The Kirst Curse? Snowmaggedon ’10

As everyone around here knows, Syracuse has been a (blizzard hellhole) winter wonderland the past few days--we're up to 43 inches, setting many records along the way for amount of snow. This is nothing new to CNY. For the past few years Syracuse has won the Golden Snowball, a competition for the most snow amongst …

Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins Really Dislikes Syracuse

Posted via email from syruckus's posterous Sally Jenkins is a talented sportswriter, having written for Sports Illustrated and now for the Washington Post. She was also the writer of Lance Armstrong's as-told-to bestseller "It's Not About The Bike." She was in Syracuse on Monday to watch Washington National-to-be phenom Stephen Strasburg pitch for the Chiefs …

Syracuse Schools: Poster Child For Failure, Yet Again

Awhile back I wrote about a talk that educator Jerry Grant gave in Syracuse, about his book "Hope And Despair In The American City." The book studied segregation and poor performance in school districts in America. Syracuse was the poster child for the "Despair" section. In this weekend's NYT magazine is a story titled "Building …

Lost In Transition Part 2

Update: this blog post got linked to by the newpaper’s Sunday Postscript: both on page A2 of the printed Sunday January 17th Post-Standard and here at their website. Thanks to Brian Cubbison at the Post. The mayor of Syracuse, Stephanie Miner, just released a report from her Transition Team (PDF) entitled Renewing The Promise of …

The Dreaded P Word: Perspective

I recently read a very interesting article on Slate.com by John Swansburg "Why I Stopped Being A Sports Fan." A guy deeply immersed in modern sports culture goes cold turkey and finds he doesn't miss it all that much. I know what he's going through. I gained what I used to call "the dreaded P …

Hope And Despair In The American City

Hope & Despair book Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun I went to a meeting of FOCUS Greater Syracuse today--one of the many good government groups that try to make an impact on our city. They have their meetings at the ungodly hour of 7:30 AM and the mostly older and white folks run around …

Stephanie Miner wins

Stephanie Miner wins Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun  Stephanie Miner took 50% of the vote in a three way race--a very solid showing--and became the first woman elected Mayor in a Big 5 city in New York State. So much for my lawn sign jinx. After only backing losers for years I'm 3-0 …