Almanack Contributor Mark Wilson

Mark Wilson's editorial cartoons - under the pen name MARQUIL - appear in newspapers and online across New York State. He also provides editorial illustrations and occasional commentary pieces for The Sunday Gazette of Schenectady and regularly chimes in here at the Almanack, particularly at election time and during the annual Adirondack Bracket. Mark lives in Saranac Lake.

Monday, April 23, 2012

The Beat Goes On and On:New Assignments for Post-Star Reporters

For the first time since sustaining deep staffing cutbacks late last month, the Post-Star has reassigned reporting beats to fill the gaps in its lineup. In the process, the troubled newspaper has officially abandoned Saratoga Springs as an anchorage for its southern reporting.

According to the staff contact page at PostStar.com, the new assignments are as follows:

• Primary responsibility for reporting news for Washington County—the beat covered by recently laid-off reporters Jamie Munks, David Taube, and (in part) Tom Dimopoulos—now falls to Jon Alexander, who will continue to cover Northern Warren County as well as the rest of the Adirondacks. It is an utterly » Continue Reading.


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Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Happy 150th, Charles Evans Hughes

Maury Thompson at the Glens Falls Post-Star alerted us to a significant and pretty thoroughly overlooked anniversary. Wednesday April 11, 2012 is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Charles Evans Hughes: Glens Falls native, Governor of New York State, Associate United States Supreme Court Justice, GOP presidential candidate, United States Secretary of State, and Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

To that resume let us also add: Adirondack vacationer.


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Monday, April 9, 2012

Mark Wilson: The Post-Star’s Public Shaming Policy

New York State keeps detailed motor vehicle accident statistics, compiling them year-to-year and county-by-county. Those data as well as the aggregate state figures compiled since 2001 are available online at safeNY.gov. The standards for data collecting and reporting have remained consistent since 2003, the year New York lowered the blood alcohol content standard for drunk driving, and the year the Glens Falls Post-Star initiated its policy on publishing names of teenagers busted for drinking. Data in the following comparison are derived from police-reported accidents—collisions resulting in fatalities, personal injury or property damage. These records are more uniform within each region and over time than DWI » Continue Reading.


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Monday, April 9, 2012

Mark Wilson: The Post-Star’s War on Underage Drinking

Ken Tingley is back in his bully pulpit. Two Sundays ago in his weekly column, the Editor of the Post-Star defended his newspaper’s policy of publishing the names of teenagers ticketed for violating underage drinking laws. In blunt and patronizing language, the crusading editor took on a recent South Glens Falls High graduate who had dared to leave a comment on the Post-Star‘s Facebook page objecting to the policy:

Mr. Mumblo was probably playing video games and reading comics when we reported the death of 17-year-old Jason Daniels in Warrensburg on May 18, 2003, and four months later, the death of 19-year-old Adam Baker, also » Continue Reading.


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Thursday, March 8, 2012

Will NCPR have its own Congressional District?

Among the standards used by the US Department of Justice in determining the validity of newly redrawn political districts are that district maps be compact and contiguous and respect natural and artificial boundaries. In drawing up the new map for the 21st Congressional District, Special Master Roanne Mann strictly followed county borders (artificial boundaries), with the exceptions of Herkimer and Saratoga Counties whose southern population centers would have thrown off the numbers. For an equally useful artificial boundary that validates the common interest of the proposed 21st Congressional District, consider the frequency and signal strength map of North Country Public Radio. Broadcasting out of studios at St. » Continue Reading.


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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

New Congressional District (Almost) Unifies the Adirondack Park

Three years ago in anticipation of the decennial census, reapportionment and redistricting, Adirondack Almanack suggested a congressional district (red outline on the map) that would comprise the entire Adirondack Park and lands reaching to the St. Lawrence River from Alexandria Bay to Cornwall and the US/Canadian boundary from Cornwall east. If necessary there was plenty of room on the map for the district to expand below the park to accommodate larger numbers.

The numbers were loosely based on a guess that New York would lose only one congressional seat this time around. The fact that New York lost two seats in the reapportionment process, » Continue Reading.


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Sunday, December 4, 2011

Selected Holiday Art of Kathy Ford

Courtesy of the artist, here is a selection of Kathy Ford’s holiday glass paintings from the past twenty-five years (click below)

1987 Goose with Wreath

1994 Angel

1996 Kids Making Snowman

1998 Skaters on Pond

» Continue Reading.


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Sunday, December 4, 2011

A Window on an Adirondack Holiday Tradition

Kathy and Lonnie Ford own a small hillside home in Saranac Lake. They’ve lived there for three decades, raising two sons along the way. The dominant feature of the 1931 Sears catalog bungalow is a large plate glass window installed by the original owner to support his wife’s cultivation of African violets. For the past 25 years Kathy, who is Production Supervisor and Senior Designer at Adworkshop in Lake Placid, has used the picture window for pictures: as a temporary canvas for her annual holiday greeting to neighbors and passersby.

The tradition was inspired by memories of smaller holiday window paintings made by Kathy’s mother. Since December 1987 Kathy » Continue Reading.


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Saturday, November 12, 2011

Spiegel House in Lake Placid Comes Down

The final curtain has dropped on the seven-year-long legal drama centered on a high-profile residence overlooking Lake Placid in the Town of North Elba. They are bringing down the house. In this case, literally.

The structure, owned by Arthur and Margaret Spiegel of Plattsburgh, was built on the Fawn Ridge development—at the head of the former Fawn Ridge ski slope—on Algonquin Drive starting in late 2004. As the house neared completion in 2005, it ran afoul of the Adirondack Park Agency. The Agency charged the builders with violating three provisions of the original permit for the development: building height, proximity to a slope, and vegetation clearing. The case proceeded » Continue Reading.


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Friday, October 28, 2011

Leroy Douglas Pleads Guilty to Pollution Charges

A three-and-a-half year legal case against Leroy Douglas of Black Brook has ended. According to the Post-Star, Douglas pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges—prohibited solid waste disposal and endangering the public health, safety or the environment—brought by the Clinton County District Attorney against Douglas and his corporation.

The charges date back to the August 2008 discovery by New York State DEC officials of open oil drums and illegally disposed solid waste at the Douglas Resort property on the shores of Silver Lake. The Blog Adirondack Base Camp summarized the original charges from Douglas’s arraignment earlier this year.Douglas’s attorney sought successfully to have many of the » Continue Reading.


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