The third Immutable Truths of My Home Town is: Everyone is half the man his father was. It is as established a fact and as impossible to escape as gravity. It’s also most “provable” if father and son were in the same line of work and were lifelong residents, because then the ...

This week’s column continues the theme of Small Town Truisms, and discusses Cronk’s Law, named after one of our constabulary, Sgt. Cronk. It is, “Everybody dies famous in their hometown.” I can add to this that not only do they die famous, but they die bigger and better too. It’s ...

Last week, I survived a brief — but not brief enough — encounter with The Number One Gothamite: Benjamin Franklin Fairbanks XIV. Though he claims he’s related to the original Ben Franklin of kite-flying and bifocal-inventing fame, he’s as directly related to Old Ben as I am to Jesus. ...

In journalism parlance, “scoop,” as a noun, means the latest news. As a verb, it means to get your story in print before any of your rivals. In the dog-eat-dog J-Biz world, where breaking news is everything and morality is nothing, scooping another paper or reporter is just bizness as ...

Last weekend was The Paul Smith’s College reunion and it was a special one for the Class of ‘75, since it was their 50th. It was also special for me, because having started teaching there in ‘73, that class was my first one. Beyond that, two of my rave-faves from the class, Jack Skelley ...

Question: Why can’t DOT employees do math? Answer: Because they think this (see photo) is between four and seven feet. OK, so that’s a joke of sorts and not strictly true, but if you check out some of the bike lanes in and around SL, you might think so. New York State law says bike ...