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Tishler’s perspective will serve Nisky well
My neighbor, Sarah Tishler, is running for a seat on the Niskayuna School Board. A few days ago, she met with my friends and me to ask us some questions about the school and any concerns we may have.
I felt she seemed very open to what we had to say and was interested in the mental health and well-being of students. Some may know that she is a product of the Nisky school system and has a deeper understanding of it from a perspective of someone who was a student. She, being young herself, can relate to people of all ages and clearly has experience in connecting with others.
I am a Niskayuna High School freshman, and I am confident in my choice to support Sarah Tishler for school board.
Laurel Hamilton
Niskayuna
LaFex brings record of service to board
I have had the honor of working side by side with Jessica LaFex, as she is the pantry manager for Nisky Now. There are many reasons why Jessica will do amazing work for our district as a Board of Education member, but two reasons stand out.
Jessica is the kind of person everyone wants to work with. She listens carefully, is thoughtful and puts the work in. Jessica is also the kind of person parents will want to contact with questions or concerns. She is empathetic, understanding, and knows that caring about students means caring about families.
As a board member for Nisky Now, president of two PTOs, leader of two Girl Scout troops and a parent, Jessica has a strong track record demonstrating investment in the community and leadership.
Jessica Brennan
Niskayuna
Voting for SROs and transparency in Spa
Regarding Andrew Waite’s recent coverage of the Saratoga Springs School Board election (“Saratoga Springs school board candidate downplays motives,”), one would think there is a conspiracy brewing.
In fact this column was full of innuendo and false flags to divert your attention from the actual problem with school boards and what is at stake in Saratoga.
School boards should have a balance of parents, taxpayers and teachers to best serve students and the community at large. Waite is covering up the real issue in this campaign, which is SROs (school resource officers). Sharon Dominguez is clearly in support of SROs.
Also, why are Andrew Waite and Rebecca Lynch opposed to parents knowing what is going on in the schools? What are they trying to hide? I support curriculum transparency and SROs. I will be casting my vote for Sharon Dominguez and Joseph Sabanos on May 16.
Charlene Stafford
Saratoga Springs
LaFex will listen and be respectful in Nisky
I am writing in regard to the Niskayuna Board of Education elections on behalf of Jessica LaFex.
I have known Jessica for several years and have served with her on the boards of Nisky Now, Inc. and Iroquois Middle School PTO.
I have found her strengths to be direct and timely communication, transparency of process and prioritization of students. Jessica is kind, authentic and can readily lead or be a team player.
I am particularly impressed with her ability to create safe spaces for the community to voice their opinions in a productive, organized and respectful manner.
Jessica’s significant contributions to Nisky Now, Inc. and the PTO are a testament to her dedication and commitment to our school district.
Without hesitation, I support her candidacy.
Carole Ann E. Morrison
Niskayuna
Ostrelich not looking out for the people
I was disappointed to learn that fellow Niskayuna, Glenville and Scotia Democrats will be deprived a choice for Schenectady County Legislature in June’s primary after allies of Michelle Ostrelich objected to the nominating petitions of a wheelchair-bound disabilities rights advocate.
This is only the latest instance in a half-decade of opportunistic political maneuvering by Ostrelich.
A Republican until 2017, Ostrelich has now run for office as a Democrat four times in six years.
She’s unsuccessfully sought promotions, despite failing to master her current brief as county health chair.
Ostrelich being woefully asleep at the wheel during the county’s pandemic response was exposed by The Gazette amidst Lisa Ayers’s August 2020 dismissal.
Last year, Ostrelich told The Troy Record that she would run for Senate “regardless of which district [she] ends up in,” even if that meant challenging progressive incumbent Michelle Hinchey, who was already admirably serving western Schenectady County.
Just months after being appointed to the county legislature, Ostrelich skipped a meeting and avoided voting on giving herself a 35% raise, leaving her new colleagues stranded to take all the flak for the massive pay hike.
Schenectady County deserves legislators who look out for the people, not for their next political opportunity.
Kevin Duffy
Niskayuna
U.S. not living up to potential for goodness
I just read “Ordinary Grace” by William Kent Krueger.
It’s a muted yet powerful book written about a small community where several deaths have occurred. Although it’s a book about death, this special read is a blueprint for moving forward.
Not revenge. Not hatred. But finding a way forward in love and understanding.
It sounds mamby-pamby. Not the hot tempered, the vile-name-spewing, belittling America is becoming known for, but a way forward to grace and forgiveness. Forgiveness about the past events, not rewriting events, not dismissing events, but simply facing the outcomes.
