Columbia County News

dog wins case one

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Wed, 30 May 2012 16:24:00 +0000

Here is the judge's decision. Well, $300,000 later, that suit is done. Four more to go.

my response to the latest spin

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Thu, 17 May 2012 10:43:00 +0000

On Thursday, May 17, 2012 The Register Star ran an letter by planning board member and former head of the Stuyvesant Republican party Tom Shanahan called "Courts have better things to do." I know Mr. Shanahan resents the fact that newspapers and the ballot box are not the only checks on government. Luckily, the founding fathers gave us a strong judiciary to stand up to factional government. James Madison, arguing for strong courts, said, "By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

I found out Mr. Shanahan objects to lawsuits the hard way. On October 26, 2011 I filed my first article 78 suit. On October 30, 2011, after Mr. Shanahan was seen observing my property, I was given a citation in town criminal court for dog barking. The charge is ridiculous but the charge allows up to 15 days in jail. When I showed up at the appearance date on the ticket on November 9, 2011, Judge Carrie O’Hare reported that the affidavit for this charge disappeared off the face of the earth. The town tried to prosecute me in the same way back in January 2011, a charge clearly based on a false affidavit. After I filed a suit in federal court, the town judge dismissed the first ticket, but not after the town hired a special prosecutor, on a dog barking charge, and spent more than $7000 on expensive Albany lawyers from Whiteman, Osterman and Hanna to prosecute me.

Since I filed my suits, this kind of nonsense has now stopped completely. I have not been ticketed for impossible charges. I do not have to endure hearings (the town put me through 16 in 2011). I don't have cars at the end of my driveway. The zoning officer stays away. I can operate my business without worrying about having to justify every action (even how I take out my trash) questioned before a board of busybodies.

Filing these suits is not sending a message. This is fighting for my livelihood and freedom from oppressive factional government. What is at stake in these suits is the rule of law, the 14th amendment, and basic issues of fairness.

Mr. Shanahan said, "Perhaps it is best encapsulated in a statement Mr. Pflaum posted about the most recent lawsuit on one of his blogs – 'My lawsuit is meant to send a very simple message: ...'" I never said this statement. It's in quotes.

Mr. Shanahan said, "the courts are not there for the purpose of 'sending messages.'" Yet on August 5, 2010 in an article on a junkyard in New Lebanon in the Regsiter Star, the town attorney said that a suit was would “send a message to anyone in New Lebanon who’s violating the law.” Google the phrase "send a message" and "lawsuit" and watch what happens.

Speaking about the lawsuit for information filed against the town clerk, Mr. Shanahan said, "Even the state Committee on Open Government, which oversees the FOIL law, applauded Town Clerk Melissa Naegeli’s diligence." This statement was long ago. Mr. Shanahan has clearly not been following the actual suit. I sued to get information Ms. Naegeli denied existed, including evidence that the Hook Boat club assessment is fraudulent. Although Ms. Naegeli mislead the court, I now have town officials on record that the documents exist, the ones they earlier denied. I consider that a complete victory.

Then Mr. Shanahan called my efforts "a frivolous abuse of the legal system." Mr. Shanahan can say this in a newspaper article but none of the town's seven (at least) attorneys have made this charge in court.

Then Mr. Shanahan said, "For Stuyvesant, the legal fees to defend against them now amount to many tens of thousands of dollars – and it’s likely to go higher." Did Mr. Shanahan complain when the town spent $150,000 to target me? And now, why does the taxpayer have to pick up the tab to defend supervisor Ron Knott's personal interests or the personal interests of ZBA Secretary?

As per New York General Municipal Law 805 (1)(c), officials cannot “receive, or enter into any agreement, express or implied, for compensation for services to be rendered in relation to any matter before any municipal agency of which he is an officer, member or employee or of any municipal agency over which he has jurisdiction or to which he has the power to appoint any member, officer or employee.” Mr. Knott signed a contract with William J. Better to defend his personal interests on the taxpayers' dime. Does the above law preclude this contract?

Then Mr. Shanahan said, "In the long run – surrendering to intimidation never turns out to be cheaper." My point exactly. As the zoning officer Gerry Ennis admitted, the town posted the ZEO at the edge of my property before dawn 25 times in June 2010, for example. I have a video of town board member Ed Scott threatening to beat me up for conducting a sound test mandated by the planning board on which Mr. Shanahan sits. The fire chief and town employee Steve Montie posted on the internet that I should move out of town and applauded Scott's vigilantism.

