I've spent my life telling people that I am a voter who looks at all candidates and decides which one is the best based on experience, positions on issues, track record, blah, blah, blah.

Yes, I am that guy. The one who proudly maintains that political orientation doesn't enter into the equation when determining who I think is the best person for the job.

Then I always pick the Democrat when I go to vote. I have good friends who preach the same gospel of non-partisanship and then always vote Republican. I think the truth is that most people are one or the other – Democrat or Republican - no matter what they say at cocktail parties or after church.

But Dede Scozzafava was going to be my ticket out of decades of posing as an independent thinker. She was going to get my vote in the 23rd Congressional District race and become the first Republican to be endorsed by me in nearly 34 years and who knows how many elections.

That was before the all-capitals, bold and big headline screamed out at me from the front page of my Times: SCOZZAFAVA BOWS OUT. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20091101/NEWS03/311019920/0/FRONTPAGE

It was Sunday morning so my first thought was that God didn't want me voting for a Republican – even a clear-thinking, moderate one who has a grasp on local issues gained through years of service in political offices from Gouverneur mayor to state assemblywoman. It took a few cups of coffee to shake out the cobwebs and conclude that God probably has bigger things to worry about than my voting record or a congressional race in an area the national media describes as, “somewhere in New York.”

Turns out that God didn't force Dede to throw in the towel, it was mostly a group of Republicans with a bunch of money and a dream to send a message to moderates in their ranks. A “my dogma is bigger than yours” type thing.

These conservative powerbrokers picked a candidate – Doug Hoffman - to spew general messages of tax cuts and less government and pro-life and anti-gay marriage. Then they bankrolled him onto the ballot as a Conservative Party candidate. Dede couldn't compete. All she had was a proven record as a state legislator and local knowledge to help her understand how to do the job in a way that would best serve the north country. That apparently doesn't buy you votes these days. You need the cash.

Hoffman's cash didn't come from somebody in Hermon or Hopkinton or Adams Center or from anywhere that cares about the north country. It came from folks who know so little about the north country that they would likely believe it if you told them Alexandria Bay was an exotic dancer. They know the 23rd Congressional District only as a place they might be able to make a political point for their team nationally. They might know where it is exactly, but I doubt it. They probably just describe it as “somewhere in New York.”

It is somewhere, by the way, where their handpicked Hoffman robot doesn't even live. A minor concern, I suppose, if you have your eyes on a bigger prize and aren't worried about the little people who actually do live in the district. Hoffman and his moneybaggers might be pro-life, but they sure aren't pro-north country life.

I looked at all the candidates, and based on experience, positions on issues and track record, Dede was the best choice. I could have cast a symbolic vote for her and legitimized my claim that my interest is in picking the best person, not party. It was an option I thought about well and long while I stood in the voting booth with my Sharpie marker and paper ballot. Then I chose the Democrat.

Bill Owens may not be Dede. He may not be my inaugural Republican vote. But most importantly, he's not Hoffman ... and he won. That is a victory for the north country.

Steve Warr is on a mission to do away with the village of Potsdam.

This wouldn't be nearly as newsworthy if he was one of the local nutjobs who periodically come out of the woodwork to protest something the village government is or isn't doing. It wouldn't be that newsworthy if he was just a longtime businessman with an opinion that village government is costly and unnecessary. What makes Warr's quest interesting is he is a village trustee – or at least soon will be.

The Democrat is running unopposed for a village seat in the Nov. 3 election. His campaign strategy is: “Hire me so I can work to get myself fired.” Well, not fired exactly, eliminated. Or consolidated. Or dissolved. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20091024/NEWS05/310249959 Call it what you want, he'll lose his job as a trustee if he is able to make good on his campaign promise to get rid of the village government. He WANTS to lose his job.

I like the way he thinks. But I also think he'll still have a job four years from now when his term expires. The idea of getting rid of the village isn't new ... people have been talking about doing it for more than a decade. The problem is it makes far too much sense for it to actually happen. People don't generally like change. And there is always some measure of comfort in the devil you know.

The truth is the change proposed by Warr probably wouldn't end up being that much of a change. There would be no village government, but services would likely continue under a new master and need to be paid for by residents. The only thing that would change is what you put on the “pay to” line of your checks. The devil would still be there, he would just have a different name.

If the goal is to lower the cost of living in what now is the village, getting rid of the government is a good first step. A baby step. Saving real money, though, will take more than losing a board of trustees here, a village administrator there. It will take residents willing to say things like we don't need to spend a boatload of bucks for a police force that doesn't do much beyond breaking up beer parties and giving out traffic tickets.

The generally safe streets of Potsdam would not go to the devil if we didn't have village cops. State police, the St. Lawrence County Sheriff's Department and SUNY Potsdam cops surely could fill the gaps well enough if we didn't have the village blue to stop students from occasionally relieving themselves from the pressures of college life in the middle of Market Street. So losing the local patrols would have no practical effect on Potsdam residents other than lowering their village tax bill by a considerable chunk of change. And I can almost guarantee it won't happen.

People like the perceived protection of having a local police force. It's comfortable seeing “Potsdam” on the side of a cop car in your neighborhood ... and comfort most often trumps cost-benefit analysis when it comes to paying for police. It's easy to complain about taxes being too high. It's not as easy to accept the cuts that would have to be made to lower the levy.

Steve is probably going to lose his fight to lose his job. But even if he wins and puts himself out of work, it won't be much of a victory if all we end up with is a different devil collecting the same high taxes for services – needed ones, luxuries and ones that aren't vital – that we've always gotten.

Paul Matott doesn't look like you. He doesn't look like me. Like lots of folks these days, he's got a lot of tattoos on his body. But what sets him apart from others is his face is literally a work of art.

I don't know his story. I don't know if the intricate etchings that blanket his face from the neck up mean something special. I don't know how, when or why he made the decision to become a man of color. I don't know him except to say hi when I walk by with my girl dogs and he is sitting in front of the Sleepy Hollow tattoo parlor in Potsdam where he works.

I know that he lives on my street. I know that he probably takes the same path home each night from Sleepy Hollow – shortcutting the trip by going through the Clarkson Inn parking lot and a small field to get to Hamilton Street. I know that three guys and a two-by-four jumped and beat him when he was making that walk Friday night. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20091020/NEWS05/310209948 I don't know why.

I know that the motive wasn't robbery. Paul says he had a laptop computer and $1,300 on him when they came out of the bushes wielding pepper spray and the lumber. When they ran away and jumped in a red SUV waiting for them on Bay Street, he still had the money and the laptop. So if they were robbers, they were really bad at it.

I am no Columbo, but it sure looks like this band of young punks staked out Paul's nightly route for the sole purpose of ambushing him and beating him up. I can only guess why: He didn't look like them. That is more disturbing than if the motive was robbery.

Robbery – as heinous as it might be – is a crime I can at least understand. Robbery solves a need for money. Beating someone because they are different solves no need that I can think of. I hope the police ask the punks when they catch them what pleasure they got out of their act - what need was solved by leaving Paul laying in the field.

And I do think they will be caught. If the motivation wasn't money, it had to be some sort of twisted bragging rights within a twisted social sphere where these kids hang out. So they have to tell people what they did or they lose whatever value the act had for them. The more people you have trying to keep the secret, the better the chance it will escape the twisted sphere.

The farther from ground zero the secret gets, the more likely it will find its way to a person whose sense of right and wrong leans more closely to the right. Maybe that will be a parent. Maybe a policeman. Maybe it will be someone who wants to claim the $500 reward being offered by Paul's boss. I can almost guarantee these kids will be caught. Their success on this very disturbing mission - like Paul's injuries - will only be temporary.

I don't know if their actions will be considered a “hate crime” and subject to tougher penalties. You might have to be gay, or Jewish, or black, or old, or member of some other traditional minority to be officially hated under federal law. I am not sure Paul qualifies. He's just a guy who made the choice not to look like me or you or the twisted punks who needed numbers and lumber to prove they were tough.

Hacketts President Herbert Becker has a bunch of jobs he wants to fill at his company's department store in Ogdensburg. St. Lawrence County has a bunch of people out of work. It doesn't get more yin and yang, more ham and egg, more Tracy and Hepburn, than that.

