SusanCampriello: My Works

“My hope is in a better tomorrow”
The Daily Mail
Jan. 16, 2009

Dozens of students and community members remembered the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on the 80th anniversary of his birth Thursday night with a candlelit march through Catskill and a program at Catskill High School.

The program included reading of King’s words, multimedia productions featuring photographs of King’s life and the American civil rights movement as well as musical performances by the Choraliers, led by musical director James Guldenstern, and a student band.

King was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968, by James Earl Ray.

At 6:30 p.m., Second Reformed Church Pastor Richard Turpin said a prayer with the assembled crowd outside the Second Baptist Church before the marchers made their way down Main Street and across Catskill Creek to Catskill High School.

Richard Muggeo, who has helped organize the celebration for years, explained to the students that during the civil rights movement, people congregated at churches and marched to courthouses to demand a change to “the legal, but morally wrong” Jim Crow laws.

He told the crowd of that they only had to battle the cold Thursday night, but during the movement, people were beaten with clubs, attacked by dogs and sprayed with fire hoses while they marched.

Members of the Catskill Community Center Continental Cadets Drum and Bugle Corps lead the march to the Greene County Courthouse with a lively street beat. Behind them, the 60 marchers carried batter-powered candles and sang the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome.”

Lorainne Ferrara, advisor for the Catskill High School Interact Club, which is Rotary International’s service club for high school students, said that the club has been around for 38 years, making it the longest sustained club in the nation.

Catskill High School teachers have a long history in honoring the civil rights movement, Ferrera said. For years, Maryann Morrison, Naomi Wiener, Ed Synan, Muggeo and Ferrara spent the holiday celebrating King’s life at the State Capital in Albany.

Ferrera honored Mel Horowitz and Andy Jones for their service to the school and to the annual event. She dedicated Thursday’s celebration to Patricia Lewis, who was a freedom rider during the movement. Ferrera spoke of the courage Lewis, and everyone else who stood for equality, showed

“Her legacy, like Dr. King’s legacy, lives on,” Ferrera said.

Catskill School District Superintendent Dr. Kathleen Farrell addressed the assembly, reminding them that King spoke for everyone.

She asked her students, their parents and community members to remember and work towards King’s legacy.

“Choose what is right and change what isn’t,” she said.

Turpin asked the young crowd to cup their hands before them, and to feel the weight the social, economic and moral decisions they would make and the lives that they would live the next 20 years.

“It’s heavy,” he said.

Turpin said he hoped the students could live in the world of King’s dreams.

“My hope is in a better tomorrow. My hope is in your hands.”

During the second half of the celebration, students from Catskill and Cairo-Durham high schools spoke the words of King regarding faith, racism, peace, justice and freedom.
They read King’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech and the address King gave after winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

Levi Fiske and Kedong Wang, co-presidents of the club said that they cherish the freedoms they enjoy today.

“We are still pursuing the dream,” Fiske said.

The Catskill Ecumenical Council will sponsor a service to honor King’s life at Second Baptist Church, on Main Street, on Sat. Jan. 17, at 4:00 p.m.

At 84, family meat market going strong
The Daily Mail
Jan. 14, 2009

Paul DiStefano says the secret to the success of his meat market, which this year celebrates its 84th year, is personal service.

“We love our customers,” he said.

One wall in the front room of DiStefano’s Meat Market shows its long history in the area. The wall is covered by photographs of the DiStefano family, their friends and customers, overlapping each other to fit. Mary Stuart Masterson, who came to town while filming “The Cake Eaters,” poses next to Paul in one.

“It’s great,” DiStefano said of the wall. “People come in and see their cousin.”

DiStefano says his market is the last of its kind in Greene County.

DiStefano and his two employees, Cathy Backis and Thomas Kravovich, who have nearly seventy years of experience between them, generally cut meats to order.

They have been known to invite customers into the back room, where the cutting is done, to select their own pieces. Such a personal selection of food is generally not allowed in chain grocery stores, DiStefano said.

