Other Voices

Gwendolyn Bondi grew up hearing family stories about her ancestors who had fought in the war for America’s independence. She and her mother worked together to document their family history and Bondi became a member of the Old Hellebergh Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution in 1994; her own daughter is now a member, too. In this week’s podcast, Bondi talks about Cons...

Andy Maycock directs filming at the Altamont Manor for a trailer to promote the romantic comedy he wrote, “The Best Man’s Privilege.” An English teacher at Guilderland High School who produces the school plays and musicals, Maycock is using some of his former students in the cast. The plot centers on a groom who unwittingly signals an escape plan — promoted by his best man — from his own wedding....

Wilma Beason Jenssen was Mrs. Beason, teaching in Harlem’s Public School 92, when she was featured with student Kime Holman in this 1966 LOOK magazine photo essay, “Life Without Father.” Photographer Bob Adelman wrote, “Kime’s school, buried in the Harlem ghetto, is as segregated as any of its Mississippi counterparts.” Jenssen, who was raised in the midwest and now lives in Guilderland has, at ag...

CiCi Ferrara spoke at a home-grown Black Lives Matter rally in Berne on Aug. 9 about what it was like to be the only Black student in her class at Berne-Knox-Westerlo. In this week’s podcast, her kindness shines through as she describes both the experiences she suffered through as well as the sense of common humanity she gained from her high school social studies teacher, James Lemire, another spe...

John Gonzalez — a Taíno/Pimicikamak journalist, author, and filmmaker — shown here with LaDonna Tamakawastewin Allard at Sacred Stone Camp, which spreads a message for green energy and living with respect for the world, likens Canada to a giant battery, charging the United States. He described the poverty and depression in many indigenous communities, worsened with disruption caused by the megadam...

Eliza Anne Cohen-Prue is in the arms of her father, Keegan Prue, with her mother, Olivia Cohen-Prue, by her side and their greyhound, Desmond, at their feet, in their Altamont yard. Olivia gave birth to Eliza on July 12 after a day-long labor and a years-long odyssey to get and stay pregnant. With 1 in 8 couples unable to conceive, Olivia and Keegan came to realize that many others had similar exp...

Sarah Gordon, a white woman who lives in the Helderberg Hilltowns, would like people to listen to each other and understand different perspectives. She has suffered tremendous backlash for creating a guide that any Hilltown business can sign onto if they pledge to be antiracist. Gordon agreed to do this week’s podcast, if the conversation could be about “moving the needle” and listening to Black v...

Reverend Robert J. Luidens, affectionately known throughout Altamont as Pastor Bob, has written a memoir, “The Kingdom Will Come Anyway: A Life in the Day of a Pastor.” In 50 chapters that serve as parables — some of them light and humorous, others of them heavy and soul-searching — Luidens writes of becoming a minister and serving first in a rural Kansas community for three years and then for 31...

Jonathan Feil is an adventurer. After graduating from Guilderland High School and then earning a bachelor’s degree in agriculture at Cobleskill, Feil wanted to immerse himself in another culture. He joined the Peace Corps and was sent to Gambia in West Africa. After two months of training, Feil was settled in a rural village of about 300 people where he lived with a host family he describes as “aw...

Milton Hart is the only child of two only children. His service in World War II — as a combat infantryman with the 70th Armored Infantry Battalion, 20th Armored Division — gave him a sense of camaraderie. The soldiers he served with, he said, were “as close to me as a brother would be.” Hart has stayed in touch with his comrades in arms throughout his life and, at 94, is one of the few surviving....

Grace Nichols is a citizen scientist and also an activist. In this week’s podcast, the former biology teacher talks about a group she has formed to document the many species of bats that live in portions of the pine bush slated for development. “Clunk, clunk — click, click,” she describes the sounds heard on their bat detectors, the pitch too high for human ears to hear. Recorders from a local bat...

Mohammad Yadegari of Guilderland has written a book, “Always an Immigrant: A Cultural Memoir” that describes his life in three parts: as a child, growing up in an Iranian family in Iraq; as a young man, learning about life on his own in Tehran; and as a newcomer to America where he studies in Albany, marries, and becomes a teacher. He spent a decade writing the book, crystallizing a lifetime of ex...

