Jill Rifkin is a sort of Robin Hood for musical instruments.

She collects them from often well-off kids who don’t use them and redistributes them to children who can’t afford them.

Rifkin was hooked, she says, by a little boy from the Caribbean.

“He didn’t speak much English, was desperate to play the violin, and his school did not have enough violins to give him … He was lonely,” Rifkin says in this week’s Enterprise podcast.

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A new widow had never driven. She had no license. She did, however, have her husband’s car. But, without a driver’s license, she couldn’t register the car to park it on the street.

A neighbor said, “Hey, if you title it to me, I can register it in my name and I can then park it.”

The widow didn’t know where to turn. She thought maybe she should have a contract with the neighbor.

She called 518-400-5544. That is the number for the Legal Hand Call-In Center. Any Schenectady or Albany county resident seeking help can call that number or email [email protected].

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Joan Mckeon had an awakening as she mowed her lawn — a job she hated.“It smelled bad, it was noisy, and the little creatures would run for their lives,” she says in this week’s Enterprise podcast.

The less lawn she mowed, the more native plants grew up. “They would bloom and then they’d be covered with bees,” she said.

Similarly, plants in her garden beds had been purchased at a garden center and came from other parts of the world.

Read the full story at https://altamontenterprise.com/02032023/mckeon-says-nurturing-nature-native-plants-something-everyone-can-do

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Emily Vincent is carrying on a legacy.

A sheep farmer in Berne, Vincent had a brain tumor removed in January of 2020.

“After I got out of my surgery, I had just the most horrendous vertigo that you could ever have,” recalls Vincent in this week’s Enterprise podcast. “It was really hard.”

Vincent, a registered nurse, had regularly commuted to New York City where she worked in intensive-care units.

Now, she couldn’t stand up for long. “When I stood up, I was teetering. I looked like I was perpetually drunk. I couldn’t drive, so I couldn’t get down to my job in New York City.”

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Julia Young, a student at Clayton A. Bouton High School, is one of 25 seniors in New York State nominated as a Presidential Scholar, a recognition the Regents chancellor called “the pinnacle” — and yet Julia Young is humble.The day after the nominations were announced, Young told The Enterprise she was surprised by the accolade.

“I like being challenged,” she says in this week’s Enterprise podcast of what motivates her.

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Christine Galvin helps abused and neglected children who have fled their homelands in hopes of building a better life in the United States.

She has spent up to a thousand hours each year for more than five years working, for free, to help them.

Asked why, Galvin says simply, “They all need help.”

Pressed further, she says, “Because I speak Spanish and because I’m a lawyer, it’s a perfect set of skills to do this kind of work. So how could I not?”

Galvin, who lives in New Scotland, has responded to prejudice against immigrants, undocumented workers, writing in a letter to the Enterprise editor, “Undocumented immigrants are contributing members of our society and deserve to be treated as such.”

She says in this week’s Enterprise podcast of the kids she represents, “They work hard and they do jobs nobody wants to do.”

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Rudy Pitcher calls his wife, Connie, his “combat buddy.”

It’s not an exaggeration.

Pitcher, now retired from his Army career, was stationed in Tehran in 1978. His wife and their three young children — ages 5, 7, and 9 — were with him.

Pitcher had spent a year learning Persian-Farsi before he left. At first, life was peaceful, with the shah’s pro golfer teaching Pitcher’s two young sons to golf.

But everything changed in a matter of months. That’s when the Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Khomeini threw out the pro-Western shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, ending the historical monarchy. Pitcher was the provost marshal in charge of security — and had eight installations overrun in 48 hours.

“We got captured … They weren’t killing us or our families, which was good,” says Pitcher in this week’s Enterprise podcast.

Find more at altamontenterprise.com

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Paul Steinkamp wishes that, when he was a child, someone had taught him how to fold a piece of paper in half.

As he talks about the art and science of origami, which he came to late in life, he sounds like a poet.

“The greatest gift you could ever give a child, as far as I’m concerned, is to introduce them to folding paper ….,” he says in this week’s Enterprise podcast. “You can fold paper for the rest of your life and you will still have some discovery … It’s a river. It reminds you you have a brain and you have fingers … It’s something that no other living thing can do.”

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