In addition, the town hired a special prosecutor, William Nolan, from the biggest law firm in the capital district to prosecute me in town court on a false, indeed impossible charge, based on a perjury then destroyed an affidavit proving a secondary account of perjury. Mr. Shanahan was involved in the second incident of judicial harassment and destruction of evidence in October 2011 as above.

Mr. Shanahan is part of the oppressive government that I am suing. If Mr. Shanahan got his wish and removed the ability of courts to keep tabs on local government, can you imagine the abuse and larceny that would be going on? Even now, the situation is not good.

Will Pflaum

7 lawyers, 1 little tailor

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:35:00 +0000

Lawyer list at the other blog. Thanks.

unmuffled: Think you forgot a few folks

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 01:46:00 +0000

unmuffled: Think you forgot a few folks: Commentary The local reporter responsible for writing about cops and courts, as well as the Hudson City School District, wrote in a blog ...

story

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 10:59:00 +0000

http://registerstar.com/articles/2012/04/21/news/doc4f92266154fbf763632162.txt#blogcomments

That's the story in the paper. Here is the quote I emailed the reporter April 18, 2012 5:07:05 PM EDT:

Ron Knott hired the biggest law firm in the Capital District and spent $150,000 on Whiteman, Osterman and Hanna in 2011. And after all that time and money, can they name a rule and say I broke it? No. Meanwhile, the town supervisor, Mr. Knott, is breaking the very parts of the zoning law they still want to use against me if they can. If you live in a glass house, don't throw stones. One way to convince people to stop throwing stones is to pick one of the rocks they threw at you up and throw it back.

I would think the reporter would use the glass houses quote.

Grattan, the dynamo

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 01:11:00 +0000

An article this bad deserves two blog posts.

"Pat Grattan, R-Kinderhook has taken a pay cut, initiated the taping of meetings and posted county financial info online, all since January."

Wow. In just four short months he managed to post financial info online. How long does it take him to upload a video to youtube?

A mere 100 days and he has already NOT uploaded any data. After four hard months of work, the County website is exactly the same and just as crappy as always, thanks to the tireless work of that dynamo Grattan.

A pay cut? He has three other jobs, that dynamo.

I know internet access can be slow in Columbia County. But even I can upload some data faster than that and I have Fairpoint Communications DSL.

But you have to remember, the County IT department is full of crony relatives who only play video games and can't actually use computers, and they have to pass all idea through some guys who whisper a lot and act shady, so the fact that they also have dial up modems is not the only impediment to claiming that they uploaded data that they didn't actually upload over the course of an otherwise uneventful 100 days of business as usual with the boss away at this other job.

"Monthly financial reports and resolutions are being posted on the county’s website."

Wait. The resolutions have been online for a year. Grattan, some dynamo. He's claiming credit for something that is really easy and was done a year before he got into office.

Mr. Dynamo came in, saw that the county website was crappy, and did nothing about it. All in a mere 100 lackadaisical days.

"The Board of Supervisors is also having its monthly full board meeting videotaped for the local public access channel at a maximum cost of $1,200 a year."

And he put a big "NO VIDEO RECORDING" sign in front of the place where the meeting is, which makes not sense if he also wants to brag about paying someone to tape the same meeting.

So, other than stopping people from video recording the meetings and uploaded the video for free and instead paying someone to put it where no one can find it, claiming to have uploaded data you didn't upload or was already online, and looking at a fire hydrant, Mr. Dynamo did a lot more great stuff.

Like... like... trust me, he's really busy, a dyanmo, the county is in good hands now!

This story is like the Onion meets Pravda. 100 days to not upload a PDF.... that no one uploaded.

our local the Onion

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 10:45:00 +0000

I mean, this has to be a joke right? This is news? The guy is presiding over a corrupt empire and doing nothing about it as his thieving friend Robert Fitzsimmons hands out no show jobs to his own employees in private practice, with Grattan seeing no evil hearing no evil... and he has four jobs himself. What a dynamo! Mulligan-Moore: we want every penny back! (So we can steal it ourselves.)

bring out the paper

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 01:26:00 +0000

I'm in the middle, or more like the end, of a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) lawsuit against the town of Stuyvesant. Funny to think that when Gerry Ennis revoked my permit on August 9, 2010 and the town clerk Melissa Naegeli emailed me to tell me I have no right to appeal on August 16, 2010 I did not know that the FOIL law existed. Never sent in a FOIL request until then. Now here I am arguing a FOIL lawsuit I filed pro se... and maybe doing a little better than just arguing a lawsuit.