Except when Becker offered up jobs, the jobless said, “no thanks.” Yin gave yang the brush off. Egg kicked ham off the plate. Tracy and Hepburn .... well, they're just dead. Maybe that wasn't a good comparison.

In any event, Becker was shocked when he got no response to advertisements seeking applicants for 12 clerk, cashier and sales positions at his store.

“It seems so strange. I thought we'd put up a few notices and we'd be overrun, but we're not getting anybody," he said in a recent Times article. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20091005/NEWS05/310059979

It does seem strange on its face. Like a homeless person refusing to accept free lodging because the drapes in the apartment being offered clash with his Army green knapsack. Or like me turning down a cheeseburger. It is not something that you would think would happen.

But it did. And maybe it isn't so strange. Hacketts hasn't been the poster child of stability lately.

It was a cool store for a long time. You could buy a high-end All-Clad frying pan or a plunger. A Woolrich brand sweater or fishing tackle. A weed whacker or bottle of Drano. It offered quality, variety, and stayed open until 9 p.m. on weekdays. People liked Hacketts.

It grew from its Ogdensburg roots and added stores. It got bigger. It got sold. It got bigger. It got bigger. Then it tanked. Financial troubles led to months and months of nearly empty shelves in its stores. Workers in the stores would tell tales of being kept in the dark about the company's problems. They'd come to work each day with little to do and only a sliver of gratefulness that they had jobs at all. People started liking Hacketts a lot less.

Then stores started closing. Watertown – gone. Canton – gone. Massena – gone. Potsdam – gone. Jobs – gone. Massena rose from the dead and reopened. Gouverneur received the death sentence but got a last-minute stay of execution. Store closings and near-closings aren't the kind of things that makes potential workers bang down the door for the chance to wear a Hacketts smock.

At least that is what Becker – hired to turn the struggling business around – is finding out. People want jobs, but more than that, they want job security. Becker can promise them that a turnaround is on the horizon, as he does in ads that shout in bold letters, “Hacketts is here to stay!” But words aren't the best building blocks of confidence in a company. He needs to roll out the turnaround and let people see it for themselves. Until that happens, he should expect some rough going on the hiring front.

It may take a while to remake Hacketts into the store it once was – the one that people liked. I hope Becker succeeds, because I am one of those people. My winter coat was purchased at Hacketts. I bought two of my bird feeders there. I kept Yankee Candle in business with birthday, anniversary and Christmas presents from Hacketts over the years. The paint in my living room came from its shelves. I have been a fan for a long time. It would be sad if the company ends up like Tracy and Hepburn.

The guy slumping next to me at the bar perked up when he heard a television news reporter on Cornwall Island say that the Seaway International Bridge might close again because of a dispute between the Canadian government and the Akwesasne Mohawks. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090923/NEWS05/309239966

“She ish gonna get inta deep doo-doo for calling the Mohawks a slobberin' nation,” he said.

I explained to him that she had said “sovereign nation,” but his head was back down on the bar and he was snoring. Good thing, too, because he might have asked what she meant by that and the answer would have given him the spins quicker than the whiskey he was drinking.

The Mohawks are a sovereign nation except when the United States or Canada says they are not and starts bossing them around. So it is technically correct to incorrectly say that the Mohawks and the land they live on is sovereign. I warned you this could make your head spin.

Take Cornwall Island, for instance. No one disputes that it is part of the Akwesasne reservation and sovereign land of the Mohawk tribe. Except the Canadian government owns it. So when a Mohawk returns home to the island from the United States, they have to report to Canadian Customs. If they don't, Canada comes and seizes their sovereign cars.

Canadian Customs used to be on what is but isn't the sovereign Mohawk land of Cornwall Island. The Mohawks for years put up with that breach of their not-so-sovereign sovereignty. But when Canada decided to give their border guards guns this year, the Mohawks protested and the bridge was closed. During the time the bridge was closed, the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino on the American side of the Indian reservation lost an estimated $3 million worth of Canadian business. If it closes for good, as some Mohawks are calling for, it could be financially devasting to the casino. Nobody ever said pseudo-sovereignty was cheap.

The bridge reopened after the border guards were moved off the island and into the city of Cornwall. This means those folks living on Cornwall Island now can't go straight home after a night at the casino in the States. Well, they can, but like I said, then Canada takes away their car. Sovereignty gives. Sovereignty takes away.

On the gives side of the ledger, both of the North American federal governments allow the Mohawks to sell tax-free cigarettes and give them the freedom to let people smoke them inside public buildings like casinos – which were not legal to operate on sovereign Indian land until the feds figured out how lucrative sovereignty could be.

On the takes side of the ledger, when the governments figure out a way to collect taxes on the cigarettes, that strand of sovereignty will be stripped away from the Mohawks faster than you can spell Akwesasne.

The Mohawks clearly get to operate under different rules from other Americans or Canadians, but calling them sovereign is like calling a man pregnant: Saying it doesn't make it so. And it is ridiculous. Yet we do it every day in papers and on televised news reports without ever having to make a correction or clarification after the story runs.

I am sort of glad I didn't have to explain all this to my drunken friend. I doubt he would have been able to follow the story. Then again, maybe it all makes more sense if you are too drunk to think.

Three times I have edited stories about the Ogdensburg School Board voting against filling a seat left when one of its members resigned. Three times I came away shaking my head.

The vacancy leaves an even number of votes and creates the possibility of ties. Sounds like an easy enough problem to solve. You fill the seat. It's math in its simplest form: Add one person and you will always have a majority on one side of any vote. But the city school board keeps failing the test. Four members vote to fill the seat. Four vote against. That's a tie. See the problem, folks?

The board members voting to stomp on common sense and logic by keeping the tie-breaking seat empty apparently don't see the problem. And none of them - President Frederick P. Bean and board members Angela M. Rufa, Paul M. Drummond and Vicky M. Peo - have given a clear reason why they are content to maintain the deadlock in a vote that would remove the possibility of deadlocks.

"The law says we may fill the seat ... it doesn't say we have to or shall," Mr. Bean said recently.

You don't have to go swimming or turn on your air conditioner when it's 95 degrees outside, either, but both of those things are still really good ideas. Choosing to sweat doesn't make near as much sense.

The four filibuster types are not just choosing to sweat, they are at the beach covered in blankets and wearing Arctic parkas in August.

And it gets sillier. Filibuster Angela Rufa - after helping tank the third vote - suggested others should respect her opinion and quit bringing up the issue of whether to fill the seat. Her opinion – and the others in the deadlock gang - apparently is that it is a bad idea to eliminate the possibility of tie votes that could stop the board from accomplishing things for the children in the school district. They are saying they welcome the chance to be an ineffective board. That's not an opinion that needs respecting. It needs rejecting.

To be fair to the filibuster four, they haven't technically given an opinion or offered insight as to why they don't want to add a ninth member to the board. They voice their opinions with their puzzling votes. And as far as the issue of tie votes with an eight person board goes, Mr. Bean has a plan of attack should that arise: “We'll deal with it,” he said. Quite a plan, Mr. President.

There must be more to the story. Something none of the board members want to talk about in public. There is no other way to explain the odd behavior of these four board members. Or maybe they just love the irony that a tie vote is stopping an action that could stop tie votes.

There have been residents at meetings who ask them to do the sensible thing and fill the seat. Joseph Lightfoot, the guy who left the seat, has urged them to fill it. Former board members have attended the meetings to give them a nudge in the right direction. Nine candidates ran for three seats in the last school board election, so there are plenty of people out there who would be interested in serving on the board. They easily could fill the seat. But it appears they won't. Tthat seat will likely remain empty until an election in May, thanks to the filibuster four.

That means no more having to scratch my head after editing a story about another tie vote. I suppose my chafed scalp is the only winner in this whole deal.

Love Nugget had one word when she read that Potsdam's economic development specialist thinks there is a good chance a major retailer will step in to fill the void left by the closing of Hacketts.

Nordstrom.

Nordstrom is a major retailer where you can listen to someone playing a grand piano while you browse for brassieres that lift while separating you from a couple hundred dollars. I don't think it would be a good fit in a shopping plaza that has a store where you can save a nickel on your groceries by bringing your own bags and a Cheers-like bar where a lighted sign keeps track of every time a local Norm knocks back a Jaegerbomb.