DiStefano said the was shop moved from its original location, one space most recently occupied by the MuddyCup on Main Street, in Catskill, in the 1950’s because there was no parking available to customers, and few people walked by. The market occupied space on Cairo’s Main Street until the 1990s, when it relocated to its current location off Route 23B, in Cairo, right at the intersection of Route 23. The newest location is conducive to walk-in business, he said.

DiStefano said that first-time customers come into the store every week. They say they saw the market from the road and decided to stop in, DiStefano said. But, by DiStefano’s estimate, 90 percent of his customers have been familiar faces in the shop for years.

Paul DiStefano’s father, Savario, known as Sam, came to the area from Sicily, where he first started working as a butcher. Sam continued his trade in Brooklyn before he set up shop in Catskill in 1926.

DiStefano still uses Sam’s recipes for Italian sausage and says that he has always measured its components by sight.

“We never weigh a thing,” he said.

DiStafano still uses a cleaver and two wood chopping blocks, which have been worn away from so many cleansing scrapings and washings that their legs need to be placed on blocks to make their surfaces the right hight. Wood shavings cover the cutting room’s floor. He uses a hand-operated meat stuffer to fill casings, which works by turning a crank on its side.

“It’s not the fastest process in the world,” he said.

But it works.

DiStefano’s hands move quickly and effortlessly when he twists the long sausage tubes into links.

He said he was never formally taught to cut meat, but learned the shapes of bones and cuts of meat by watching his Sam bone out. Now, meat arrives to the market already off the bone. Sam also slaughtered animals, work DiStefano has always avoided.

DiStefano said that although he sells a couple hundred pounds of meat a week, roughly 10 percent of his business comes from farmers ask him to prepare their livestock. DiStefano estimates that he custom cuts about 30 deer for hunters for year, however, that number has gone down over the last few years. He also cuts meat for several restaurants in the area.

He said the hardest cut to prepare is a veal cutlet, because the finished product has to be so thin, but working with pork and beef in considerably easier. Most of the beef he sells comes from Canada, which is generally leaner than domestic beef, DiStefano said.

DiStefano has also ordered and prepared elk, boar and alligator meat for customers with a taste for such exotic animals.

Cathy Backis, who had been serving customers while DiStefano worked with and discussed the meat, said she had one goal for DiStefano’s Meat Market this year.

“To make it to 2010,” she said.

Warm sounds on a cold night; Duo of Malcolm Cecil and Garfield Moore jazz up the classics
The Daily Mail
Jan. 11, 2009

A small but enthusiastic crowd that braved falling snow and slippery roads were treated to a evening of jazzed-up classical music played by acclaimed musicians Malcolm Cecil and Garfield Moore at Imagine That in Catskill Saturday night.

The concert was held to celebrate the relocation of the pottery workshop to its new location at 397 Main St.

Cecil, who hails from Woodstock, won a producing-and-engineering Grammy Award in 1974 for his work on Stevie Wonder’s album “Innervisions” and has been featured on albums with the Isley Brothers, Joan Baez and Little Feat.

Although he is best known for playing jazz on the acoustic bass and synthesizer, Cecil is also an accomplished classical musician.

“I’m from the Duke Ellington school of music,” he said.

Cecil said he likes to play music across a variety of musical genres.

“There are two kinds of music. The good kind and the other kind,’ Cecil said, quoting Ellington, adding, “I play the good kind.”

Garfield Moore teaches music appreciation and history at Columbia-Greene Community College.

Moore has played on Broadway, with the Pacific Philharmonic and in Eastern Europe, and has a cello duo, Duoleo. The Catskill resident studied at Stanford University and at the Institut de Hautes Etudes Musicales (Institute of Advanced Music) in Switzerland and has lectured at the Juilliard School.

Baritone vocalist and guitarist Perry Beekman was scheduled to play with Cecil Saturday night, but was unable to do so because of the weather, giving Moore a chance to play with Cecil in Catskill.