I'll discuss the details of the case soon enough. We'll see how it plays out, my case is looking pretty good, but I'm not sure the Freedom of Information system is working as well as it should.

Freedom of Information Law and the right of the public to information is far too weak in New York State and United States. We have a solid right to publish our opinion. We don't have a solid right to get the information necessary to know what to say. If the government wants to cover stuff up, they can get away with it. If they get caught, nothing much happens to them.

Who's fault is that?

The process back in the 18th Century that lead to our Constitution was good. The anti-Federalists had good reasons to oppose the Constitution - like the power of unelected, lifetime appointed judges. Good points on both sides, mixed in with plenty of deception and power grabs. Both sides argued intelligently. The process worked.

When the anti-Federalist complained that there was no bill of rights in the first draft, Madison wrote back that you don't want a list of rights. There are things that should be rights that will not get on the list of rights. If you make a list, then that's it, anything not on the list isn't a right.

The anti-Federalists said, no, if you don't have a list then you might have no rights. The anti-Federalists won that one, except maybe Madison and company did get in the 9th amendment, which means there are other rights other than those on the list.

Madison had a point, as enshrined in the 9th amendment. Take FOIL. It's not a Constitutional right. It would have been a strange thing for people in the 18th Century to think of as a right. They didn't have photocopiers or carbon paper. They had printing presses and newspapers but documents, government documents, were hand copied pieces of paper. I guess you could require the government to make a copy and post it on a pole somewhere - and in fact, we have plenty of laws about "notice" that amount to just about that. They could not have imagined the huge amount of data and easy of copying that data that we have now, or even what we had 50 years ago.

So they didn't think about Freedom of Information. How could they? I also think the Founding Fathers didn't pay enough time thinking about embezzlement. And maybe 12 or 20 years would be enough for a Federal judge, who then has to be re-appointed (or not). And plenty more they didn't think about... which is why the Bill of Rights was never intended to be the end of the story.

The Founding Fathers knew things would change, so they left the door open for rights they hadn't thought to put in the Constitution back then. The Right to Information, FOIL or FOIA, is exactly the kind of thing they had in mind: an example of the kind of thing they had in mind when they said there would be things they did not have in mind.

When the government hides stuff, it should be a bigger deal than it is. FOIL or FOIA means don't hide stuff from the people.

The 14th amendment boils down to what's good for the goose is good for the gander. The 1st amendment means you have a right to your own head and body. The 2nd and 3rd are hard to figure out. The 4th amendment means, hey, this is my house. The 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th mean they can't railroad you, take your property and lock you up for nothing. All kind of basic common sense stuff in there.

And information? The government can't hide what their doing. Pretty simple. No hiding stuff is a pretty basic, simple idea. No secret meetings. No secret budgets.

I think Freedom of Information is covered by the 9th amendment, as we have laws and 40 years of legal precedent to back those laws up. The right to information is now part of the culture, as well as the law of the land. I think the right is now covered by the 9th amendment and there is no going back. FOIL and FOIA cannot be repealed (I would say).

But like everything else in the Bill of Rights, or even the Constitution generally, you'd be hard pressed to prove that the government actually follows what the paper says. The president can start a war without Congress, no matter what the paper says. They can strip search you for nothing. They can fly over your house with drone and take pictures of you. Hide the budget. Hide everything. Lock you up. Kill you, whatever.

Still, I think information is a right, even if it is violated by the government as completely as all the other rights. I think when the government hides stuff, it should be a big deal, like when they hammer you to try to shut you up. We know they shouldn't punish you for speaking your mind, arrest and strip search you for attending a peaceful demonstration and all the other stuff they do.

It's just as bad when they hide what their doing, hide the paper.

FOIL or FOIA is what the Federalists had in mind when they wrote the 9th Amendment. So hand over the documents. Post everything online. Open up the files. Bring out the paper.

Go file a pro se FOIL lawsuit.

stuyvesant zba again

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 10:49:00 +0000

There is an article in the Register Star by John Mason that is a good summary of the issues and what happened.

I think mediation is the way to go now in the neighbor dispute (Serpico-Palladino), as I recommended to the town more than a year ago.