But my woman is a dreamer on a grand scale. She still holds out hope that I will one day quit sneezing into my hand and then wiping the microscopic bugs on my pant legs. I told you she was a dreamer.

In her defense, though, her dreams – aside from those related to my personal hygiene - are not that much different from James A. Murphy's. Murphy is the economic development guru who gets paid real money for predicting the Hacketts building won't stay empty for long. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090918/NEWS05/309189940 His dreams are not nearly as specific as Nugget's. A major retailer? K-Mart? Target? Bed and Bath? Pet Smart? Home Depot? Nordstorm? Who knows?

If Murphy does, he is not telling. He doesn't have to. He is paid only to dream. His argument is that Potsdam's economy is solid, so it's a no-brainer that some major retailer will want to set up shop here and exploit that fact. Best Buy? Costco? Kohl's? Macy's? Who knows?

I am leaning toward none of the above. A lot of these stores are failing in big markets in this economy. I can't see a reason they would want to try their luck in the north country. Potsdam's market isn't big and the economy is about as solid as St. Lawrence River ice in early November.

Some time ago – when the national economy was booming – I remember complaining to a local lifer how little the value of my home was increasing from year-to-year. “You should count your blessings, son. We get sort of giddy up here when the value of our home doesn't decrease from one year to the next,” he said.

That lesson in north country economics has stuck with me. When the national economy is good, ours is bad. When the national economy is bad, ours is bad. Economic developers may be the only people sporting rose-colored glasses around here. Them and my Love Nugget.

The Nugget has only been around here for about four years – most of which living in the Adirondacks, where major retailers are considered nightmares and not part of the economic dream. But she spent 30 years before that in Los Angeles, where shopping is a vocation and I am pretty certain that dreaming is required by city code. So when she sees the empty Hacketts building, she really does have visions of grand pianos and bras that cost as much as my first car.

Murphy's vision may not be as grand, but it is about as realistic. Would Hacketts be packing up its $25 candles and trying to sell them in Ogdensburg if the market was strong in Potsdam? Well, maybe that's not a fair question. Hacketts has its own problems that aren't related to location, location, location. That Hacketts lasted so long in Potsdam is probably more surprising than its recent failure. But I still can't think of a major retailer that would fare better in a town that is short on people, short on jobs and short on money. A town that already has a Walmart and almost has a Lowe's where our limited money can be spent.

It would be great if I end up being wrong. I am just not very confident that will be the case. Major retailers don't get to be major retailers by dreaming. They make decisions for locating stores based on demographics and things like facts. They leave the dreaming to economic development types and middle-aged women who live in the north country and have a jones for shopping.

Business Thai: The Lowe's store in Potsdam may be the exception to the “if it looks like a duck and acts like a duck, you've got a duck” rule. The building on Route 56 in the town clearly looks like a Lowe's store - and month after month some official quacks that it will open in the next month or so - yet there it sits closed and without a lot of activity. I sure hope the “coming soon” Thai Cuisine restaurant at 29 Maple St. isn't adopting the Lowe's business model. There is a sign that says it's coming ... the windows are papered over like you always see before a new business opens ... but there doesn't seem to be a lot of activity going on. And in weeks of trying, our Potsdam reporter has been unable to find the owner to talk about plans for the business. Could the curse of 29 Maple St. be striking before this latest restaurant even opens? http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090821/BLOGS06/908219991/ Or is the owner just trying to get his duck sauce in a row before opening just to ensure it doesn't fail? Stay tuned.

The Tao of weather: When it is 60 degrees in May, I am dancing and singing as I reach for my shorts and Hawaiian shirt. When it is 60 degrees in September, I am crabbing and moaning as I reach for my blue jeans and hoodie sweatshirt. I can't find the science to explain the phenomenon, but 60 degrees in the spring always feels warmer than 60 degrees in the fall.

Dogging it: A friend recently told me that I had officially become one of Potsdam's “characters” because I can be seen every day walking the village streets with three of my dogs: one each at the end of leashes held in my hands and the third tethered to my waist. Most often the young golden retriever is pulling me, the old fat black dog is lagging, and the schnauzer bred for rat hunting is tugging at my midsection as she scouts for squirrels. Not sure who were the other characters my friend lumped me in with, but I am hoping she did not put me on the same list as the guy who used to walk the streets with a paddleball racket swatting at balls only he could see.

Dogging it, part two: Maybe my friend didn't really mean to call me a character. Maybe she meant that I have become one of Potsdam's familiar sights – sort of like the field of toilets at Market and Pleasant streets. That would make more sense to me, because it is true that I get lots of beeps and waves from people driving by when I am walking the girls. Most of the time I don't have a clue who these random folks are .... but they seem to know me. And I can't tell you how many people don't know me when I don't have the girls in tow. I'd have a good chunk of money if I had a buck for every time someone sitting next to me in a bar said: “Oh, you are THAT guy ... I didn't recognize you without your dogs.”

Guilt by association: The other day I let the girls off their leashes in the park and we came upon a woman with her dog. As I was doing my usual “the black dog growls but she has no plan B” routine for the woman, I recognized that we had met the dog mine was giving the alpha treatment to several times before. “Oh, is that Macy?” I asked the woman. When she said it was, I asked if she was dog-sitting and got a puzzled look and no response. So I asked again. This time she said, “Um, no ... Macy is my dog.” So I blundered forward: “Macy is your dog? I thought she belonged to this couple I always see her with down here.” The woman responded: “Um, I am half of that couple.” Turns out I recognized the dog but not the owner without her boyfriend to complete my mental picture. Funny how the brain works ... or in this case, didn't.

Two kinds of people: There are the kind who see me coming to a corner while walking the girls and they speed up to get there first so they don't have to stop for us. They then roll through the stop sign and hurry on their way. Then there are the kind who see me coming and stop 10 yards from the stop sign and wave us through. I like this kind of person.

Crappy way to act: I am so puzzled when I see adults walking their dogs and letting them dump in someone else's yard without picking it up. When Fido dumps in his own yard, I would assume these people don't pick it up and throw it onto their neighbor's grass. I would also assume they would think that's a ludicrously rude thing to do. But that is pretty much what they are doing when they strap Fido on a leash and walk him down to a neighboring house to let him do his duty. As the owner of the poopingest dogs in North America, I am here to tell you that there is nothing hard (or disgusting) about carrying plastic bags and picking up after your animals on a walk. And if you plan it right, you can take a route that has a garbage can within a block or two of ground zero so that you can get rid of your load without having to tote it too far. Offenders – and you know who you are – give all dog owners a bad name when they don't do their duty and pick up their dog's duty. How about you all clean up your act?

All economics is local: My friend in Michigan spent decades working in the auto industry before losing his job to the poor economy several months ago. Last night he sounded about nine beers into a 12-pack when he called to tell me he got a job. In Michigan. In the auto industry. I once heard the economy explained this way: A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. The depression just ended for my friend and his family. Maybe this is the start of something good on a bigger scale. Everybody cross their fingers.

So long summer, we hardly knew you.

The north country's best season sort of spit the bit in 2009. It rained. It was mostly cool. It rained. But that doesn't mean summer up here was a bummer. Summer in the north country is like what the late comedian Richard Pryor once said about sex and pizza: When it is good, it is very, very good. And when it is bad, it's still pretty good.

I got lucky during the pretty good summer of '09. Mother Nature cooperated almost the whole time I was on vacation. There was nothing but sun and blue sky as a back drop for a couple of eagles who flew overhead when I was in a boat fishing and touring the Thousand Islands in August. That same day we got close enough to a loon to see that one of her little bitty babies was hitching a ride atop her back while its sibling floated just behind mom on the St. Lawrence River.

This was way better than pretty good. Even my friend and guide who grew up in Alex Bay and might just be the only legitimate curmudgeon under 30 was positively excited about the wildlife gifts we were treated to that day. Plus we caught some fish and boated our limit of empty Labatt Blue Light cans before docking at a waterside bar. Just another day in paradise.

OK, so maybe the north country isn't paradise. But it is still a pretty good place to be. We live where people vacation. Sometimes in the hubbub of everyday life that is easy to forget.

