Andrea Schnobrich sits at a long table in a room just inside the entrance to Fowler High School with three colleagues from CNY Works, processing applications for summer jobs from students who have filled them out and, if under 18, had them signed by a parent. “We don’t want to be a pain in the neck,” she calls after students she has to send back for a pass justifying their appearance. Now in her fourth summer as manager of the agency’s youth department, gaining access to city schools is a major accomplishment in the progress she has brought to the program, and she doesn’t want to step on protocols. The students don’t mind complying, and file in and out in a businesslike manner...

CATEGORY: General Society

TAGS: Sing dance act get paid syracuse, Media Unit, Walt shepperd, syracuse theater

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A flurry of candidate withdrawals sprung an awakening for Samadee. Unable, as he had been, to generate the Big Mo for announcement of his entry into the gubernatorial race, passing up, as he had, the Westcott Cultural Festival, the Winterfest Wingwalk and the St. Patrick’s Day Parade as appropriate blast off points, he realized the only credibility to be built for seeking higher office was from denial of intent to pursue an office of lower status.



State Legislature
It flashed like a light bulb in the balloon over a cartoon character’s head. And he knew he could find mentoring for the move from Tom Buckel, who had already announced an exploration of a run for the State Senate, then eschewed the campaign...

CATEGORY: General Society

TAGS: politics syracuse,walt shepperd, samadee's run for office

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The middle school students gathered in the big Room A at SU’s Marley Education Center were slow to respond to Otto Feliu’s, “Good Morning,” opening the Rite Aid Drug Quiz Show April 7. It was 10 a.m. and many had driven significant distances, from Afton and Endwell, Edmeston and Indian Lake, for the state regional play-offs. But the Director of Crouse Chemical Dependency Treatment Services got them to turn up the volume on a repeat of their response to his call, before asking how many outpatient visits they thought his agency got each year. The estimates started low, and took awhile to reach actual 135,000. Then Feliu worked them into chanting. “I am the future,” they chorused...

CATEGORY: General Society

TAGS: drug quiz syracuse,walt shepperd,city eagle syracuse,Susan Meidenbauer,Deputy Mayor John Cowin,Kim Vacco,Syracuse/Onondaga County Drug Abuse Commission,Rockefeller drug laws,marijuana

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Samadee went to the Tea Party in Clinton Square. Having seen Sarah Palin on television telling a national gathering of the group, “This Tea Party is the future of politics in America,” and heard from their local coordinator Joanne Wilder that they would stay away from endorsements, he sensed a Machiavellian opening. Politics, he had learned after four decades of searching for an office to run for, was about getting elected. He had learned—although knowing he would never compromise the principle—that his one campaign pledge, not to take any campaign contributions, meant the chances of winning an election, even if he could finally get into one, would be a contradiction in terms. Joanne Wilder’s rejection of endorsements had a similar feel to it...

CATEGORY: General Society

TAGS: Tea Party in Clinton Square,Walt shepperd at the Tea party,samadee at Tea Party,Joanne Wilder,Tea Party national organizer Mark Williams,Benny Mardones,Syracuse tea party

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They talked about more effective uses of stage lighting and how music sometimes distracted from narrative flow, about dances coming out of the moment and how casters on set pieces could allow for better sight lines. They were Lisa Myers, Youth Tour Director at Merry-Go-Round Playhouse, and Jon Wilson, artistic director at Appleseed Productions, and Dan Tursi, long a moving force on the local drama scene and founder of Rarely Done Productions.


They were adjudicating the Michael Harms Theater Festival, familiar each spring at Oncenter’s Carrier Theater for more than the past generation. But this year they stood in front of the stage in the magnificently renovated Irene A. Bisgrove Theater at Cayuga Community College...

CATEGORY: General Society

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