As to the second issue: Ronald Knott, the deputy supervisor and later town supervisor, is the author of the policy to spend 17% of the 2011 budget on zoning enforcement to close Glencadia Dog Camp. The town spent $150,000 hiring the biggest law firm in the Capital District, Whiteman, Osterman and Hanna in an illegal executive session. Ronald Knott participated, lead the charge and supported all of this.

One of the primary points in that process was whether of not the business qualified as a home occupation if the house and the barn were on separate lots. The law is clear that a home occupation required the business and house to be on the same lot. Meanwhile the town planning board refused my application to put the lots back together, which would solve the problem.

Meanwhile, Knott himself was operating a home occupation with a business and a house of separate lots.

That's the deal.

student-student teacher ratios

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 17:32:00 +0000

Per School Digger.com, here are the student / teacher ratios for local schools:

Hudson 10.3
Taconic Hills 11.8
Chatham 13.4
Ichabod Crane 13.4

Other nearby schools similar in size to Hudson but not in Columbia County:

Red Hook 15.0
Saugerties 19.2

Thanks Hudsonian.

county attorneys

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 01:51:00 +0000

Here is something I got off a list serve and have not researched to vouch for the info... comments welcome if this is not correct. Thank you.

County Attorneys: ALL REGISTERED REPUBLICANS

Robert J. Fitzsimmons
Andrew B. Howard
Clarissa D. Garvey
Charles E. Hoag, Jr.
Tal G. Rappleyea
Robert J. Fitzsimmons
Barrett D. Mack
Brent R. Stack

Assistant District Attorneys: ALL REGISTERED REPUBLICANS

David M. Costanzo
James A. Carlucci
H. Neal Conolly
Carl G. Whitbeck, Jr.
Dominic J. Cornelius
Robert M. Gibson

Public Defenders:

Public Defender: Arlene Levinson
1st Assistant Public Defender
Robert Linville

Asst. Public Defenders: ALL REGISTERED REPUBLICANS

Maryellen Minor
Ian L. Crimmins
Kenneth G. Cranna
Virginia D. Mallon
Michael C. Howard
Jessica Howser
David Seth Michaels

Now check the NYS Board of Elections website and who contributed to the Republican Party in the last political campaigns.

Money for jobs: that's what it is all about. Same thing for the rest of the County payroll.

why taxes are high and corruption is endemic

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 14:14:00 +0000

Columbia County has about 60,000 people. We also have about 21 highway departments, 5 police forces, 5 school districts, 19 assessors offices, 50 judges, 19 justice departments.

This situation is 1) wasteful; 2) inefficient; 3) breeds patronage and corruption through impossibility of oversight, along with no agency tasked with oversight.

Look at police. By having these multiple forces (sheriff, state police, Hudson police, Chatham, Copake, etc.), one central authority cannot allocate resources based on need. The resources are based on politics. COMPSTAT kind of efficiency and effectiveness is impossible.

Look at the highway department. Do we need 21 fleets of vehicles, 21 salt sheds, 21 billing departments, 21 purchasing authorities? No. If these resources were allocated on a need basis not on politics and tradition, how much could we save.

Look at assessment. This local assessor stuff is asking for trouble. You would get fairer and cheaper assessments by following the recommendations of this study.

Look at justice departments. Remember the New York Times series on terrible upstate small town judges? Anything change after that? In 1812, it made sense to have people travel a couple miles to their local judge: weather, horses, etc. Now it makes sense to have professional, appointed judges working full time with oversight.

Look at schools. This system with no choice for schools is terrible. In transportation and administration alone, consolidating the districts would have a tremendous amount. Allowing choice within the public system, let alone opening the thing up to charter schools, would put some pressure on the mediocre system we have.

From Hudsonian (thanks):

The top 10 teachers pay in Hudson:

Hungerford, Susan J $104,010.25
Rees, Lucy A $96,617.00
Peters, Charles M $95,681.00
Aronson, Jay O $94,905.75
Bonville, Thomas E $93,618.00
Barletta, Anna M $92,150.05
Libruk, Regina $91,636.50
Ringer, Gordon D $91,579.80
Dolan, Elizabeth A $91,488.00
Huemmer, Ellen K $91,243.00

You can use the link (http://qvs.visiblegovernment.us/seethroughNY.net/contracts/school-contracts/Hudsoncityt063011.pdf) to view the current contract between the taxpayers of the Hudson City School District and the Hudson Teachers Association.

