Two Saranac Lake arts organizations have combined forces to strengthen and expand their impact in the arts community. ArtWorks and BluSeed Studios, both well-respected in the Adirondacks, formalized their "under one roof" collaboration earlier this month. There will be one board overseeing the combined group, with a special ArtWorks committee, but memberships for each will continued to be handled separately and funds raised will be kept apart.Saranac Lake photographer Mark Kurtz, a past ArtWorks Chair, said he’s excited about a closer working relationship between BluSeed and ArtWorks. The two groups spent months working out the details of a collaboration.Leaders of ArtWorks and BluSeed say individual missions and identities will remain in place.BluSeed Studios founder and Artistic Director Carol Vossler calls it a "marriage" that is both natural and logical since the two arts groups have worked together in the past. [full story]

Sharpen your pencil! That's the first thing Cooperative Extension's Amy Ivy does when she gets ready to think about ordering vegetable seeds for the coming gardening season. A pencil, a piece of paper, and a good seed catalog, and she's ready to list, A to Z, all the vegetables she MIGHT want to have in the garden. It's a long list to start with. It gets more realistic before she places an order. This week she shares what's important to consider when making the final choices. [full story]

Part of the Hamilton, Ontario, harbor called Randle Reef is one of the most polluted sites on Canada’s side of the Great Lakes. A thick layer of toxic black tar coats the lake bottom. Government agencies plan to suck it up and put it in a big underwater containment. [full story]

(Jan 27, 2017) Ten officials from the North Country are headed to Kazakhstan on Monday. They’re going to check out the World University Games there - a kind of amateur Olympics that attracts thousands of athletes and spectators. The local leaders are looking into the idea of hosting the games in Lake Placid. [full story]

More than a decade after the state’s highest court ordered New York lawmakers to spend billions more a year on schools, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his top aides are moving further away from ever fulfilling the order, critics say.The New York Court of Appeals ruled in 2006 that many of the state’s schoolchildren were deprived of their constitutional right to a "sound, basic education" and that billions more needed to be spent on schools each year. [full story]

Some areas in the Western and Northern Adirondacks, including the High Peaks, could see 6 to as much as 18 inches of new snow by the end of the weekend, arriving in regular daily doses, especially on Northern and Western slopes above about 1,500 feet. The deepest snow will fall at higher elevations, especially in Northern Herkimer and Hamilton counties. [full story]

After twelve years and four albums, the Burlington band, PossumHaw, is disbanding. Husband and wife band founders Ryan and Colby Crehan will be relocating to Wyoming in the next couple of months. So, the band has been hosting a series of farewell concerts this season in Vermont, New Hampshire and the North Country. They'll perform one last time at the Whallonsburg Grange Hall on February 10 and at Cafe Livre at the Long Lake Library on February 11.Todd Moe spoke with Colby and Ryan Crehan via Skype to talk about their love for music and favorite Possum Haw memories. The band made a name for itself with its brand of original, blue grass, folk and Americana music. Jazz and blues influences weave through their repertoire of original music. Ryan said the farewell concerts have been "bittersweet." [full story]

President Donald Trump won the White House in large part by appealing to small town America. But rural policy experts say his bold promises to revive small mining and manufacturing towns will be hard to fulfill. [full story]

President Donald Trump revived the Keystone XL pipeline and Dakota Access pipeline with a highly publicized executive order this week. In New York state, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration has quietly acted to further energy pipelines across the state. [full story]

Martha Foley talks with Dr. Curt Stager about how carbon cycles through the atmosphere and the bodies of all living things - why we need it to live, and how it also threatens the planet. [full story]