Judith Enck has devoted her career to protecting the environment. She has had a role in initiatives great — regional director of the United States Environmental Protection Agency under the Obama administration — and small: designer of her town’s rural recycling program. In this week’s podcast, Enck talks about some of her current causes, including her founding of Beyond Plastics. Her insights are...

Campus Barber has not reopened for humans yet but owner Joey Barr can still give the shop dog, Zero, a cut. Barr, now 30, started his career as an apprentice at age 16. He was fond of the Albany shop that taught him his trade but, after four years, plied his scissors and razors in New York City. There, he learned some sophisticated techniques but says he felt like a little fish in a big pond. A de...

Alice Green, founder and executive director of the Center for Law and Justice in Albany, talks in this week’s podcast, about structural racism that affects not just our criminal justice system but everything from our schools to our health-care system. Seven years ago, in the aftermath of a Florida jury finding George Zimmerman, a white man, not guilty of any crimes despite his shooting and killing...

Brenna Autrey describes herself in this week’s podcast, as “100-percent in” and “very headstrong.” An English teacher at Guilderland High School for 18 years, she cares deeply about her students, some of whom she has stayed in touch with throughout their lives. She vividly remembers Sept. 11, 2001 when she was teaching ninth-graders in rural Iowa and had to “put on a face” to guide them through th...

Christine Primomo, a retired nurse living in Coeymans, is an activist who is passionate about many initiatives, among them the need for every Albany County resident to be counted in the 2020 census. In this week’s podcast, she notes that currently only 59 percent of county residents have filled out the brief survey. Primomo stresses that the census can be answered by phone, by mail, or online — an...

Karen Sigond, R.N. of Berne says her mother and grandmother taught her to sew and to recycle things. So she has used colorful scraps from her quilting projects to make hundreds of masks for people who need them. “That’s how I grew up,” she says. Her thought with the mask project was: “Let me use what I have,” she says in this week’s podcast. That statement seems to be a metaphor for her life. Sigo...

Melissa Hale-Spencer loves taking her dog on miles-long walks at the foot of the Helderberg escarpment where she lives. The longtime editor of The Altamont Enterprise, Hale-Spencer has, for the 10th time, been recognized among the best opinion writers in the weekly press. The Golden Dozen awards were announced recently by the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors. In the society’s annu...

Craig LeHoullier is a tomato guru. He thinks the time of coronavirus, when people are home and wary of grocery shopping, is the perfect time to become a gardener. He does Instagram Live on Fridays from his North Carolina home —@NCTomatoMan — as he tends his garden and answers inquiries. A chemist by trade, LeHoullier treats the growing of vegetables like a science but also takes great delight and...

Sarah Slack — here, on the deck of the icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer — says science teachers who taught her at Farnsworth Middle School and Guilderland High School shaped her into the explorer and teacher she became. “Our job is not just what we talk about in the classroom,” says Slack, who teaches eighth-grade science, technology, engineering, and math, known as STEM, at The Montauk School in Br...

Hedi McKinley grew up in Vienna, Austria, the only child of poor storekeepers; they lived over their grocery store. Her father, who fought in World War I, had been taken prisoner by the Russians and spent four years in Siberia and then another two years walking home to Austria. When Hedi was 18, she and her parents were turned out of their home by Nazis on Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938. Yet Hedi...

Ward Stone, Ph. D., wildlife pathologist for the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation for more than 40 years, has fought his way back from a series of strokes that almost killed him. “I can’t walk, but I can think,” he says. At almost 82, the passion he’s had since his boyhood for wildlife and for discovery is unquelled. He says in this week’s podcast that he has an unfinished job — to...

Steven Wickham last week undertook a spontaneous act of civil disobedience. As chairman of the steering committee for the Guilderland Coalition for Responsible Growth, he got a call last Thursday afternoon that Pyramid was clear-cutting trees to make way for a Costco before the project had gone through the state-required environmental review process. In this week’s podcast, Wickham tells how he en...

Berne-Knox-Westerlo students, from left, twins Evan and Lena Thomas, both 13 and both in eighth grade, and their 11-year-old sister, Clara Thomas, a sixth-grader, talk from their Berne home in this week’s podcast, at AltamontEnterprise.com/podcasts, about what their days are like without school. After one week without classes, the thrill of sleeping in has given way to missing friends, teachers, a...