her life.

A historical novel was written about Clarissa Putman by John J. Vrooman, Superintendent of New York State Historic Sites back in the early 1950s. The book, Clarissa Putman of Tribes Hill, has a chapter called "The House on the Fort Hunter Road" which describes the house in detail. Clarissa Putman is buried in Vale Cemetery in Schenectady. Some of her descendants still live in the Mohawk Valley.

This photo shows the house after we cut down trees and brush, removed the porch, painted the house, changed the roof on the addition (built around 1870) from a shed roof to a regular roof, and re-shingled both roofs.

This photo shows the house as it is now. We added two windows on the left to balance the ones on the right. Replaced all the windows on the main house with modern replacement windows meant to look like colonial windows, replaced the windows in the addition to look like windows from that period, replaced the front door, pointed up the foundation, and painted the addition. We are not completely done with the front of the house, but it does show improvement.

Historical preservationists have spent a lot of time and money preserving the homes of wealthy people. I do not have a problem with that, but not enough time and money has been spent preserving the homes of the poor, the working poor, tenant farmers and the like. That is just one reason why I wanted to save this house, which was probably only a year or so away from having to be demolished when we bought it.

I will write more on this project in future posts.

Historic Ingersoll - Stanford House May Be Torn Down.

2006-10-13T08:57:00.000-04:00

Some people, including Niskayuna Town Supervisor Luke Smith, want to tear down this historic home at the corner of Route 5 and Balltown Road in Niskayuna and replace it with Walgreens and other big box stores.

Supervisor Smith and his supporters want to see these trees cut down and this historic spot covered with blacktop.

At 9:00 a.m. tomorrow (October 14) and at 9:00 a.m. Sunday (October 15), you can watch an interview that Ernie Tetrault did with Linda Champagne about the importance of this home and why it should be preserved.

The home was owned at one time by the family of Leland Stanford, the founder of Stanford University. Read several newspaper articles about the controversy surrounding the plan to destroy this property.

Here is a list of stations that you can watch the interview on:

OVER THE AIR - ALBANY 15
OVER THE AIR - PITTSFIELD 51
ADELPHIA CABLE-BENNINGTON 5
ADELPHIA CABLE-EDINBURG 3
ADELPHIA CABLE-GLENS FALLS 3
ADELPHIA CABLE-LEE 9
ADELPHIA CABLE-NORTH ADAMS 9
ADELPHIA CABLE-NORTHVILLE 3
CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS-CHATHAM 3
CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS-WEST STOCKBRIDGE 16
MID-HUDSON CABLEVISION INC 9
TIME WARNER CABLE-PITTSFIELD 8
TIME WARNER CABLE-PORT HENRY/TICONDEROGA/CROWN PT 13
TIME WARNER CABLE-SCHROON LAKE 11
TIME WARNER CABLE-ALL OTHER SYSTEMS 4
DIRECT TV 51
DISH NETWORK 7112

It's Time To Debate Legalizing Drugs.

2006-10-12T06:32:00.000-04:00

Note: The following article which I wrote appeared in The Sunday Gazette on October 8.

Whatever happened to the War on Drugs? Apparently, it has been replaced by the War on Terrorism. However, two recent events brought the War on Drugs back into focus for me.

The first event was the raid by a Schenectady SWAT team, during which children were handcuffed and terrorized, a pet dog was killed and only a small amount of marijuana was found.

The second event was the arrest in late September of Joseph Flowers, 24, of Rotterdam for robbing several area banks. Flowers told the police that he committed the robberies in order to support his addiction to crack. Normally, when I read about someone who has been arrested for robbing banks or possessing drugs, I immediately forget about it. But this time it was different. I knew the bank robber.

I haven’t seen Joseph (we called him Joey) for quite a few years. When I knew him, he was a somewhat rambunctious, but very loveable kid. My son and Joey were in the same class in school, and they often hung out together. Joey would come to my son’s birthday parties and sometimes stayed overnight.

I can’t tell you why my son is attending college while Joey is sitting in the county lock-up. It’s certainly not because my son had better parents than Joey. Joey had good parents, did not come from a poor family, attended private school for at least part of his education and received moral and religious training. Joey is a warning sign to white, middle-class, suburban America that crack cocaine is not just an inner city, African-American problem.

Both events--the SWAT raid in Schenectady and the arrest of Joseph Flowers are two more pieces of anecdotal evidence to add to the mountain of facts, figures and stories that show that the War on Drugs has failed.

So what is the answer to crack cocaine and our forty year war on illegal drugs? Before I attempt to answer that, I must mention some disclaimers. First, I have never used any illegal drugs. I couldn’t tell a joint from a Virginia Slim. I have never inhaled. Furthermore, I have always supported conservative political candidates who were tough on drugs and have always believed that if we legalized drugs we would be sending the wrong message to our young people.

But my thinking has begun to change. What has changed my thinking is not the ideas of left-wing groups, or even libertarian groups, but the ideas of a small but dedicated group of cops and ex-cops called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).

LEAP, which was founded only four years ago, already numbers 5,000 members. Those members include judges, sheriffs, prosecutors, parole officers, corrections officers and other law enforcement agents, along with people who are not law enforcement agents but who are concerned about the drug problem in America. Many of the cops and ex-cops involved are or were narcotics officers.
LEAP’s goal is to make drugs legal, but to then control and regulate them. According to LEAP’s website (www.leap.cc),

“After nearly four decades of fueling the U.S. policy of a war on drugs with over a trillion tax dollars and increasingly punitive policies, our confined population has quadrupled over a 20-year period making building prisons this nation's fastest growing industry. More than 2.2 million of our citizens are currently incarcerated. In the last five years we have arrested 9 million people for nonviolent drug offenses--far more per capita than any country in the world. The United States has 4.6 percent of the population of the world but 22.5 percent of the world's prisoners. Every year we choose to continue this war will cost the United States another 69 billion dollars. Despite all the lives we have destroyed and all the money so ill spent, today illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and much easier to get than they were 36 years ago at the beginning of the war on drugs. Meanwhile, people continue dying in our streets while drug barons and terrorists continue to grow richer than ever before.”

LEAP claims that 80 % of the people who listen to one of their presentations are convinced that legalizing and regulating drugs is the right thing to do, while 14% are unsure. I would have to place myself among the 14%. I want to hear more. I want to hear from both sides. What LEAP has done for me is to make me realize that we should at least debate the issue.

What’s disappointing, however, is the disappearance of the drug problem from political debate. Neither Eliot Spitzer nor John Faso, the two major candidates for Governor of New York State, have had anything to say about illegal drugs and both of their web sites are silent on the subject. The only political candidate I have found who has raised the issue is Warren Redlich, the Republican candidate who is trying to unseat Michael McNulty.

With drugs legal and regulated, would Joey Flower still be on drugs? Would he have robbed four banks to fuel his habit? Would the Schenectady SWAT team have handcuffed children and shot their dog to arrest a young man with a few joints?

We will never know if we never talk about it.

Call Me Melville.

2006-10-11T05:33:00.000-04:00

The Albany Academy, where Herman Melville attended for one year, and the Albany Academy for Girls are sponsoring a Why Melville Matters Now symposium. According to the academies, Melville matters because “The questions he posed are the same issues that inspire contemporary writers, artists, and thinkers today—the vexed relations between humans and their environment, racial and social injustices, capital punishment, psychological alienation, and the new frontiers of science and globalism.”

No matter that the questions Melville posed most were theological and philosophical. Is God good or is he malignant? Does man truly have free will or is everything predetermined? Why do good things happen to bad people?

Moby Dick has more than 250 Biblical names, quotations and allusions, the first one showing up in the third word of the opening. Ishmael is supposedly the first Arab and the ancestor of Muhammad. Now there’s relevance.

Anyway, some good will come out of this symposium, even if Melville’s life long quest to resolve religious issues raised during his Calvinistic upbringing has been relegated to the category of irrelevant. There will be a 24 hour reading of Moby Dick and you can get a free T-shirt if you volunteer to read. William Kennedy will be the first reader and the Great White Whale himself, Andy Rooney, another alumnus of the Albany Academy, will be the last reader.

Maybe hearing parts of Moby Dick will inspire some people to read the entire Moby Richard for the first time, and they can decide for themselves if Melville thought Ishamel and Queequeg were a gay couple, or if Starbuck had survived the sinking, whether or not he would have been the founder of Greenpeace, instead of lending his name to a coffee company.

Jockeying To Interpret History.

2006-10-09T06:57:00.000-04:00

I haven’t seen a Black lawn jockey in probably twenty-five years, but I stumbled upon this one yesterday in one of Amsterdam's nicer neighborhoods. Many sites on the internet attempt to dispel the racist, or at least stereotypical, overtones of these statues, but it appears that such attempts are simply part of revisionist history. For what it’s worth, I note that the wife of one of Montgomery County’s judges was sitting in the driveway of this house, along with its owner.

Ethel or Fred?

2006-10-06T03:18:00.000-04:00

2006-10-05T02:55:00.000-04:00

Kerouac, Ginsberg & friends in New York

The UK's Guardian & The Amish School Shooting in PA.

2006-10-04T08:46:00.000-04:00

The British were back in the Mohawk Valley yesterday, not getting their butts beat as they did when they were here two centuries ago, but reading my post, Amish Paradise Lost: An Open Letter To President Bush. The Guardian, once known as the Manchester Guardian and winner of the British Press Awards National Newspaper of the Year 2006, reprinted part of my post in a Newsblog post, Shots Through A Community’s Heart, written by James Sturcke.

Raa-Ther!

Jim Wild, convenor of the Men's Studies Unit at Nottingham Trent University, wrote in yesterday‘s Guardian that the Amish school shooting had something to do with our failure to debate masculinity. I don‘t agree with Mr. Wild, but his article is worth reading.

In any event, The Amish school shooting was The Guardian’s number two story of the day yesterday, and it was intriguing to see how the Brits view and interpret news stories about the United States.

Amish Paradise Lost: An Open Letter To President Bush.

2006-10-03T04:38:00.000-04:00

Dear President Bush:

It’s time to bring the troops home from Iraq. I say that, not as a carping liberal critic, but as someone who has voted 95% Republican ever since 1980 when I proudly cast my first vote for Ronald Reagan.

Mr. President, while we are supposedly winning the war against terrorism abroad, we are losing it at home. The terror in our homeland is not terror caused by fanatical Muslims but by our own people, grown American men who storm into schoolhouses and kill young girls.

It’s time to come home and focus on our own spiritual bankruptcy and our own tendencies for terror and violence. Yesterday’s attack on an Amish school was the last straw for me. What happened on 9/11/01 was unthinkable, but what happened on 10/02/06 was also unthinkable.

I voted for you twice, Mr. President. I thought it was right that we invaded Afghanistan. Initially, I also supported the War in Iraq. But I can no longer support the war. We allegedly are exporting democracy to Iraq, but in many people’s minds that has come to mean secret prisons, torture, being detained without counsel, illegal wiretapping, ignoring the Geneva Convention, and ignoring the wishes of the American people embodied in both branches of Congress.

This issue is so serious that I don’t plan to vote for any Republicans this Fall. I am pro-life, pro-military, support the death penalty, and am against gay marriage, but all of those issues are going to take a back seat because the most important issues to me right now are bringing our troops home, restoring civil and human rights for all Americans and for all people who are under the jurisdiction of the American military, and the ending of terror and violence in America, not just by Islamic radicals, but by our own people.

Sincerely,

Daniel T. Weaver

Sign Of The Times.

2006-10-02T06:26:00.000-04:00

A Psalm For The Day From Jack Kerouac.

2006-10-01T06:32:00.000-04:00

Oh god how I rejoice in sorrows now, as though I had asked You for them, and You had handed them to me, how I rejoice in these sorrows. Like steel I will be, God, growing harder in the forge-fires, grimmer, harder, better: as you direct, Oh lost Lord, as you direct: let me find You now, like new joy at morning, like a horse in his meadows in the morning seeing the master a-coming across the grass--Like steel, I am now, God, like steel, you have made me strong and hopeful.

Strike me and I will ring like a bell!

From Jack Kerouac Windblown World. The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954.

Different Strokes For Different Folks.

2006-09-29T08:52:00.000-04:00

Edward Fletcher pled guilty yesterday to shooting his sister’s dogs after his mother had poisoned them and will get 16 months in jail.

The Schenectady Police Department shot and killed a pregnant dog while it was running away from them in fear, during a drug raid that netted a small amount of marijuana. No investigation. No arrests.

The Mohawk and Hudson River Humane Society in Menands killed and cremated hundreds of animals after disease swept through the facility. A cursory investigation by the state. No arrests.

Here are some excerpts from the original Times Union story on the Menands Shelter.

Outbreak shuts shelter
Humane society closed until at least Oct. 2 after killing 344 animals
By Danielle Furfaro, Staff writer
First published: Friday, September 22, 2006

MENANDS -- The Mohawk and Hudson River Humane Society will be closed until at least Oct. 2 following disease outbreaks that led to the killing of 344 animals and severe criticisms about the way the shelter has operated in recent months.

At a meeting Thursday night, Marsha Nagengast, a member of Whiskers Animal Benevolent League, a local, nonprofit, all-volunteer animal shelter, said she was authorized to inform the board that Whiskers would no longer deal with the humane society.

Other animal groups, including Peppertree Rescue, had already informed the humane society that they would not work with them because of concerns about how the shelter is run.

Shelter employee Bill Adams, who works nights, told of animals living in filth while the shelter failed to stock items such as clean mop heads and gloves.

Read the entire story.

Here are excerpts from a follow-up story.