I forget almost every winter. The athlete in me packed up a bunch of torn knee ligaments and left town years ago, so I don't do a lot of the winter sporty things like skiing or snowshoeing. I don't understand the lure of standing over a hole in ice to fish in sub-zero temperatures. I don't own a snowmobile. I don't hunt. So my winter fun is pretty much limited to mocking people who vehemently opposed the development of Potsdam's Walmart when I see them in the tofu aisle of the big box while doing my weekly grocery shopping. That's fun and gets me out of the weather, but it's not the kind of thing you'd find on a brochure for paradise.

I'll be the first to admit that north country winters can be brutal. When they are bad, they are very, very bad. And when they are good, they are still pretty bad. But I have months before I have to start really griping about that. Today I am all about the summer I love. A summer that except for spurts and spots, didn't show up for true until just before Labor Day.

A little late for my garden and the tomatoes that have struggled under gray skies and through cool days, but in time to remind me that there are fewer better places to be than here when the livin' is easy and the corn stalks are high.

Be assured that I am not being paid by any area Chamber of Commerce to write this column. And I am not saying nice things about the north country summer because my girlfriend fears that the more-controversial positions I've taken in this space are going to get us run out of town and urged me to tone it down for a while. I told Love Nugget that I would never steer away from controversy simply because she wanted to quit wearing a babushka and sunglasses when she went out with me in public.

The truth is that opinions are going to spark people to praise you if they agree with your position or call you a jackass if they don't. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090910/OPINION02/309109975 It doesn't matter what the topic is.

I know there are people out there who don't understand that the north country during the summer is closer to Nirvana than it is to Ottawa. These are the folks who don't fish or swim or hike or camp or golf or appreciate seeing eagles overhead. They are the ones who couldn't care less that they could walk down to the end of the block on a breezy summer night and see a majestic great blue heron silhouetted against a fading sun in the rippling waters of the Raquette River. They are the ones who would call me a jackass for thinking it is special that I can and do. And I do it a lot.

I know there are still plenty of good days left to enjoy before Old Man Winter comes around to screw things up, but the passing of Labor Day forces you to acknowledge that another north country summer is in the books. Maybe it wasn't the best one ever, but it was still pretty good. It always is when you are a jackass lucky enough to live in the north country.

I have worked at the Watertown Daily Times since 1993 and fully understand that I could get fired today if I happen to tell my boss to go pound salt. The reality of being an “at-will” worker is you are free to be fired.

But reality is not always black-and-white. That my boss could fire me doesn't mean he would fire me if I lost my mind for a moment. He might yell at me. He might ask me if I quit taking my medication or started hammering Jim Beam and diets for lunch. He might even suggest I get a CAT scan done to see if something came loose between the cerebral cortex and frontal lobes of my brain. And he surely would write up some sort of reprimand for my personnel file.

My boss is a pretty fair and reasonable guy. He would look at my whole body of work, weigh it against my digression, and ultimately conclude that I earned some slack by not sucking at my job for more than a decade.

Reality for former Potsdam Village Court Clerk Shelley A. Warner is a lot different. She doesn't work for my boss. She doesn't actually work for any boss since Judge Joseph T. Welch fired her recently. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090827/NEWS05/308279944

In the interest of full disclosure: I like Shelley Warner. She started her job about the same time that I started mine and over the years has always been honest, forthright and helpful to me and the reporters who work for me. She answered questions when she could and told us to pound salt when she couldn't. She did have some strong opinions about issues and people within the village, but I can never remember her saying anything bad about the judges for whom she worked.

Her firing surprised the salt out of me.

The comments we received on our Web site after publishing the stories about her firing varied greatly. There were the black-and-whiters who said the judge had the authority to do what he wants, so there is nothing wrong with what he did. There were the Warner supporters who mourned the village's loss of a proven court clerk. And there were the Welch bashers who basically said the judge had all the management skills of a toad.

All these people are right. Welch was free to do what he wanted, so there legally was nothing wrong with what he did. Warner had surely proven herself by serving the village in the job for some 16 years. And you just might get warts if you rub up against the judge during a seminar about good management.

Like I said, I work for a good manager, so I know a little bit about what is good management. Plus I am the most beloved manager in the editorial department of the Watertown Daily Times in all of St. Lawrence County. When I say beloved, I mean that hardly any of my reporters have ever told me to my face to pound salt. Of the few who have, none have been fired without first being formally reprimanded for doing so.

That is the fair and reasonable thing to do – whether you have to or not. There is no evidence that Warner in more than 5,500 days on the job ever received a formal reprimand for doing something wrong. She says she hasn't and no one on the side of firing her has disputed that. Welch hasn't pubicly said why he fired her, but he reportedly told her the reason was insubordination.

The problem is Welch didn't bother to make his case against Warner during the nine months or so she worked for him. He found her guilty and sentenced her to unemployment despite the evidence that she was a good worker who amassed zero formal reprimands during her career at the court. That's not fair or reasonable.

Warner was the victim of a bad boss. There is not much she can do about it but look for a job for the first time in a long time. I'd like to think she has a work record and skill that will get her out of the unemployment line fairly quickly. I also think when Welch comes up for re-election and asks for my vote, I will tell him to go pound salt.

I read the story twice about Carrie L. Whalen stealing money from the non-profit group she headed and still can’t figure out why she was crying in court after pleading guilty and effectively getting no sentence for the crime. She should have been dancing. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090826/NEWS05/308269965

She got no time in jail. She got no fine. She was basically ordered not to steal from her employer anymore – but if she did plan on continuing her career as a white collar criminal, the court said she couldn’t do it at a non-profit agency for at least a year. She was also ordered to pay back the $25,500 she stole from Citizens Against Violent Crimes. It was sort of a slap on the wrist without the slap or the wrist.

I may be missing something, but here’s how all this adds up to me: Whalen orchestrated a scheme that amounted to getting an interest-free loan for more than a year without having to put down any collateral. Her sentence was a pretty sweet deal, not punishment for a crime. It also seems to be par for the courts.

Former Denmark Supervisor Daniel L. Hurlburt earlier this year admitted to taking $11,511 from his town’s coffers while in office. Debra L. Degone a few years ago stole $17,000 from Key Bank in Watertown. Both copped pleas similar to what Whalen walked away with: Pay the money back and go home. No jail. No fines.

I don’t see the deterrent value in such sentencing. It sends the message that if you steal from your employer, you either a.) get away with it. b.) get away with it for a while and then have to repay the loan. You face a greater penalty for driving a few miles an hour faster than the posted speed limit on Route 11.

I wonder if Whalen got caught speeding on the way to turn herself in for stealing this week. That might explain her crying jag in front of the judge – she faced actually having to pay something for a crime she committed. Maybe that is what made her sad.

Her tears might have made more sense if she had some sort of sorrowful tale to tell the court when being sentenced. You know, like she needed the money she stole to pay for quadruple-bypass surgery on a favorite aunt who was left penniless after sending her life-savings to an orphaned prince in Nigeria. Or maybe that she needed the money to save abandoned puppies from being euthanized throughout the north country. I’d be tearing up with her had she held up a photo of an 8-week-old labradoodle retriever and wailed in front of the judge, “I just couldn’t let this little cutie patootie die!”

Turns out Whalen had no such story to tell. She spent the money on things like hotel rooms, eating in restaurants, clothing, and equipment for horses. Stuff someone making $56,000 a year – a nice salary by north country standards – coulda, woulda and shoulda been able to buy without “borrowing” money from her employer.

CAVA was set up to help people. Whalen used her post at CAVA to help herself. Then she got caught. Then she got teary-eyed. Then she found it’s not always true that if you do the crime, you do the time. That is a crying shame.

The good news is there is a Thai restaurant coming to Potsdam. The bad news it is moving into a building that for years has been eating up restauranteurs as eagerly as a fat guy who loves Asian food would devour a plate of gaeng sapparod goong.

Mr. Donut was there and got dunked. Dixie Lee Fried Chicken went south. Monkey Joe’s Bar slipped on a banana peel. California Rotisserie Chicken spun out. The Riverbend took a dive. O’Mally’s Pub and Grill went on a bender. Six restaurants tried. Six restaurants failed. The building is cursed.

I know there will be logic-lovers out there who will say that O’Mally’s failed because it was the only Irish pub in the world that didn’t sell beer. Or that Mr. Donut would still be frying if it didn’t get cited for a laundry list of health department violations. Or that California Rotisserie killed itself by selling chili that was made with white beans and chicken. These are arguments made by the same folks who deny the Curse of the Bambino and suggest the Boston Red Sox lost the 1986 World Series because Bill Buckner was a shoddy fielder.

