For 250th anniversary, support your local history
Stefanik votes to allow war with Iran to continue and against aid for Ukraine
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Like most nonprofits, the Chapman Museum in Glens Falls could use your help.
There is no crisis, no impending doom — although those utility bills this winter were shocking — but preserving local history is always a challenge.
Nicole Herwig and her staff at the Chapman Museum — there are just three of them — continue to fight the good fight, maintaining the current collection, hosting guest speakers and conducting tours around downtown during the summer.
You probably didn’t even know that.
Three years ago, I joined the board of trustees at the Chapman.
I’ve carved out a niche, enhancing the Christmas decorations, while trying to make it an annual destination for families all across the region — kind of like an indoor version of the Griswold House over on Clayton Avenue in Glens Falls.
But when I asked for the numbers earlier this year, I was disappointed to learn that fewer people visited the Chapman Museum to see the Christmas decorations this past Christmas than the year before.
That was discouraging.
Our decorating committee had put in a lot of work and believed the second year was even more beautiful than the first.
I suspect that is the world the staff at the Chapman deals with regularly. Despite new programs, walking tours around downtown and new quarterly exhibits, getting people through the door continues to be a challenge.
The United States is celebrating the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution this year, and while there are plenty of events all around the region, I’m asking you to recommit to our local history here in Glens Falls.
Through the year, the Chapman hosts an event titled “Conversations with the Past.” This Wednesday, Sean Kelleher, a trustee of the Saratoga County History Center and historian for the town of Saratoga, will be giving a program called “Benjamin Franklin Slept Here: The Founding Father’s Failed Mission to Make Canada the 14th Colony.”
Kelleher will speak about how Benjamin Franklin journeyed through the Saratoga region on his way north to convince Canada to join the American cause as the 14th colony. The mission ultimately failed, but it was a part of our history that had escaped me.
These programs go on all the time at the Chapman. They cost $10 for non-members but are free to members.
So become a member (See how below), get out of the house, stop watching TV and participate in your community.
Each Friday during the summer, the Chapman Museum holds a different walking tour of downtown Glens Falls. I’ve been on three of the four and I always learn something new about this city.
It’s always a mix of visitors from outside the region and local folks.
This week is the Warren Street tour. You can park behind St. Mary’s Church, with the tour beginning in front of the church.
The tour begins at 11 a.m. each Friday and costs $20 per person ($15 for members).
Group size is limited, so you are asked to register for any of the events by calling (518) 793-2826.
The Chapman Museum’s “Summer Bash” fundraiser is coming Aug. 6 with a 1980s theme — it was the 1960s last year — and a chance to experience the Fort William Henry Carriage House and fireworks over Lake George.
It’s a good cause.
So here’s my plea, my request — put on your summer list a visit to the Chapman Museum. Some of you have never been, others haven’t been in decades. Check it out.
It would be even better to become a member or make a contribution because local history has never been more important.
And I hope when the holidays roll around, you will come see our decorations, visit with my penguins and take in the glory of the Christmas nutcracker exhibit.
Support local history. Support your local community.
To support the Chapman Museum, to become a member, click here:
Elise votes disturbing
The House of Representatives passed a measure last week to hold the Trump administration accountable for the war in Iran. Of course, the Senate has to pass the measure and Trump has to agree to it.
If you wondered how Rep. Elise Stefanik voted, she chose to shirk her responsibility as a check on presidential power and vote to let the war continue.
Several lame-duck Republicans have started to vote against Trump measures, but Stefanik is not one of them.
In another vote this week, the House voted to approve new aid for Ukraine, with 18 Republicans voting with the Democrats to help Ukraine with loans in its war with Russia.
Rep. Stefanik was not one of the Republicans who voted to help Ukraine.
The legislation passed 226-195.
“Are we going to stand with good, or are we going to stand with evil?” Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said ahead of the vote. “That’s what this is about tonight.”
Rep. Stefanik chose to “stand with evil.”
Best interests
Retired Times Union editor and journalist Rex Smith made an astute point in his Substack column on Saturday.
“Through most of the decades that I’ve been engaged with American democracy — working in government and campaigns when I was young, then covering them as a political reporter, and later observing them as an editor and columnist — I’ve believed that most candidates from both political parties had the nation’s and their constituents’ best interests at heart,” Smith wrote. “It is hard to ascribe good intentions to politicians who support or enable the Trump administration’s attack on science and education, its destruction of efforts to make the planet safer and healthier, its embrace of authoritarianism, its blatant and unprecedented corruption.”
That about sums up the political world we live in these days.
There should be a Hall of Fame somewhere for the Republicans in Congress — including our own Elise Stefanik — who have refused to hold this administration accountable for making the world a worse place.
Then Smith got to the heart of the matter and said until the Republican Party cleansed itself of MAGA, “good-hearted Americans” should oppose those Republicans supporting Trump.
Both of the Republicans running in the June primary to be our next representative in Congress support Trump’s corruption 100 percent. In fact, they are fighting over who supports Trump more.
