Updating a dream from 15 years ago
Stefanik plants story on northern border crisis, threatens DA
By Ken Tingley
More than once over the past 15 years, I wondered about Rachel Crawford.
I wondered if there was any news from Hollywood, if she had managed to carve out a career in Tinseltown.
But I never found anything.
Fifteen years ago, Rachel convinced me she was going to make it.
She was 19 and I had just seen her perform in an Adirondack Community College theatrical production.
She had poise, determination, and maybe a little bit of a glow about her that you rarely see in a small-college production. But what impressed me the most was what she already seemed to know about life.
She knew it would be hard.
She knew the odds were stacked against her.
She told me that’s what appealed to her about the challenge ahead.
She was an outlier in a well-known harness racing family who had grown up in Stillwater and was taking the road rarely traveled.
There aren’t many who choose that path, that embrace it.
What we all learn along the way is that life is hard, that its unexpected challenges sometimes derail us and that the bumps in the road are the norm.
Rachel is 34 now.
She bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles after her time at ACC.
But she didn’t make it in Hollywood.
In fact, she didn’t even like Hollywood.
There was a superficiality about her acting classes, a sleaziness to the auditions hinged on what you looked like and not how you delivered your lines. Often, there was a Polaroid photo and the door.
“I kind of hated it,” Rachel tells you now.
She now accepts it as part of the journey, part of the you-can’t-get-there-from-here path that we all have to take.
She eventually left L.A., enrolled in film school at Burlington College in Vermont, earned a scholarship and headed down another path.
What happened next was, well, life.
Instead of applying for internships in film after graduation, she went back to the family horse racing business for the summer. She needed a break form school, hoped to make a little money and pay down some of those student loans. But the summer led to a job at a track in New Jersey, then marriage to a driver from Canada, three years living in Toronto and divorce.
Rachel came back east, toyed around selling lawn jockeys and other trinkets at the farmer’s market. She started selling things online and when business people saw her product photos, they wanted to know who was doing the work.
It was Rachel doing the photos.
She tells you about the photo class she took at ACC. It was old-school photography where you developed your film and printed out your photos.
It’s an epiphany now in hindsight.
It only makes sense now.
Her teacher, Rene O’Brien, did something teachers rarely do.
She told Rachel she didn’t need to be in school.
She suggested Rachel take her talent, buy a camera and go to work.
Maybe that seemed too easy for Rachel at the time.
Maybe it seemed like she was cheating the other dream.
All those inquiries about her photographs led to a marketing and photography business called “The Content Agency.” The office is on Broadway in Saratoga Springs.
There something ironic about that, about working on another Broadway.
As we talk, she seems happy and enthusiastic about life now and what the future holds.
There is no sense of regret.
True happiness only comes to those who have lived life to the fullest. Rachel seems to have achieved that and she has so much more ahead.
Another memory
After writing about the new Lake Placid Olympic Museum, Cheryl Breen-Randall commented on her own memories from the “Miracle on Ice” game.
Cheryl was working in the marketing department for the Lake Placid Olympic Organizing Committee in 1980. Their office were just down the hall from the Olympic Arena.
“It was close to 5 p.m. and I was alone in our office when someone stopped in and suggested I go and watch the game,” Cheryl wrote. “I really wasn’t a hockey fan but I had `infinity’ accreditation which allowed me entrance to all venues and events so I decided to attend. I was in the first row of the SRO (standing room only) section directly behind the net. The atmosphere was electrifying and at times I felt like I’d faint as I was dizzy from excitement. It’s an experience that even 43 years later is forever etched in my memory.”
Cheryl also went to the Gold Medal game against Finland, but the hockey bug did not stick. She remembers going to a Montreal Canadiens game in the 1980s and an ECAC college game in Lake Placid once.
That’s probably for the best. She was never going to top those two games in 1980.
Stefanik threatens DA
Shortly after the news broke that former President Donald Trump had been indicted by the Manhattan district attorney, Rep. Elise Stefanik threatened the DA with a social media post.
“This is unprecedented election interference from corrupt Socialist District Attorney Alvin Bragg,” Stefanik wrote on Twitter. “The radical Far Left will stop at nothing to persecute Joe Biden’s chief political opponent President Trump ahead of the election.”
Then came the threat: “The @HouseGOP will hold Alvin Bragg accountable.”
Instead of letting the case play out in the courts like any legal case, Rep. Stefanik weaponized her position in the federal government with a threat to interfere in the state of New York. She currently sits on a committee in the House of Representatives that is investigating this type of conduct.
Someone on that committee needs to investigate her actions.
Cartels in NY?
Rep. Elise Stefanik tweeted this out this week:
“Cartels are operating along our northern borders in Upstate New York. People are at risk due to Biden’s Border Crisis.”
It’s a message of fear for anyone in the North Country. Her source on this was a story from the The Washington Examiner, a conservative online news outlet based in Washington D.C. The story was written by Homeland Security Reporter Anna Giaritelli.
So where did The Washington Examiner get its story?
From Elise Stefanik.
Stefanik told The Washington Examiner that because border agents were transferred from the northern border to deal with the crisis at the southern border, there had been an influx of illegal border crossings in the north.
Since October, border patrol agents have encountered 2,856 people along the northern border or about 571 a month. Statistics have gone up and down over the years between 900 and 4,400 each year. The highest year for arrests was 8,000 in 2008. At the current pace, the northern border will have about 4,000 this year, which is about the average.
There was no mention in The Washington Examiner story about the cartels at all.
Elise's threats are over the top. Now she is attacking the New York State legal system, a jury of fellow New Yorkers and a D.A. elected by New Yorkers. She has no loyalty to anyone but herself, and is willing to divide us and undermine our government to further her political self interest.
Stefanik is a threat. Full stop. We can do better. We must.