Take a look at page 38 of the contract. You'll notice that the maximum amount any teacher can earn is $ 85,587. Is there something special about the teacher at the top of the list in Fact # 1 where she can earn almost $ 20,000 above the maximum in the contract?

Locally, the two cities that are probably the closest to Hudson in population are Rensselaer and Mechanicville. Another measure of efficiency (or lack thereof) would be to calculate and compare per capita rates or how much is spent on a particular service per citizen.

For example, using Hudson and it's Police Department, the per capita would be $ 303.17 or $ 303.17 for every resident of the city. This is calculated by taking the 2,035,162.11 in 2011 salaries and dividing that by the 2010 census number of 6,713.

Rensselaer's per capita is 248.18 ( 2,330,909.06 / 9,392) and Mechanicville's would be about $ 162.71 ( 813,540.24 / 5,000). The 5,000 is an estimate. I couldn't seem to get a real number but that's what one source had for 2009.

In summary, Hudson spends $ 303.17, Rensselaer spends $ 248.18 and Mechanicville $ 162.71. In other words, Hudson is 22% higher than Rensselaer and 87% higher than Mechanicville.

Here's a list of the top five (5) cop salaries in Hudson:

Richardson, Ellis 108,813.13 Chief
Finn, Lynne 99,313.75
Moon Jr, Anthony 92,566.62
Paolino, Richard 91,656.33
Foutch, Thomas 89,079.85

Here's the same for Rensselaer:

Famiglietti, Warren 93,067.21
Fusco, Frederick 87,784.92 Chief
Terry Jr, Joseph 84,770.52
Frankoski, James 82,023.00
Nagengast, Anthony 80,452.29

Here's the information for Mechanicville:

Rabbitt Jr, William 88,364.03
Rocco, Peter 81,067.65
Rocco, Louis 78,520.71
Westfall, Scott 76,882.81
Waldron, Joseph 76,874.73 Chief

The 2012 city Budget includes $ 40,000 for gasoline. Assuming $ 4.00 a gallon for gas, that's 10,000 gallons. Assuming each police car gets 10 miles per gallon, that would be enough gas to travel 100,000 miles per year or 273 miles a day 365 days a year. Does that sound reasonable? I realize that some of those miles are outside of Hudson (to pick up or drop off prisoners, etc.). Does anyone know how many miles of road there is in Hudson?

Sheriff's office:

Michael Merante $127,081(3rd highest in the County)
Brendan Filli $109,790
Louis Bray $106,400
Michael Stelling $101,092
Paul Graziano $100,716
Dave Barlett $95,328
James Sweet 92,931
John Davi $92,553

sleepergate episode 2 on the other blog

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:20:00 +0000

Well, let's see now.

couple stories out of ghent, one from new lebanon

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:04:00 +0000

False claim mortgage. And Big Up not happening this year. Also, violent encounter on Route 20 in New Lebanon (lot of crazy stuff on that road).

why didn't the county sheriff release the name of the house?

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:30:00 +0000

The county sheriff's office seems to have covered for the supervisor. What is up?

drone strikes

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:15:00 +0000

Barack Obama thinks he can order the execution of anyone without judicial review. The administration picks someone, an American citizen, convicts them, then executes them and refuses to disclose the evidence to any court even after the fact.

If you are in Yemen, Pakistan, Afganistan, Iraq, Somalia, Obama can sign off and kill you if he doesn't like you. What's the policy? Is the congo okay? What if you are in Eastern Congo, hiding in the jungle? Can he kill you there? Or the Amazon jungle with the FARC? Just blow you up? Tajikistan? Siberia? You can't go to Yemen or Pakistan, which are officially allied counties: he'll just kill you. You can go to Iran or Cuba, though, since if he killed you it would be a big deal. Is there a list of places that are drone-able? Can Obama summarily execute an American citizen in downtown Berlin? How about London? Cleveland? Does anyone get any say on this other than Obama? What about President Gingrich? Would like him to kill anyone he doesn't like anywhere with no judicial review?

new york state corruption: busy week

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:35:00 +0000

here is another great new york state govenment lawyer

Stealing. Another crooked New York State lawyer. Being crooked seems to be what government lawyers do. Did you see the Sleepergate story too?

school board officials stealing pension credits

Does this sound like Sleepergate to you? Same type of scam.

state lawyer convicted of hate crimes

Those wacky municipal lawyers... the Klan upstate.

crusader for open meetings

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:41:00 +0000

Roy Brown seems to be changing and growing. We all can learn from his example. I met with Mr. Brown on 1-17-2011, talking about attorney invoices for over an hour with observers, and found that he was indeed concerned about corruption in government. I appreciate Mr. Brown's initiatives.