The logic lovers and all their fancy factoids fail to recognize that the building curse is what caused the problems that led to the restaurant failures. If the curse didn’t exist, O’Mally’s would have easily gotten a state license to sell beer, Mr. Donut would have washed his hands before frying, and nobody would have let California near the chili pot.

Dixie Lee and diners like The Riverbend survive just fine in other buildings in St. Lawrence County, but failed when they gave it a go at 29 Maple St. This is not coincidence, it’s the curse. Monkey Joe’s was touted in the Times as “fun, festive and funky” when it opened. How could a full-proof formula like fun, festive and funky fail? Two words (and for once they aren’t Wal and Mart): the curse.

The Red Sox ended the Curse of the Bambino by signing Johnny Damon for $32 million and then waiting three years. The foodies of Potsdam have a much faster and cheaper way out. All we have to do is support the restaurant when it opens. Thai one on for dinner at least once a week and we can send the curse packing. It won’t be easy. The curse will be there at every turn. It will be the curse telling you to stay home and make tuna fish casserole. It will be the curse telling you to avoid spicy food. Don’t listen.

We have to break this curse. And it’s not just because I am a fat guy who loves Asian food and hates driving all the way to Ottawa or Watertown for a fix of pad prik. OK, so maybe that is one reason. But we also have to do it because commerce at 29 Maple St. has suffered long enough. It is time to take the bad news out of what has for too long been a good news-bad news story.

Bank robbers 4, Law enforcement 1.

That is the score in the north country since 2006. Five banks have been robbed. One (alleged) robber has been caught. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090803/NEWS05/308039957

This is a startling stat if you are like me and thought nobody robs banks anymore – at least not successfully.

Robbing banks is so 1930s. Think tommy guns and black getaway cars with running boards. Bonnie and Clyde. John Dillinger. It was a way to make a living back then. It was also a sure way to make a dying. That had to be one of the big things that historically has taken the shine off bank robbing as a career choice.

Since those days, technology piggybacked the threat of death to thwart would-be thieves. There is that tricky money that explodes and coats you with dye two blocks after you think you are home free with a pile of loot. And there are those expensive high-tech cameras that can capture on video the latest in ski mask fashion worn by the robber while they are robbing.

So what criminals with any sense would choose to do a crime that they had virtually no chance of getting away with in this day and age? I can’t tell you because – in four of the cases we reported in the Times - they all left the north country banks they robbed without leaving a business card. They didn’t shoot anyone. They didn’t get shot. Three of them didn’t even seem to have a getaway car. They ran away and have not been caught.

I don’t get how this can happen. It’s not that I think the bank people or police or anyone but the robbers did anything wrong. It’s not that I think north country banks could have done something to stop the resurgence of bank robbing as a profession here. It’s that I am astonished. Astonished that people are still robbing banks. Astonished that people so far have gotten away with it. Astonished that they have succeeded four times.

It is all so hard to believe. I lived for years in Detroit – a city often cited as a haven for crime – without ever reading in the local papers about anyone robbing a bank. Same deal in Reno, Nev. Same deal in a sprawling metropolis north of Miami, Fla. I had empirical evidence from living in those big cities and would have bet my last dollar that no one robs banks anymore. If you are keeping score, I would have lost.

"We have met the enemy and they is us." - Pogo the possum.

Walt Kelly penned that phrase in his "Pogo" comic strip years ago. Chuck Kelly - no relation - probably has uttered it a few times in the last weeks.

Chuck is the editor and publisher of the Ogdensburg Journal and wears similiar hats for the Daily Courier-Observer, the St. Lawrence Plaindealer and Malone Telegram newspapers. He has worked for various owners of the Ogdensburg papers since he was very young. I may be wrong, but I think the first story he covered as a cub reporter was the British attack on Ogdensburg during the War of 1812.

In any event, ever since those early days, the papers have competed for news with the Watertown Daily Times. That robust competition made sense until 1997, when the Johnson Newspapers - which publishes the Times - bought the Journal and the other papers. But times were good. Newspapers were making money hand over fist.

It should be known that whether you are talking about the late John B. Johnson - editor and publisher of the Times when it bought the smaller papers, or John B. Johnson Jr., who along with his brother, Harold, run the show now, journalistic competition is in the family's blood. So nothing changed after the purchase ... except Chuck's fight was now against the guy who was signing his checks.

I am told Chuck chewed out his reporters royally when the Times broke a story his papers didn't have. And when forced to follow one of these stories in his publications, he would not have his reporter credit the Times for breaking the news ... he would have them say the news was first reported in "an out-of-county" newspaper. No mention of the Watertown Daily Times necessary, thank you very much. Like I said, Chuck is a competitor and we were the enemy.

The times have changed. The Times has changed. I don't know much about finances, but I know the fist we used to make money over seems to have slugged us and taken our wallets. It might not have made sense to pay two reporters to cover the same story in 1997, but we could afford the adrenaline rush that competition brings back then.

The Johnson family about two weeks ago made the announcement that the days of competing were over. That tough times required tough solutions. No more would the company pay two reporters to cover the same story. And Chuck started channeling the little possum named Pogo. He had met the enemy and it was him. He was us.

The Times, Courier-Observer, Plaindealer and Telegram are now sharing stories. There's a lot to do in changing a system, changing a culture that has existed for so long. It's surely going to take a while before the new news operation is running smoothly. It will likely be longer than that before we see any financial benefits from the move. The immediate winners will be the readers of Johnson Newspapers, because the steps we are taking will help ensure there is an Ogdensburg Journal, a Daily Courier-Observer, a Telegram and a Times into the foreseeable future.

The Times will remain the leading full-service newspaper in the north country and will continue to bolster its position in the Internet news race. The smaller papers will continue to provide the kind of community news that people love to make fun of and would hate to do without. You also can expect the Journal and Courier-Observer to develop Web sites of their own not too far down the road. All of this is going to happen with the Johnson Newspapers working as a team.

There was a time not too long ago when that idea would have made Chuck go into convulsions. I think today he has grasped the notion that any media outlet whose checks aren't signed by someone named Johnson is the enemy. Well, he's mostly grasped that. He still seems to gets a little jittery when I call to tell him I'll be sending his paper a story written by a Times reporter. I suppose that's understandable after 55 years fighting the fight. Old enemies die hard.

Lyle N. Furnace and his business partners are soon going to open a hookah lounge in Potsdam. If he can fit it on the sign, I suggest they name it, "Suck on this, federal government!" http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090620/NEWS05/306209934

Lyle is the Potsdam businessman who owns what we used to call a "head shop" when I was a teenager. Among other things, head shops sold things like tie-dyed T-shirts, incense and pipes to smoke marijuana. Maybe it was illegal in the 1970s to sell pipes that people used for smoking marijuana, but I can't remember anyone getting busted for doing it. Lyle got busted for doing it in 2004.

This is the short version of the story: federal agents came into his store, Happy Daze, and told him he shouldn't sell pipes that people use for smoking marijuana. The feds apparently didn't see the signs in the store that said tobacco was the intended weed to be used in the pipes he sold. In any event, he was arrested on federal charges a while later. Then he pleaded guilty to selling drug paraphernalia and was sentenced to a year of probation. Feds 1, Lyle 0.

I don't think any federal agents got promoted for the victory. Getting rid of pipes is not going to solve America's drug problem. Nobody is ever going to launch a national anti-drug campaign with the slogan, "Pipes are dumb." Someone intent on a night of reefer madness will whittle a potato into a pipe if they stumble across a bag of dope and have a match. If you want to talk about dumb, it's that there are laws against selling pipes and there are agents that we pay real American dollars to enforce them.

And where there is dumb, there is often dumber. Listen to this: Happy Daze is still open and it legally sells pipes which could be used to smoke marijuana. They are called hookahs. You suck a hookah hose, drawing smoke from whatever is in its bowl through water before it hits your lungs. It's legal to sell those. Selling a water pipe - a device in which you suck on a hose, drawing smoke from whatever is in its bowl through water before it hits your lungs - could get you time in federal prison. Make sense of those laws and the first bowl at Lyle's lounge is on me.

