DOWNLOAD or PLAY the audio version of the local news headlines for Mon., Nov. 28 (8:53). (Produced by Philip Grant.)

Some of the stories that made the news from Fri., Nov. 25 through Sun., Nov. 27:

Thanksgiving is over and the Christmas season is upon us. Greg Hudson reported in The Daily Mail visitors lined Main Street in Catskill on Fri., Nov. 24, for the village’s annual light parade. The annual event launched the holiday season, and featured dozens floats and decorated vehicles from local businesses and Greene County fire departments. The popular holiday characters Olaf the Snowman, the Grinch and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer all took part. “It’s great to be here, it’s an honor to be a part of this,” Catskill Elks Lodge exalted ruler Tim Reed said from the back of the club’s holiday float. In Kingston, Sinterklaas, joined by Rip Van Winkle this year, arrived via tugboat on the Hudson River. The boat docked at the Maritime Museum downtown before setting off down the Rondout Creek. The town of Livingston will kick off its annual Christmas celebration next weekend. The festivities include a holiday supper, Fri., Dec. 2, at the Linlithgo Reformed Church on Church Road, followed by the annual Christmas tree lighting and carol sing at the town gazebo. The Hudson Opera House will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Winter Walk, Sat., Dec. 3, with the local debut of Unsilent Night, a community musical parade composed by Phil Kline. The event will be broadcast live on WGXC 90.7-FM and at wgxc [dot] org, beginning at 5 p.m.

Matthew Hamilton reported at Capitol Confidential Executive Chamber staff spent the holiday weekend reviewing 133 bills requiring action by Mon., Nov. 28. In addition, there are 25 more items awaiting action on the governor's desk. And a variety of bills have not been handed up by the Legislature yet. That list includes the indigent legal services bill. Earlier this month, the legislative bodies in both Columbia and Greene counties passed resolutions urging Governor Andrew M. Cuomo to sign the measure into law and ease the burden on individual counties now paying for public defenders. This law would require the state to fully reimburse counties for the cost of indigent legal services by 2023. The cost for public defenders and related expenses statewide is estimated to be more than $450 million a year.

Chal Ravens reported in Fact Magazine that Hudson Valley composer and experimental musician Pauline Oliveros has died at age 84 on Thu., Nov. 24 in her sleep. Oliveros pioneered the concept of deep listening. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s, and collaborated with Terry Riley and modular synthesist Morton Subotnick. On Nov. 21 she read from John Cage's letters at an event in Manhattan, which was broadcast live on WGXC. Of Oliveros, the Daily Freeman wrote, she "...was a constant local presence but her influence is worldwide." Oliveros was a longtime resident of Kingston.

Mid Hudson News [dot] com reported the state of New York is close to having half of all families statewide living without sufficient income and resources for housing, food, child care, transportation and health care, according to a report just released by United Way of New York State. The United Way in 16 states have participated in ALICE for the past two years. ALICE stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, and looks at the growing population of residents working, but still struggling to afford the basic necessities. “Our report shows that this is not an urban or rural issue – it affects every corner of our state,” said Brian Hassett, CEO of the United Way of the Greater Capital Region. “Too many New Yorkers find themselves above the poverty line but below the economic line that allows them to provide health care and educational advantages for their children, and to save for their own future,” he said. The New York ALICE Report revealed: 44 percent of New York households can no longer afford all of life’s basic necessities, including food, shelter, child care, transportation and health care; nearly 1 million New Yorkers working in retail sales, the restaurant industry and home health services are paid below $20,500 a year, or $10.25 an hour, the ALICE threshold for survival as a single adult; and, from 2007 to 2014, the cost of housing, food and health care statewide far exceeded the rise in salaries, thus increasing the number of ALICE households. The report also includes recommendations for both short- and long-term strategies intended to help ALICE families.

Chris McKenna reported at The Fray the Open Primaries organization announced last week it sent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders a letter signed by more than 3,400 voters online, urging him to attend a hearing in in a case challenging the legality of New York’s closed primaries on Dec. 6. New York City lawyer Mark Moody filed the lawsuit in April after he was unable to vote in the state's Democratic presidential primary. New York currently has 2.5 million active voters with no party affiliation, slightly fewer than the 2.6 million people registered as Republicans. Several hundred thousand other voters are enrolled in minor parties and are therefore ineligible to vote in Democratic or Republican primaries. John Opdycke, president of Open Primaries, said, “It is a problem that independent voters are being excluded from the political conversation at precisely a moment in our country’s history that their voice is most needed. ... We need more open doors, and more participation, not less, to grow our state. I hope Senator Sanders will support it.”

