Other Voices

Other Voices

By The Altamont Enterprise & Albany County PostSociety & CultureKids & Family
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Other Voices episodes

  • Jennifer Bashant — positive psychology
    Jennifer Bashant of Guilderland, who has worked in a mental-health clinic, in a county jail, as a school social worker, and as a research scientist for the state’s Office of Mental Health, now runs a business called Building Better Futures. She combines her expertise from academic degrees with a hands-on approach to help teachers, parents, and businesses navigate challenges. During the pandemic, her focus has shifted to schools, supporting people through stressful times — teaching positive psychology resilience, and being trauma informed. People, often unknowingly, create narratives about themselves, sometimes listening to a too-often critical inner voice. “You can write a restraining order for that voice,” says Bashant, which creates a new neural pathway in the brain. For everyone struggling through the pandemic, Bashant says, “Don’t be hard on yourself. Feel your feelings … Don’t compare what you’re doing now with what you did a year ago … Do the best you can.”

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    28 min
  • Lora Ricketts — a lifetime in the Hilltowns
    Lora Ricketts consults a cookbook, with her rolling pin and measuring cup at the ready. At 83, she still lives on the Hilltown farm where she settled well over a half-century ago after a peripatetic childhood. She finished eighth-grade in a one-room schoolhouse, then went on to high school in Woodstock, Vermont. She fell in love at 17 with Raymond Ricketts. He managed a neighboring farm in Vermont but, at 16, couldn’t drive. He’d take her to the movies on the back of a big workhorse. Together, they raised three children on their 80-acre farm in East Berne and were largely self-sufficient, Ricketts says in this week’s podcast. They raised beef cattle and pigs, harvested hay, kept a cow for milk and butter, and had a big vegetable garden. Rickets did home canning and freezing and, when her children were older, worked for 37 years as a nutrition instructor for Cornell Cooperative Extension — teaching young families and seniors how to make healthy meals. She retired at age 70. Her husband and two of her children have died. “I miss the ones that are gone,” says Ricketts. “You’ve got to make the most of what you’ve got left.” Her life revolves around her family and she takes great delight in her five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

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    32 min
  • Thomas Capuano — Race and history in Altamont
    Tom Capuano, who grew up in Altamont, has a strong sense of place and the importance of history. Capuano founded Historic Altamont to spread that love, he says on this week’s podcast. The not-for-profit group has started a cemetery preservation project and would like to learn of area cemeteries that are now nearly forgotten. Capuano discovered a list of cemeteries made in the 1940s by the late Guilderland town historian William Brinkman who visited family plots and noted burial grounds — often with unmarked graves — of enslaved African Americans. This led Capuano to produce a mini-documentary, with his son, on the foundational role of African Americans in the Altamont area. He tells the story of an enslaved man, named Sam — only his first name survives — who saved the life of Revolutionary War hero Jacob VanAernam. He also tells of the African-American stable master who tended to the horses of Frederick Crounse, Altamont’s first doctor. That was one of the reasons Historic Altamont had tried to save the 1833 Doctor Crounse House, which the town and village jointly own and plan to demolish. “It had the bedroom of an African American who was daily tending to Dr. Crounse’s needs,” says Capuano. Retired from his career teaching Spanish and Portuguese at Truman State College in Missouri, Capuano now lives in an historic house on the outskirts of Altamont where he raises sheep from a reclaimed Dutch barn. In 2013, Capuano published a book-length poem, an epic, on the history of the area. Whether the topic is racism, or sexism, or immigration, history “has a lot to tell us about our present times,” says Capuano.