Lyle managed to miss out on prison - he says by "this much," holding a thumb and index about an inch apart in front of his bushy gray beard when I talked to him this week. But it cost him more than $50,000 in inventory the feds took from him. And he has a federal charge on a rap sheet that he said before this ordeal contained nothing more than traffic tickets. All for selling water pipes.

Neither Lyle nor his business partners, daughter Jessika T. and her fiance, Darin S. Richards, will admit to consciously relishing the beautiful irony that they hope water pipes help them recover some of the money they lost because of water pipes. Jessika talks about business plans and researching other hookah lounges. Lyle talks about how they chose not to offer alcoholic drinks at the lounge. Darin points out that everything smoked at the lounge will be tobacco- and nicotine-free. I couldn't get one of them to say on the record that they chose to open a hookah lounge so they could say, "Suck on this, federal government."

Maybe we'll see that on their shingle when the lounge opens in the fall. Hope it fits.

Here is a conversation that I had about 10 times during my furlough last week.

Neighbor/friend: “Beautiful day, eh? What are you doing home?”

Me: “I am on furlough.”

Neighbor/friend: “Sweet, dude. Good for you.”

The last line might have varied from one conversation to another, but whatever words they chose always meant the same thing: You are one lucky guy.

Everytime it happened I resisted the urge to tell them that I also had a $1,000 crown fall off of my tooth and a dental insurance plan that was going to cover about six cents worth of the bill. I figured if they were so happy for me that I was unemployed for a week, the tooth story might send them into a coma of euphoria.

I think there are a couple possibilities why people have the misguided notion that furloughs are good things. One is that many must have an image of furloughs that is rooted in movies made in the 1940s. I know I did before last week. You know the flicks: Sailors on furlough – played by Frank Sinatra or Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire - singing and dancing and boozing it up on the streets of a port town. Twenty-four hours of chasing women and getting into scuffles with the occasional Marines who had their eyes on the same skirts. Good times. So when I told people I was on “furlough,” what their brains heard was “fun romp.”

Another possibility – for those too young to have caught these movies but old enough to be among those still reading newspapers – is they’ve seen a story or headline that combines the words furlough and vacation into the sweet-sounding hybrid, “furcation.” Newspapers like to do this kind of thing. When the economy first tanked, we came up with “staycation” to describe drinking beer on your porch because you can’t afford the cost of traveling to Disneyland to tip a few with Pluto and Goofy. Get it? Stay-at-home vacation.

Newspapers introduced furcations when the economy tanked even more and furloughs became all the rage as companies across the nation started trying to maintain profits by mandating that workers take time off without pay. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090404/NEWS03/304049929/0/FRONTPAGE A furcation is a staycation without being able to afford the travel or beer. Which means it isn’t a vacation at all. It’s sitting on your porch without a job. And that really isn’t very sweet, dude.

I am suggesting a new hybrid for FUrlough from woRK – “furk.” It gets rid of the misleading “cation” and won’t conjure up the ghost of Fred Astaire when you tell someone why you are working in the garden rather than in your office.

Neighbor/friend: “Beautiful day, eh? Why are you at home?”

Me: “I got furked.”

That should make everything clear, don’t you think?

The president of D’Arcinoff Group in Washington, D.C., recently said he didn’t want to get the north country all excited about his company’s plan to bring an estimated 12,000 jobs to the region. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090616/NEWS05/306169973

Too late. This is a place where we get all excited when Taco Bell announces plans to hire two part-time burrito slingers to man a restaurant it wants to open in a combination gas station/car wash/pizzeria/donut shop/convenience and gift store. Michael C. Darcy is talking about retooling the General Motors plant in Massena and employing thousands in wind turbine production. We are all excited.

Truth to tell, if Mr. Darcy had told us a little more when he gave a scant outline of his plans to newspapers and television stations across the north country, we might all be number-oneing ourselves right now. But all we know is that really big number – 12,000 jobs.

The last big number we got all excited about around here was $108 million. That’s how much a group called Northway Island Associates announced a few years ago that it would spend on developing a speedway and resort complex a few miles south of Massena. The resort was going to pump $168 million annually into the region’s economy. It was going to create some 3,500 jobs. It took a wrong turn and wound up on a dead-end called Pipe Dream Avenue.

We’d like to think Mr. Darcy isn’t taking us on the same ride. Retrofitting an abandoned auto plant is not the same as a scheme to build a racetrack in the middle of a cornfield and tell us people will come. Other wind turbine companies are already up and running in old plants across the nation. It’s Mr. Darcy’s estimates that are troubling.

A wind turbine manufacturer recently retrofitted an auto plant in Iowa and boasts that it employs 150 there. A company that calls itself the second-largest producer of wind turbines in the world took over a former U.S. Steel plant in Pennsylvania and employs 300. At a Web site listing wind turbine manufacturers that either took over empty plants or built new, not one of them lists having more than 750 workers at any of the sites.

If half the jobs Mr. Darcy estimates his company will bring to the region end up at the Massena GM plant, that’s 6,000 workers ... in a plant that in its heyday had 2,000. Maybe that’s possible. A union official who used to work at the plant said, “five or six thousand at our plant sounds pretty crowded to me.” It sounds sort of like we’re heading down Pipe Dream Avenue to me.

We are suckers in the north country when it comes to people telling us they have jobs for us. Deep down we probably know that jobs don’t come here, they leave here in very big numbers. But we want to believe. Mr. Darcy shouldn’t worry about us getting all excited. That’s what we’ve learned to do. It feels good ... at least for a while.

The dispute that is keeping the Seaway International Bridge closed better end sometime soon. I don’t want to end up having to wait until winter to ride in the trunk of someone’s car across the frozen St. Lawrence River just to get my fix of steamies and fries.

Steamies are hot dogs at a place called Billy K’s. They are probably made of some kind of meat and, when dressed, wear a layer of something resembling cole slaw. Last time I was there, they were 69 cents Canadian. And while food snobs across North America will probably want to flog me with a natural casing wiener for saying so, they are gloriously delicious. Ditto about Billy’s (always made with fresh potatoes) fries.

But I cannot practically enjoy these culinary delights if I can’t get to Cornwall from Massena. And I cannot get to Cornwall from Massena as long as there is a protest near the bridge by Akwesasne Mohawks who say they don’t like Canada’s plan to arm Customs officers with pistols. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090609/NEWS05/306099980

My only dog in this fight is sitting in a steam table at a restaurant in Cornwall. The easy position for me to take is the Mohawks are wrong and they should stop the protest and free me to once again slather malt vinegar on my Billy K’s fries whenever I want to make the drive into Canada.

I am not a Mohawk. I am a hungry white guy living in upstate New York. Americans armed with pistols make me antsy, but I just can’t get any level of fear going about Canadian officials toting handguns. Of all the groups with thumbs in this world, I put Canadians up there as the least dangerous. If Canadians were dogs, they’d be golden retrievers.

The Mohawks have a different idea about our friends to the nord. They say the Canadian Customs people are not that nice to them. Adding insult to the injury, when the guards are not being nice to the Mohawks, they are doing so from inside booths that are on Indian land. Hmmmmm...

Maybe the easy position is still easy, it’s just not the one I originally thought of. Maybe the easy position for me to take is the Canadian government is wrong and should move Customs off Cornwall Island and put it at the other end of the bridge on Cornwall – which is land it actually owns. That way it could arm its officers with pistols, rifles, beaver traps ... whatever it wanted, without offending the Mohawks. And I could get from Massena to Cornwall again without waiting for the river to freeze.

I can almost taste the steamies already.

If I had the choice of having lunch with Potsdam Assessor Kim Bisonette or the devil, I would choose Bisonette. Bruce Konkoski would probably choose the devil. And Bruce would likely offer to pay.

Konkoski – who heads a group called the Town of Potsdam Taxpayers Association - is as much a fan of Bisonette as mice are of boa constrictors. He thinks Bisonette’s assessment work is shoddy. I’ve seen evidence that supports this position and I agree that Bisonette doesn’t do a very good job. But that makes him a bad assessor, not a bad guy.