Animal shelter is OK'd by state Inspectors pass humane society where disease forced euthanizations
By Danielle Furfarfo, Staff writer
First published: Sunday, September 24, 2006

Meanwhile, several members of the animal care community are painting a dire portrait of the shelter situation. They allege new management there, led by Friedman, who arrived in March, has limited experience with animals and is more concerned with the financial health of the shelter than the health of the dogs and cats.
"There are a lot of questions in everyone's minds about how the animals are being evaluated and what euthanizations are going to be made," said Elizabeth Sommers, a former member of the humane society's governance committee and the current president of Peppertree Rescue, an Albany-based group that finds homes for dogs. "We rely on the shelter to give us proper information about the animals. Once we take them out, we are putting them in our own homes."
Sommers resigned from the shelter's governance committee shortly after Friedman came on board and let some longtime staffers go.
"If nobody knows dogs, you are going to have bad situations," she said. "I made the executive decision to keep Peppertree away from the shelter until they get the proper people in there. I don't want Peppertree to be associated if there is some tragedy."
Carol Hall, president of Whiskers Animal Benevolent League, an Albany-based nonprofit, all-volunteer animal shelter, said her board will discuss on Tuesday whether to formally break off all ties with the humane society.
"We were really distressed that this has happened," Hall said. "An awful lot of innocent lives were lost."

Meanwhile Bellanca Fletcher, a Troy lawyer, responded to my original post about the Menands shelter. She said,

Unfortunately, the author of this article (actually, I’m not entirely sure of what this is), has fallen into the trap of many. He has assumed that he has information that, in fact, is largely false. Yes, the Mohawk and Hudson River Humane Society closed down for a short term because of a disease outbreak that caused the euthanasia of many animals.
What one needs to remember, however, is that MHRHS is a municipal shelter that is REQUIRED to take in all animals brought to it by municipalities with which it has a contract. Additionally, this shelter takes in all animals brought in by individuals in the community, irrespective of the health of the animal and irrespective of the space available. The result is that many animals that have not been spayed, neutered or vaccinated are brought to the shelter, putting other animals in the shelter in jeopardy.
This also leads to serious overcrowding from time to time and, while the shelter reaches out to rescue as much as currently possible (and more in the near future), the shelter is perpetually full. Rescue organizations are also limited in the number of animals they can take in at any one point in time.
Management and staff at the shelter have taken this closure time to work tirelessly to identify sick animals, clean and disinfect the entire shelter, and get protocols in place to avoid this type of outbreak in the future.
In an overcrowded shelter full of animals that have never been vaccinated, even the immediate vaccination received upon entry into the shelter doesn’t confer upon the cat or dog an immune system adequate to fight off exposure to some disease. Additionally, animals are routinely brought in sick. It’s unfortunate, but it’s a fact, that people often don’t take care of their animals and decide that, when they become ill, someone else should take the responsibility.
So instead of bashing one of the few municipal shelters in our area, try helping. Your readers can contact the shelter to find out what it needs - i.e. blankets and bleach, dog and cat food, cat beds that are easily washed, cat litter, dog toys, etc. and can volunteer to walk dogs to keep them mentally stimulated so that they fare better in the shelter environment, or assist with an off site adoption clinic where numerous animals are adopted out every month or donate funds to offset the annual budget deficits experienced by this underfunded and overpopulated shelter. Better yet, go down and adopt an animal or two - many of these animals were owned and surrendered by uncaring owners. You might be the perfect home for one of these lovely animals.
No, I don’t work at the Mohawk and Hudson River Humane Society, and no, I don’t like to see any animal euthanized. However, the reality of the situation is that it will continue to happen as long as humans are irresponsible with respect to vaccinations and sterilization. There are more dogs and cats in our area than there are homes to care for them.

Here is my response to Ms. Fletcher.

I agree that people need to be more responsible when it comes to caring for their animals and shelters need more volunteers. However, shelters should quarantine incoming animals and not let them near the other animals until they have been tested for disease, given vaccines, etc. There is a double standard when it comes to the way the Humane Society and the SPCA are allowed to treat animals and the way the general populace is allowed to treat animals. If a farmer or private rescuer had to kill and cremate 300 animals, it would be a front page story and criminal charges would likely have been filed. Furthermore, I have never heard of another shelter in the area that has had to euthanize several hundred animals at one time.

Upstate New York Small Town Justice.

2006-09-28T06:02:00.000-04:00

Note: A reader brought to my attention a three part series by The New York Times on Upstate New York’s system of town justices. It’s a series worth reading. You might have to sign up for a free New York Times account in order to access the complete articles.

Here is the opening of the first article.

Some of the courtrooms are not even courtrooms: tiny offices or basement rooms without a judge’s bench or jury box. Sometimes the public is not admitted, witnesses are not sworn to tell the truth, and there is no word-for-word record of the proceedings.

Nearly three-quarters of the judges are not lawyers, and many — truck drivers, sewer workers or laborers — have scant grasp of the most basic legal principles. Some never got through high school, and at least one went no further than grade school.

But serious things happen in these little rooms all over New York. People have been sent to jail without a guilty plea or a trial, or tossed from their homes without a proper proceeding. In violation of the law, defendants have been refused lawyers, or sentenced to weeks in jail because they cannot pay a fine. Frightened women have been denied protection from abuse.

These are New York’s town and village courts, or justice courts, as the 1,250 of them are widely known. In the public imagination, they are quaint holdovers from a bygone era, handling nothing weightier than traffic tickets and small claims. They get a roll of the eyes from lawyers who amuse one another with tales of incompetent small-town justices.

Below are quotes from the first article that deal with justices in the Mohawk Valley. These cases were minor compared to some in other parts of the state.

In this department, Pamela L. Kadur may hold a record. As town justice in Root, west of Schenectady, she presided over at least seven cases involving relatives, who often received lenient treatment, the commission said when it ordered her removal in 2003. Justice Kadur heard a speeding case against her son in her own kitchen, then tried to cover up their family relationship in record books, the commission said, by misspelling his last name.

One longtime town justice near Albany let a friend who owned a driving school sit with him at the bench; when the justice ordered anyone to take a driver-training course, only the friend’s school was acceptable. Another justice, in Rensselaer County, told a trucker charged with drunken driving that he would not suspend his license because “I can’t do that to a fellow truck driver.”

In 2003 alone, justices disciplined by the state included one in Montgomery County who had closed his court to the public and let prosecutors run the proceedings during 20 years in office.

In what the Commission on Judicial Conduct called “a shocking abuse of judicial power,” Justice Roger C. Maclaughlin single-handedly went after a man he decided was violating local codes on the keeping of livestock in Steuben, near Utica. The justice interviewed witnesses, tipped off the code-enforcement officer, lobbied the town board to deny the man approval to run a trailer park, then jailed him for 10 days without bail — or even a chance to defend himself, the commission said.

Some justices, unsure of the law, have also come to rely too much on the authorities. Elaine M. Rider, who presided in Waterville, near Utica, fretted that she did not “really have the time to puzzle this out” when a criminal defendant argued that evidence had been seized illegally. So she had the prosecutor write her decision, the commission said.

Read the first part of the series. This is Not America. In Tiny Courts of N.Y., Abuses of Law and Power.

Read the second part of the series. You Learn by Mistakes. Small-Town Justice, With Trial and Error.

Read the third part of the series. Nothing Gets Done. How a Reviled Court System Has Outlasted Critics.

Another Amsterdam Blogger.

2006-09-27T06:28:00.000-04:00

I finally found another serious (and sometimes quite humorous) blogger in Amsterdam. Robert N. Going, former Family Court Judge in Montgomery County and now Corporate Counsel for the City of Amsterdam has a blog well worth reading. It is called The Judge Report, and is described as the Musings of a Conservative Republican Pro-Life Catholic Red Sox Fanatic, currently hiding out in Amsterdam, NY USA.

I particularly enjoyed the following entries:

Sept. 25. De Tocqueville on Islam and Democracy.
Sept. 23. Flash. Bob indirectly makes the case for why women should wear bras.
Sept. 18. No Eighth Grader Left Behind. Bob gives examples of what 8th graders had to know in 1895.

I hope you will check out Bob’s blog and leave some comments. I will be adding his blog to my links.

Couch Potato Couldn't Be Bothered To Go To The Dump.

2006-09-26T07:16:00.000-04:00

Illegal dumping in rural areas is increasing, at least it is on my road. Tires are the biggest problem, a problem which could easily be solved by charging a deposit on tires that would be returned when the tires were returned to a garage. Other items I see a lot of on country roads are appliances, full bags of garbage, the remains of meals from McDonalds, Burger King and KFC, soda and beer cans, Stewart's coffee cups, lottery tickets and cigarette butts.

When I go walking down my road, I often contemplate on what this growing phenomenon says about us as a people. My thoughts about people who dump their trash on country roads is not printable on this blog, which generally trys to be family oriented.

Mohawk & Hudson River Humane Society Allegedly Neglects, Then Kills 300 Pets.

2006-09-24T05:53:00.000-04:00

“We will not rest until we have ample "empty" space to save all animals in our care. “ The Mohawk and Hudson River Humane Society.

Apparently the Mohawk and Hudson River Humane Society is resting right now because according to an e-mail I received from the Times Union’s Reader’s Network (TURN), “Staff writer Danielle Furfaro is following the story about the Mohawk and Hudson River Humane Society, which shut down this week after disease outbreaks caused the euthanization of more than 300 animals. Many have criticized how the shelter has been run in recent months.”

Humane Society workers, which in New York City, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, act as law enforcement officers in animal abuse and neglect cases, are quick to arrest people who neglect their animals. What I want to know is-will anyone at the Mohawk and Hudson River Humane Society be arrested for this fiasco?

If you are going to adopt one of these animals, I suggest you consider changing their names. Appropriate names include Smokey, Cinderella, Burns, Ashes, and Barbie Q.

2006-09-23T05:55:00.000-04:00

Fort Johnson Privy (Out House)

I've written before about the importance of the outhouse at Old Fort Johnson. It is believed that George Washington sat here, when he travelled through the Mohawk Valley. Enjoy this one minute video of one of the most important outhouses in the United States.

2006-09-23T05:47:00.000-04:00

Amsterdam Castle

The former Amsterdam National Guard Armory, now a private residence, was the setting for a recent film, God's Good Pleasure. You can also visit the Castle's web site.

Is Tracking Sudafed A Patriotic Act?

2006-09-22T08:19:00.000-04:00

It’s old news, but I didn’t know about it until I went to Rite-Aid in Amsterdam recently to buy some Sudafed. As someone who suffers from chronic sinusitis I rely on Sudafed. Sudafed is no longer stocked on the shelf. You have to wait in line at the pharmacy to buy it. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that you have to show the pharmacist your license, sign for the medicine, and your purchase is recorded in a database. You are also limited as to how much you can purchase each month.

Sudafed and its generic equivalent pseudoephedrine are key ingredients in the illegal manufacture of meth. The relatively new database of Sudafed users is part of the government’s war on drugs, and became law as a rider to the renewed Patriot Act.

If you read this blog regularly, I am sure you can guess how I feel about this. Rather than give my opinion, however, you can read the pros and cons here.

Apparently, some pharmacies have stopped selling Sudafed rather than deal with the information gathering required by law.

Jack Carroll To Give His First Prison Interview.

2006-09-21T03:10:00.000-04:00

Editor’s Note: For those of you who say there is never anything worth watching on television, please read the following e-mail I received from Justice Now. For background information on the Jack Carroll case, click here.

Jack Carroll speaking to Carl Strock from inside prison is the featured guest this weekend on Justice Now. I believe it is the first TV interview Carroll has done since he was first incarcerated eight and a half years ago. Strock taped the interview with Carroll at the Washington Correctional Facility in Comstock New York, several weeks ago. The half hour program edited and produced by Ernie Tetrault will be seen twice this weekend on Cable Channel 4(over the air channel 15) WNYA, at 9AM both Saturday and Sunday. The title of the program is "Waiting for Justice."

Despite being locked up Carroll reveals he has a very warm and extensive family life. His wife Mary visits him just about every weekend and talks to him by phone every night.

Like all inmates wives and family members Mary Carroll pays outrageously high phone bills . This is due to the sweetheart deal the phone company has made with the State which pulls in something like 25 million dollars a year profit from overpriced inmate phone calls.

While in prison Carroll has earned certification as a Paralegal and works every day in the prison law library helping other inmates with their various legal problems. During the course of the interview Carroll shares with Strock some interesting and compelling insights into the prison and parole systems.

Read Jack Carroll’s most recent letter from prison.

Paul Vandenburgh Is A Confused Conservative.

2006-09-18T08:37:00.000-04:00

WROW's Paul Vandenburgh is a confused conservative. This morning he is railing against the AMD giveaway in Luther Forest, for which I agree with him. Corporate welfare is another form of big government. At the same time he is peeing his pants because local columnists have attacked the government for its weak case against Yassin M. Aref, 36, the leader of a Central Avenue mosque, and Mohammed M. Hossain, a pizzeria owner. Vandenburgh is also griping about the attacks against Trish DeAngelis over the prosecution of Christine Wilhelm.

Vandenburgh wants small government when it comes to taxes and corporate welfare, but he seems to think the expansion of our ever burgeoning prison system is a good thing. He seems to have no problem with using valuable police time to entice people who never committed a crime into committing crime. Vandenburgh’s ideas reflect the movement of conservatism away from traditional conservatism towards a conservatism that doesn’t look much different from liberalism, at least in its desire to expand government.

Amsterdam Memorial Hospital has dumped 38 jobs in a massive lay-off due to a $1.1 million dollar deficit. Have CEO, Donald Massey, and the other highly paid executives at the hospital considered taking a pay cut to set an example for the company? It might raise morale at the hospital if they did.

