A new way to explore the Bronck Museum

In Events, Events - Greenville, The Greenville Pioneer

June 8, 2023

Bronck Museum Curator Shelby Mattice. Contributed photo

COXSACKIE — The Bronck Museum in Coxsackie is pleased to announce a new way to experience the museum.

Beginning on Friday, June 9, at 2 p.m., and offered several Friday afternoons throughout the regular museum season, Curator Shelby Mattice will be offering a series of tours that will explore the more remote corners of cultural, social and lifestyle history.

The June 9 curator’s tour “In the Beginning” will focus on the mindset of the early Dutch settlers as they faced what for them was the exotic new environment of the American wilderness.

Early printed landscapes of the Dutch colony of New Netherland featured both palm trees and unicorns. Their expectations with regard to their new home, combined with the desire to maintain a European lifestyle that was unsupportable in the New World, generated significant challenges and peculiar practices.

The tour will last two hours. Cost is $25 per person.

The Bronck Museum is located just off Route 9W, 1.5 miles south of the intersection of Routes 9W and 81, near Coxsackie.

To make reservations for the June 9 curator’s tour, please visit www.gchistory.org/schedule-tour.

Mask mandate for businesses lifted Thursday, schools’ requirement remains

In News, News - Greenville, The Greenville Pioneer

February 9, 2022

By Melanie Lekocevic

Capital Region Independent Media

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday the mask mandate for most businesses will be lifted Thursday, but masking requirements at schools will remain for the time being. Courtesy of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Office

ALBANY — The mask mandate for most indoor businesses will be lifted Thursday, but the requirement for students and staff in schools will remain for the time being, Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a press briefing Wednesday.

The state will re-evaluate the school mandate in early March.

The lifting of the mask-or-vaccine mandate comes as COVID-19 numbers are dropping in all regions of the state and across all metrics, including infections and hospitalizations, Hochul said.

The current mandate went into effect in mid-December as the number of virus cases began to spike due to the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant.

“On Dec. 10, we initiated a plan to say that across the state, any business would have the option to require people to be vaccinated or enforce having people wear masks,” Hochul said. “It was a strong statement, but I stand behind it as a way to not have to resort to shutting down businesses when this variant began to spread like wildfire.”

The Omicron spread peaked Jan. 7 but is now declining rapidly.

“Now we have witnessed a 93% drop in cases,” the governor said. “That is what we were waiting for.”

As of Feb. 8, the seven-day average positivity rate was 3.67%, Hochul said.

“Why is this happening? Because New Yorkers and businesses stepped up and did the right thing,” Hochul said.

The Omicron variant is less severe than previous forms of the virus, including the most recent Delta variant, Hochul confirmed.

“Of people who were contracting Delta, 62% of people who were infected ended up in the hospital,” she said. “With the Omicron variant, we see only 3.5% did.”

The high number of vaccinations and booster shots statewide also contributed to the lower number of serious infections, she added.

“Omicron is not considered as severe, but there are people lying in hospitals today because of Omicron, so it is something we still take very, very seriously,” Hochul said.

With COVID metrics down on all fronts and the high number of vaccinations, the decision was made to lift the mask mandate for indoor businesses.

“New Yorkers, this is what we have been waiting for — tremendous progress after two long years,” she said. “We are not done yet, but this is trending in a very, very good direction and that is why we are entering a new phase of this pandemic.”

Municipalities and businesses will still have the option to require masks at their discretion.

“At this time, it is the right decision to lift the mandate for indoor businesses and let counties, cities and businesses make their own decisions on what they want to do with respect to the mask-or-vaccinate requirement,” Hochul said Wednesday. “Given the declining cases, given the declining hospitalizations, that is why we feel comfortable to lift this tomorrow.”

The mandate will remain in place at health care facilities, adult-care facilities, nursing homes, correctional facilities, schools, childcare centers, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters and on public transportation, including buses, trains, subways, airplanes and airports.

“This pandemic is not over and that is why we are going to maintain protections for people in vulnerable places where people are very concentrated,” Hochul said. “I want people to feel safe.”

The requirement for schools — a hot topic statewide — will be re-evaluated a short while after students return from winter break later this month. In the interim, test kits will be handed out to families so they can test their students and retest three days later to ensure they are not infected. The state will also continue to analyze factors such as hospitalizations, infection rates and what is occurring globally before making a decision.

“After the break, after we had kids tested, we are going to make an assessment the first week in March,” Hochul said. “There will not be one number that says yes or no, it will be an assessment of all these factors that have guided us throughout.”

Assemblyman Chris Tague, R-102, decried the decision to retain the school mask mandate.

“Today’s announcement by our governor is no cause for celebration, because it provides no plan whatsoever to end the masking of our children in schools,” Tague said. “Even as other Democrat governors have relented and ended their school mask mandates, Hochul has ignored both the data and public sentiment by needlessly prolonging this harmful and entirely unnecessary policy. Two years of masking has had a marked impact on the development and educational success of our children, and it’s long past time to put an end to this mandate once and for all.”

The National Federation of Independent Businesses cheered the decision for small businesses.

