Top Stories from NCPR

It's generally considered best to avoid politics and religion at social gatherings. But that's not the case as the second offering of Pendragon Theatre's Summer Season opens this Friday night. "Disgraced" by Ayad Akhtar focuses on a dinner party between four people with very different backgrounds, where these forbidden subjects become the main topics of conversation.Director Kim Bouchard says the play, for mature audiences, is a compelling, witty story of America. She told Todd Moe that she was intrigued by the script, story structure and the characters.

The Depot Theatre in Westport hosts an open house on Sunday afternoon so the public can get a first look at the theatre's new capital improvements.The theatre has a new wifi system, lighting grid, flooring and carpeting in the theatre, and brand new seats. Visitors will also be invited to take a back stage tour, and join Broadway singer Alisa Endsley in a celebratory sing-along. Todd Moe spoke with the Depot's Producing Director, Kevin Cochran, about this summer's season of plays, which opens on July 7 with a new comedy.

Most of the NCPR news department was out of town last weekend at gatherings of our journalism colleagues from around the country.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is not signing a bill the New York State Legislature passed last week that would provide grants for flood victims along Lake Ontario.

New York state lawmakers left behind a lot of unfinished business when the legislative session ended on June 21. It included a failure to act on ethics reform proposals despite an economic development scandal in the Cuomo Administration. Nine former associates of Governor Cuomo are have been charged with bribery and bid rigging, among other crimes, and are set to go on trial as early as the fall.

Theatre Kingston invites you to window shop for live performances this week during the annual Storefront Fringe Festival. Three empty storefronts in downtown Kingston, Ontario, will host 17 theater companies, that will put on shows in the vacant spaces on Princess Street through Saturday.Kingston has hosted fringe festivals before, but this is the first year the event has obtained official status from the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals. Festival director Mariah Horner said the shows were picked through a lottery system and include eight out of town acts. She says one of the shows will have audience members gathering inside a large camping tent for the performance. Horner told Todd Moe that although this week's fringe festival includes shows for children, it is uncurated and uncensored.

Martha Foley took horticulturist Amy Ivy's advice from last week and gave her pale struggling tomatoes a little nitrogen. Now that they've perked up and greened up, what's next?Amy says it's time to train and support them to produce a good healthy yield.

A group of local radio stations in the Tri-Lakes region of the Adirondacks have fallen on hard times. As of this week, three of the five stations owned by Saranac Lake Radio's Ted Morgan were off the air. The only two that were broadcasting were simulcasting the same station, WNBZ, from a Plattsburgh office building. The decline of the local stations has happened amid big financial troubles for Morgan, leaving local listeners in the dark.

The North Country's first tourists were sportsmen. They came by train starting in the 1860s and 70s, to hunt and fish in the deep woods. Warren Humes was one of the first to turn that wave of tourists to his advantage, by building a hunting and fishing hotel right next to his family's home in Harrisville, in the southwest Adirondacks. At a recent North Country at Work event in Harrisville, Gerald "Gerry" Humes brought in a story and these photos about one of those hotels, built by his great-grandfather Warren Humes, who was born in 1829 and lived to be 87.

It's been ten years since the disease known as white nose syndrome first appeared in bat populations in Upstate New York.