Cecil’s plucked strings juxtaposed against Moore’s smooth bow strokes made for a unique interpretation of classic pieces by Bach and Vivaldi.

The pair enjoys mixing styles like this and think it a new way to engage audiences and fans of both genres.

Moore, Cecil and violinist Gwen Laster recently teamed up to create Super Stringz, a group, Cecil said, which plays classical pieces like jazz tunes and jazz songs like classical ones.

“I think people latch onto the feel,” Cecil said of the musical outcome.

The group will be playing a concert for the University of Albany at Albany public access radio station on Feb. 10.

Cecil, who is used to playing with larger groups of musicians, said that he likes playing with one other musician, because it gives him room to experiment with styles, as he did with Moore.

“I have a lot more freedom,” he said.

Cecil is particularly interested in astronomer Johannes Kepler’s theory that musical harmonies are connected to planetary orbits.

He demonstrated on a string of his bass the vibration arc of an octave. When only lightly touched by a finger, the string is allowed to vibrate for its whole length, creating two notes. The string vibrates in one direction above the finger and in the opposite direction below the finger, both together making a circle.

Planets, as they orbit, vibrate also, Cecil said.

“Vibrations are vibrations are vibrations,” he said.

Cecil’s visit to Imagine That Saturday night was not his first. At the suggestion of his wife, who herself is an artist, he has begun creating a large plate depicting the complete theory of music, including a diagram of all the notes and harmonics.

He said that pottery is a much more permanent medium for the diagram than its original, a yellowed piece of paper.

Cairo bears get their closeup
The Daily Mail
Jan. 10, 2009

Cairo will get a first glimpse of “Aurora Bearealis” and the other 39 bears of the Bears and Butterflies project this Sunday at Gallagher’s Banquet Hall on Main Street.

Sunday’s rendering reception is a chance for the bears’ sponsors to meet the artists who will turn the statues into art. But this event is also an opportunity for the public to get a preview of the bears that may soon be coming to a sidewalk or storefront near them.

“Part of the fun and excitement of the whole project is to see what the artists will come up with,” Sue Hilgendorff, a project organizer, said in an e-mail.

Each sponsor will select the rendering they want for their bear.

“It’s first come, first served,” she said.

Once finished, the bears will not all be placed along Cairo’s Main Street, as are the cats in Catskill, but instead will be spread across the town’s hamlets.

Event organizers hope that a game they have incorporated into the bears to celebrate the quadricentennial of Henry Hudson’s voyage up the Hudson River, will encourage residents and visitors alike to explore parts of the town they do not usually see.

Each bear’s pattern will include a butterfly, and each butterfly will contain a letter or symbol that will correspond to a question about Henry Hudson. Those who can answer all 39 questions will become eligible to win cash and prizes.

Unlike “Aurora Bearealis,” which has already been painted by Jim Cramer, the other bears have not been assigned themes.

“The renderings we have received so far are all fabulous and varied,” Hilgendorff wrote.

The reception will last from 2 until 4 p.m., and is open to the public at $5 per person.

Saving seniors from scams
The Daily Mail
Jan. 10, 2009

A representative of the Office of New York State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo met with senior citizens at the Acra Senior Center Friday to offer tips on how to avoid being caught up in money scams.

During the lively presentation, Mark Hoops, the Office’s senior consumer fraud representative, described schemes that target senior citizens, such as sweepstakes companies that offer prize money in return for an international money order, home improvement contractors who ask for cash upfront to buy supplies, and solicitors collecting for not-so-charitable causes.

Copies of the Office’s Smart Senior booklet, which outlines how to prevent and report fraud, were available as well.

Hoops warned the audience that even though as seniors, they have built up a history with banks, creditors and charities, banks might not catch abnormal activity or recognize it as fraud. Sending such orders, he cautioned, could quickly plunge a victim into debt, but is also illegal.