I didn’t know until I read Bob Cudmore’s article in Saturday’s (9/16/06) Daily Gazette that Paul Keesler died last year. I have mentioned Keesler in the past. Keesler was an avid outdoorsman and loved the Mohawk Valley. His premature death is a great loss to the Mohawk Valley. He was working on a book on the Valley when he died. His family is trying to get the book published. You can read the unfinished work on-line. Keesler also wrote books about the West Canada or Kuyahoora Valley.

For those of you interested in local history, Peter Betz, Fulton County Historian, wrote a great piece in the Leader Herald recently on a tragic explosion in downtown Gloversville in 1937.

New York's Emerald Green Party & Other Random Thoughts.

2006-09-15T05:45:00.000-04:00

If you think the race for governor of New York State is simply Do Re Mi vs. Faso, you are wrong. There are alternatives. One is Malachy McCourt, running on the Green Party ticket. McCourt is the older but lesser known brother of Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes and ‘Tis. While Frank McCourt is one of the greatest writers I've ever read, his brother Malachy, who is also a writer, is not so good. Malachy is better known as an actor. He played the bartender in The Molly Maguires, had a role in Gods And Generals and had a number of other small roles in movies and television series. Even though Malachy is not a great writer, if you want to see how Hollywood chews up and spits out the vast majority of actors, then I recommend reading his books. If you don’t like Spitzer or Faso, then check out the Green Party.

The Porco trial was not the most important trial of the year in the Capital Region. More important is the trial, now in progress, of Yassin M. Aref, 36, the leader of a Central Avenue mosque, and Mohammed M. Hossain, 51, a pizza shop owner, who face the possibility of life in prison if convicted of aiding terrorists. But I wouldn’t look for the Times Union or WNYT to start a Aref & Hossain Trial Blog anytime soon.

The Leader-Herald of Gloversville is a small newspaper that, unlike The Recorder of Amsterdam, writes its own editorials. And it writes some good ones. A recent editorial on the IRS telling ministers what they can and can’t preach is a good example.

The Rensselaer County DA’s office must have worked overtime this week to help Patricia DeAngelis save face over the Christine Wilhelm case. The DA says she doesn’t want to re-try the case because she wants to save Wilhelm’s son the pain of testifying again. DeAngelis continues to say that her primary task is to protect the citizens of Rensselaer County. She sounds like our president (yes, I’m guilty. I voted for him twice) who continues to say his primary job is to protect the Homeland (fatherland, motherland), when the oath of office they both took obligates them to protect the Constitution.

While Trish DeAngelis has made her reputation by prosecuting sex offenders, both real and imaginary, DA Louise Sira of Fulton County has made her reputation by prosecuting people who abuse and neglect animals. While there is strong evidence that Jane Fletcher poisoned her dogs earlier this year; the evidence against her son is less compelling. According to Edward Fletcher, he shot the dogs after finding out that his mother poisoned them in order to put them out of their misery. Fletcher’s mother and sister corroborate his story, but Edward Fletcher was charged with the same 13 counts that his mother was charged with. The only charge against Edward that makes sense is “destroying evidence” which he did by burning the dogs’ bodies.

Veteran Prison Guard Charges NYS DOCS With Racism.

2006-09-13T08:28:00.000-04:00

Editor’s Note: Upstream received the following story via e-mail from a twelve year veteran New York State Department of Corrections officer who believes he was unduly fired and that his race was a factor in his firing. Upstream publishes his story in the interest of justice.

My name is Terrance L. Wilson Sr, I was a New York State Corrections officer from August 08 1994 until August 14 2006.

After filing a complaint of racial harassment against Then Deputy Superintendent William J. Connolly with the department and the State Division of Human Rights, I was suspended on false charges of assaulting an inmate on November 05, 2002. August 12, 2003. Nine months after being suspended I went to an arbitration hearing and the state requested an adjournment because they were not ready to proceed. I was placed back on payroll by the arbitrator because it was clear that the state was using the disciplinary process as punishment instead of going through the process and letting the punishment come at the end if needed.

Angered by the decision to place me back on payroll, Then Deputy Superintendent William J. Connolly had me arrested for the same charges I was already suspended for and then called me in to Sing-Sing Correctional Facility on August 26 2003 and suspended me again for being arrested and removed me from payroll thereby circumventing the decision of the arbitrator to place me back on payroll.

I went through a trial at the Ossining Village courthouse with Village Justice Raymond Barlaam presiding over the case. The trial dragged out until November. During this time I received numerous calls telling me to give up and resign. My family was harassed, I was followed, My information was illegally sent to the opposing attorney in my divorce case in Bronx supreme court and my son was removed from the home he shared with me for twelve years based on this information from NYSDOCS. Sing-Sing Superintendent Brian Fisher said the information was released without me being notified by mistake. My cousin who worked at the Westchester County Jail was placed under arrest by the New York State Department of Corrections and accused of worker's compensation fraud. Since he was on probation he was terminated without a hearing. My fiancée' who is also a New York State Correction Officer has been threatened on many occasions.

After finally finding an arbitrator that they could manipulate, NYSDOCS decided to go on with my arbitration hearing in May of 2006. I had been found guilty after a joke of a trial at the Ossining Village Court of the violation of Harassment 2nd in November of 2004, not even a crime. By NYSCOPBA contract and department directive this would not even have to be reported to the facility. A violation only has to be reported to the facility if it is in relation to drugs. My Notice of Discipline should have been thrown out but it was not. The union officials that stood up and spoke out on these wrongdoing were themselves targeted. The supervisor who was coerced into lying on me to initiate all of this, Sgt. Emerson Coulthrust was found to have immigration issues and taken into custody at Sing-Sing Correctional facility by Immigration and Citizenship and Homeland Security Agents. He was forced to retire.

I have written numerous letters to Gov. George Pataki, Commissioner Glen Goord, Senator Bill Larkin and Senator Jeff Klein to no avail. I have had my sealed court records illegally released and used against me at my arbitration hearing and used to terminate me. I have had my employers called and given false information hoping to have me terminated. I have had my creditors called and told I have illegally gained income. I am currently in Southern District Court fighting for my life and my career which was taken away by individuals allowed to act with impunity by Gov. George Pataki. Representatives of the department have knowingly perjured themselves in several different cases against the department.

How could I have been terminated for something that I could not have been suspended for?

When are these individuals held accountable for their actions?

There are countless examples of Caucasian Officers in similar or worse situations not being disciplined at all or even when they were it was never this harsh or prolonged. I know this sound incredible in this day and age but I have all of the official records as proof.

My life has been destroyed and I need help to get things right.

I thought the days of separate but equal were long behind us, but apparently only when you do not work for the New York State Department of Correctional Services.

Opposing Viewpoints On 9/11 & On Ralph Bucky Phillips.

2006-09-11T08:03:00.000-04:00

DIFFERING VIEWPOINTS ON RALPH BUCKY PHILLIPS

“Now the miserable creature will suffer for the rest of his life in the New York state prison system.” New York State Police Superintendent, Wayne Bennett

“...The Phillips I knew was definitely not some kind of animal. This was a guy who was really trying to turn his life around...” John Keavey, Parole lawyer for Ralph ‘Bucky’ Phillips.

“I feel nothing but contempt and disgust for the man.” Erie County Sheriff, Timothy Howard.

“I don’t apologize for him. I feel there’s no justification for what he did. He should have the maximum punishment. But I feel some guilt. I was part of the team that tried to help him, even though my efforts were sabotaged.” Sylvia Honig, Phillips’ social worker when he was incarcerated in Brookwood, a juvenile detention center, in 1976-77. (From Carl Strock’s column in the Sunday Gazette of Sept. 10, 2006).

“There are other Ralphs being established right now in Brookwood and other places.” Sylvia Honig.

OPPOSING VIEWS OF 9/11.

“The best way to control people is to frighten them. Sept. 11 was just a gift to them (the Bush Administration) and to other harsh and repressive elements throughout the world. That was evident instantly. That was the first thing I said when I was asked by reporters what I thought the effect would be. And, yes, that’s what it is. They have to keep people frightened, keep having scares come, make it look as if they’re doing something bold and courageous to defend the American people from international terrorism. And the best thing to do is to pick up cheap targets which are not costly and where you can strike dramatic gestures and so on.” Noam Chomsky in an interview by Nicholas Holt on March 8, 2002.

"Laura and I approach tomorrow with a heavy heart. It's hard not to think about people who lost their lives on Sept. 11th, 2001," he said. "I vowed that I'm never going to forget the lessons of that day." President George W. Bush. Sept. 10, 2006

New Mohawk Valley Blog.

2006-09-08T06:00:00.000-04:00

Rebecca Mecomber has started a new Mohawk Valley blog, called Mohawk Valley View. Its subtitle is “Perspective from a non-native, non-Italian, non-politician resident of the Mohawk Valley. Just my two cents worth.”

Rebecca defines the Mohawk Valley in narrower terms than I do. She says, “The Mohawk Valley area is unique. I consider the Mohawk Valley to very generally be Route 5 east-west from Oneida to Little Falls and Route 8 north-south from North Utica to Cassville. The official Mohawk Valley stretches out a little further beyond this, but for clarity and brevity (!) that is what I pin the area down to.”

Rebecca’s blog focuses primarily on what is known as the upper Mohawk Valley. My blog which puports to focus on the entire Mohawk Valley, tends to focus on the lower and middle Mohawk.

It’s exciting to see another voice join the chorus of Mohawk Valley bloggers. And I like how she lists her occupation as New York Taxpayer.

Rebecca has another blog also, which has a lot of nice photographs and a great entry on Fort Stanwix.

Three Women Respond To Judge David Jung.

2006-09-06T05:35:00.000-04:00

I have written several times about Judge David Jung, Fulton County Family Court Judge. One of my posts received three responses, which I wanted to hi-light because comments to older posts are not often likely to be read by people.

Jill - July 23, 2006
Hi I had a heck of a run in with Jung,,,,,,,, I was smart enough to go to the commission on judicial conduct ,,,,,,,,,,,,,I’m waiting but I’m sure he will receive some censure or be admonished something has to happen, he’s nuts………and my daughter is with her abusive father because of it, temporarily ...albany ny

Deb - July 28, 2006
Hi I just read a comment by Jill about judge Jung. I also was just recently in front of him and after 13 years of raising my two daughters this judge decides that they are better off with their abusive father. I would like to get information on this commission of judicial conduct people. I never knew anything like that existed. if you can please email me any information. and your right about the fact that something needs to be done about him! glenfield, ny

Kelly of Johnstown - September 2, 2006
Well my niece just was killed in a car accident last month and left a 3 month old son, my sister (the grandmother) is fighting the low life non existent father on custody. My sister’s lawyer had the case postponed due to another court case and my sister received the paperwork with the new date in the mail. Well the baby’s father is also fighting her on custody and tried to serve her but she DID NOT SIGN the papers…he went to court anyway and judge Jung gave him custody on default that my sister never showed up. they came and took the baby….it is absolutely unbelievable that he allowed, legally, for it to get to the point of listening to the baby’s father without my sister and not obeying the postponement date…How could this have happened. And of course it is a long weekend. So she has to wait until Tuesday. Does he hate women that much? I know he had a bitter divorce…but every situation is different. Being in that position gives him too much power with his own opinion. Help what can we do to have him stop this nonsense!!

R.I.P. Joseph Longobardo & Rocco Petrone.

2006-09-05T07:08:00.000-04:00

Amsterdam lost two distinguished native sons recently. While neither had lived in Amsterdam for some time, both were born and brought up there.

"FREDONIA -- State Trooper Joseph Longobardo, a 32-year-old Ballston Spa resident, died Sunday afternoon, almost three days after he was ambushed in the woods of western New York and shot in the leg."

Read the rest of the story here.

"LOS ANGELES (AP)—Rocco Petrone, who was director of launch operations at Kennedy Space Center in the 1960s and played a key role in the Apollo program that landed men on the moon, has died. He was 80.

Petrone, who later served as director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, died Aug. 24 at his home in suburban Palos Verdes Estates of complications related to diabetes, his wife Ruth said this week.

Born in Amsterdam, N.Y., Petrone graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1946. After serving in Germany, he worked on various missile programs, including the nation's first ballistic missile.

He went to work for the Army general staff at the Pentagon before transferring in 1960 to NASA's facilities at Cape Canaveral, Fla., now Kennedy Space Center.

Petrone took over planning, development and activation of all launch facilities for the Saturn rockets used in the Apollo program."

Read the entire obituary here.

Read NASA’s biography of Petrone.

2006-09-04T12:06:00.000-04:00

Demolition Of Mohawk Mills Power Plant Smokestack.

This Amsterdam landmark could be seen from several miles until it came down this summer.

2006-09-04T12:01:00.000-04:00

Mohawk Mills Building 36 Demolition

Video of the demolition of Mohawk Mills Building 36 earlier this summer.

2006-09-04T10:29:00.000-04:00

Train ride along the Mohawk

With all the hype about YouTube, I thought I would take a look at it. Most of the videos are mediocre at best. Here is a 24 second video of a train ride near Cranesville, showing the old Adirondack Power and Light Company in the background. The videographer mistakenly refers to this as Schenectady County rather than Montgomery County.

Thought For The Day.

2006-09-03T06:18:00.000-04:00

Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and can be confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.
--Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Nazi Storm Troopers In Albany?

2006-09-01T05:24:00.000-04:00

Copyright 2006 Times Union.

There is something eerie about this photo that appeared on the Times Union’s web site yesterday. It shows an Albany SWAT team looking for a gunman who fired some shots on Madison Avenue.

