Other Voices

Brendan Cushing, a University at Albany senior, is an activist, getting young people to vote. “Students know little to nothing about local and state government,” Cushing says in this week’s podcast. For example, the students his GenVote@UAlbany team surveyed didn’t know who the mayor of Albany was, or how a bill becomes law. Cushing termed this “rather frightening.” He thinks party polarization has turned students off, and also the lack of civics classes in public schools has left students uneducated. Cushing believes, too, that youth are largely ignored by politicians, which he concedes may be because so few vote — leading to a vicious cycle. UAlbany has about 24,000 undergraduates, and just 57 voted in the 2018 elections, he said

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What will our world look like in 2030? Filmmakers Jon Cring, left, and Joe Murphy are making a short mockumentary — a humorous, pretend documentary — this summer in Voorheesville to bring home the effects of climate change: It’s a world where refugees are rampant, political rhetoric doesn’t square with reality, and kids have never seen a butterfly. In this week’s podcast, Cring and Murphy discuss their hopes to eventually make the mockumentary a feature-length film and also talk about a blog launched this spring, “How I Talked About Climate Change Today.” They believe individuals can make a difference: The Murphy family went solar and the Cringes bought a bidet to save on toilet paper. — Photo from Joe Murphy

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Wayne Crounse has a Bible from the 1700s that lists, in fine German script, his ancestors. He plans to pass along the inherited tome — with the corners of the embossed leather cover so worn, they were reinforced with metal — to his son, who will pass it in turn to his grandson. The Bible belonged to Frederick Crounse, born in 1716, who came to the New World, from Germany, and settled with his wife in Guilderland at the foot of the Helderergs. In this week’s podcast, Crounse shares his family’s rich history — humorous stories as well as deep insights.

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“Love is not made of DNA,” Carol Caloro writes in her memoir, “My Father’s Daughter.” She speaks with reverence of her kind and loving father and of the difficulties of living with an emotionally abusive mother. Caloro often served as a stand-in mother for her five younger siblings. Her book has many Norman Rockwell-like moments of growing up just after World War II in a small town on the Hudson River. But it ends with a bang. In her 70s, while doing research through Ancestry.com, Caloro discovered the man who loved and raised her, since deceased, was not her biological father. She started writing as a way to deal with that discovery. “He chose to make me his daughter,” she writes, ending her book, “Dad, I so wish you were here. I desperately need to hug you.”

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Frank Dees and his older brother, Ricky, were both on their high school football team. One week, in 1964, the team played two games. In Tuesday’s game, Ricky made a tackle on a hard hit, and told Frank afterward that his head hurt. At Saturday’s game, Ricky got another blow to the head — and died. Ricky’s number, 54, was retired. Frank shared his story with The Enterprise in 2012 when the newspaper was editorializing on the need for local high schools to adopt a testing program that provides a baseline so athletes suffering concussions aren’t sent back to play too soon. Frank Dees has, since then, shared the Enterprise editorial that tells his story with hundreds of people and has a binder with hundreds of letters, personal responses to his plea. In this week’s podcast he talks with heart about his mission of protecting athletes from themselves.

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Eric Brown and his wife, Linda, also a wildlife rehabilitator, have housed everything from owls and hawks to raccoons and foxes on the Duanesburg farm he inherited from his grandfather. Brown tells in this week’s podcast how he grew particularly fond of four coyotes that were taken from their mother’s uterus after she was shot; he calls them princesses. Nine months ago, three bobcat kittens were brought to him from Altamont Orchards after their mother disappeared. The feisty bobcats are now ready to be released back into the wild.

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James Meade, after graduating from Guilderland High School, Hamilton College, and Northwestern University — with a Ph.D. in English — wrote several novels, all rejected by publishers. He thinks it’s important not to self-publish but to write for money, and built a career writing nonfiction books, over 30 of them, including five in the well-known Dummies series. His favorite book is “The Answer to Cancer: Is Never Giving It a Chance to Start,” which he wrote with Hari Sharma, M.D. The two have recently written, “Dynamic DNA: Activating Your Inner Energy for Better Health.” Meade and his wife, Nina, started practicing transcendental meditation 50 years ago when they lived in Illinois. They now live in California’s San Fernando Valley where they run the Encino Transcendental Meditation Center and travel the world, teaching the techniques that he says, relieve stress and improve consciousness.

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Abby Maslin, a former Helderberg Hiltons resident, talks about her new book, "Love You Hard."

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Tim O’Shea, a musician from Killarney in southwest Ireland, says he doesn’t charge to play at weddings or funerals but, rather, is honored to be the soundtrack for the parts of a person’s life on the edge of emotions. O’Shea, along with his bodhrán, an Irish drum, and guitar, his form of the harp, was brought to The Enterprise by his cousin, Dennis Sullivan, who writes our monthly “Field notes” column.

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Lisa Dougherty first became interested in genealogy as a teenager in the 1970s when she helped her father find relatives in Ireland. She pursued genealogy again as an adult when, after her father died, her mother gave her a folder with the papers they had assembled. Back then, records were obtained the old-fashioned way, by writing letters and receiving documents. The internet along with genetic testing has revolutionized genealogy. Now, says Dougherty, many more are interested in finding their family history. Whereas before genealogy was often a hobby pursued by retirees, many young people are now involved. Anyone can do it, Dougherty says, adding the caveat: You have to be prepared for surprises.

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