Hoops said that shut-ins and those who only have a telephone for company are especially at risk from these types of schemes. Hoops asked seniors at the lunch to speak with their friends who may fall into that category.

Hoops then turned the presentation to the scams home contractors pull on unsuspecting homeowners. He described the difficulty of tracking a suspect contractor, especially if the contractor was paid in cash.

Different counties across the state have different rules as to what type of contractors need licenses and training to conduct business, so the Office of the Attorney General recently launched a Web site to help inform homeowners and stop dishonorable contractors from pulling off their scams.

The site, NYKnowYourContractor.com, provides homeowners lists of which home improvement contractors and landscapers have complaints filed against them or are subject to lawsuits. It offers tips for finding the best contractor for a job, such as knowing which permits are needed for what type of work, obtaining proof of insurance for a potential contractor and interviewing multiple contractors for a cost estimate and to agree on a time frame.

The site also directs users to the state’s Consumer Protection Board as well as regional and county bureau and agency information sites.

Hoops advised the audience that charitable donations may not always end up where the donor intended.
“Anybody who wants to solicit money from New Yorkers is mandated by law to register with the Attorney General and report to them every year their collections, the name of the telemarketer they hired, and what they paid the telemarketer and what pledges they collected that actually went to the charity,” he said.

Last month, Cuomo issued a report that showed, on average, that 38 cents of every dollar brought in by a telemarketing company on behalf of a charity actually goes to that charity.

Hoops said that people considering donating to a charity with which they are unfamiliar should request its annual report before writing a check.

“When you introduce the Office’s name into the conversation,” he said, “the scammers usually hang up.”

He reminded the audience that solicitation calls from people claiming to be state troopers are from scammers, too.

Many audience members said that they had received calls from so-called troopers asking for money.

“State troopers don’t solicit funds. It’s simple, they don’t,” he said.

People can further protect themselves from scammers by taking advantage of the Security Freeze Law, which went into effect in 2006.

Under the law, people can send requests to the three major credit reporting agencies for a freeze, or lock, of their credit histories. Doing this will help prevent anyone from opening accounts or borrowing money using the information contained within.

Hoops described the benefits of a credit freeze as like becoming invisible.

“You stop getting bogus checks in the mail, offers for cruises disappear. Your mailbox lightens up,” he said.

Reports can be unlocked for legitimate reasons by the account owner and then relocked once the process is conducted.

Freezing the records will not disrupt credit card accounts or halt transactions, he explained.

Several seniors at the lunch said they were familiar with the schemes Hoops highlighted. Several said they knew of people who had been victimized by one scam or another and they would start using Hoops’ tips if they did not use them already.

Greene County Legislator William Lawrence, R-Cairo, who also attended the lunch presentation, said afterward that the freeze law was an excellent idea.

Using the service left little option for someone to open an account using someone else’s personal information, he said.

Hoops asked the audience to tell their friends about the protective measures, saying that as the public becomes aware of certain schemes, scammers are forced to give up their game.

Hoops is scheduled to make other related presentations around the county in the coming months.

Jazz legends Cecil, Beekman team up for concert
The Daily Mail
Jan. 9, 2009

Lillian Johnson is welcoming the new year in a new location with a jazz concert Saturday night featuring two renowned artists, bassist-producer Malcolm Cecil and vocalist-guitarist Perry Beekman.

Johnson moved her pottery workshop, Imagine That, to 397 Main St. at the close of 2008. The move was the first of many changes she will make this year.

The new space is much larger than her old space, which was across the street. The store’s green, salmon and blue walls and colorful floor entice customers to come in and let their creativity show.

“The future seems to feel brighter and better,” she said.

And that is cause for a celebration, she said.