If you removed the SWAT and police signs from the uniforms, this photo could be of a group of Nazi storm troopers looking for Jews in some European city. The color of the uniforms and style of the helmets especially make these guys look like storm troopers instead of cops.

That’s not to say that I equate these guys with Nazi storm troopers. But if the current expansion of government and clamp down on civil liberties continue in our country, I wouldn’t be surprised to see storm troopers on our streets in my lifetime.

blogspot.com vs. wordpress.com

2006-08-30T06:45:00.000-04:00

In a post sometime ago Dave Lucas wondered why I post my blog both on wordpress.com and blogspot.com. Here’s why. When I initially wanted to blog, I didn’t know about wordpress. I did know that blogspot was where most of the serious blogs were. I wanted to be taken seriously and knew that places like livejournal and myspace were not where I wanted to be.

I really liked blogspot when I started out, but I wanted to be able to index all of my posts by using categories. I could not figure out a way of doing it. Then I discovered wordpress. Wordpress makes it very easy to add categories. You can also add additional pages that show up as tabs at the top of your blog. You can add pages like about us, contact us, etc. Wordpress also allows you to import ALL of your posts from your old blog.

I imported all of my posts from blogspot to wordpress and was working on categorizing all of the old posts, but I had yet to let anyone know about my blog, when one day blogger went down for hours and people could not access my blog. That’s when I decided it would be a good idea to let people know about my wordpress blog, so they could access it when blogger was down. Blogger has gone done several times since, which made me realize that a back up blog site was important to have.

At first traffic on my wordpress site was low, but now it has outstripped my blogspot site. It runs about five times the traffic on blogspot. In fact my blogspot blog traffic has remained relatively constant now for months. I also do not have to add any tags to my wordpress posts, because the categories work as wordpress tags. Furthermore, wordpress tags, in my experience, are picked up better by search engines than technorati tags are. Not having much computer savvy, I have yet to learn how to add technorati tags in the graceful way that Dave and other bloggers have.

On the downside, you can't modify your template with wordpress (although you can if you pay a one time $15 upgrade fee), and it’s not easy to add links, although I think that would be corrected by upgrading. I am also not sure that you can have a blog with multiple contributors. Using html is not as easy as with blogger and there are other minor quirks as well.

Posting to two blogs is a pain, even when you cut and paste. I have been tempted to upgrade my wordpress account so I can modify my template and abandon blogspot altogether, however, I understand that blogspot is coming up with a better version so I will wait and see.

For those of you who would like to add categories to your blogspot blog, Dave has come up with a fairly simple method, one I would have never thought of.

If I do abandon my blogspot blog, I won’t delete it but will leave a post there with a link to my wordpress blog.

Dumb Belles-Lettres To The Editor Of The Daily Gazette.

2006-08-29T06:45:00.000-04:00

The Daily Gazette has published a number of letters to the editor lately that I can only characterize as dumb.

The other day, Barry Groat was complaining about how WMHT is always asking for money. It seems that about every other month, the Gazette publishes a letter like this. But no one ever writes in and complains about WAMC always asking for money. WMHT provides the only classical music in the Capital Region and Mohawk Valley. It also provides some of the best television. Furthermore, while WAMC’s staff pleads, begs, chastises, and guilt trips the listener in the manner of an Elmer Gantry or a Tetzel (as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, your soul from purgatory springs) in order to get listeners to drop money in their tin cup, WMHT’s auction lets you get something for your money.

On a side note, a little research on Barry Groat turned up a story I had forgotten--Groat’s brother’s conviction for trying to extort money from the CIA. Groat’s brother used to be a cop in Glenville, until he got kicked off of the force. I don’t mean that to be any reflection on Barry Groat. It’s just an interesting side note.

On 8/17/06, Norrine Thompson wrote to The Gazette making fun of another woman who had written about the properties of scented bleach. Norrine seems to have missed the point of the first letter. The first letter writer was letting people know that scented bleach does not disinfect. If you live in areas of New York State that were flooded in June, that is a useful piece of news. The fact that you can’t disinfect your flooded house with scented bleach is at least as important as which movie star is pregnant, getting married, getting a divorce, etc.

On 8/22/06, Anne M. Fitzgerald wrote to say that Child Protective Services only takes children away from parents who are neglecting or abusing them. She must believe that cops only arrest guilty people. I have written a response to The Gazette. Look for it soon.

Going back a ways to June 7, Elaine Pastore of Scotia wrote a letter making fun of Carl Strock who had written about how much Mary Carroll has to spend each month keeping in touch with her husband, who is incarcerated, by phone. Pastore, like Thompson, learned her ABCs, but is still functionally illiterate. She’s missed the point of Strock’s column. The State has a contract with MCI to provide phone service to the prisons that borders on being criminal. Prisoners can only call collect and the price of the calls are exorbitant. The Department of Correctional Services is essentially punishing prisoners’ families along with prisoners. Why haven’t Alan Hevesi and Eliot Spitzer criticized this deal. Teddy Roosevelt would have trust busted this arrangement. Rumor has it, that Elaine Pastore may have written this letter at the instigation of Patricia DeAngelis, but I haven‘t been able to confirm it.

NYS Supreme Court Provides Awkward Moment For DA Trish DeAngelis.

2006-08-28T05:31:00.000-04:00

By now I’m sure you’ve already heard that Christine Wilhelm’s murder conviction was overturned by the Third District of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court on Thursday. Wilhelm, who suffers from a severe psychotic condition, was prosecuted in 2002 by Rennselaer County DA Patricia DeAngelis (DeAngelis was an ADA at the time) for drowning her one son and attempting to drown the other.

You can read the entire 16 page decision yourself.

Carl Strock wrote a great column in yesterday’s Sunday Gazette about the court’s decision. The Times Union also wrote an editorial praising the decision and blasting Ms. DeAngelis. Even The Record came out from under its rock long enough to say that the DA "may have had the last nail pounded into her political coffin."

There is little to add to what Strock, The Record and The Times Union had to say except to note that DeAngelis has yet to post a press release concerning the decision on her web site. This is odd because if a court’s decision is favorable to her, she posts a press release before the ink is dry on the decision.

I also note an oddity that is mentioned on both pages three and fifteen of the decision. The prosecutor was at the Hoosick Falls Police Department shortly after Wilhelm was arrested and monitored Ms. Wilhelm while she went to the bathroom. DeAngelis did apologize for being with Ms. Wilhelm at such an “awkward” moment.

It seems that the court’s decision has provided another awkward moment for Patricia DeAngelis, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for an apology.

Ames, New York. "The Loveliest Town Of All."

2006-08-25T05:17:00.000-04:00

In one of the loveliest sentences in the English language, E. B. White describes “the loveliest town of all.”

In the loveliest town of all, where the houses were white and high and the elm trees were green and higher than the houses, where the front yards were wide and pleasant and the back yards were bushy and worth finding out about, where the streets sloped down to the stream and the stream flowed quietly under the bridge, where the lawns ended in the orchards and the orchards ended in fields and the fields ended in pastures and the pastures climbed the hill and disappeared over the top toward the wonderful wide sky, in this loveliest of all towns Stuart stopped to get a drink of sarsaparilla.

The town that E. B. White is describing is Ames, New York, a small village located in the southwest corner of Montgomery County, where White often visited. The quote is taken from Chapter XIII of Stuart Little. Here Stuart Little meets Harriet Ames, a young girl, who is as small as he is.

Stuart Little and Harriet Ames might be Ames’s most famous fictional characters, but Alexander William Randall is its most famous native son.

My wife and I looked at this old house in Ames when it was up for sale. It came with 40 acres and was less than $100,000, but when we got inside we found that it had been redecorated in a style that here in Montgomery County we would refer to as “Fulton County.” It would have taken another $100,000 to put the house right.

Ames has its own museum, which was formerly the Ames Academy.

Parking his car in front of the general store, he stepped out and the sun felt so good that he sat down on the porch for a few minutes to enjoy the feeling of being in a new place on a fine day. This was the most peaceful and beautiful spot he had found in all his travels. It seemed to him a place he would gladly spend the rest of his life in, if it weren’t that he might get homesick for the sights of New York and for his family, Mr. and Mrs. Frederick C. Little and George, and if it weren’t for the fact that something deep inside him made him want to find Margalo.

View an old postcard of Ames, NY.

Memo To Ed Girtler.

2006-08-23T06:47:00.000-04:00

Note: I was away the last two days without access to this blog or to my e-mail. Several comments were left on an old post I wrote about Jack Carroll and Ed Girtler. Some of them were written by Girtler and some were responses to his comments. I have posted those comments and you can read them here. For background on the Jack Carroll case, go to the web site run by Justice Now.

Ed,

The first thing I need to say is that I am not anti-cop. I need to say that before some bozo tries to make that comment. My father was an MP in World War II. My uncle George was a cop in Media, PA and was shot when he interrupted a burglary in progess. He recovered and remained a cop his entire life.

One of the problems I have with your comments is that you seem to equate legality and morality. Something may be legal; that does not make it ethical or moral. Killing Jews was legal in Germany during World War II, but it wasn’t moral. Slavery was legal in the United States at one time, but it wasn’t moral.

Lying has a corrosive effect on a person. We just saw that in the Christopher Porco case. Even when you lie for a “good” purpose (e.g. in order to get a confession out of a defendant), it has an effect on you. I’m not sure that a person can just put on a liar’s persona and take it off at will. A cop who lies on a regular basis in the station house, may not be able to stop lying when he gets on the witness stand.

You mention “the higher power” that you and Jack Carroll will have to face some day. I am glad you are thinking about God because that is where my mind has been a lot lately also. I especially think about that commandment, “Thou shall not bear false witness.” I also think about the words of one of the Jewish prophets who said there are two great evils--the first is letting a guilty man go free, the second is making an innocent man suffer.

Anyway, according to one comment on the previous post, you still have an open invitation to sit down and talk with Ernie Tetrault about the Jack Carroll case. I also extend to you an invitation to write a guest column for this blog and I will post it. My only caveat is that you be willing to field questions from people who read this blog. Lately, the number of people reading this blog has been more than a thousand a day so you would have a good audience for your story.

You have already been presented in an unfavorable light in Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz’s book, No Crueler Tyrannies*, and I believe there is a documentary and book in the works on Jack Carroll and I don’t think you are going to come off too well in those either. So it might be time for you to speak up and to answer questions about the Jack Carroll case that have plagued many of us.

Dan

*If you haven’t read this book, you should. All of the people accused of abuse in this book have been exonerated, except for Jack Carroll. However, Mr. Carroll’s case is the most recent case in the book, and I expect that eventually he too will be exonerated. Rabinowitz would not have included Carroll in this book if she didn’t think he too was innocent and had the same chance of exoneration that the others did. Some people in the book had to wait almost twenty years before they were vindicated, but eventually they were. By the way there is a great story in there about a cop who went to prison because another cop falsely accused him.

Ed Girtler Opens His Mouth & Removes All Doubt.

2006-08-21T05:11:00.000-04:00

Retired Cop Ed Girtler responds to an old post I wrote on Jack Carroll. Read the post and comments.

Grandmother Speaks Out About Saratoga Child Protective Services.

2006-08-18T07:28:00.000-04:00

I live in Saratoga County and the Trauma that my daughter suffered was unbelievable. I asked for help at a time when I was weak from chemo to the point where I had to take procrit and had to get help. CPS instead helped themselves to my grandson and told me that my daughter had to earn him back. They used her disability to keep my beautiful grandson; and pulled stunt after stunt on my daughter who has recently turned to the drug world in order to deal with the pain of losing her son. They constantly called her at her job; I know because she complained to me. She lost job after job; two apts, then started to lose her sanity with the cruel tricks they played on her. They then made a false accusation, called the police hoping to find a bruise on a two year old child. When they couldn’t find any signs of abuse, they tricked her by saying that if you admit to permanent neglect, you will get your child back way sooner. So she admitted to what they were accusing her of, figuring they would use it anyways. Her child is with the foster parents and she turned to drugs and went to jail. Now she is out and I cannot even say where she is anymore. I tried to get her son and have been trying for three years (in court constantly and visiting, never missing a visit). However they have terminated her rights and couldn’t find anything on me (don’t have a record), so they decided to say that I am guilty of not knowing that she would not get better. Now we have to appeal and all I can afford is a court appointed attorney who is exactly that, owned by the court.

Thank you,

Deborah
However, yesterday I recieved a Nationwide class actions v. family courts & CPS alert from Tom Howse, President of Civil Rights Council www.indianacrc.org

Horse Trade.

2006-08-16T05:03:00.000-04:00

We got burned when we bought our first horse--a pretty, eleven year old, tri-colored paint mare with the not very original name Flicka. A veterinarian sold her to us, never telling us her bad habits. She destroyed the gate to her pasture and chewed up and ruined the entire top rail of the fence, and she had other bad habits to boot.

Well we finally found someone who was willing to swap even with us, even after we explained all of Flicka’s faults. Our new horse, Jitterbug, is a three year old, Quarter Horse gelding. He needs training, but at least we won’t have to break him of bad habits.

Our New Horse Arriving.

Our Old Horse Leaving.

Please note that for the time being I will only be blogging on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Ground Fog.

2006-08-14T06:54:00.000-04:00

One of the reasons I enjoy walking early in the morning, especially this time of year, is because of the opportunity to see ground fog. These are some scenes taken on my road the other morning.

Porco Family Member Comments On Guilty Verdicts.

2006-08-10T22:28:00.000-04:00

Editor’s Note: I asked one Porco family member to comment on the guilty verdicts that were handed down today against Christopher Porco. I thought the response was excellent, and I thank ”Insider” for taking the time to share with us.