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    38 min
  • Clare Gaffey — Arctic scientist
    Clare Gaffey is pictured in October in the Arctic on board the Norseman II, a converted king crab boat, holding a bottle with a water sample that would eventually be analyzed as part of a project studying the effects of global warming. Sometimes she worked 24 hours with no sleep but the camaraderie with other scientists on board the ship was sustaining, she said. Gaffey is now back at Clark University in Massachusetts in her third year of a Ph.D. program in geography. The Distributed Biological Observatory project has for years been documenting the thinning of sea ice, the rising seawater temperatures, and the resulting biological changes. Gaffey also works with satellite imagery to see chlorophyll across the ocean surface. In this week’s podcast, Gaffey describes “a great childhood,” growing up in Guilderland where she was fascinated with nature and felt a duty to protect nature. She hiked with her family in the Adirondacks and attended the Heldeberg Workshop in the summertime. At Guilderland High School, she studied chemistry, biology, and physics as separate disciplines. It wasn’t until she got to the University at Albany, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental science and a master’s degree in geography, that she understood how those fields were interconnected, how, for example, climate affects biology. During her high school years, what Gaffey learned from sports — she played field hockey, cross-country skied, and ran track — is what shaped her character, she said. “It built my confidence and also humbled me,” she said. She learned the value of persistence and now thinks of herself as a scientist. She advises that permafrost, when it melts, releases organic matter that will become methane and also that sea ice and glaciers reflect the sun but, once melted, they are replaced with dark ocean that absorbs radiation, increasing global warming. Individuals can make a difference by “voting with your dollars,” says Gaffey. For example, “If you eat meat, get it locally … Be mindful of how you live.”

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    30 min
  • James E. Gardner — A master printer and publisher
    Jim Gardner, the former long-time owner of The Altamont Enterprise, was raised in a large family in Guilderland. As a boy, he fished in the Black Creek and hunted pheasants and rabbits, squirrels and partridges along Siver Road. “We were born into it,” he says in this week’s podcast at AltamontEnterprise.com/podcasts, of hunting for game. “We never wasted it … If you shot it, you prepared it for the cook.” Gardner was in the Class of 1955 — the first to graduate from the new Guilderland High School. His best friend, Chuck Pergl and classmate Frank Elliott thought up the Flying Dutchman as the still-used symbol for the school. Gardner and Pergl loved country music and listening to their favorite songs on WWVA, a station in Wheeling, West Virginia. “Especially on rainy nights, you could pick it up,” said Gardner. One weekend, they took a spur-of-the-moment road trip to a WWVA jamboree in Wheeling, an adventure that inspired a lifetime of stories. In high school, Gardner started working at The Enterprise as a printer’s devil, carrying heavy frames of hot-lead type to the grand printing press in the cellar. When the press ran, you could hear it in the middle of Maple Avenue, Gardner recalled. He learned the art and craft of printing. “That’s when I fell in love with the printed word ….I have never gotten over that.” Gardner became a master printer and a partner at The Enterprise. Eventually, with his wife, Wanda, working by his side, he was the sole owner of the newspaper and the print shop. He had met Wanda Sturgess when he was the best man at his brother’s wedding and she was the bride’s maid of honor. “It was amazing,” recalled Gardner. “When I met this woman, I said, wow!” They married a year later. The Gardners still work side by side at Enterprise Printing and Photo at 123 Maple Avenue.

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    30 min
  • Dennis Sullivan — Christmas Day podcast
    Dennis Sullivan begins our Christmas Day podcast by reading from one of his Christmas columns on his naïve search as a child for the Star of Bethlehem, which became a lifelong journey to finally find it. Sullivan has compiled 62 of his Enterprise columns into a just-released book, “Homeward Bound.” He took the cover photo of the rail trail after rain had cleared it of people, leaving a green leafy canopy over a straight shot of pavement. At age 80, Sullivan says, “I’ve got a foot in the grave … All that’s waiting for you, me, anyone is that white light.” Sullivan spends a month meditating on each of his essays, which starts with “une ligne donné” — a given line, as French poet Paul Valéry put it. “There is a world beneath that line and it is a writer’s job to find out what is below that line,” says Sullivan. “The lines don’t leak,” he says of his writing, crediting Joan Didion and Janet Malcolm as two of his literary parents. “The columns really are poems,” says Sullivan. He references Virgil’s pace — no more than three lines a day — in writing The Aeneid, quoting the ancient Roman poet: He licked those lines into existence like a mother bear licks her new-born cubs into shape. In the Age of the Internet, when local links are disintegrating, Sullivan’s focus in compiling his book, and in life, is on the local community. He has been Voorheesville’s historian since 1986 and has led library groups on poetry and memoir writing and helped launch the poet laureate contest that used to be held at Smitty’s Tavern. His work on restorative justice — he wrote “Handbook of Restorative Justice: A Global Perspective” — had international reach but focused too on the local, whether in South Africa or London, as the only way restorative justice can work — finding ways communities can resolve disputes without violence. Sullivan hopes his book will encourage readers to look at their own lives and write about them.

