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Good Monday Morning.
 I'm hoping everyone had a stellar 4th of July weekend, I know I did. They say you're supposed to enter a celebratory slowdown as you get older but I seem to be running in over-drive these days. Let's just say I started the 4th at a rowdy softball game in Bethel, CT, then at a party with a 75' makeshift slip-n'-slide on a steep hill and two punk rock bands... and we'll leave it at that.
As I read through the papers today I see that the top US news stories today are that A-Rod is getting divorced due to alleged extra-marital affairs. (So much for the sanctity of marriage.) And, the presidential election has confused American voters. Polls show that 24% of prospective voters support Warren G. Harding, 21% support Eugene V. Debs, 27% support escaping to the Caribbean for the months of October and November, 21% thought that annexing Cambodia as the 51st State was a good idea and 3% ran screaming from pollsters. Put me in that 3% category.
Singer Della Reese turned 77 this past weekend, Sylvester Stallone punched in at 62, Doc Severinsen hits a high note at 81, Ringo Starr managed 68, Kevin Bacon turns 50 tomorrow and Tom Hanks reaches 52 on Wednesday. Arlo Guthrie celebrates his 62nd on Thursday and on Saturday, pianist Van Cliburn strikes the chord at 74, Bill Cosby jokes about 71 and the anti-Jack Lalane, Richard Simmons manages to reach a 'fabulous' 60. You didn't need to know all this but it came across the newswire.
Last week we bid farewell to Larry Harmon the most well known Bozo the Clown. I still remember seeing him on television as a child, as many of you can, too. Exit, stage left.
There's a kick-off party for John Degnan's campaign for Assembly this Wednesday evening at the Sentistra Grill in Brewster and in response, Greg Ball is hosting a fundie this coming Saturday, complete with farm animals, in Patterson.
This morning's NYJN police report brings us this tidbit:
A.J.V., 27, of Fox Run Lane was charged June 8 with third-degree falsely reporting an incident, a misdemeanor, after she called police to complain that her ex-boyfriend, against whom she had an order of protection, had called her cell phone repeatedly, showed up at her residence and punched the kitchen window in an attempt to get inside, police said. However, an investigation by Deputy Matthew Monroe showed that the man never called her and that he never appeared at her residence, police said. V_ did not explain why she made up the story, police said.
 Last week, two Mahopac teens whose morbid curiosity got the better of them, ventured into Oniontown (near Dover Plains) after viewing a You-Tube video made by some downstate rich kids depicting that community as a trash-cluttered place of rundown homes inhabited by backwards, inbred people. It is pretty rundown, but poverty is rarely pretty.
In the video, filmed from the safety of their car, you hear one of the three downstate troublemakers shouting, "Look, they've got f***'n' chickens!" As if as far they know, chickens are born, raised and bred in the frozen food aisle of the A&P and then when ready, jump into Col Sanders boxes for their convenience. Yes, you silly city people. Some of us inbred country hicks do raise chickens!
Needless to say, local residents, fed up with hoards of curiosity seekers, objected to this latest incursion and attacked the car with rocks and bottles. The Mahopac teens were injured. There was one arrest. Perhaps the response was a tad harsh but that should keep curious folk out of there for awhile.
Lastly, thanks to those who responded to my shop-local email yesterday seeking a porta-potty for Saturday and a tractor repair man. Of the seven who did respond to the latter request, five named the same guy. 'Pricey', they said, 'but reliable'. We shall see.
So, welcome back to work, here now, the news:
- Historian looks to save 18th-century tavern (Putnam Valley)
- Rail trails upgraded (Dutchess County)
- Bills seek to boost public's access to information (NYS Open Meetings Law)
- Norway Proposes No New Suburban, Drive-to Malls
- Longtime Bozo the Clown, Larry Harmon, Dead at 83
- Big Touch-Up for the Blue and the Gray (The Cyclorama gets and overhaul)
- U.S. considers using racial profiling in terror cases (Don't get too tanned this summer...)
Historian looks to save 18th-century tavern Barbara Livingston Nackman
The Journal News
PUTNAM VALLEY - At the T-intersection of Church and Oscawana Lake roads, which some maps identify as Crofts Corners, others as Oscawana or Sodom Corners, is a sad-looking, nondescript white farmhouse.
It has a rectangular box shape with a row of half-moon windows on the second floor. There are no fancy trim flourishes, and the bushes are a bit overgrown. Some windows are shuttered with wood planks or torn sheets, and debris is clustered in parts of the yard and on the porch.
Inside the house are a brother and sister living in what may be harsh conditions in a house that could be among the oldest and most historically significant in the county.
Former Putnam Valley Councilman Dan Ricci, now the town historian, is trying to accomplish two things at once with the old farmhouse -preserve it for future generations while helping Chester and Kathy Ingersoll, whose family has called the property home for four generations.