Hi Dan,

I guess here’s what I’d say: While we’re obviously pleased with this outcome, sending Chris to jail for 50+ years will not bring Peter back or turn Joan back into the wonderful woman she was. I still won’t be able to pick up the phone and call Peter when I want to, and our family will never again sit around the dining room table at Brockley Drive and enjoy one of Joan’s famous dinners. So while I don’t blame anyone for celebrating, tonight I’ll raise a glass on my own in Peter’s memory. My hope for the future is that we can support Joan and do our best to make sure that she doesn’t waste any of the limited money she has left on the appeal Terry is already planning. Chris is entitled to his appeal, and I’m sure there are plenty of public interest lawyers and bright law students who will be willing to help him with it. I just don’t want to see Joan driven any further into poverty by Chris’s selfish act.My sincere thanks to McDermott and Rossi who are smart, patient, and honorable lawyers. Thanks also to the BPD and everyone who has said kind words or sent warm thoughts our way. I sincerely appreciate that while the community expressed their outrage at what Chris did, you all were able to see that a very normal and loving family still existed outside of that act. With any luck, we’re going to work on getting back to being that family.

Insider

Chris Porco Guilty On Both Counts.

2006-08-10T17:53:00.000-04:00

I said I would not post again about Christopher Porco, but I feel it necessary to mention that he was found guilty on both charges today, as I (and many others) predicted he would be. I did not expect the jury to return a verdict in six hours, however.

I would like to repeat one more observation. Now that Christopher has been found guilty, someone, either family members or crime victim’s advocates, should see that none of his victims’ money is used to pay for his defense.

On Vacation.

2006-08-10T08:05:00.000-04:00

I'll be back on Monday.

Dan

As Others Blog It.

2006-08-08T05:18:00.000-04:00

Here are a handful of posts from other blogs that I have wanted to point out for a long time.

York Staters wrote a great piece back in June on the meaning of the name of the town of Niskayuna. The names of cities and towns in New York State seem to have at least four major sources: Indian names (Niskayuna); Classical names (Utica, Troy, Ithaca), names from the old countries (Albany, Amsterdam), and Biblical names (Sodom, Goshen).

The state has been wanting to ban open burning for years, thus depriving kids of one of life’s simple pleasures--bonfires. I-Saratoga blogged in June about Schenectady's health officer wanting to shut down another of life’s simple pleasures--the potluck supper.

Albany Eye blogged recently about another of life’s simple pleasures--drive-in movies. If you live out in this part of the Mohawk Valley you can choose between Ozoner-29 in Broadalbin or El-Rancho in Palatine Bridge. Ozoner 29 was built in 2003. El-Rancho has been around since 1952. At one point, in the late 70s or early 80s, District Attorney Howard Aison had to shut down El-Rancho. At the time, it was only showing pornographic movies, and the locals dubbed the theater, El-Rauncho. It has long since returned to family fare.

Finally, Dave Lucas of Capital Region People blogged about a number of people who have unexpectedly died or disappeared, then asks one of life’s ultimate questions, “If this was the last day of YOUR life, would you ‘be ready?’”

Neighbor of John Behrmann Speaks Out On Officer Geraci Incident.

2006-08-07T07:04:00.000-04:00

Note: An Albany Grand Jury refused to indict Officer Michael Geraci on assault charges this past week. Upstream received the following comment from a neighbor of Mr. Berhrmann, the man Geraci was accused of assaulting.

Hello I'd like to comment on the John Behrmann incident here in Albany New York. If anyone one saw the video of Mr. Berhmann being dragged out of the police van, it was absolutely horrible. No one should be treated like that by the police unless of course they are being assaulted. Knowing Mr. Behrmann personally, it takes him fifteen minutes to get in and out of a vehicle with free hands, so imagine at 73, hands cuffed behind his back and a much needed hip replacement how assaultive he could have been. Mr. Behrmann has lived in Albany for about 18 months without problems until an officer back in November questioned him about speaking to a person that he (the officer) didn't like. It's been down hill every since.

On December 31, My husband came in the house and told me that Mr. Berhmann had been arrested and he was unsure of the cause. Later we found out that it was trespassing (a lie), public intoxication (um maybe tipsee) but who isn't on New Years Eve, and some other miscellaneous charge which by the way happened to be another lie. All of which was dismissed in police court. None of it was true. From the police station Mr. Behrmann was taken to the Va hospital where he was treated for injuries sustained while he was in police custody. He had no injuries before that. The following day Mr. Behrmann came to see my husband and me and he was terribly bruised and bleeding, I took pictures and we reported it. That is how this case started. Now Mr. Behrmann is a target for Albany Police Department.

Remember the officer that I said questioned Mr. Behrmann about why he was speaking to an individual he didn't like? Well he has an office in the apartment building in which Mr. Behrmann lives. This building is for the handicapped, disabled and ederly. Mr. Behrmann went home one day to find his key wouldn't open a door he usually goes in. The key got stuck, he's hitting the door to get his key out and cracks the glass. Mr. Behrmann goes to jail and guess who the arresting officer was? Well a few of us tried bailing him out and let me tell you the response that I received. There are two here in Albany. One bailbonds man (after mentioning John Behrmanns name told me straight out "I know the officer, I'm not BAILING John Berhmann out" and hung up! The second bondsman was much more polite but too said "He knew the officer and didn't want to be involved". The tone of this case was already set. The message was loud and clear.

Last week just before the grand jury hearings were about to be over, Mr. Behrmann along with my husband and a few other people were sitting on my steps and according to witinesses, a patrol car drove up madison ave, made a U-turn and stopped. FOUR police officers approached Mr. Berhmann about having an open container. They never saw him lift a bottle, nor was he intoxicated. They never even questioned my husband or a couple of other guys who were sitting around drinking bear. Their target, John Berhmann. Upon my arrival from work they were asking him all of these questions, "Who's the president", "Whats the day of the month" etc all of which Mr. Behrmann answered correctly. Mr. Behrmann never moved off of the steps nor did he drink. There was a bottle there, but it wasn't his which will come out in court because he was given an appearance ticket. Let me also add that every time Mr. Berhmann tried to open his mouth to tell them he hadn't been drinking or that the bottle wasn't his, the officer retorted with threats of arrest for disorderly conduct. On Monday morning it was on the news. Channel 13 with "John Behrmann Arrested "AGAIN" for open container on Madison ave". The news never said he was at a private residence. They made it sound like he was roaming the street with an open container. I cannot begin to tell you how disgusted I am with the Albany police Department. These are people we are suppose to trust and turn to in times of trouble. I could go on and on but it wouldn't do any good.

I feel bad for Mr. Behrmann because he is out of his element. He practiced dentistry for 37 years, lived in wonderful places and raced horses in Saratoga. Retirement and divorce bought him to Grand Street. I feel bad because If Mr. Behrmann had been in his own element instead of Grand Street where there are mostly (us) blacks he would have never ever been treated this way. My final thought for this entire mess, If the police don't even respect their own kind, then imagine what the rest of us face. We don't stand a chance for justice.

My Last Porco Post.

2006-08-04T08:02:00.000-04:00

As of today, I will no longer be posting about the Porco case, even though doing so brought this blog up to number 16 on Wordpress’s Blog of the Day list and brought more readers to this blog than publishing the Muslim cartoons did. For those of you who came to this blog and found other posts worth reading besides the ones on the Porcos, I hope you stick around. The rest of you can go find another fire hydrant to raise your leg up on.

A couple of righteous dudes have complained about “the desperate housewives” who are following this trial too closely, jumping from blog to blog, to read and comment. To you I ask, how do you know this if you haven’t been doing the same?

I will confess that I have been following the trial too closely. I have found that doing so, and writing about various aspects of the family and trial, have been stressful. I guess I don’t have the stomach for this kind of stuff. Journeying into myspace, photobucket and the like was like swimming in a septic tank. The image of Mrs. Porco’s face on the front of the newspaper is one I wish I had never seen. And the hatred expressed by anonymous posters toward each other on various blogs--well I’m just glad they are not in the same room with an ax handy.

Frankly, the trial itself has begun to bore me. It has followed the script that was set out in the opening statements, with little deviation. I have become more and more interested in Christopher Porco’s psychological make-up and the whole tragedy of a divided family than I have the trial itself.

Here is a summary of most of what I have said in the many posts I have written.

1. I believe that Chris Porco killed his father and maimed his mother. As someone not on the jury, I can say that. However, if I were on the jury, I would not be so quick to judge. Too many people have been wrongly convicted in this country, and Christopher Porco deserves his day in court with a fair trial and an impartial jury that will deliberate carefully, neither of which he would have gotten in Albany County.

2. I believe that both the prosecution and defense are doing their jobs well and doing what they are supposed to do.

3. I may be wrong, but I do think Christopher is going to be found guilty.

4. If acquitted, I believe he will be arrested on burglary, sale of stolen merchandise, wire fraud and other charges based on evidence turned up during the murder investigation.

5. If found guilty, steps should be taken to insure that none of his victim’s money be used to pay for Christopher's defense.

6. I also asked several questions in some of my posts. The one question that has not been answered to my satisfaction and probably can’t be is why did the attacker spend nearly three hours in the house? The question may not be very important as far as either the prosecution or defense is concerned, but it’s one that keeps bugging me. (To all of you who suggested that the attacker was showering off the blood, the prosecution has contended from the beginning that the attacker likely did not get any blood on himself, and they produced a blood spatter expert to testify to that effect.)

7. Most of my other posts had to do with information and photos found on other web sites. A couple of people have commented that this material is irrelevant to the trial. That may be true, but if you look at the top of this blog, you will notice that its name is Upstream not The Porco Trial Blog.

The fact that Christopher Porco has been boozing, hanging out with various and sundry women or driving his yellow jeep around has nothing to do with whether or not he attacked his parents. Indeed, Judge Berry chastised the prosecution for trying to bring up Christopher’s drinking and said the prosecution was dangerously close to causing a mistrial.

But the photos of Christopher do serve as character witnesses. The fact that they were taken less than two weeks prior to the first anniversary of his father’s death says something as well. My father died unexpectedly when I was 27 years old, just a little older than Chris. I began anticipating the first anniversary several weeks in advance and was in no mood for partying.

The photos are at least as important as The Daily Gazette’s description of what Mrs. Porco was wearing while she was on the witness stand, or WNYT’s report of running into Christopher at a restaurant.

In an e-mail, another reader asked the more important question: “Why are you posting so much about the trial? It’s just another murder.”

While I don’t think that this is just another murder, I do think the question is a fair one. There are obviously more important things to blog about. On the other hand, if we get beyond the question of whether or not Christopher Porco is guilty, then the attack on the Porcos, the devastation of the family, Christopher’s personality and lifestyle, coverage of the case and even our fascination with it raise psychological, sociological, philosophical and even religious questions that are worthy of discussion.

In any event, I will not be blogging tomorrow or Sunday. So stop back Monday, if you are interested in other things besides the Porco case.

Carl Strock On Chris Porco's DNA.

2006-08-03T07:33:00.000-04:00

Carl Strock On Chris Porco‘s DNA.
As usual, Carl Strock wrote a good column in today's Daily Gazette. The major part of his column was about Child Protective Services, but he also had a short section at the end where he discussed the DNA on the toll ticket purportedly belonging to Chris Porco. Strock disputes the math of some local reporters who have said that there is 99.6% chance that Porco’s DNA was on the ticket, since 99.6% of the population does not have that type of DNA. Strock argues that the math is wrong, The .39 percent of the population that have the type of DNA found on the ticket, including Porco, constitutes 1.3 million people (if by population we mean North America), making the odds that the ticket was Porco’s 1 in 1.3 million.

For Breaking News, Read The Obituaries.
There is other news happening besides the Porco Case. Yesterday, The Daily Gazette reported the sad story of a Red Sox fan from Schenectady who was stricken at Fenway Park, taken to the hospital where she gave birth, then died. This story actually had appeared the day before, in the lady’s obituary. When I was reading her obituary, I was wondering why no one had actually written a story about the incident because it’s the kind of thing newspapers like to write about, and as sick as it seems, it’s the kind people like to read.

If Chris Porco Is Convicted, Will Shanks & Kindlon Get Paid?

2006-08-02T08:24:00.000-04:00

A lawyer posted on this blog, suggesting that Christopher Porco’s defense was being funded by his father’s life insurance policy. My question is this--if Christopher Porco is found guilty, can any of his mother or father’s money be used to pay his defense fees? If his parent’s money was used to pay his lawyers, wouldn’t that mean that a criminal was financially benefiting from his victims? Does the current Son of Sam law in New York State cover that?

I don’t know the law, so I would love to hear from some lawyers on this issue.

Amish Buggy & Canajoharie's Dummy Light.

2006-08-02T08:20:00.000-04:00

Here are a couple of photos, my daughter and I grabbed while out on a ride yesterday. The first is of any Amish buggy that just turned off of Route 5S and was heading up the Currytown Road. It used to be that you rarely saw the Amish on the south side of the Mohawk, but now that they have moved into the Town of Glen you do see them. I thought this photo came out quite well considering my daughter had to take it from the passenger seat through the driver's side window, while both the car and buggy were in motion.

The second photo is of Canajoharie’s Dummy Light, which has been a local landmark for decades. It’s a real traffic light, not a dummy light. My understanding is that it’s called the Dummy Light because it’s not very intelligent to stand out in the middle of the road. You may remember that the state wanted to remove this light, but the citizens of Canajoharie put up such a fuss that the state backed down.

Porco Family Member Responds To Upstream.