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    40 min
  • Jennifer Dorsey — ordained 'Mother Jen'

    Jennifer H. Dorsey, now known as Mother Jen, was ordained as a priest on Sunday by William H. Love, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Albany, at St. Boniface Episcopal Church in Guilderland. “Mystical” is how Dorsey describes the ceremony, in this week’s podcast, as other clergy lay hands on her and prayed God would descend upon her and make her a priest. As a child in northern New Jersey, Dorsey grew up in the Episcopal Church and always loved it. “I felt like this is home and where I was meant to be,” she says.

    As an adult, she traveled the country, studying and teaching history, and ended up back in the Northeast, as a professor of American history at Siena College. She involves her students in community projects, meant to help them think more broadly about the value of history; they also learn that active citizenship is about more than voting.

    The Franciscan and liberal arts traditions at Siena teach students to be problem-solvers, Dorsey said, adding, “Service and advocacy and education all go together… to advance the good of the Capital Region.” As church-going declines nationwide, Dorsey sees anxiety levels rising and doesn’t think yoga or diet programs are adequate for managing that anxiety.

    “As a culture, our anxiety levels are just beyond the pale …,” said Dorsey. “Religion is such an important tool for me to feel grounded and safe and protected by God who is steadfast in his kindness and love.”


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    25 min
  • Robert Porter — explaining a Marine
    Robert Porter is currently renovating the first floor of his duplex in Albany to accommodate handicapped veterans, whom he feels are often not well provided for by the government. Porter himself served in the Marine Corps for 21 years, 4 months, and 19 days. At Christmas time, Porter dons a scarlet uniform with brass buttons and a chestful of medals to become “Gunny Claus,” helping with the Marines’ Toys for Tots program. The corps has shaped his life. After boot camp, he was first stationed in Okinawa, Japan from where he trained in the Philippines and Korea, and vacationed in Thailand. Being abroad, Porter said, made him appreciate “how great it is to be in the United States.” He largely worked in law enforcement and remembers being in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, when he trained Iraqi police in Rawa. “Under Sadam Hussein, they were basically thugs,” he says in this week’s podcast. He remembers being “put on high alert” when Hussein was found and executed in December 2006. He also remembers standing on the roof of the police station in Rawa after an explosion and being able to see the nearby Euphrates River for the first time — the three-story building that had blocked the view was rubble. Porter says the Marines taught him about honor, courage, and commitment and, at age 54, he is still in top physical shape and still works harder at what he does because of being a Marine. “You have those standards you hold yourself to,” he said.

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    45 min
  • Judy Carey Nevin — “Kindness is so easy and it’s free”
    Judy Carey Nevin, right, says kindness and compassion are important to her. “Kindness is so easy and it’s free,” she says on this week’s podcast. Over the last three years, Nevin has written four children’s books — the latest is called “All Kinds of Kindness.” The book’s series of 11 couplets uses simple words to express profound thoughts. In her eight years working as an editor at Viking, Nevin loved finding undiscovered authors but never thought of becoming one herself. However, she did save two paper fortunes she got from fortune cookies while working there: “You are a lover of words,” said the fortunes. “You will someday write a book.” Nevin had loved reading from a very young age. Once, emulating her mother reading in the bathtub, she accidentally dropped a Lynnwood Elementary School library book in the water. She and her husband read books to their daughter, now almost 8, since she was born, and Nevin noted two things: “There are so many bad books” and many children’s books are about the wonders of mothers. One day, she heard her husband tell their daughter, “Daddies like hugs too.” That led her to write her first book, “What Daddies Like,” followed by “What Mommies Like,” and “All Kids are Good Kids.” She is pictured with her husband, Mark Nevin — both are graduates of Guilderland High School — and their daughter, Sarah. Mark Nevin is an associate professor of American history and Judy Carey Nevin is the manager of library services — both at Ohio University Lancaster.

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    36 min

About Other Voices

From the publisher's feed

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…