“This is welcome news for New York’s small businesses and our communities, which for nearly two years now have wrestled with ever-changing and taxing public health mandates,” Ashley Ranslow, the organization’s state director, said. “Gov. Hochul’s announcement that the indoor mask-or-vaccine mandate will be lifted is necessary and prudent as other states, including our neighboring states, are easing restrictions and finding a way back to normal.”

Horses of Unbridled: All about Elle

In Columns, Columns - Greenville, The Greenville Pioneer

February 24, 2023

By Susan Kayne

For Capital Region Independent Media

Being bred from a championship racing line couldn’t save Elle from the slaughter lot — but Unbridled Thoroughbred Foundation stepped in and saved her. Courtesy of Holly Scism

Elle Tempo is a 17-year-old Thoroughbred mare. She is coal black with a white crescent moon stretching sideways across her forehead. Her muzzle softens to a rich mahogany brown, and Picasso-like smatterings of white cuff her legs just atop her hooves.

Compared to a movie star, she would be Elizabeth Taylor. Splendid and gorgeous, she carries herself with the regality of the noble blood coursing through her veins.

Elle’s earliest memories can be likened to those of Black Beauty from his utopian youth: “The first place that I can well remember was a large, pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it. Some shady trees leaned over it, and rushes and water lilies grew at the deep end. Over the hedge on one side we looked into a plowed field, and on the other we looked over a gate at our master’s house …”

On Feb. 3, 2006, Elle’s dam (mother), Uhavethebeat, birthed her into this world atop a bed of golden straw at Charlotte Colket Weber’s iconic Live Oak Stud. Imbued with beauty and elegance, the newborn filly stepped into her life outside of the womb with confidence and grace.

Elle’s sire (father) is Eltish, a successful racehorse and stallion bred and owned by the late Prince Khalid bin Abdullah of Saudia Arabia. Eltish won graded stakes races in Britain and the United States and retired with earnings of $704,186. Elle’s maternal grandsire is the great Unbridled. In 1990, he won both the Kentucky Derby and the Breeders’ Cup. At the age of four he retired with earnings of $4,489,475.

As a home-bred of Weber, Elle was born into one of the most elite racing dynasties in America. Weber is the granddaughter of condensed soup inventor and Campbell Soup founder John T. Dorrance. A devoted equestrian, Weber owns and manages Live Oak Stud, a 4,500-acre Thoroughbred farm and commercial cattle operation just west of Ocala, Florida.

Since 1995, Weber has solely guided the fortunes of her Thoroughbred breeding and racing operation. In these past four decades, Live Oak Plantation’s distinctive black, red and white silks have become a nationally recognized racing symbol.

Elle loves little girls. She is pictured with her friend, Hailey. Contributed photo

In 1998, Weber purchased Uhavethebeat as a yearling for $300,000 at the Keeneland Sales. The filly could not withstand the stress of training and did not race. At the age of three, she was bred to With Approval, the 1989 Canadian Horse of the Year and Champion. For the next eight years she was rebred and gave birth to beautiful foals for Weber. In 2009, pregnant for the last time, Weber sold Uhavethebeat through the same Keeneland Sales where their story had begun 11 years earlier.

Of Elle’s eight siblings, her elder brother, CAN’T BEAT IT, garnered the most success on the racetrack. He won graded stakes races in the silks of Live Oak and earned over $387,000.

Elle, like her mother, was sold as a yearling. She withstood training and went on to race 13 times in the colors of Denholtz Stable. Her lone victory came on the turf at the age of three under trainer Hamilton Smith at Colonial Downs in Virginia.

At the age of four, Elle retired to Kimberly Godwin Clark at Leighton Sport Horses to be trained for a “second career.” Tall, long-legged and balletic, Elle excelled in the discipline of dressage. Leighton showcased Elle’s exceptional talent in videos on You Tube. According to Clark, Elle was sound, talented, and adopted for a fee of $3,500.

Eight years post-adoption, on her 12th birthday, Elle was discovered in a slaughter-bound lot of horses in Pennsylvania. She was frightened, skinny and unkempt. It is a mystery how she landed in such a predicament, and alongside an elderly gelding named Grand Fashion who also raced under Hamilton Smith.

When Unbridled began fundraising to save Elle from shipping to slaughter, our loving supporters rallied the funds to also rescue her friend Grand Fashion. With care, nourishment and time, both horses reclaimed their health and regained their dignity.

Saved from slaughter, Elle’s coat is now gleaming and she is the picture of good health. Contributed photo

Grand Fashion was adopted as a non-ridden companion horse, and Elle was rehomed to ride with a family in Massachusetts. Under tack, unsoundness plagued Elle. Whatever had happened to her, she could no longer tolerate a saddle.

In August 2019, Elle returned to the pastures of Unbridled. With her troubles over and travels far behind, she is enjoying the freedom and security of her life in sanctuary.

Elle Tempo is Spanish. It translates to SHE TIME in English — something Elle will have in abundance for the rest of her days at Unbridled.

Susan Kayne operates the horse rescue organization Unbridled Thoroughbred Foundation, on the border of Albany County and Greenville.