2006-07-31T18:20:00.000-04:00

Editor's Note: The following comment from a member of the Porco family was left on my blog. I am putting it here as a post so it will get the attention it deserves. The writer also has a blog at www.porcofactchecker.blogspot.com.

"For those of us who live in dread that Chris will get away with murder, your thoughts on his incarceration for his other crimes gives us hope he will be punished in some fashion. I just worry that since these crimes were against his father (who is deceased) and his mother, who will not press charges nor cooperate with law enforcement it will be difficult to get a indictment. Also, I am not sure if the statute of limitation comes into play on the 2002 burglary.
At the end of last week’s trial, Lori Shanks made the statement that the Prosecution is tearing our family apart… turning one member against another. Our extended family has never been closer! We agonize over Joan and her suffering: physically; mentally; and, emotionally. No one can feel more abandoned than she. And, yet no one in our family is more loved and anguished over than Joan. It is the defense who has separated Joan from us. In response to the accusation by Ms. Shanks that the Prosecution is damaging our family, I am compelled to tell all that it is the Defense team has done more to separate Joan from her family than you can imagine. Less than six months after Peter’s murder, an associate of K & S (against the wishes of her children and without regard for Mrs. Porco’s age and health) told Peter’s mother the gory details of her son’s long and tortuous death. This same lawyer then told Joan that Peter’s sister, Patty, was working with the police who were gathering evidence implicating Christopher in his father’s murder. As a result, Joan severed all ties with Patty, Peter’s sister, refusing to see or communicate with her. These lawyers so turned Joan against the Porco family members, that when Peter’s ashes were interred, Joan refused to allow ANY family members to attend the memorial service except, Johnathan and Christopher, her brother, John and his wife (with whom she lived), and the priest (her cousin) who conducted the service.
During her recovery, JoanÂs doctors had asked us not to speak to Joan about the night of Nov. 15 on the outside chance that Joan might recover her OWN memoriesÂ and, those memories should not be tainted by information coming from conversations with us. Joan and ChrisÂ lawyers told us not to talk with Christopher about his fatherÂs murder & his motherÂs nearly fatal injuries. Up until the time of the Pre-trial hearings, our family lived in a very surreal world. Whenever we were together with Joan or Christopher, the question of who did these horrific things to Joan and Peter was the “elephant” in the room that no one acknowledged or could speak freely about.We kept hoping that Kindlon and Shanks would call our family together and tell us how they were going to proceed with Chris’ defense. We thought that K&S had a handle on evidence supporting Chris’ alibi and claims of innocence which they would soon share with us. We were thirsting for some fact or truth upon which we all could hang our hopes/beliefs that Christopher was truly innocent. K & S treated our family (except for Joan and Chris) as the enemy. Family members were given orders to write letters appealing for the judge to grant bail; orders to anti up for the bail posting… but, there were never any words of encouragement from the defense team in regard to Chris’ innocence or the defenseÂs strategy. The Prosecution team, however, was more than willing to answer any and all of our family’s questions; share information and evidence with us; and, encourage us to become involved in the investigation. The defense team, on the other hand, did everything in their power to keep the Prosecution from questioning Joan, and to keep mounting evidence from reaching Joan. They told her the police were out to get Chris; that the Prosecution were liars, making up stories to prove Chris guilty. That a certain BPD detective had it ÂinÂ for Chris. Joan refused to cooperate with the police and their investigation on the advice of her attorneys. She signed whatever public letters her attorneys gave to her: First begging that her son be left alone; and then, berating the police for their persecution of Chris and their total lack of effort to bring the “real” attacker/s to justice. When the trial was to start, the defense team wanted to be sure they had full control of Joan, so they devised and executed a plan to make John and Barbara Balzano (JoanÂs caregivers) leave Goshen and return to their home in Rochester. Joan then moved in with the defense team. They now control what Joan reads, hears, sees, and thinks. She is on call to be present whenever they need her for public displays of affection. Her love for her son has allowed the defense team to make her their pawn.So when Shanks talks to the media about what damage the Prosecution has done to our family… I become enraged at such unadulterated lying. I understand that it is K&S’s job to tear down the evidence against Chris and render it impotent. But, that job does not include publicly lying about our family’s unity and our relationship with the Prosecution. For most all of us, the Prosecution team members and the BPD are our heroes. In addition, I feel a special need to commend and thank Detective Bowdish. It was his quick thinking and questioning of Joan as she lay severely injured that stopped Chris from Âgetting away with murderÂ and attempted murder. I know that Det. BowdishÂs failure to administer the Miranda rights completely, word for word, will haunt him for the rest of his life. But, he should know, that for the rest of our lives, we will be forever grateful for his actions at the crime scene where (and when) Joan had a better grip on reality than she has today. "

Even If Acquitted of Murder, Chris Porco Is Likely To Serve Time.

2006-07-31T07:41:00.000-04:00

For those of you who are afraid that Christopher Porco is going to be acquitted, don’t worry. I predict that if such a thing happens, that on his way out of the courthouse, he will be arrested for robbery, selling stolen goods, forgery and a number of other things for which he will end up serving a number of years in prison.

Don't Let Faso Blow It Out.

2006-07-31T07:38:00.000-04:00

I rarely watch tv because where I live you can’t get cable, and the over the air reception is bad. I happened to be in the waiting room at Amsterdam Memorial Hospital the other day and saw my first Eliot Spitzer for Governor commercial.

Spitzer’s learned that the next best thing to using sex to sell something is to use cute pictures of little kids. But I was surprised to hear the words to the first stanza of “This Little Light of Mine” being sung in the commercial. Most Protestants of my age grew up singing that little ditty in Sunday School. It’s catchy but not very profound.

I doubt Spitzer grew up singing the song. So he probably never got around to the stanza that says, “Don’t let Satan blow it out. I’m gonna let it shine.” Or maybe he has and this is a subliminal commercial in which we are to subconsciously equate the King of the netherworld with John Faso.

Bible Found In Virginia Dump Has Little Value.

2006-07-30T06:05:00.000-04:00

It’s been a week for finding old Bibles. A 188 year old one was found in a dump in Virginia and a 1200 year old one found in an Irish bog.

Having bought and sold many old Bibles for 13 years now, I don’t believe that the Bible found in Virginia is a significant find. Millions of Bibles were printed in the 1800s. Even small cities like Troy, Albany and Utica had printing houses that published Bibles. There has to be something very unusual about a Bible from the 1800s for it to have much value. I have sold many of them for $100 and less, and all in very good condition. The Bible found in Virginia is in poor condition, being split into four parts. I constantly get calls from people who want to sell me Bibles from the 1800s. Most of them I have to turn down because they are in poor condition or have no significant value.

The guy who found it claims that there are only six copies left of the particular Bible he found. So what. There are many Bibles which were printed by small printing shops, of which only a few remain. That does not make the Bible valuable.

To the lay person who sees few old books, a Bible from 1818 might seem rare, but when you’ve been in the business for awhile, you realize that they are very common. Almost every 19th century American family had at least one Bible. I have several Bibles from the 1800s right now. If this guy from Virginia brought that Bible to me, I would refuse to buy it because Bibles like that are too common and his is in poor condition.

This guy wants over $1,000 for the Bible. Anyone who pays even a quarter of that is a sucker. The guy who found this Bible is using the ignorance of the media to promote the sale of this Bible.

If the Bible was from the 1600s or early 1700s, I might consider buying it because Bibles from that time period are getting scarcer by the year. Just to show you how inexpensively old Bibles can go for, however, I purchased a Geneva Bible printed in 1619 from another book dealer who was no slouch for $800. It was in great shape. I then turned around and sold it for $900 to make a quick $100. Most family Bibles from the 1800s, I sell for $150-$250 if in very good condition.

The Bible, or part of the Bible, found in a bog in Ireland last week is another story. Its worth would be difficult to calculate. It was “published” long before the invention of the printing press. Prior to the invention of the printing press, Bibles were laboriously copied by hand. Many of them were illuminated or illustrated and are works of art.

In any event, the real value of the Bible, like any classic, is in the reading of it. I suggest that the dumpster diver in Virginia keep his Bible and read it.

Chris Porco Slide Shows On Line.

2006-07-29T09:21:00.000-04:00

Check out these slide shows with lots of photos of Chris Porco, but do it quick. I have a feeling they are going to disappear soon.

Father Knew Best.

Life Without Father.

Christopher Porco's Luncheon Date.

2006-07-28T04:53:00.000-04:00

The other day I wrote about a young man on myspace.com who said Chris Porco is one of his heroes. I found that troubling. Even if Porco is not the murderer of his father, I see little in his life for a person to emulate. He stole from his parents, lied to them, and forged college transcripts.

But Dan from Dullmar is not the only person on myspace who admires Chris. Three days ago, Valerie Messina, a 23 year old from Delmar, went to lunch with Chris in Goshen. According to one of our readers, Ms. Messina’s myspace page has loads of photos of Chris on it. We have not been able to verify that because she has changed her myspace page so that only friends can see it. You can, however, still see a photo of her on it.

Unlike Chris Porco, Messina is not a college dropout. In fact, she graduated cum laude from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts in 2005 with a degree in studio art. Wheaton College is a fairly prestigious liberal arts college. It has a number of Rhodes Scholars, quite out of proportion to the size of the college. The most notable thing about Wheaton College, however, is it’s price tag--more than $40,000 per year.

While they are just friends, I cannot imagine the appeal that Chris Porco, a guy who is a college dropout and who cleans up dog poop for a living, has for this well educated and apparently accomplished, young woman. But then I can’t understand why Dan from Dullmar, another friend of Chris, would list Chris as one of his heroes either.

Blogged Down.

2006-07-27T08:21:00.000-04:00

I have little to say today. Frankly, I am tired of the Porco case, tired of blogging and tired because of the immense amount of physical labor involved in restoring an old house? Did you ever try to run plumbing and electricity in a 18th century post and beam structure. Why couldn't those colonials have anticipated plumbing and wiring?

I will be back to posting tomorrow, including posting about the Porco case. Meanwhile, I could use some help. More than 1,000 people are reading this blog everyday right now. From the comments and e-mails I get, I sense that most of them are intelligent, high calibre people. They keep me on my toes. I spend one to two hours a day working on this blog. I would especially be interested in people who would want to do a guest column. Anonymous columns would be allowed under certain circumstances.

Guest columnists would be allowed to link to their website, blog or business. E-mail me at upstreamblog@yahoo.com if you are interested in participating in this blog.

Another Peter Porco. Another Parental Unit Murdered.

2006-07-26T07:26:00.000-04:00

Coincidences can be very odd things. You know the old story--President Lincoln took office in 1860, JFK took office in 1960; Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy, Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln, etc. I don’t give coincidences much weight, but here is one about the Porco case that is interesting.

Peter Porco was murdered on November 15, 2004. Laurie Waterman of Craig, Alaska was murdered the day before, on November 14, 2004.

Peter Porco’s son Christopher was arrested for his murder. Laurie Waterman’s daughter Rachelle was arrested for her murder.

One of the most interesting things about the Laurie Waterman murder, however, is the name of the reporter who first reported it. His name is Peter Porco. So while the Albany media was reporting on the death of Peter Porco of Delmar, Peter Porco of The Anchorage Daily News was reporting on the death of Laurie Waterman in Craig, Alaska.

In both cases there was an older sibling.

In both cases the surviving parent supported the child who allegedly killed the other parent.

If you read all of the stories about Rachelle Waterman, you see a person whose personality is similar to Christopher Porco‘s. Both showed little emotion about the death of their parent. Rachelle often referred to her mother as her “female parental unit.“ Here is Rachelle Waterman’s final entry on her blog.

“Just to let everyone know, my mother was murdered. I won't have computer acess [sic] until the weekend or so because the police took my computer to go through the hard drive. I thank everyone for their thoughts and e-mails, I hope to talk to you when I get my computer back.”

Sounds and awful lot like Christopher’s “Yo Dad.”

The internet played a large role in each case. In Christopher’s it was his e-mails and IMs. In Rachelle’s case it was her blog. Rachelle’s last journal entry received over 7,000 comments, which became a story in itself. Up until recently, you could still access the journal, but it has since been deleted both on livejournal.com and on a mirror site.

Videotaped interviews by the police of both Porco and Waterman were not allowed into evidence.

Both defendants come from fairly properous, middle class families. Rachelle’s father was president of the local school board. Her mother worked as a teacher's aide.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Rachelle Waterman has her own Wikipedia entry. There is also an ongoing Live Journal community for people interested in the murder.

By the way, Rachelle Waterman was freed because of a hung jury, even though it seems apparent she played some role in her mother’s murder. We will have to wait until the jury comes in on Christopher Porco before we'll know whether or not there will be another coincidence here.

Two Teens At Northeast Parent & Child Society's Park Avenue Home Arrested For Rape.

2006-07-26T07:19:00.000-04:00

I have written before about the need for an investigation into Northeast Parent and Child Society’s (NEPCS) children’s homes, especially the one on Park Avenue in Schenectady. Now that The Daily Gazette has reported (July 22) that a 16 year old and a 14 year old boy from the home raped a 14 year old girl at the Schenectady Municipal Golf Course, I feel the need to say again that this home needs to be investigated.

Recently a teen at the Prahl House in Troy drowned. The state has since issued a report saying that inadequate supervision was a problem at Prahl House.

The supervision at NEPCS’s home on Park Avenue is no better than at the Prahl House. I won’t elaborate on this topic, as I have written about it extensively before.

The State needs to force NEPCS to get their act together. NEPCS, which houses juvenile sex offenders and young girls with emotional problems in the same building, should not only segregate these two populations, but should not let teen rapists walk the streets of Schenectady.