Walter Bauer

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 03:27:00 +0000

Donations to the Hudson Opera House in his memory...

The Daily Mail > Obituaries > Walter J. Bauer
www.thedailymail.net

ReformNY: Kruger Used Campaign Contributions to Pay Legal Fe...

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:31:00 +0000

ReformNY: Kruger Used Campaign Contributions to Pay Legal Fe...: New York’s notoriously weak campaign finance laws were highlighted this week as disclosure reports revealed that former Assemblyman Carl Kr...

chess club in chatham library tomorrow at 3pm

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:42:00 +0000

Hope some people come out -- kids, adults, anyone. Thanks.

cover up?

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0000

See the other blog.

21 hours of work in a 24-hour period

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 04:38:00 +0000

As reported in the Sleepergate story, Tal Rappleyea claims to have worked 21 hours in a single day, October 1, 2010. Here you can see some of the typical work Tal says up doing.

You know, lying to me about a settlement he had no intention of honoring, working on hard to keep the town from complying with FOIL, helping them figure out how to allow someone to destroy a hill and wetlands and piss off the most famous guy in town, preparing for a meeting he was clearly in no way prepared for when it happened (don’t bother to prepare: you have no idea what will happen).

No wonder I never got my FOIL requests answered: Tal was working on them at 4 AM in a dream. No wonder they engaged in bad faith negotiations: Tal was asleep when he wrote than email agreeing to my terms.

What does it mean to work 21 hours in 24-hour period? I happen to know what it’s like. It was a winter night, about 2006.

I was just starting out. I had enough reservations to be in business but not enough to have developed new software to track them efficiently. I had enough work to keep me busy but not enough to be able to offer steady work to other people.

It takes me about an hour or two to get ready to head off to the city on a Monday or Thursday afternoon. I have to load up the dogs, program the GPS, clean up the barn again, get the dogs that are staying settled in, back then I would have had to do dinner, blankets... so I would start working about 1 PM and get off to the city maybe 2:30 or 3:30 and get back about midnight on a normal night.

It was about 11:00 PM, I was around Poughkeepsie, heading back upstate from a successful trip to the city. No terrible traffic problems, all done, almost home. I got a call from Brooklyn. Are you coming to pick up my dog? What? Yeah, I sent you an email. Oh no. I wish you had called me two hours ago when I was two blocks from your house. I have a flight tomorrow. Okay, I’ll be there but it will be well after midnight. That’s fine. We’re awake.

I turned around and headed back to the city. Around 1:30 I passed through Poughkeepsie again, fighting off the sleep. It was freezing, about 5 degrees and I had the driver’s window open. I had to stop and get out and walk around the van. Coffee. Get out again. I needed that cold air to keep me awake, the colder the better.

I pulled in to the barn at 2:30. I had a dog that didn’t want to get in the barn and was scarred, growling at me. It was too cold to stay anywhere other than the heated barn. With animals, only patience really works. I had to wait an hour for her to calm down and like me. You can’t get mad. Never works. You just have to wait. Finally, she let me put the leash on her. She went to bed.

I went to bed. With all that coffee, I couldn’t get right to sleep, as wired as I was.

Six thirty AM I was back in the barn. Back then, I thought I had to let them out as soon as they woke up so they wouldn’t poop in the barn. I know, it’s a barn, animals can poop in it. But they are all housetrained New York City dogs and they can wait and go in the yard, keep things clean. Back then I had chain link fences and always let the dogs out before 7 AM but no one ever complained about barking. Now I have wood fences and always wait until 7:30 to open the door and they complain, which makes no sense.

Anyway, Mother Nature is tough boss. I had dug a line with a shovel to bring water out to the barn. It was hard work, digging by hand, and somewhere along the line I got lazy. Somewhere, who knows where, I must have only buried the line three feet and six inches. That was okay for a while, but when Mother says four feet, she doesn’t mean three feet six inches, even if she lets you slide for a year. The line froze. No water in the barn. I had to haul buckets from the basement of my house.