“Nobody of good character would stand with this mentally imbalanced, incompetent president,” Smith wrote in his essay.
Except both of the Republican candidates in this district are.
No signs
Considering there are congressional primaries for both the Democrats and Republicans at the end of the month, I was startled to see almost no political signs in my neck of the woods in Queensbury.
On Saturday while driving on Aviation Road away from the high school, I counted six signs for garage sales, two for open houses and one for candidate Robert Smullen.
Is that a sign of disgust, disinteret?
I’m not sure.
Trump’s lawyer
Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general and previously Trump’s personal lawyer, sounded much more like the president’s personal lawyer during an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News.
The New York Times wrote:
In a wide-ranging podcast interview with the Fox News host Sean Hannity released on Tuesday, a relaxed Mr. Blanche systematically attacked all the prosecutors who had overseen cases against the president, offering an unapologetic defense of his pursuit of Mr. Trump’s campaign of retribution.
“Mr. Blanche openly talked about the so-called grand conspiracy investigation that seeks to tie many of those inquiries together in a single purported plot to deprive Mr. Trump of his rights, breaking sharply with a Justice Department policy that bars the public discussion of ongoing inquiries, particularly those involving grand juries.
He sure sounded like Trump’s personal lawyer.
Unhealthy care
The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it is giving $700 million to help the struggling coal industry build two new coal-burning power plants.
Coal pollutes more than any other fossil fuel, and the use of it in Midwest power plants helped bring acid rain to the Adirondacks.
The Energy Department has also ordered five aging coal plans to remain open.
Ironically, according to the New York Times, the money for the new coal plants will come from “funds that Congress originally designated for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from polluting industries.”
Now it will go toward increasing those emissions.
Newspaper cuts
The Minnesota Star Tribune is the latest newspaper to face significant cuts to its newsroom.
It announced Tuesday it will cut 15 percent of its staff through layoffs and buyouts and pursue a nonprofit ownership structure.
The Star Tribune has 495 employees and 200 journalists. It is expected to lose 25 people in the newsroom.
No press here!
The Pentagon press policies continue to become more and more absurd.
This past week, the acting Pentagon press secretary confirmed that the press office is now a “classified space,” and journalists will not be allowed there.
The acting press secretary said the office now shares space with Pentagon speechwriters who use classified material, so the office was redesignated as a “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility.”
That means the press is no longer welcome in the press office.
Losing streak
In case you’re keeping score, the Trump administration has not done well in court.
Politico is reporting the Trump administration has lost nearly 10,400 court cases while winning 1,200. That means they are losing 90 percent of the time. Most district attorneys will tell you that conviction percentages are usually the other way around.
The cases have involved some 425 different judges.
The Trump administration blames “activist judges” for the reason they lose in court so often.
Interesting that there have not been this many activist judges in previous administrations.
UFOs and religion
Interesting note from the Pew Research Center, which reported that Christians in the U.S. are “significantly less likely than the general public to say intelligent life exists on other planets.”
It reported that, among atheists and agnostics, 85 percent say intelligent life exists beyond Earth. Among white evangelicals, only 40 percent believe that.
Need a job
If you need a job, you might want to consider law school, since the Federal government has been unable to keeps its departments staffed with lawyers.
The federal government has hired 3,200 lawyers since the beginning of 2025, but far more lawyers have left.
The federal government now employs 37,000 lawyers. That is 17 percent fewer than it had at the end of 2024.
Follow the money
As the Trump administration’s policies become more and more unpopular, MAGA leaders within the administration — people budget leader Russell Vought — are trying to keep money flowing toward their causes.
Vought said this week political appointees should have final say over scientific research grants.
Let that sink in for a second, political appointees — not scientists or researchers — should be deciding who gets taxpayer money.
Veto, really?
It is so rare in politics that you can get everyone to agree on something.
That happened this week in Louisiana, when both the Senate and House voted unanimously to pass legislation allowing prisoners wrongfully convicted of a crime to get more compensation from the state.
The new law would increase the award from $400,000 to $600,000.
The law would have cost the state another $800,000 to $900,000 a year.
Instead, Gov. Jeff Landry vetoed the measure.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and his play “The Last American Newspaper” is being produced by Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany Sept. 25 to Oct. 18 . He currently lives in both Queensbury, N.Y. and New Orleans, La.
The Chapman was indeed even more beautiful this past holiday season. Both upstairs and downstairs displays offered nostalgia and whimsy and a wonderful connection to past local history. With a $100 supporting membership you get two free memberships which make great birthday or Christmas gifts for younger people. I gave one to my massage therapist who brought her pre-teen daughter and son to the museum displays and a program designed for youth.
Perhaps there should be a “Hall of Shame” or “ Hall of Infamy” for Elise and the Congressional cult of spineless, shameless women and men who have abandoned integrity and moral fortitude to cull favor with their psychopathic Prez. Hall of Fame seems too dignified for this troop of traitors .
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