It’s sad there’s so much potential for goodness here in our country, but what makes news every day is another shooting. A taking of a life. The life of someone who might have shaped a better future, perhaps by just being a loving person. Or a supplier of casseroles in times of sadness. Or a handy man allowing an elderly person to continue to live in their home. Or a student whose life has just begun. Or a musician whose voice calmed the stresses of those who listened.
We will never know.
Those who make the claim that a gun is not the cause of so many sorrows should have to explain why a man with mental problems has a gun, which was brought into a hospital and used to kill a woman.
Ask why circumstances and media have made people so afraid they kill someone turning around in their driveway or knocking at their door. Enough, yet not enough.
Janice Walz
Scotia
Union should buy Girling Center or land
I am writing in response to Mr. Franks Wicks’ April 22 letter (“Keep Union hockey rink on the campus,”). I totally agree with his reasoning on this issue and wish to point out that Union College has never really hit it off as far as mutually agreeing on certain issues that concern the two entities.
Next would be the issue of changing the name of the Dutchmen to something other because of the insulting and racial connotations it refers to. Really?
Lastly, instead of spending all this money on unwanted and unneeded hockey rinks and rebranding the entire campus with a new school name, why don’t they buy back the Girling Center or purchase another parcel of land closely in relation to the school to be used for the baseball team instead of traveling to Amsterdam (which has been very gracious and accommodating to our Dutchmen baseball program) for their practices and games.
That to me would be much more beneficial to the program and to the college community. Think of all the gas they would save.
Charlie Howe
Clifton Park
The writer is a member of Union College Class of 1976.
Questioning motives in Duanesburg race
Do other Duanesburg residents find it very strange that the school district did not include Board of Education candidate information in the recent mailing to residents?
We have many in town that don’t have internet access or who use the internet for email only. Today in the mail, I received campaign literature on two (one an existing board trustee) of four candidates.
I have lived in this town since 1975 and have never received school board campaign literature in the mail and have never seen the district exclude candidate information from the budget mailing.
Some might think the district is trying to help two candidates. It was mailed by The Duanesburg Teachers.
Paul Finnegan
Delanson
Look to England for pride in God, country
On the morning of May 6, in our own ritual of sorts, my wife and I took coffee while watching the live filming of the Coronation of Charles III.
We observed thousands of British citizens and guests take part in the pageantry, ceremony, pride and tradition.
From the beginning to the end, those watching the ceremony and those taking part in it were as one — something seldom seen in our own country.
There was no partisan politics played to disrupt the solidarity of the English people. There was no journalistic opining by either liberal or conservative newscasters.
The unity of the moment seemed to be enhanced by the observation of God and country. In one of the most-moving portrayals of pride in country, a seven-member gospel choir did a moving ethnic rendition which exuded human feeling.
The skin color of the singers was not the focus point. It did seem that, for one single moment in time, British citizens felt good about their history and tradition.
In rough contrast, thanks to perhaps an overzealous American elementary teacher, one of her students was asked, “What do you think of George Washington?” The first thing the young student said was, “Well, he was a slave owner.”
I do wish Americans would take more pride in God and country.
Allen R. Remaley
Saratoga Springs
Election Letters
We are no longer accepting letters related to the May 16 school elections.
Categories: Clifton Park and Halfmoon, Letters to the Editor, Opinion, Opinion, Saratoga Springs, Scotia Glenville, Your Niskayuna
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Bill Marincic
May 13th, 2023
“So that was legal immigration, I saw three groups of Mexican men four in a group walking down the street in Schenectady. I know they’re Mexican because I lived in Albuquerque for 15 years. I know what a Mexican looks like.”
BM, what does an American look like? Does Barrack Obama look like an American to you? Does A.O.C. or Hakeem Jeffries qualify for the “American look?”
Do you look like an American? I don’t care what Americans look like, but I sure as hell hope they don’t think like you.
This is the kind of thinking that made Trump think he could not get a fair trial from the Mexican-American Judge Curiel. It caused him and many other Americans to unfairly question Obama as qualified to be president on false charges of being Kenyan born.
They only thing Mr. Bill 🤡 looks like is an bigoted idiot ….And when you confront him about it he doubles down and disappears
Tony, When George Orwell’s wrote his 1945 allegorical novel Animal Farm the quote from pig Napoleon sounds like Bill, and so many other MAGA “Republicans.”
“All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.”
History just keeps repeating itself.