Cecil has been the principal bassist for the BBC Radio Orchestra and was the resident bassist at the Ronnie Scott Jazz Club in London. Cecil won a Grammy Award in 1974 for engineering and producing Stevie Wonder’s album “Innervisions.” Cecil, who also plays the synthesizer, has recorded albums with Stan Getz and Roland “Rahassn” Kirk. He has been featured on albums by such diverse artists as the Isley Brothers, Joan Baez, Little Feat and Gil Scott-Heron.

Cecil will be joined by Beekman, who has played venues in New York City and the Hudson Valley.

Beekman’s music is deeply rooted in the classic tradition of jazz and his repertoire includes songs from the Great American Songbook, which have also been performed by Frank Sinatra, Nat “King” Cole and Mel Torme.

Imagine That’s night of music runs from 5 to 8 p.m.

The shop, where people can paint their own pottery, will soon offer more craftworks, like hot glass, mosaics and ceramics. Johnson will also begin hosting children’s programs, club meetings and corporate team building workshops. Other new featured events will include tea parties and Diva Nights.

 State judge says resolution violated Open Meetings Law
The Daily Mail
Jan. 8, 2009

State Supreme Court Judge Joseph Teresi ruled Wednesday that a resolution adopted in the Town of Cairo last fall did not comply with the state’s Open Meetings Law.

The decision requires the board to review the site plan and to take another vote.

“Because the defendants’ September 3 Resolution was not issued in compliance with the Open Meeting Law or Town Law 271(16) and 274-a, the Sept. 3 Resolution is annulled,” the ruling reads according to a press release issued by Tom Roe, free103point9 program manager.

The September vote denied an application from free103point9 for their Wave Farm “Study Center” in Acra, which will include a studio for a community radio station, living areas for summer resident artists and space for outdoor performances.

“Upon reconsideration, the board will utilize the Town of Cairo Local Law 1 of the year 2006, to review the plaintiff’s site plan application, and an affirmative vote is required to approve or deny the plaintiff’s application,” Tal Rappleyea, who represents the town and planning boards, read from the decision at a Planning Board meeting Wednesday.

According to the decision, the board has to vote on the project in a timely manner.

Rappleyea called the ruling “sort of a split decision,” saying that the decision did not rule against the Town of Cairo and the Planning Board for all items in the lawsuit.

Rappleyea said that the decision held that one part of the lawsuit, alleging that the board violated the civil rights of free103point9 by not making their decision under the new law, was not applicable, because the law had not gone into effect at the time of the vote.

Rappleyea told the planning board that the court said that it was too early to make a determination on whether the board had violated the civil rights of free103point9 for not approving the plan.

The decision will not become binding until the attorneys for free103point9 file it with the Greene County Clerk’s office.

Roe said he expected that the ruling would be filed very soon so that plan review can resume.

“This project has been delayed and delayed and delayed by the town already,” Roe said.

Rappleyea said that the file has been fully submitted to the board along with comments on the plan.

Planning Board Chairman Peter Maassmann told the board that no further public hearings concerning the project would be held and no new materials would be accepted.

Planning board member Daniel Benoit suggested that the board have a special meeting to discuss the plan. Maassmann said that such a meeting could be in order if board members felt one was needed after they reviewed the file individually.

“I trust the Planning Board to respect the court’s decision and review the project under the old site law,” Cairo Town Supervisor John Coyne said.

Free103point3 is a non-profit arts group that received a Federal Communications Commission license for a 3,300-watt non-commercial FM radio station on 90.7 in Columbia and Greene counties this fall. The station will air shows with a local focus that are produced by members of the community.

“I am looking forward to working with town officials in the future, and hope that, moving forward, this project is reviewed in a manner appropriate to its small-scale and community-oriented mission,” Executive Director Galen Joseph-Hunter said in the release.

Power outage wreaks havoc for some
The Daily Mail

Sixteen-hundred Central Hudson customers lost power briefly Thursday morning, causing lights to go out as well as computer and phone systems to crash.

The outage occurred at 6:30 a.m. and power to just about everyone had been restored about 90 minutes later, according to Central Hudson spokesman John Maserjian.