William J. Kemble reported in The Daily Freeman Registered voters in the Rhinebeck school district will go to the polls Dec. 6, to decide the fate of a $12.09 million capital project proposal. Items included in the plan are similar at both the middle-high school building and Chancellor Livingston Elementary School. Included are interior doors and hardware, kitchen ceilings, telephone systems, entrance handrails, skylights, roof ladders, roof recoating, exterior doors and windows and lighting replacement. Superintendent Joseph Phelan said the project also includes replacing the floor-to-ceiling windows at Chancellor Livingston Elementary School. Polls are open from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the middle school, 45 North Park Road.

Rosa Acheson reported in the Register-Star Hudson's Savoia Bar and Restaurant will close next weekend. Now located at 214 Warren St., the Savoia will be open for the 20th annual Winter Walk Saturday, and for one final football tailgate outside of the building, Sun., Dec. 4. Owners Jake and Barbara Walthour have owned and operated the Savoia for 34 years. It is one of the few black-owned businesses in Hudson. Barbara Walthour confirmed the building has been sold to Roy Felcetto and Max Cenci, co-owners of the Ca’Mea restaurant, located in the 300 block of Warren Street. “It used to be the Howard Hotel, so there has been some talk of bringing that back. I think the Savoia Lounge might be turned into an event space,” Walthour said. “We’re looking forward to spending more time with our three children — Jacob Jr., Marcus and Nona — and our six grandchildren,” she said. “It has truly been a pleasure to have been a part of the fabric of Hudson for the past 34 years,” the Walthours said.

Local weather forecast:

Today: Sunny. High near 43. Monday night, a chance of rain, mainly after 5 a.m. Increasing clouds. Low around 32.

FORECAST FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS
TUESDAY: Rain, mainly after 7 a.m. Hig near 48. Tuesday night, a chance of rain before midnight, then a chance of showers, mainly between midnight and 4 a.m. Mostly cloudy. Low around 40.
WEDNESDAY: A chance of rain. Mostly cloudy. High near 51. Wednesday night, rain likely. Cloudy. Low around 44.

Sunrise today: 7:02 a.m.
Sunset today: 4:25 p.m.
LENGTH OF THE DAY: 9:22 hrs.

PUBLIC MEETINGS


Today is the fourth Monday of the month.
WGXC suggests calling ahead to confirm time and location.
All numbers are in the 518 area code unless otherwise noted.


COLUMBIA COUNTY Board of Supervisors Airport Sub-committee meeting, 4 p.m.; Public Works Committee meeting, 5 p.m.; Environmental Management Council, 6:30 p.m., all at 401 State St., Hudson (828-1527).
HUDSON Industrial Development Agency meeting, 3 p.m. at City Hall, 520 Warren St., Hudson (828-0212). Common Council Fire and Police Committee meetings cancelled (828-1030).
NEW BALTIMORE Town Board meeting, 7 p.m. at Town Hall, 3809 Co. Route. 51, Hannacroix (756-6671).
STUYVESANT Planning Board meeting, 7 p.m. at Town Hall, 5 Sunset Drive, Stuyvesant (758-6248).
TAGHKANIC Zoning Board of Appeals meeting, 7 p.m. at Town Hall, 909 Route 82, Taghkanic (851-7638).

Adam Goldman and Eric Schmitt detail in The New York Times how U.S. intelligence officials have targeted the propaganda arm of the Islamic State, or ISIL, with radio-controlled drone attacks. "One by one, American and allied forces have killed the most important of roughly a dozen members of the cell, which the FBI calls 'the Legion,' as part of a secretive campaign that has largely silenced a powerful voice that led to a surge of counterterrorism activity across the United States in 2015 as young men and women came under the influence of its propaganda," they write. The FBI is also sorting through the social media histories of their drone victims, to find anyone inspired by the group's messages. The story mentions specific arrests and thwarted terrorists attacks stopped by the social media monitoring. On Nov. 27, The New York Times also reported that the Obama administration expanded the legal scope of the war against Al Qaeda, deeming the Shabab, an Islamist militant group in Somalia, as part of the armed conflict that Congress authorized against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, giving President-elect Donald J. Trump more leeway for bombing in the horn of Africa.

Ariél Zangla reports in The Daily Freeman that a state appellate court ruled Nov. 23 that a jury will decide whether employees at the Ulster County Jail should have reasonably foreseen that an inmate with a prior history of violence while incarcerated might attack another inmate. Patrick J. Wassman Jr. was beaten during his stay at the Ulster County Jail on a misdemeanor charge from a violation of an order of protection by an inmate with a history of violence in jail. The State Supreme Court had previously dismissed the complaint. Read the full story in The Daily Freeman.