*Orwell
There used to be a cable news segment of a news show that I can’t now remember, but was called “No Words”. It was, for me, one of the most profound regular segments I’d ever seen, where they’d set up a camera and mic at some major news story and for a couple minutes you’d experience those raw moments with no commentary, no added drama. Women registering and lining up to vote for the first time in their country’s history is one that remains etched in my memory.
With that preamble, I post the following:
~~~~
“You have spoken with whistleblowers,” (Fox News host Maria Bartiromo) noted. “You also spoke with an informant who gave you all of this information. Where is that informant today? Where are these whistleblowers?”
“Well, unfortunately, we can’t track down the informant,” (Rep. James Comer, R-KY) replied. “We’re hopeful that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant. The whistleblower is very credible.”
“Hold on a second, Congressman,” Bartiromo said. “Did you just say that the whistleblower or the informant is now missing?”
“Well, we we’re hopeful that we can find the informant,” Comer said, explaining the informant was in the “spy business” and “they don’t make a habit of being seen a lot.”
“The nine of the ten people that we’ve identified that have very good knowledge with respect to the Bidens,” he added, “they’re one of three things, Maria, they’re either currently in court, they’re currently in jail, or they’re currently missing.”
~~~~~~~~~~~
Stay tuned for the next segment, “No Words: Abandoned ships being intentionally beached for scrap!”
What a deluded con Comer is proving to be but I’m sure his mamas still proud of her lying little spawn
The Christian Post reports: 5/14
The Rev. Franklin Graham has told Liberty University graduates that the nation is being dominated by a “culture of confusion and lies,” which come “from Hell.” Graham, who had two children that had graduated from Liberty years ago, was the keynote speaker for the Lynchburg, Virginia-based university’s commencement Friday evening.
Graham went on to say that he believed the nation was “in a freefall” because the country had “turned our back on God and His truth,” urging the graduates to be a “beacon of light, “standing on the Word of God” while living in “a culture of confusion and lies.”
Graham declared that “the Bible doesn’t contain truth, it is the truth,” adding that “every Word of God is true” and that “truth is not what you say it is, truth is what God says it is.”
Franklin will be glad to tell you “what God says it (the truth) is.” Do not be surprised when it conforms to his religious and cultural biases. It is obvious that other religious leaders interpret the same Bible in very different ways. Of course, other faith leaders have different books revealing the word of god or gods. One would think a benevolent omnipotent being would have made his truths very clear to everyone in a direct, clear, and unambiguous form.
I would love to ask Franklin to explain the obvious contradiction between two of his assertions:
1)“the Bible doesn’t contain truth…”
2)”it (the Bible) is the truth…”
He doesn’t tell us who is causing the confusion and telling the lies. Could be him?
Well, at least the KKK (and every other domestic terrorist group) is on his side. So there’s that.
As is the case with some posting on this site, Trump seems totally unaware of the hypocrisy in his Mother’s Day greeting:
Posted to Trump’s Truth Social account:
“Happy Mother’s Day to ALL, in particular the Mothers, Wives and Lovers of the Radical Left Fascists, Marxists, and Communists who are doing everything within their power to destroy and obliterate our once great Country. Please make these complete Lunatics and Maniacs Kinder, Gentler, Softer and, most importantly, Smarter, so that we can, quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
A very gentle, soft, and kind message to American lunatics and maniacs from the former president of our country. Will we ever be able to live down having chosen this man to lead our country? We can take solace in the fact he did lose the popular vote to Hillary. Maybe God is sending us a message: amend the Constitution to provide for direct election of the president!
Isn’t Melania the mother of his son? He could have wished her happy Mothers day before going on his lunatic rant.
On second thought she probably told him no way no how mention my name. Does’t want anyone to know where she is and to forget who she is married to. .
“in particular the Mothers, Wives and Lovers of the Radical Left Fascists, Marxists, and Communists who are doing everything within their power to destroy and obliterate our once great Country.”
Do you think he doesn’t realize he’s actually describing himself, or is he just playing into the hands of the Marincics of the MAGA world?
Janice Walz Just think about all of those babies that are murdered during abortion how many of them could’ve cured cancer 20 years ago; how many of them may have started a business that benefited those in Third World countries; how many of those dead babies does it take before that matters to you?
I just wonder what all of you lefties have to say about Russia Russia, Russia now that the Durham report is out and proves that the FBI and the CIA were working with the Clinton campaign. Do you think it changed in 2020 I don’t. Do you think they’re going to be involved in the 2024 election you can bet they will try to be.