Johnathan Porco's Testimony & More.

2006-07-25T04:23:00.000-04:00

Johnathan Porco’s Testimony.
I’m not sure what to make of Johnathan Porco’s testimony yesterday. The most newsworthy thing that came out of it is he said his relationship with Christopher is strained. If Christopher Porco were my brother, he would not have had to attack our parents to strain our relationship. Stealing from my parents and lying to my parents would be enough to strain relations with any of my siblings.

Is Johnathan Porco the “perfect son?”
Everyone says he is except for a guy who calls himself Insider and has posted comments on this blog and The Porco Trial Blog. On Upstream, he posted, “Mark my words- Kindlon is going to regret calling Jonathan the 'perfect son' in open court.”

Insider may just be one of those people who for some psychological reason wants people to think he had an inside track to information about the Porcos. On the other hand, some of his comments seem to suggest he knows more than the average person about the Porcos. Furthermore, he has been posting from *****. I’m not sure what interest a person from ***** would have in the Porco case unless they were a former resident of this area, a relative or friend of the Porcos, or one of Johnathan’s fellow naval officers.

Anyway, if he really is an insider, I wish he would come out of the closet and be less cryptic with his comments.

Speaking of Being Cryptic.
Yesterday Rick Karlin of the TU started his post on the TU Porco Blog with this sentence.

“In the academic world and that became apparent Monday in the Porco trial when chief prosecutor Michael McDermott said he had hoped to call three University of Rochester instructors to the stand but they were “petering out,'’ and would probably not show up at the trial.”

After reading it several times, I was tempted to use some of the words on George Carlin’s list of bad words. If there is an English major out there who can diagram that sentence for me, I would appreciate it. I can’t figure out what it means.

Chris Porco A Hero To One MySpacer.

2006-07-24T07:39:00.000-04:00

I was mucking about in myspace yesterday, trying to see if anyone from Delmar had anything to say about Chris Porco. I didn’t have any luck, with one exception. Sixteen year old Dan of Dullmar, works at the Bethlehem Veterinary Hospital where Chris works and lists Chris Porco as one of his heroes.

Here is the list of Dan’s heroes as they appear on myspace:

"my grandfather; chris porco; steve watkins; brian stanton; Holden from the Catcher in the Rye; Thomas Jefferson; alex martin, and most importantly, SARAH NICOLE SNOW FRIGGIN FUHRMAN!! I praise her and her amazingness in every way. she is my life. ... and jessi lee is probably one of the most heroic of asians..."

Steve Watkins is also employed at The Bethlehem Veterinary Hospital. The last I knew Thomas Jefferson was employed elsewhere.

Do you think there is a connection in Dan’s mind between Chris Porco and Holden Caufield?

Here is a photo, from Dan’s Space, of Chris Porco and two other staffers at the BVH.

Copyright Dan Roberts.

Repair Work At Erie Canal Lock 10.

2006-07-24T07:37:00.000-04:00

Untitled.

2006-07-23T08:11:00.000-04:00

My Tuppence On The Porco Trial Blogs.

2006-07-22T08:14:00.000-04:00

Reading the comments on WNYT’s The Porco Trial Blog is becoming a daily source of entertainment. Some anonymous bozo suggested yesterday that Christopher Porco was having an affair with the veterinarian’s wife, whom he works for. The real travesty here is that Eric Hoppel didn’t reject the comment. Most of the comments on the blog aren’t as bad as the one about the vet‘s wife, however, it‘s clear from the bulk of the the comments, that Christopher could not possibly have gotten a fair trial in Albany County.

Hoppel, who is filling in for Chris Rooney this week, stated on Wednesday, that he is not censoring any comments, which may account for the above comment appearing on the blog. It doesn’t account, however, for the two comments that I posted on the blog this week that never appeared.

Then we have The Times Union’s Porco Trial: Blog. (The originality of these blog names is astounding). I don‘t have to worry about my comments not appearing there because nobody‘s are. I guess I would rather have the wholesale censorship of the TU, than the selective censorship of WNYT. At least the former is honest.

By the way, check out these comments about the Porco trial. They’re much more thoughtful than what appears on the Porco Trial Blogs. Because they are so thoughtful, I cannot take credit for them.

I make no bones about the fact that I reject some comments. Newspapers don’t print every letter to the editor they receive and neither should blogs publish every comment they receive.

Memo To Ira
You said I could take your comment on my post, Is Patricia DeAngelis A Chauvinist Sow?, as either a slap up the side of my head or as BS and delete it accordingly. I have chosen the latter. As far as loss of credibility is concerned, I published that story you told about former Amsterdam Recorder Editor, Tony Benjamin, because it was really funny, but he says that it never happened.

TV worth watching??
Tomorrow the interview that Ernie Tetrault did with me about blogging and the rare book trade will air on Cable Channel 4 (over the air Channel 15) at 11:00a.m. Unless he edited it, you will see me drop a pile of old books on the floor during the interview. One of them was from the 1600s. There goes my chances for membership in the exclusive Antiquarian Booksellers of America Association, but then the $100 application fee, the $300 entry fee, $575 annual dues and regional chapter dues where applicable might have kept me out anyway.

Is Patricia DeAngelis A Chauvinist Sow?

2006-07-21T06:22:00.000-04:00

If you have ever had the thought that Rensselaer County District Attorney, Patricia DeAngelis, might just hate men, there is some evidence that you might be right. Her penchant for seeing male sex offenders everywhere, even driving ambulances and fire trucks and the fact that she deliberately decided not to marry so she could advance her career seem to at least point in that direction.

But her use of the term "deadbeat dads" in a press release from her office yesterday, even more strongly confirms that she is a man hater. There are deadbeat moms as well as deadbeat dads. One criminal case I have written about in the past involves Fulton County Family Court Judge, David Jung, sentencing a woman to jail when she wasn't even in the court room and didn't have a lawyer. The woman's crime was failure to pay child support.

In our enlightened age, the term "deadbeat dad" is a sexist term, and clearly indicative of hatred of males. It should be replaced with "deadbeat parent." DeAngelis' hatred of males is to be expected, seeing that she is a graduate of a women's only college, Wellesley. The few remaining, sexist, all female colleges in the country, are hotbeds of radical feminism. Many of them teach such exteme ideas as "all men are potential rapists."

By the way, Hillary Clinton is Wellesley's most famous alumnus. Need I say more.

Will Patricia DeAngelis Be A No Show In Melrose Tonight?

2006-07-20T09:17:00.000-04:00

I’ve written about the firestorm in Melrose over remarks made by Rensselaer County DA, Patricia DeAngelis. DeAngelis’ press agent set up a meeting for tonight at 7:30p.m. with the fire chief and Board of Commissioners so she could clarify her statements.

Now she is talking about backing out because she heard the media was invited. She told the attorney for the fire district that she would not come if the media is there.

If she doesn’t show up tonight, the fire chief and commissioners will hold a press conference, explaining that they held the meeting, expecting an apology from her, but that she didn’t show.

More On Johnathan Porco.

2006-07-20T06:32:00.000-04:00

While all of the focus of the Porco trial is understandably on Christopher, I can’t help thinking often of his brother Johnathan. He may not want or need my pity or anyone else's, but that doesn't stop me from feeling the emotion anyway.

Assuming that Christopher attacked their parents, then in some respects Johnathan is the greatest victim of this crime. Johnathan lost his father, has a mother who has been tragically changed, and a brother who may very well be heading to prison for a long time. If he thinks Christopher is innocent, then seeing him on trial must be tough. If he thinks Christopher is guilty, then Johnathan’s relationship with his mother must be strained since she maintains Christopher’s innocence, and, of course, what kind of relationship can you have with a sibling you believe killed your mother?

In one tragic night Johnathan’s family disintegrated. A seemingly perfect, nuclear family, destroyed by the equivalent of an atomic explosion of hatred. (And if any crime should be called a hate crime, it's this one.) In some ways, Johnathan is much like an orphan. As the sole, strong survivor of this family tragedy; however, Johnathan might very will be the key to the Porco’s survival as a family, if indeed such a thing is possible.

In any event, Brendan Lyons of The Times Union wrote a piece a few days ago, in which we get the most definitive story about Johnathan to date. Here is what he said about him.

The potential testimony of Christopher's older brother, Johnathan, who has missed most the case's court proceedings, is even less clear.

Johnathan Porco, a 25-year-old Naval officer, is assigned to a submarine based in Groton, Conn.

"Johnathan was and is the perfect son," Kindlon said in his opening statement to the jury, as he went on to describe Christopher Porco as someone who has "done some really dumb things."
Johnathan Porco has remained silent about the case, other than a letter attributed to him in a bail application for Christopher, who was indicted for murder in November 2005.

"I am firmly convinced that he is innocent," the letter states. "I have not heard or seen anything from him or any other source that would indicate to me that he is guilty."

The letter was never signed by Johnathan Porco before it was submitted to a judge just prior to Christopher Porco's bail hearing. Sources close to the family said the letter was written by an attorney for the family before Johnathan had approved its submission.

Johnathan Porco then attended the bail hearing that month with his own attorney, James E. Long, and allegedly had threatened to withdraw the letter before approving its submission at the last moment, according to sources close to the family. Long declined comment, and Johnathan Porco could not be reached for comment.

"Johnathan is 100 percent supportive of Christopher," Kindlon said last week. "You may recall that a significant amount of Christopher's bail was posted by Johnathan."

Prosecutors said they still hope to call Johnathan Porco as a witness, but his submarine's mission and location are classified and his availability uncertain.

"The information that we've received from the Navy is it's not as simple as all that," McDermott said. "He is on a submarine, and the next time the submarine surfaces, there is a possibility he would be made available, as long as it doesn't interrupt the operation of the vessel. ... It's up to him. It's a voluntary-type thing."

If Johnathan Porco does testify, McDermott said, they would seek to bolster earlier testimony from another Naval officer that Johnathan Porco was on a base in South Carolina at the time of the murder.

Johnathan Porco has never been accused of having any connection to the attacks. But he was one of only four family members -- along with Peter, Joan and Christopher -- who knew the master code on the family's alarm system, which was deactivated at 2:14 a.m. the night of the attacks, McDermott said.

"The main purpose of calling him would be to establish his whereabouts at the time the crime occurred, and that's been done through another witness," he said.

Need A Break Today?

2006-07-19T06:14:00.000-04:00

I am taking a break from posting about the Porco trial today, but will return to it tomorrow. If you need a break, Upstream recommends going to Animal Land, especially if you have young children. Located about 10 miles north of Amsterdam, on Route 30, it doesn‘t look like much from the road, but there is a lot to see. The price to get in is reasonable, $9.95 for adults and $6.95 for kids under 12. The only downside is the snack bar offers little variety, so you might consider taking a picnic basket with you if you go.

Here are just a few of the more than 100 photos my daughter took while we were there.

Tall, Dark and Handsome.

Pack of Unfiltered Camels.

New York State Gubernatorial Race.

More Porco Trial Blogs.

2006-07-18T05:13:00.000-04:00

If you are bored with WNYT’s Porco Trial Blog, you can switch to The Times Union Porco Trial blog which began yesterday. Frankly, you will still be bored, but then yesterday’s testimony from the frat rats wasn’t very exciting. They told us what the ADA already told us they would tell us. I did think their testimony was harmful to Porco. On the other hand, the testimony about the amount of gas in the jeep’s gas tank seems about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Although not very exciting, Abigail Bleck did post a good summary of yesterday’s testimony on The Porco Trial Blog. She obviously put a lot of time into writing and posting it.

Then there is The Edge who spends so much time commenting on The Porco Trial Blog, he has no time to keep his Porco blog up to date.

Finally, here's a blog that combines the names Porco and Bruno.

Former Mohawk Valley Resident Responds To Upstream.

2006-07-18T05:08:00.000-04:00

Note: This was sent to me as a comment. I am posting it here so more people will read it and possibly correspond with the writer.

I don't know if u will read this since I just slapped it in here - but I live in So. Ca. but was born & raised & lived my young adulthood in Albany, Schenectady, Ballston Lake, Galway, Rotterdam & Niskayuna (which high school I graduated from). I left NY in the early 70's and went to work for FEMA and the director; covering disasters through the US. I took a transfer to So. Ca. and here I remain. But, I love the history of the Mohawk Valley, am now in a position to want to take the time and bring myself current after all these years. My parent's owned a huge "farm" in Galway (some of the 1st land granted to the New World according to the history of the house called "Kings Grant Manor" - and history it did have. My grandfather was President of Bank in Schenectady, owned a large lake house on Ballston Lake which I dearly loved; and I spent my high school years in a huge home on Vly Rd in Niskayuna. I have wonderful memory's of that area and would love to know what has occurred over the years - I remember the "haunted" house by the old Scotia bridge (right hand side as you came over), the "haunted" hotel & bar going down to the Mohawk outside of Schenectady area - going to the grand opening of Macy's Mall in Colonie; being friends with Susan Yager & Doc Yager (owner of Albany Pontiac dealership) and so many guys from Union College. I would love to hear from you, or anyone else who has the time, etc. to correspond or bring me up to date. Even reading your site has been very warm & fuzzy for me - thanks - Sand-E of So. Cal. (email is niftyknobs@dc.rr.com).

Did Christopher Porco Plan To Kill His Parents? Part Two.

2006-07-17T05:21:00.000-04:00

If you haven’t read Part One of Did Christopher Porco Plan To Kill His Parents, you should do so before reading Part Two. Part Two will make a lot more sense if you have read Part One.

