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Deborah Owens remembers the knock on the door.
That’s where she starts her story.
She said she was a “hermit,” living out in the woods near Thurman. She didn’t go into town and the few times anyone did knock, she ignored it.
This time she answered the door.
She still doesn’t know why.
“And I let the person in,” said Owens, still surprised by her actions years later. “Talked for 45 minutes. I was impressed.”
She got involved in a town project called “Thurman Free Store.” It’s kind of like a townwide garage sale - except for free. Everyone was encouraged to bring the stuff they didn’t want to the Thurman Town Hall and the next day everyone could take what they wanted.
They did one in April and have another one scheduled Sept. 28-29.
It was a small thing, but in Thurman it was a big thing.
Deborah came up to me after Mary Miller’s “Fact-checking for All” event at Crandall Public Library a couple weeks ago.
She told me she brought five other people from Thurman.
That was a surprise.
It’s a shade under 20 miles to get to Thurman, but it’s farther late at night.
So here was the thing.
The hope for the fact-checking event was for it to be a beginning, to be the first of many all around the region. That’s how I was going to measure success.
Give people the tools to fact-check, challenge the craziness on social media and that will lead them to be good citizens and smarter voters.
That helps us all. That brings us together.
Thankfully, Owens saw it that way, too.
She wanted to bring Mary Miller up to what she called “the interior” of the Adirondack Park.
She’s talking about having a Mary Miller event at the library in Warrensburg and another one at the Tannery Pond community center in North Creek. She thinks the Tannery Pond one will happen.
While Owens was working on the interior, Melissa Carli over at the Salem Bancroft Public Library was looking to bring Mary Miller to Salem for another fact-checking event.
But these are small towns with few resources, and the New York Publishers Foundation charges $500 for Miller to do her presentations, plus mileage.
If you can help out, let me know and I can put you in contact with Miller, Owens or Carli.
Owens talked about being a “rigorous fact-checker” in her own life and the struggles she has had having a conversation with other members of her family because of their political beliefs.
I asked Owens about what she was hearing about the fact-checking event.
“Pretty astonishing,” Owens said. “Everybody was, it went from appreciative up to grateful.”
Owens said one of the people from Thurman told her it had opened his eyes, “I feel like a dummy. This made me feel really dumb.”
The sad part is that many of us feel that way these days. It’s easy to be duped and misled.
A couple of days after the fact-checking event, Owens posted my article on the town website. Then she posted her idea about holding an event locally.
And people were interested. It’s now a matter of working out the details and raising the money.
“I’m surprised at the reception it is getting from everyone we speak to,” Owens said.
She’s hoping to hold the event in North Creek the third week in September.
It’s another beginning and it’s needed more than ever.
I heard from Adirondack Theater Festival’s Martha Banta that ATF is planning on offering a bus trip to Albany to see my play The Last American Newspaper, which is being performed Sept. 25-Oct. 18 at Capital Repertory Theater.
Banta said ATF would be reaching out to all those who attended any of the four readings at the Wood Theater last year and would offer discounted tickets to ATF members.
She even asked if I would be willing to be on the bus trip. We’re trying to work out the details on that.
I hope it all comes together. My only vision when I first pitched the play to ATF was for it to have a full production in Glens Falls. While that did not come to pass, it would be great to bring that Glens Falls spirit to Albany.
It’s their story, too.
For Tickets to The Last American Newspaper:
As a warmup for Capital Rep’s production of The Last American Newspaper, Sept. 25-Oct. 18 in Albany, I’ll be speaking at the Queensbury Senior Center on Monday, August 31 at 2 p.m.
I’ll give you the story behind the story — how my book was developed into a play and a full stage production.
Rehearsals begin for the play on Sept. 1.
More than 50 people showed up for movie night Monday at Crandall Public Library.
Instead of super heroes, the audience was treated to a sobering dose of reality that looked at George Orwell’s life, his book 1984 and the rise of authoritarianism around the world.
And yet, most stayed for another 30 minutes to discuss the film, Orwell 2+2=5, and what worries us about the world around us.
It was therapeutic. It was good to hear that other people have the same worries.
The event was sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Glens Falls with Will Doolittle and me acting as moderators after the discussion.
If you wonder why all the tax breaks seem to favor the wealthy, a new Public Citizen’s report sheds some light on the subject.
It found that President Trump appointed 57 people to work in his administration who have a net worth of at least $100 million — each.
That is startling.
Consider Trump’s cabinet: Eight of its 23 members are worth more than $100 million, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
That’s a lot more money than most teachers make.
“Wealth, perhaps second only to loyalty, has been a prized attribute for Donald Trump during his second presidency,” The Associated Press wrote.
The number of people in the administration worth $100 million is more than four times the combined total from the past three presidents.
The report concluded that having that much wealth in charge of policy can lead to problems.
“When the people holding the reins of government are drawn overwhelmingly from the ranks of the ultra-rich, it leads to misplaced incentives and corruption, and begs the question, ‘Whose interests they are truly serving?” said Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen’s co-president.
The list does not include Trump or the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
You might remember the former congressman from Buffalo, Chris Collins.
After learning inside information about a coming government deal, Collins made a phone call to his son, telling him to unload his stock. He and his son were arrested by the FBI for insider trading. He eventually resigned his congressional seat, was found guilty of insider trading and began serving a 26-month prison sentence in October 2020.
President Trump pardoned him in December 2020.
Those crimes would disqualify most people from elected office, but not Collins.
Collins has resurfaced in Florida, where he is running for a congressional seat.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has added another benefit to its officer recruitment efforts — fully paid insurance to any local police officers who make immigration arrests and then face financial consequences if they are accused of misconduct.
The agency says it will subsidize liability insurance for state and local officers who are trained and deputized to enforce federal immigration laws.
ICE’s partnerships with local police departments soared under Trump, but New York just passed a law forbidding those partnerships.
ICE proposed to subsidize approximately $250 for each individual under the plan, or roughly the price of the insurance.
It appears cannon fire in the Adirondacks is going to be put on hold.
Both Michael Hopmeier, the man who wants to bring a howitzer firing range to the Adirondacks, and the environmental groups that oppose the range have asked to stop a special state hearing on the project.
According to Adirondack Explorer, Protect the Adirondacks, Adirondack Council, Adirondack Wild, Friends of the Forest Preserve and Sierra Club are all calling on the Adirondack Park Agency to reject the firing range.
“Because the applicants have failed to meet their burden of proof despite having been provided every opportunity to do so, the APA Board cannot make its required findings under the APA Act and the application must be denied,” wrote Christopher Amato, counsel and conservation director for Protect the Adirondacks to the court.
Hopmieir doesn’t want his application denied, but he wants it sent back to the APA to work out “unanswered questions” outside of a hearing.
Now it’s up to the judge.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and his play “The Last American Newspaper” is being produced by Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany Sept. 25 to Oct. 18 . He currently lives in both Queensbury, N.Y. and New Orleans, La.
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