Chal Ravens reports in Fact Magazine that Hudson Valley-based composer Pauline Oliveros, who pioneered the concept of “deep listening,” has died at age 84. Flutist Claire Chase first reported the news Nov. 25 on Instagram and it was confirmed by many posts on Facebook and Twitter. Oliveros was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s, and collaborated with Terry Riley and modular synthesist Morton Subotnick. On Nov. 21 she read from John Cage's letters at an event in Manhattan broadcast on WGXC. In 2003 she explained her "deep listening" concept: “In hearing, the ears take in all the sound waves and particles and deliver them to the audio cortex where the listening takes place. We cannot turn off our ears–the ears are always taking in sound information–but we can turn off our listening. I feel that listening is the basis of creativity and culture. How you’re listening, is how you develop a culture and how a community of people listens, is what creates their culture.” Oliveros taught at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy and Mills College in California, and lived in Kingston, New York.

Ellyn Gaydos in The Columbia Paper goes to New Lebanon to figure out why Columbia County has such lousy broadband service. New Lebanon town Supervisor Colleen Teal, who serves on the broadband subcommittee of the county Board of Supervisors, wrote in a recent email, “I believe that lacking infrastructure is the underpinning of most of the issues that we are dealing with both at the county level and at the individual town levels and broadband is the most critical. If we do not ‘fix’ this, it will be much harder to ‘fix’ the other issues we trying to deal with.” Doug Banker, chairman of the New Lebanon Broadband Committee, worries the latest push from Gov. Andrew Cuomo to make broadband widespread by 2018 won't be different then past efforts. “Individual towns trying to get broadband don’t have enough critical mass to influence Fairpoint to do something better for them at a price they can afford,” he says. But besides Cuomo's efforts, the recent merger of Charter Communications with Time Warner Cable means the new company, now called Spectrum, must provide high speed internet access to underserved rural areas, and Spectrum serves much of rural Columbia County. “They’ve begun updating fiber [optic cables] in central locations,” Banker said. Fairpoint did not respond to The Columbia Paper, but Andrew Russel, from Charter’s media relations, wrote in an email, “Charter is committed to completing our upgrade of the existing Columbia County communities we serve by 2018… deploying our network to 145,000 unserved homes and businesses in rural upstate New York, and to bringing faster broadband speeds to the communities we serve. These investments will all be from Charter, with no state support.” Until then, New Lebanon residents struggle. Sarah Steadman, who runs the Mall of Found artist residency in New Lebanon, says, “If we have artists coming and the internet’s out, which does happen, they can’t access our files. It’s really embarrassing when we’re fundraising with someone," with the current service, “unpredictable, like the weather.” Read the full story in The Columbia Paper.

Patricia Doxsey reports in The Daily Freeman that the Ulster County Legislature voted 19-3 to hold a public hearing at 6:10 p.m. Dec. 13 on a proposed law making cyber bullying a misdemeanor with a potential jail sentence. Legislators David Donaldson (D-Kingston), John Parete (D-Boiceville), and Richard Parete, a Democrat from Accord who caucuses with the Republicans, were the three dissenting voices. Ulster County Executive Michael Hein's law would make it a crime for a person, with intent to threaten abuse, intimidate, torment or otherwise inflict emotional harm on a minor electronically transmit information not of public concern that they know will inflict emotional harm; electronically transmit private sexual information, or photographs or videos of uncovered breasts, buttocks or genitals of another; electronically transmit false sexual information about another; or knowingly appropriate the name or likeness of another. The few legislators voting against the public hearing did not mention free speech or the U.S. Constitution as an issue. “I’d rather not see us create more victims by these kids getting an unclassified misdemeanor,” Donaldson said. “I really think we need education, rehabilitation first.” Read the full story in The Daily Freeman.

Local weather forecast:

Today: A slight chance of rain and snow showers before 10 a.m. is predicted, then a slight chance of rain showers between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 43. Saturday night should be mostly cloudy, with a low around 29.

FORECAST FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS
SUNDAY: Partly sunny, with a high near 39, and a low around 26.
MONDAY: Mostly sunny, with a high near 38, and a low around 29.

Sunrise today: 7:00 a.m.
Sunset today: 4:25 p.m.

DOWNLOAD or play the audio version of the local news update for Tue., Nov. 22 (4::44). (Produced by Lynn Sloneker.)