Photo This

I’ve had a couple more peices up at All Over Albany, on Dyken Pond and the Saratoga & North Creek Snow Train. Go ahead, check those out, I’ll wait.

Dyken Pond was a surprise. I’ve visited most of the environmental centers in the area but had no idea Dyken Pond existed or was as interesting as it is — and I sort of grew up in Rensselaer county. Totally my fault. I didn’t visit at the best time, but I’ll blame that on the weather, there should have been some snow already. It looks like a great place to snowshoe and I’m eager to visit again in the spring for the vernal pond and fall for what should be an impressive color show. Some stuff that didn’t make it into the AOA article:

This is a “pufball” mushroom, likely Morganella pyriformis. Pyriformis is one of the few puffballs that grow on wood, in fact decomposing the wood as part of their life cycle. I can’t be absolutely sure of the classification but it’s a safe bet. These are smaller than they seem, only about a centimeter across — I was using a 35mm lens on tubes for ninja macro performance.

This was by far more interesting to me, maybe because I’m easily amused. On the right you see a quartz vein, all over you see moss and some lichen. This tells a story, albeit a long, protracted, and uneventful one. Under all the moss to the left is likely granite, though I didn’t scrape it off to check. Lichen and moss are known as pioneer species and in cases like this one are successional. See, lichen is a symbiosis of algae and fungus — basically something you really do not want on your feet. The fungus gives the algae a hospitable place to live and in return the algae photosynthesizes and provides the fungus with some food. As someone way smarter than me once said, lichens are fungi who’ve developed agriculture.

But fungi eat more than just algae poop, they can actually slowly decompose minerals, and being extremely hardy they can colonize and live on mineral deposits — what we usually call “rocks”. So lichen actually turn rocks into soil over a long period of time, and eventually mosses are happy to call that soil home. So long lichen, thanks for all the hard work. So, why did I find the above quartz and moss interesting? Lichens are able to colonize and break down certain rock types much more easily than others, and this is a perfect illustration. Lichens can live on quartz, but it’s much easier for them to live on the granite in which we often see quartz veins. The boundary you see is there because of the particular adaptability of the lichens paving the way, and if that doesn’t quite blow your mind, this colonization likely started hundreds of years ago. It takes a long, long time for lichens to turn rock into a suitable home for moss.

There’s lots of other geeky sciencey naturey stuff at Dyken Pond, like glacial erratics. These are massive boulders that ice sheets just decided they didn’t want anymore so they just kind of left them all over the Northeast. It’s glacier trash that gets in our way, which is kind of funny but not really seeing as our trash is sort of destroying what’s left of glaciers. Whoops.

The Snow Train, now that was fun. As the AOA editors mentioned at the end, this was a media junket, which I’m not completely comfortable with. You just can’t honestly evaluate something you’re not paying for, but I took the time to talk to the poor schmucks who did pay (okay, that’s unfair, they were really nice), to help get an idea if riding in the dome car was worth it or not. When the train stopped over a mist-covered river lit with the golden Adirondack sunrise and everyone jumped toward the windows to take photos, I had my answer.

As I mentioned in the piece, if you aren’t hitting the runs you aren’t getting your full money’s worth, but I enjoyed riding the gondola up and stomping around. Way in the past I took three snowboard lessons and decided careening down a mountain in winter was not for me, so I’m fascinated by ski/snowboard culture and particularly life at the top of the run.

I tried to get as many candid, street-style photos as I could, but even a breakfast Bloody Mary didn’t loosen the pressure of being on assignment, so stuck mainly to what I knew would run. We were also on something of a schedule, but I tried to get an honest look at life on slopes. It’s definitely something I want to go back and spend more time with.

I like North Creek more than it may have seemed in the AOA piece. It’s a small Adirondack town that’s kept its individuality in the face of being a tourist destination — Gore may not be nationally known but it’s one of the more popular mountains in the east. Compare that to somewhere like Lake Placid, which is a blatant tourist trap. The people are great and honestly happy to see you. We stopped at Marsha’s, advertising the best burger in town, for lunch. We were the only table, but the burger didn’t disappoint, especially for the price. Medium rare came out perfectly medium rare and it was not just a preformed Sysco patty. As we walked out, the staff were playing cards on the bar, and after leaving I knew I should have stopped and taken a few photos, even if it meant switching lenses and mounting a flash. But once the idea came to me, I felt too self conscious to go back and ask, so I filed it away in the endless folder of “things to remember for next time”.

After some shopping and sightseeing we whiled away another hour or so at the Barking Spider, which I absolutely, 100% recommend visiting if you’re in North Creek. This is the townie bar. We were mostly ignored — probably because I’m not the most outgoing person — which I respect. The pickled eggs were fantastic. PBR cans are $2, and there’s a giant fish with a clock hung at one end of the bar and a huge wooden spider with a couple hundred dollars of small bills signed by patrons behind it. I love that place.

Unfortunately, as you can read in the article, the trip didn’t end as well as it could have. The vast majority of my traveling companions, most of whom had paid for the thing, were still in good spirits. I used that as further anecdotal data (hah) that the trip is worth it, and had I spent $80 I would still feel that way. Riding in that dome car is great, giving a view of the Adirondacks that’s impossible otherwise. If we get some more snow I’ll probably take the $55 dome car round trip and just chill in North Creek. And if they continue the service year-round, it’ll be a great way to get up to to some rafting, hiking, and camping.