Initial reports said that the outage was caused by a transformer explosion near the Greene County Courthouse on Main Street, but, according to Maserjian, the mechanism fastening a power line to a pole malfunctioned.

“The problem did damage to the transformer. The transformer was not the cause of the problem,” he said.

The initial outage only affected about 300 customers, Maserjian said, but power to lines around the damaged fastener had to be cut, which extended the outage to 1,600 customers.

Greene County employees said they heard that computers in the building malfunctioned as a result of the loss of power.

Although many Main Street businesses said they were unaffected by the power failure, the Bank of Greene County was not so lucky.

Bank of Greene County President Don Gibson, who works in the administration center at 302 Main St., said the outage turned out to be a major inconvenience.

“It played havoc with our computer system and our phone system,” he said.

Gibson said that power fluctuations continued through the afternoon, causing issues for employees until around 4 p.m.

Bank staff in the building service 11 branches.

Phone service at the bank branch at 425 Main St. was also “screwy,” Gibson said.

Saving energy, money in Cairo
The Daily Mail
Jan. 1, 2009

Cairo town offices could close one day a week later this year in an effort to reduce the town’s heating bills.

Town officials discussed the four-day work week at their board meeting in December, but did not reach a decision.

Certain offices, such as the bookkeeper’s and the supervisor’s, could close Fridays, for example, but could extend their hours to accommodate residents who come for help when they get out of work.

Other offices, including the assessor and the building department would remain open, officials said.

The state mandates that the library stay open for 35 hours a week. Councilwoman Janet Schwarzenegger pointed out that the library needs to be open on Saturday to accommodate students. The Acra Community Center is also utilized on weekends.

Town Supervisor John Coyne said that officials were looking into various plans to save money.

“I would love to see this happen, but I don’t think it will happen this heat season,” he said.

Hours for the tax collector and assessor have already been publicized on department forms and could not be changed, he said.

Cairo officials did not respond to several attempts to learn how much the town spends on heating the building and how much money would be saved by switching to a four-day work week.

Storm ends 2008 with a chill
The Daily Mail
Jan. 1, 2009

Greene County residents celebrated the arrival of the New Year Wednesday from under a blanket of snow.

A winter weather advisory was in effect for western Greene County Wednesday until 4 p.m., warning that temperatures, already in the 20s, would feel colder as wind gusts would reach up to 40 miles per hour.

The National Weather Service in Albany said the storm dumped about 6 inches of snow in Catskill while 6.5 inches fell in Cairo.

Crews cleaned up an accident Wednesday morning on Main Street, in Catskill, where a sedan skidded through the intersection at Thompson Street and slammed into the Greene County Office Building on Main Street. The driver was uninjured, according to Catskill Police Sgt. John Lyles.

The car shattered a window and damaged a wall in the Department of Motor Vehicles’ office space, Greene County Clerk Michael Flynn said.

Flynn said that the breach had been temporarily repaired when he arrived at the office at 7:45 A.M.

“Greene County Buildings and Grounds did a great job buttoning it all up,” he said.

Greene County Highway Department crews started laying down de-icing agents and plowing at 4 a.m. Wednesday, said Deputy County Highway Department Superintendent Robert Van Valkenberg said.

“It was very slippery earlier,” he said.

Van Valkenberg said that crews would monitor roads today for snow drifts that had been moved by winds overnight.

Denise VanBuren, vice president of public relations for Central Hudson, said she was aware of only three power outages in the county. She said that a dry snow, like that which fell on Wednesday, was not likely to cause problems with power lines.

Slick roads, however, could contribute to outages, she said.

“Problems would come with the unfortunate person who does not heed the warnings and slides off the road into one of our poles,” she said.

State Police responded to several minor accidents on the Thruway Wednesday morning. Troop T authorities said that most of the accidents were minor.

Wednesday’s snow may not melt today, the National Weather Service said, as temperatures will stay below 20 degrees and wind chills will plunge far below zero.