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Rail trails upgraded With Phase 2 under way, walkers, runners and cyclists will gain access
By John Davis
Poughkeepsie Journal
Work is progressing on parallel tracks to develop, upgrade and extend two recreational rail trails in Dutchess County.
Construction on the second stage of the 12-mile Dutchess Rail Trail is set to begin this by month. A highway crossing on the Harlem Valley Rail Trail was just completed.
And much more work is planned in the year ahead to continue extending both county rail trails. This is good news for local residents who like to bicycle, inline skate, walk or run.
Parents with strollers and those who can't walk also will benefit from the improvements.
"My office looks out onto the trailhead here in Millerton. I can just sit back in my chair and I just see people constantly on the trail during the week," said Lisa Deleeuw, administrative director of the Harlem Valley Rail Trail Association, a nonprofit advocacy and fundraising organization.
"I see people in wheelchairs, which is spectacular," she added. "Where else can they so easily get around?"
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Bills seek to boost public's access to information By Cara Matthews
Journal Albany bureau
ALBANY - A good year at the Capitol means no legislation passes that could hamper the public's rights to government information and access, according to the head of the state's Committee on Open Government. Using that as a yardstick, this could be an off-the-charts, banner year for his cause.
"This year, we're seeing a half dozen positive bills likely to be signed," Robert Freeman, executive director of the committee, said Friday.
The measures are awaiting action by Gov. David Paterson, but a spokesman said Friday the governor does not comment on bills before they reach his desk and he has had a chance to consider them.
One bill would end the phenomenon of people sitting empty-handed in audiences at public meetings, while board members are told to turn to such-and-such page and discuss the written material. The legislation would require government bodies to make records available at least 72 hours before the meeting. They could charge a fee for copying documents.
"This would eliminate so much of the frustration and make the Open Meetings Law more meaningful," Freeman said.
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Norway Proposes No New Suburban, Drive-to Malls
In Norway wages have kept pace with fuel and food price hikes, so car trips haven't yet dropped drastically. To discourage driving, Environment Minister Eric Solheim has now proposed a bill that would forbid shopping centers of 3,000 square meters or more from being built along highways in Norway's suburban centers. Norwegian research has shown that 95 percent of shoppers to suburban malls arrive by car. Shopping centers would still be allowed in areas where public transport is existing or possible. The regulation, if passed, would be retroactive to this July. That 3,000 meter size, according to newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv, is just 1/12th the square footage of the latest IKEA already approved to be built in a suburb of Bergen. The government has also considered forcing shopping centers to charge shoppers to park.
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Longtime Bozo the Clown, Larry Harmon, Dead at 83 LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Larry Harmon, who turned the character Bozo the Clown into a show business staple that delighted children for more than a half-century, died Thursday of congestive heart failure. He was 83.
His publicist, Jerry Digney, told The Associated Press he died at his home.
Although not the original Bozo, Harmon portrayed the popular frizzy-haired clown in countless appearances and, as an entrepreneur, he licensed the character to others, particularly dozens of TV stations around the country. The stations in turn hired actors to be their local Bozos.
``You might say, in a way, I was cloning BTC (Bozo the Clown) before anybody else out there got around to cloning DNA,'' Harmon told the AP in a 1996 interview.
``Bozo is a combination of the wonderful wisdom of the adult and the childlike ways in all of us,'' Harmon said.
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Big Touch-Up for the Blue and the Gray By LISANNE RENNER
GETTYSBURG, Pa. — The pair of soldier’s shoes is battered and hard-worn; a hole in one leather sole suggests the many miles trudged en route to battle with a rifled musket and canteen.
These Civil War-style shoes are being pressed into duty for a battle that ended 145 years ago — not for last weekend’s re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg but for a conflict that still rages on the canvas of an enormous painting in the round. The Gettysburg Cyclorama, as it’s called, is to reopen on Sept. 26 after a five-year restoration, and for the first time in more than a century, viewers standing in the middle of the wraparound canvas will see it as its artist originally intended.
Like props on a stage set, the lace-up shoes will join scores of other items — bayonets, saddles, cartridge boxes, canvas stretchers, knapsacks, even a full-size Union cannon with its carriage — in a diorama that will be placed in the foreground of the cyclorama’s canvas. By contributing to the illusion of three dimensions, the props are meant to give viewers a sense of immersion in the chaotic carnage.
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U.S. considers using racial profiling in terror cases By Lara Jakes Jordan / Associated Press
WASHINGTON – The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.
Law enforcement officials say the proposed policy, which does not require Congressional approval, would help them do exactly what Congress demanded after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001: root out terrorists before they strike.
Although President Bush has disavowed targeting suspects based on their race or ethnicity, the new rules would allow the FBI to consider those factors among a number of traits that could trigger a national security investigation.
Currently, FBI agents need specific reasons – like evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated – to investigate U.S. citizens and legal residents. The new policy, officials told The Associated Press, would let agents open preliminary terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, were deemed suspicious.
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