One of the TOPTA guys – Derek Stevenson - the other day lodged a complaint that Bisonette had yelled at him and poked him with his finger during a discussion of his assessment. The town is investigating the incident and I suspect it will be found that there are two sides to the story. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090527/NEWS05/305279968/-1/NEWS

It would be bad if Bisonette did the things Stevenson accused him of doing. But it would also be bad if the other side of the story was that Stevenson got the fight he came in looking for ... that the whole TOPTA plan was to provoke bad behavior by Bisonette. TOPTA has lodged a strong attack on Bisonette’s professional ability, so it would not be too hard to believe that they are expanding the strategy to take some pokes at him personally.

I’d like to believe that is not the case. I also suspect it very well could be the case. Konkoski wants the assessor booted from his job. He says he spends four hours or so every day working on the project. When some retirees would be fishing or mowing the lawn, Konkoski is researching and plotting and trying to figure out ways to kick some assessor butt out of office. He is man on a mission with a whatever it takes attitude.

Which is OK, as long as whatever it takes involves amassing evidence that Bisonette doesn’t do his job very well. The assessor doesn’t have to be Dale Carnegie, he has to assess properties in a fair and equitable way. If Konkoski and his crew can show that Bisonette too often fails to meet this standard, it seems town officials would have to consider making a switch.

Konkoski and TOPTA can succeed without making the issue personal. They can hate the sin and love the sinner. Well, they don’t have to love Bisonette, but they should at least keep in mind that he isn’t the devil – even if they think he does a hell of a poor job.

An older friend of mine likes to say he doesn’t mind being a senior, he just doesn’t want to graduate. I always thought that was pretty funny. Not so much now that I have reached an age when people I know are starting to graduate a little more often than I like.

My friend and former Times staff writer Chris Garifo wasn’t a senior when he graduated. He earned a degree in non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at an age when a lot of folks are just learning how to navigate life without using training wheels. I am talking young. A spring chicken. A kid. He was my age.

He surely wasn’t ready to graduate in his early 50s. He kept turning down his diploma every time the principal of Cancer High School tried to tell him he had enough credits and it was time to move on. His attorneys, K. Moe Therapy and Ray D. Ashun, helped keep him out of a cap and gown for years, but he ultimately lost the fight and was forced to accept the degree he never asked for and fought so hard to reject. That, though, was not the end of his story.

Chris was a gentle giant of a man who worried more about inconveniencing others than he did himself. I don’t know how many times he turned down my offers to drive him to Burlington, Vt., for one of the million treatments he had to go through during his last year, but it was a lot. No matter how weak or tired, he’d rock his University of Arizona baseball hat, pin on his “Cancer Sucks!” button, jump in his truck, pop the CD he burned and dubbed “Cancer Tour 2008” into the player, and off he would roll. “Thanks, Jeffrey, but you got better things to do.”

That was Chris being Chris. The kind of guy who long after meds made it impossible for him to drink alcohol, would make sure he had a case of Foster’s lager in the fridge if he knew I was coming to visit. He would not just buy beer that he couldn’t drink, he’d buy good beer. And the day he found out his treatments would mean an extended stay at the American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge in Vermont, I came home to find what was left of the case sitting on my porch. Chris being Chris.

Maybe Chris had demons lurking from lives he lived long before he met me. He hinted at that one sunny day as we walked the streets of downtown Burlington. He couldn’t walk very fast or too far for very long, so we made a lot of stops and talked. It was mostly small talk with a dying man ... stuff that was easy to forget. But I will always remember one thing he said: “Jeffrey, I only wish I had been nicer to people along the way.” I’ll remember that because I couldn’t believe it. I had no point of reference to connect Chris and mean. I guess he knew better than me. Or maybe it was just him needlessly worrying about how he treated others. Chris being Chris.

His parents sent me a note this week saying Chris was doing well after graduation – that they would soon be helping him move to his new home at a spot overlooking the Pacific Ocean. They said he had recently completed another step in his academic career by taking part in a program at a company called BioGift. The program gave scientists a chance to study him and to do research that one day could mean others won’t have to take extended stays at the Hope Lodge. His final time in a classroom was spent doing something good for others. And he made sure that good deed will continue for years to come. Chris being Chris. A fine person. A fine student of life.

So my dad asked my niece the other day what was this Twitter thing he keeps hearing about.

“It’s all about social networking and stuff, ya know? Like, you go online and you tell all your friends what you are doing. See, like, right now, I am telling you what Twitter is, so I can type in, `I am explaining Twitter to an old guy.’”

So my dad asks why they care.

“Well, like, ya know, so they can tweet me back to tell me what they’re doing right now.”

So my dad asks what is a tweet.

“A tweet is, like, the message you send when you Twitter. So when I tweet, they can tweet me back.”

So my dad asks why would they tweet her back.

“Um, so, then I know what they are doing. Duh!”

So my dad asks what value it adds to her life to know that her friend is, say, eating a piece of toast.

“Geez, ‘cause then I can tweet her that I had toast this morning, too.”

So my dad again asks why would she care.

“HELLL-OOOO. Earth to you ... it’s all about social networking.”

So my dad says that all sounds pretty worthless. Oh, wait, I lost my father years ago. That was me saying all those things. Next thing you know, I will be muttering to anyone who'll listen: “You kooky kids and your Twittering. Don’t you have something better to do with your time?”

The Watertown Daily Times has a Twitter page that we seem to use to steer readers to our Web page. http://twitter.com/WDTnews. I sort of get that. What I don’t understand is Twitter’s general premise: You answer in 140 or fewer keystrokes the question, “What are you doing?” Here are some examples I took at random from Twitter sites across the nation. These are for real. These are tweets I found in cyberspace. I present them unedited ...

... got a new phone today. it’s pretty and purple.

... for the 2nd time in 3 months I have a uti so bad my uterus is infected...meds and bed!

... Drinking some coffee ... need to get motivated!

... Finished translating "Label-Free Electrical Detection of SARS virus with Nanowire Sensors Using Antibody Mimics as Probes" into layspeak.

... Setting up my new Blackberry to work with Twitter!

So there really are Tweethead’s - Twits? - out there who get all atwitter when they read notes like these from their friends? I just don’t get it. But I can play along for a moment ... What am I doing? I just learned that at 51, I have become my dad.

I was walking the girl dogs the other day and I saw some chicks. Not sorority girls, mind you, chicks – as in baby chickens. Actually, they were pretty hefty chicks – probably teenagers – doing their chicken thing of pecking at the dirt underneath a car parked next to a house on Bay Street.

The next day on our walk there was a woman working in the garden of the house and I asked her about the chicks. “Oh, they’re still around here somewhere. But there’s a farmer coming to pick them up later today.”

She told me students in a neighboring house must have thought it would be fun to have some chicks. The fun – apparently for the students and for sure for the chicks – ended with the semester. The students moved out of the rental house and left the homeless chicks outside to fend for themselves.

Chickens are pretty good fenders in the right conditions. They thrive in the wild on the streets of Caribbean islands. They would die in the wild on the cold streets of Potsdam in May. They didn’t freeze to death, though, because the young gardener brought them all into her house a couple of nights ago when frost was forecasted.

She gave her husband the credit for bringing the cute little peckers inside and keeping them alive that night. I’ll give her credit for marrying a guy with the compassion to reach out to the homeless. Even though we are only talking about giving a roof to chickens without a coop for the night, it was still a nice thing to do. And then the couple found them a good home where they’ll have a chance to scratch out a living by becoming productive egg-laying members of society. A nice thing, part two.

I come and go with how I feel about students in my college town neighborhood. One day I got the women who live at the AGO sorority bringing me a beer while I am working in the garden – which is the kind of compassion that puts students solidly on my good list. The next day I got students doing something dumb and at least some of that good will the beer bought goes down the drain.

Releasing chicks to face the wilds of Potsdam streets and spring weather is dumb. It is also cruel. I’ll fight for a student’s right to do dumb things, because young is a legitimate time to be dumb. But there is no legitimate time to be mean. I hope the students who callously left the chicks outside to live or die learn that at some point during their walk to becoming adults.

Where Ogdensburg once had industry, it now has polluted land and crumbling buildings. Where it once had jobs and a strong tax base, it now has polluted land and crumbling buildings. It is hard not to feel bad for the only city in St. Lawrence County.

The once-grand city on the St. Lawrence River was struggling to make ends meet long before the rest of the nation got caught up in the current economic crunch. When the rest of the world was booming, Ogdensburg was on the edge of busted. Needless to say, the recession didn’t help things much.