I hauled a couple of five gallon buckets out and put them down. A Golden Retriever from Brooklyn checked these things out. Buckets? Water? She had never seen a bucket of water before. She’d seen a water bowl. She’d been to Prospect Park and gone swimming in the pond. What do you do with a bucket of water? She thought. She checked them out? Do you drink it or swim in it? Only one way to find out, she said to herself.

Now I’m about to make a Painfully Obvious Statement (POS). When you get to this POS (Painfully Obvious Statement), you will say, naturally, well, duh. That is the correct response to a Painfully Obvious Statement (POS): “Duh.” In fact this statement is so painfully obvious that even all the dogs in this story except this one knucklehead could figure the POS out immediately without any trial and error. The POS is so PO that even dogs can figure it out analytically. If the POS (Painfully Obvious Statement) is so obvious that even the vast majority of dogs can figure it out, it really should not be necessary to actually state it here when, presumably, everyone reading this blog entry is a human being (or having the entry read to them, although I supposed you could read the whole thing to a dog, in theory).

But I need to remind you: some of the people who read this blog are members of various Stuyvesant Boards (Planning, Zoning and Town). What may be obvious to everyone on the planet, including dogs, can sometimes be hard for members of Stuyvesant boards to understand. For example, the further away you are from a sound, the quieter it is. Or if you listen to a sound and can barely hear it, that means it is not loud. Dogs do understand these things, in general with your occasional exception. As a rule, members of boards in Stuyvesant cannot figure these things out. So here it comes, the POS (Painfully Obvious Statement) offered for the benefit of Stuyvesant board members:

A Golden Retriever cannot go for a swim in a five gallon bucket. The problem pertains to a fact of the universe called VOLUME. Larger things cannot fit inside of smaller things at the Newtonian scale in which we live on planet earth most of the time. If a big dog like that tries to swim in a bucket, the dog will knock the bucket over. When water is not contained in a tight container, it tends to head downward due to a phenomenon called gravity. We call this “spilling.”

To those of you who do not sit on boards in Stuyvesant, my apologies for having to take the time out to explain the basic rules of the small piece of the universe in which we live, stuff that even animals understand. I mean, if the town board of Stuyvesant can’t figure out that sound decays at the inverse square of distance, you can’t be sure they understand about gravity or volume either. Sometimes even dogs don’t understand that stuff as well as they should. I mean, 99% percent of the time dog do understand. But if 1% of dogs can’t figure it out, to be safe, I had better explain it to the board members who might be reading.

So the buckets got knocked over. That meant another trip back to the basement to get more water. I was heading back over the ice with those new buckets, each step was agony. It was probably about 8 AM by this time. I leaned up against a snowdrift and set the buckets down to rest. It was still cold, maybe 10 degrees. Even so, I fell asleep.

I don’t know how long I slept, maybe a few seconds or a few minutes, but I woke up with a start. How long would it be before someone noticed that I was missing? I would normally still be working in the barn until 10 or 11. It might take a few hours before she checked on me. In that time, would I freeze to death? I can’t just fall asleep.

I finished cleaning the barn and went in. The exhaustion is quite simply pain. You can be so tired that you fall down in a freezing cold snowdrift and fall asleep. You can be so tired that it actually hurts. You have difficulty performing simple tasks, like closing the door. I wasn’t sure I would make in up the two little stairs to my house and had to hold on to the railing.

That’s what it is to work 21 hours in a 24 hour period. When you start something like a business it takes some time to figure it all out. You never figure it ALL out but still, you get the point. You don’t have to be a genius or Hercules but there will be times when you just have to do whatever it is that has to be done. No one else really cares enough. It’s your business.

Does this happen now? No. This was not a good solution. Driving tired is not safe. I got a better reservation system now. I dug the whole line up and rented a back hoe and dug that water line the right way. I have water all the time now out in the barn. I got enough steady work to have steady help. This scenario won’t happen again.

Why? Working 21 hours in a 24-hour period is never a good idea. It’s not healthy. It’s not safe. It’s not productive. There is nothing good about it. I did it. I got through one rough day. It threw my whole week off, like having jet lag. This driving two nights a week, getting up the next moring, I told myself, this is not working. I can’t keep this up much longer.But Tal can. And just to take care of routine work…

Sleepergate

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 01:53:00 +0000

Big story on the other blog.

Woody Guthrie’s New Year’s resolution list from 1942

noreply@blogger.com (Glencadia) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 04:41:00 +0000