I know posts have been few and far between. I’ve got a few things up my sleeves, stay tuned. Thanks for reading.

Ever repeat a word so much it loses it’s meaning, becoming gibberish? That’s where I am with “occupy”, it’s only a lingual click and kiss, though I’m no less sympathetic than I was at the start. The last time I mentioned Occupy Albany was in October, politically that’s prehistory, so what’s happened since then?

In October, it did in fact snow, something most of us in Albany forgot about because we didn’t see it again until just a few days ago.

November brought little in the way of inclement weather, easing the occupation’s namesake. As I understand, most of the tents were actually not occupied at night; the vast majority of occupiers, having jobs, families, and other responsibilities, erected them both as a statement of solidarity and to provide shelter for those who needed it and did want to stay the night.

The daily protests and regular meetings continued, and I stopped by when I could to see how things were going. One popular anti-occupy narrative claimed the camp was attracting the homeless who were causing problems. When I visited on the 5th, I saw some people I would knee-jerk classify as homeless, which I can’t confirm, but everyone was friendly and I didn’t hear of any reported issues. The man on the right, below, was nice to me and everyone else, and tried to get his reluctant friend into the photo.

November 11 is Veterans Day. I visited during the parade expecting some clashes; the occupy movement has been branded by the right-wing media as a leftist movement to rival the Tea Party, and the nationalism associated with Veterans Day should be likely to stir tensions, I thought. Aside from some dismissive comments overheard at the parade itself, the occupiers were left to respectfully express themselves, and they were even represented by marching with the Veterans for Peace.

On November 15, a splinter group led by Bradley Russell began challenging the invisible city/state boundary between Lafayette and Academy parks. This repeated nightly several times including arrests. On the 17th, Occupy Albany organized a rally and daytime march to the capitol building, with representatives from across the state including New York City joining.

By the 23rd, all arrest charges had been dropped and the protesters agreed to stop encroaching on Lafayette Park.

December brought unseasonably mild weather to Albany. Occupy Albany had an easy go of continuing their stay in Academy Park. But on December 2nd, the city inspected the camp levying 15 heath and safety violations, giving until December 22 to vacate. The protesters accepted a permit that lasted until the 22nd, but worked to improve conditions toward allowing them to stay beyond.

Many of these violations were on sanitary grounds which the occupiers previously responded to.

(from November 17)

On December 5, Occupy Albany removed unoccupied tents and other items in response to the inspection. This didn’t help and the December 22nd vacation (as in “vacate now”, not “go on a holiday”) proceeded. The protesters had a surprise for the Albany Police Department, physically lifting their large last remaining tent off the ground and parading it around the streets of downtown Albany for over an hour.

The APD were extremely lenient and helpful during this march, blocking traffic and escorting the protesters along their several mile path during rush hour. The occupiers attempted to set their tent back down in the park at the end, resulting in our very own pepper spray incident, over which both sides are still arguing. The Capitol Confidential blog has good coverage, I’ll give a shout out here to Jimmy Vielkind who’s been on top of this story from the start, he’s the hardest working person Albany.

In the meantime, on December 20, Occupy Albany released a demand, which did nothing to quiet critics who railed against the occupy movement for having no demand.

So, without a camp, where is Occupy Albany now? They have solidified their message and organization and are continuing to speak out in furtherance of their stated goals. In the early days I said give them time to learn how to effectively protest and organize, which they seem to be doing, yet this is not the endgame. I hesitate to inflate the importance of the occupy movement nationally, but with the GOP presidential nomination race in full swing I find some dots to connect between Occupy and, say, the attack on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital. Has the message of the 99% penetrated even the staunchly pro-1% Republican Party?

Most recently, Occupy Albany protested the Citizens United ruling by marching at the U.S. District Court on Broadway, complete with a “democracy funeral march”. One of their chants is “the people united will never be defeated” giving an Orwellian doublethink to “Citizens United”. It was 22 degrees and breezy, I didn’t want to stay for more than ten minutes.

You can view my Occupy Albany Photos in slideshows, I’ve broken them down by month: October 2011, November 2011, December 2011, January 2012. Many others have been covering the protest photographically too; Dylan Boyce, Sebastien, Happy Accidents, Tim Raab, dwlcx, MikeCNY; Sotto Voce at Daily Kos has some good photos too. If I missed you, leave a comment with a good link to your Occupy Albany Photos.

I’ll keep documenting Occupy Albany as well as I can.

It may not feel like winter in Albany lately, but it’s December, and that means another Santa Speedo Sprint. I’ve talked about this in 2010 and 2009, so I’ll keep this mainly photos. The latest word I have is that ASAP raised over $20,000 for the Albany Damien Center, which is fantastic.

This year the sprinters were especially amorous. Draw your own conclusions.

That last one is from Lionheart Pub, where the awards and official unofficial afterparty were held. That gave its own opportunity for more photos.

I split this one into two sets, here are the slideshows for the sprint itself and the aftermath. All Over Albany has their own photos (I love the third one down, killer lighting) and a good roundup; more photos from Sebastien, albany_tim, anobjectn, and MikeCNY. If you have some, drop a comment!