Often, truth isn’t handed down from public officials but comes from listening to other voices. Once a week, you can hear a wide variety of views from people who shape our corner of the world in New York’s Capital Region. The Altamont Enterprise is the weekly newspaper of record for Albany County, New York.
We’ve talked with a Buddhist who provided therapy for Gilda Radner and then helped set up Gilda’s Club after she died; with a Muslim woman who is trying to educate people about her religion as she feels increased hatred; with an African-American man who, as a teenager, helped ferry people north from a town in Mississippi haunted by lynchings.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Often, truth isn’t handed down from public officials but comes from listening to other voices. Once a week, you can hear a wide variety of views from people who shape our corner of the world in New York’s Capital Region. The Altamont Enterprise is the weekly newspaper of record for Albany County, New York.
We’ve talked with a Buddhist who provided therapy for Gilda Radner and then helped set up Gilda’s Club after she died; with a Muslim woman who is trying to educate people about her religion as she feels increased hatred; with an African-American man who, as a teenager, helped ferry people north from a town in Mississippi haunted by lynchings.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Anna Judge and Louisa Matthew realize they live in an ageist and sexist society — but, with generous spirits, they are paddling against the current.
The mother-daughter duo together coach a crew of dragon boat paddlers.
Matthew, the mother, is an art professor at Union College. Judge, her daughter, is a certified personal trainer who led her mother into the sport.
“A dragon boat is a 40-foot long, very narrow racing boat,” explains Matthew in this week’s Enterprise podcast. “That became standardized in the 20th Century but it’s based on a thousands-year-old Chinese tradition of racing the big rivers in China.”
A dragon boat has 20 paddlers, two to a seat, with a person in the stern who steers and a person in the bow signaling directions, traditionally by drumming.
“It’s the national sport of China,” said Judge “so it’s quite big in Asia and has subsequently spread to Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.”
It came to the United States through Canada, she said, citing the work of a doctor in British Columbia who changed prevailing medical opinion on exercise for breast-cancer survivors.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Holly Cameron loves her church.
She has been the pastor of the New Scotland Presbyterian Church for 25 years.
“The church is a place to try to understand what is something larger than myself, both within that community of people, and with God,” she says in this week’s Enterprise podcast.
She describes her becoming a pastor as a journey.
Cameron grew up in Alabama, in a time and place where women weren’t ministers. That time is not necessarily distant as this month delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting voted to amend their constitution to say their churches must have “only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.”
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
John Fritze Jr. is a dedicated ham radio operator and a third-generation jeweler. He is passionate about both his avocation and his vocation — and on the cutting edge of each.
Hams have a saying as they try to inform the public that amateur radio operators use the latest technology: “We like to say, ‘It’s not your grandpa’s hobby anymore,’” says Fritze in this week’s Enterprise podcast.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
When Scott Abraham read about farmers committing suicide, he decided to do something about it.He read about families that had owned their farms for generations but couldn’t carry on. “It was just too tough … They can’t find help,” he says in this week’s Enterprise podcast.
He started a farmers’ market in Guilderland, near where he lived, and has a second market in Albany.
It’s a vital need for the community, Abraham says, to support local farmers while getting fresh produce and knowing where your food comes from.
He opened the original Guilderland market in 2018. Five years later, Abraham is starting a new venture: Meet Your Neighbors Open Market started this month and will run every Sunday in June from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. as a “test run,” he said.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In the way most of us breathe air — an essential intake to sustain life — Leonard A. Slade Jr. breathes poetry.
He inhales the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and Langston Hughes, and breathes life into their words as he recites them as naturally as if he were exhaling. Their words, entwined in his thoughts, his very identity, flow naturally in conversation.
Slade writes his own poetry, reams of it, imbued with what he has learned from a lifetime of reading literature but uniquely and personally his.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Anita Martin talks to horses.As a certified equine sports massage therapist, she helps horses in pain.
“When horses are in pain,” she says, “they need help. They can’t tell us with words, but they certainly tell us with body language and action,” which can include biting, bucking, and kicking.
Martin has been familiar with horses since before she was born. Both of her parents rode horses. And, Martin’s mother rode horseback when she was pregnant with Martin, which she says made her comfortable in utero with the rhythm of riding.
In her book, “The Horse Less Traveled,” Martin writes that horses were the glue that kept her family together.
She describes her father as a “real hillbilly” who did trick riding at a mountain resort for city folk, which is how her parents met.
“My mother’s obsession for horses and my father’s rebellious James Dean personality. It was a perfect match!”
As a very young child, Martin writes, she would spend hours quietly observing horses. “There was something going on very deep inside me, as if I could hear them, as if I knew their thoughts. This was a connection that was very personal. This was a window that they allowed me to see into their world.”
As she grew older, Martin rode her pony, Candy, everywhere. “Being a quiet little girl my pony gave me courage and confidence,” Martin writes. With Candy, she felt secure, and that’s how people knew her as she traveled her neighborhood on horseback.
“I always felt like even my own feet were foreign to me,” Martin says in this week’s Enterprise podcast. “But being on top of a horse was more natural and comfortable. I was fascinated by them.”
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.