When Christopher Porco left Rochester, I don’t believe he had any plans to kill his parents. I believe he was going home to talk to his parents and try to weasel his way out of the mess he had made with college, his finances, forging his father’s name on the loan, etc. That explains why he took the Thruway, instead of an alternate route, parked the jeep in the driveway, and forgot to remove the key from the lock after he disabled the alarm.

My next conjecture is that one or both of his parents woke up. Either they heard his jeep pull into the driveway, Christopher coming in the door, or possibly the dog barking when Christopher entered the house.

Next, even though it was a late hour, I believe one or both parents welcomed him and they talked. (I have two sons in their twenties so I know that late hour arrivals and talks are not unusual). The talk turned to what Christopher had done, then became a nasty argument. Finally, the parents ended the argument and went to bed.

It was at this point that Christopher decided to kill his parents. At this point, he had some time to plan, but not to plan adequately. He waited for his parents to go back to sleep, put the dog in the cellar, donned a pair of gloves (he may have even had gloves with him as it was already the middle of November), then went and got the ax and began hacking away.

Following the attack, which I believe occurred around 4:45a.m, he smashed the security system console and cut the telephone cable to make the attack look like an attempted burglary. In his panic to get away, he bungled the effort to make the attack look like a bungled burglary.

While this theory may not be perfect, it does get rid of some of the problems in the prosecution’s current theory. One of the biggest problems for both the defense and prosecution is explaining what the attacker was doing in the house for three hours. According to the prosecution, the alarm was deactivated around 2:00a.m., Christopher’s jeep was spotted by a neighbor around 4:00a.m. and the phone line to the house was cut around 5:00a.m.

Assuming that Christopher was the attacker and that the attack took place near 5:00a.m, then what was he doing in the house for three hours? Did he plan to kill his parents while in Rochester, get cold feet when he got home and have to work up the courage for two to three hours to do what he did? Possibly, and there are other possible explanations, but I believe my theory is more plausible.

Another difficulty for the prosecution is how was Mrs. Porco able to identify Christopher. Did Christopher turn on the light when he entered the bedroom? How could she have seen him in a darkened bedroom. The defense claims in their opening statement that Peter Porco had sleep apnea and in order to sleep better always slept in a very dark bedroom, therefore Joan Porco could never have seen her attacker. But if Joan and Peter had talked and argued with Christopher when he first arrived home, there would be some plausible explanation for her identification of Christopher as the attacker.

The above theory also explains the ferocity of the attack. The attack, like O.J. Simpson’s vicious knife attack on Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman, appears motivated by incredible hatred and anger not money.

My theory, like the prosecution’s, is not without holes. One reader has already pointed out that if Christopher was just going home with the intent of seeing his parents rather than killing them, then why wouldn’t he have just used his EZ Pass? One answer to that question is that he had no money in his EZ Pass account, just as he seemed to have no money in his bank account. Anyway, the amount of money he had in his EZ Pass account wouldn’t be difficult information for either the prosecution or the defense to obtain.

Well I guess I’ve done enough speculating for now. After hearing what the lynch mob on local talk shows and blogs have been saying, it seems necessary to repeat, although it will most likely fall on deaf ears, that we are still at the beginning of the trial, and no one has yet to prove Christopher guilty.

While it may be fun to be an armchair lawyer, it is still important to keep an open mind on the subject of Christopher’s guilt or innocence. From what I have been reading and listening to, it’s a good thing that Terry Kindlon got a change of venue for his client. If the trial had remained in Albany County, Christopher’s only chance of getting a fair trial would have been to waive his right to a jury trial and go with a bench trial.

Can Anything Good Come Out Of Amsterdam?

2006-07-16T07:07:00.000-04:00

I had forgotten about Frank Zindler, until I accidentally stumbled across him on the internet. Zindler used to live in Amsterdam back in the 80s. He was a science professor at Fulton-Montgomery Community College. He was also known as the Mohawk Valley’s most strident atheist.

Zindler promoted atheism with all the zeal of a Fundamentalist Christian preacher. Indeed, he had more in common with some Fundamentalists than he did with some fellow atheists. He was and is the true believer. He never missed a chance to speak on the radio or elsewhere, often wrote letters to the editors of local newspapers and even started in own atheist church in Amsterdam, which is no longer in business.

Zindler’s zeal paid off, at least among unbelievers. He is now Director of the American Atheist Press and Editor of the American Atheist Magazine. He is one of the most sought after atheistic speakers in the country. He is also the author of several books.

Zindler isn’t so much anti-God as he is anti-Jesus. Zindler does not believe that Jesus even existed. He has also written a book attempting to prove that the Apostle Peter never existed.

Zindler’s latest theory is that the village of Nazareth, the Biblical site where Jesus grew up, never existed.

Nazareth, according to the Gospels, was such a backwards, provincial, godforsaken place, that when people heard of the fame of this new, upstart carpenter who dared to call himself a preacher, they asked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

I’ve often asked, “Can anything good come out of Amsterdam?” I guess if you are a true believer in unbelief, you can answer that question with Frank Zindler. If not, you still have Kirk Douglas.

A Few Questions For Proponents Of Gay Marriage.

2006-07-16T06:51:00.000-04:00

I hope to get back to the subject of gay marriage eventually. For now I would just like to ask the proponents of gay marriage a few questions. Once gay marriage becomes legal, as I think it probably will, the current absolutist definition of marriage will be gone. When that happens, the definition of marriage will have the potential of endless expansion, like the universe after the big bang. Bigamists, polygamists and polyandrists are already using the same arguments as gays, in an attempt to legalize their unions. Will the gay community support polygamists in their fight for "equal protection under the law", or will their heterophobia cause them to discriminate against them?

And just how far will the marital universe expand, once gay marriage is made legal? Will a man be able to have five or six male spouses? Will a man eventually be able to marry his niece? Will a PETA-phile be able to marry her horse?

California Has Wild Fires, New York Has Patricia DeAngelis.

2006-07-15T06:28:00.000-04:00

Note: Part Two of Did Christopher Porco Plan To Kill His Parents will appear on Monday rather than this weekend as I initially announced.

Rensselaer County DA Patricia DeAngelis started a firestorm over a recent column she wrote in The Troy Record suggesting that parents in Melrose not call 911 if their children needed emergency aid because a recently released level 3 sex offender could legally become a fireman, respond to a 911 call and maybe molest your child on the way to the hospital. There are no sex offenders working as firefighters in Melrose, and last I heard the Melrose Fire District has not placed any ads asking for sex offenders to apply for jobs as firefighters.

Not only are the fire chief and firefighters in Melrose upset, but firefighters at other fire departments are as well. My sources say that yesterday Channel 6 interviewed Dominic Pasinella Jr., Chief of the Melrose Fire District, and that interview should appear soon. Also DeAngelis’ column in tomorrow’s Record will attempt to explain how Pasinella “misunderstood” her.

Since Danny's News closed here in Amsterdam, I can no longer purchase the Record. I would appreciate it if someone would forward me a copy of the column by DeAngelis.

Alex Torres & His Latin Orchestra.

2006-07-15T06:24:00.000-04:00

I caught this picture of Alex Torres practicing his guitar outside his store, El Palacio Musical, on East Main Street in Amsterdam yesterday. Alex Torres and his Latin Orchestra (formerly the Latin Kings) have been quite successful in the world of Latino music.

Upstream Update.

2006-07-14T18:48:00.000-04:00

Upstream Slips To Second Place In Google Search.
As of tonight when you type Porco Trial Blog into Google, WNYT’s Porco Trial Blog is now the first result returned. Upstream which has been number one all week has now slipped to second place, although five of the first ten results returned link to Upstream. Frankly, I have no computer savvy, so I have no idea why Upstream is even on the first page of results. After reading some of the more recent posts and comments on The Porco Trial Blog, however, I’m not sure that Upstream needs to take second place when it comes to the quality of posts and comments.

Upstream Editor To Appear On Television.
I’m not very photogenic, which is why I do not post photos of myself on this blog. But in the unlikely event you are interested in what I look like, tune into WNYA, Cable Channel 4 (over the air Channel 15) on Sunday morning, July 23 at 11:00a.m. and you can see what I look like. More importantly, you will see an interview that Ernie Tetrault did with me. The primary topics of the interview were this blog and my book business, although we did touch some on Mohawk Valley history and the Jack Carroll case. By the way, If you tune in this Sunday at 11:00a.m., you can watch an interview that Ernie Tetrault did with Carl Strock.

Upstream Sells Photo And Article To Boating Magazine.
Frankly, I was getting very discouraged with blogging a few weeks ago. While more and more people are visiting Upstream, posting everyday is hard work. Not that I don’t enjoy it at times. Furthermore, blogging takes up a lot of time, and there are no financial rewards, at least around here. I had considered taking a two month sabbatical while I tried to get some articles published in magazines that would actually pay me a few dollars for my two cents. It’s not that I’m mercenary, but I do have two sons that I am trying to get through college, an old house that I am trying to restore; and like the rest of you, I like to eat.

Just as I was about to announce my vacation from blogging, I got an e-mail from Power Cruising Magazine. They wanted to purchase one of the photos I took, and posted on Upstream, of Lock 10 on the Mohawk River. I, of course, agreed and then received another e-mail asking me to write a short article on how flooding affected boating on the Canal. How could I refuse. The photo and article will appear in the next issue of the magazine which, I believe, is due out before the end of the month.

So for now, I’ll keep on blogging. As a reminder, if you have any stories that the traditional media have ignored, have an idea for a post, have some interesting photos, or would like to do a guest post, please contact me at upstreamblog@yahoo.com.

Did Christopher Porco Plan To Kill His Parents? Part One.

2006-07-14T06:58:00.000-04:00

“Christopher Porco went home in the early morning hours of November 15th to silence the voices that wanted to hold him accountable, that were telling him to grow up, that were telling him to take responsibility.” Albany County Assistant District Attorney Michael McDermott. ( Page 39, Transcript of Opening Statements People vs. Christopher Porco).

With all due respect to Mr. McDermott, I don’t believe that Christopher Porco went home to silence his mother and father. That doesn’t mean he didn’t go home on November 15, 2004. It also doesn’t mean he didn’t kill his father and injure his mother. It simply means he did not, prior to leaving Rochester, plan to kill his parents.

The theory that Christopher Porco went home with the intention of killing his parents and with a plan already in place as to how he was going to do it has too many holes in it, holes big enough to drive a yellow Hummer through, not to mention a yellow jeep. Here are some of the holes.

1. If Christopher had planned to kill his parents before leaving Rochester, why did he decide to use an ax when there are easier, less gory, quicker and more sure ways? I mean did he sit in his dorm and think, “Oh yeah, Dad’s got an ax. I can use that?”

2. Why did he take the Thruway home, when he could have driven down to Route 20 and taken that home? The prosecution says that the Thruway was the most convenient route from Rochester to his home, but if you were planning to kill your parents, would you take the most convenient road home, or the one where you would least likely be detected? Route 20 parallels the Thruway. It’s other name is The Great Western Turnpike, and it was the equivalent of the Thruway before the Thruway was built. I often take Route 20 instead of the Thruway. It is a decent road, four lanes in many areas, and would have only added about an hour to his travel time. The advantage to a would be murderer is that there would have been less chance of being detected since there are no toll collectors on Route 20.

3. If he had planned the murder, why didn’t he park his car at least a few blocks from his parents house, instead of in the driveway?

4. If he had planned the murder, why did he leave the house key in the front door?

5. If he had planned the murder, why did he spend three hours inside the house? He would have gone in, killed his parents and left. The length of time that the murderer spent inside the house is something that requires explanation.

6. If he had thought this murder out in advance, why did he leave the murder weapon behind, with the possibility that it might have his DNA or fingerprints on it?

7. If he wanted the crime to look like a burglary, as the prosecution contends, then why didn’t he steal something? The prosecution says that nothing was removed from the house. If he had planned this crime, he would have stolen something to make it look like a burglary.

8. After the murder, the family dog was found in the cellar, a place where it was not ordinarily kept. If Christopher placed the dog in the cellar prior to attacking his parents, as the prosecution intimates, then why didn’t he let the dog back out just before he left the house, knowing that leaving the dog in the cellar might be a clue pointing to him?

One answer to these and other questions is that Christopher planned in advance to kill his parents, but that he planned poorly. While Christopher may have gotten rotten grades in college, he is no dummy, and after getting caught in the past selling stolen property on Ebay, it seems to me that if he planned to kill his parents, his plans would have been more painstaking. The prosecution contends that one of Christopher’s motives was his share of his parents’ million dollar estate that he stood to inherit when they died. That may be true, but Christopher had to have known that if he didn’t pull the murders off just right, he was going to be put away for the rest of his life.

These holes in the prosecution’s case, are not insurmountable. Later today or tomorrow, I will present what I think is a more plausible theory about the attacks on Peter and Joan Porco, assuming that Christopher was the attacker, a theory that would eliminate many of these holes.

There are other holes in the prosecution’s case, however, that can’t be dealt with very easily. I hope to discuss those over the weekend or on Monday.

Aerial Photos Of Flooding On The Mohawk River.

2006-07-13T17:48:00.000-04:00

The following aerial photographs of flooding on the Mohawk River were taken on June 28, 2006 by the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department.

The first three photos show flooding in Canajoharie, NY, with the third photo showing the Beechnut Factory. The fourth photo shows flooding on Route 5 near the intersection of Route 67 between Nelliston and St. Johnsville. The farm in the left center of the photo is an Amish farm that we used to buy baked goods at. The fifth photo shows flooding at the Fonda Fairgrounds, and the last photo shows flooding at the Cranesville Block Company, which was formerly the Adirondack Power and Light Company, near Lock 10 on the Mohawk River.

Click on the photos to enlarge them.