The current problem is that the city doesn’t have money to pay its debts. And as dire as that sounds, it gets worse. The city this month is expected to borrow money to pay off a debt. Sort of like using a credit card to pay off a credit card – when all is said and done, you still have debt. And as dire as that sounds, it gets worse.

A tax anticipation note is the fancy name for the loan the city is expected to get. As the name implies, collateral for this loan is tax money the city expects to collect next year. So the city is paying off one debt with borrowed money that it will pay back with taxes that it couldn’t collect this year and that helped lead to the debt that it needs a loan to pay. OK, I’ll admit that might have been hard to follow. But you don’t have to be Suze Orman to think that this kind of financial management might have a cousin named Ponzi.

And as dire as that sounds, it gets worse. The debt the city has to pay is owed to St. Lawrence County. First, a very quick lesson in how tax collection is supposed to work here: The city collects taxes for the county. The city takes the money it collects and sends it to the county. Here’s how it actually has been working: The city collects taxes for the county. The city spends that money but promises to pay it back.

In some worlds, that would be called stealing. In the world of Ogdensburg government, using money that is not yours to cover day-to-day expenses is called, “dealing with a cash flow problem.” Can you imagine what would happen to a bookie who collected gambling wagers for organized crime but then spent the money before handing it over to his boss? Cash flow would be the least of his problems.

It is hard not to feel bad for Ogdensburg and the financial problems it faces. The city didn’t drive away industry. The city didn’t pollute its land. The city didn’t do anything that made the national economy crash. It is a victim of a lot of circumstances, struggling to get through some real hard times. Unfortunately, when you get to the dire point of having to borrow money to pay off a debt, things more than likely are going to get worse before they get better.

"Good morning, Acme Property Assessor Training Academy, how may I help you?"

I told the lovely but slightly nasally voice on the phone that I wanted to be the property assessor for the town of Potsdam and was interested in getting some training for the job. She laughed.

“Training, sir? You said, `Potsdam' ... the one in New York, right? You don’t really need training for that job. I mean, we’ll let you pony up the $150 to take our course if you insist. But for fifteen bucks you can get the book, `Property Assessing for Dummies.' It covers everything you’ll need to know.”

So I thanked her, hung up, then ran out to buy the book. Like all the “...for Dummies” books, it was bright yellow with juvenile art on the cover. The drawing on this one was a stick man taking a photograph of a stick house. Underneath the house it said: POTSDAM EDITION. It was thinner than most books of its ilk. Everything you need to know about being a Potsdam assessor in only five chapters and an introduction.

Introduction

Our franchise requires us to imply you are a dummy if you bought this book. But if you want to be the Potsdam assessor, you are no dummy. The job is easy, pays well and, the way the system is set up, it is fairly impossible to do your job poorly enough to be fired. Who wouldn’t want to be the assessor in Potsdam? Dummies.

Chapter 1: Drive by shooting

The first step – and the bulk of your work - is to make it appear you are collecting data for your records. Do this by driving around town with a camera. Every so often, park the car in the street to draw as much attention to yourself as you can, get out and snap a photograph of a house – preferably one whose owner is outside raking the lawn. It is important to give taxpayers the impression that you are doing your job. Do this every day for months.

Chapter 2: Guess-essing

It is time to slap some values on town properties. The taxpayer thinks that you use the photos you took to refresh your memory when determining property values. Which is good, because that’s what you want them to think. Truth is, photos just muddy the water and make your job cumbersome. You don’t have to know what a property looks like to guess what it might be worth. Chapter 1 was for show, Chapter 2 is for dough. So start guessing. Go low. Go high. Hit the mark on occasion. It just doesn’t matter.

Chapter 3: You can’t be wrong

No taxpayer is going to complain if you go low in guess-essing their property. That’s a fact. And a lot of taxpayers whose property you guess-ess too high are not going to complain, either. Here’s why: they think your goal is to be fair and equitable so that everyone pays their fair share of taxes. People, as a rule, don’t mind paying taxes that are fairly distributed. (See, “Property Assessing for Dummies: ALL TOWNS BUT POTSDAM EDITION.”) They assume if you jacked their house’s assessment up by $20,000, you also jacked up their neighbor’s comparable house by $20,000. The beauty is they don’t often check. The only problem you will have are with the taxpayers who do check and find that their 1,200-square-foot house is assessed higher than their neighbor’s 1,200-square-foot house. But the system covers that for you: If someone complains, all you have to do is amend your guess to what they think the assessment should fairly be. Voila! Happy taxpayer. Problem solved.

Chapter 4: Make the whiners work

Remember it is not your responsibility to get things right. If the taxpayer thinks you got something wrong, make them prove it. That’s another beauty about this system: You don’t have to show taxpayers photos, or explain how you came to the conclusion that their small house was worth more than a bigger and better house down the street. They have to show you! If they do the legwork and have the evidence that your guess-essment was wrong, tell them you’ll review their information and get back to them in two weeks. Don’t answer questions or make any changes on the spot – that would hurt your credibility. If they don’t do the legwork and just come in to whine that their assessment is too high, tell them to take it up with the Board of Assessment Review.

Chapter 5: Board of Assessment Review

You’ll have to sit in the room and listen while taxpayers explain to a panel of appointed taxpayers – ones who have the power to change your guess-essment - how you got things wrong. Sometimes taxpayers will refer to you as “the moron” when making their case. Suck it up. Even the best jobs have flaws. But remember from Chapter 3 that it is impossible for you to be wrong. If your guess-essment is changed, tell everyone you know that it was the Board of Assessment Review who got things wrong. Stand by your guess.

So, that’s it. That’s everything you need to know to be the assessor in the town of Potsdam. The sad part is I am pretty certain Potsdam Assessor Kim Bisonette has read this book. He might even have written it. I guess I have no chance of getting the job. He's too good at what he does.

Say it ain’t so, mon. Tell me the cocaine police say you sold them was cumin. Tell me you’ll sell me oxtail again when this big misunderstanding is over. Tell me you are not a Jamaican jerk.

Ainsley Edwards – owner of Leonie’s Jamaican Cuisine in Canton – was arrested a day after I got my last meal from him. On a Friday he was dishing me up some jerk chicken and talking about opening another restaurant in Potsdam. On Saturday he was in a police station posing for photographs in front of a chart that showed how tall he was without a chef’s hat on. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090508/NEWS05/305089959

All this is very sad, because dude could really cook. He was the real Jamaican deal, serving up things like stew – not stewed – beef, and curry – not curried - chicken. The food was good, plentiful, and cheap. Maybe that last thing was the problem.

If a restaurant is going to succeed at $8 a plate, it better have lots of customers. The north country isn’t the most daring place when it comes to food. Chinese buffets are about as exotic as we get ... but even then, there better be pizza somewhere on the steam tables. So maybe not enough of us dared to take a culinary step to Ainsley’s island for a plate of curry goat. And maybe he turned to drugs to support his cooking habit.

I hope none of this is true. Ainsley always seemed like a nice guy willing to work hard to eke out a living. His bling was a starched chef’s jacket and hat. Sometimes his cuter than cute baby girl would be sleeping in a playpen while he was skinning chicken legs in the open kitchen or out front spooning food into a to-go container for a customer. I never saw evidence of other employees in the many times I stopped in for dinner. He was sous-chef, chef, waiter and probably the dish washer, too.

Normally, he was a man of few words. This is how it usually went when you stopped in for dinner: “What can I get you? To go? Rice, or rice and peas? Do you need silverware? Do you need a plastic bag? $8.60. Have a nice day.” Last week, though, he was especially chatty after I asked him if the rumor about him opening a place in Potsdam was true. Not only was it true, he had already scoped out places downtown – eliminating one and seriously considering another. He was excited. I left smiling. The only thing better than having a Jamaican restaurant in the north country would have been having a Jamaican restaurant close enough for me to walk to from my home.

Maybe that walk might still be possible one day. Innocent until proven guilty is the law of the land, afterall. When Ainsley went to court this week to hear what the police said he did, he told the judge it ain’t so. He also told a reporter afterwards that he was anxious to get the legal mess straightened out so he could reopen his little restaurant. That’s what I needed to hear, mon. I only hope it was the truth.

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