and they shape us

I carry with me, in a backpack that serves as my purse, a tiny inch-high replica of a thatch-roofed African hut. It is a favor from a wedding, which I was honored to attend several years ago.

GUILDERLAND — Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was a 19th-Century glass manufacturer, mineralogist, and ethnologist. His ancestry and accomplishments were chronicled in the 1930s by the late Guilderland historian Arthur B. Gregg, in his Altamont Enterprise columns

GUILDERLAND —The house that sheltered young Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Guilderland’s most famous son, had fallen on hard times.

GUILDERLAND — School district voters will be the first in the county to cast their budget and board ballots electronically.

“We’re going from ancient lever machines to scanatrons,” said school board President Colleen O’Connell at Tuesday’s board meeting.

BOSTON — Saturday night, a thousand people filled the seats at the ornate Jordan Hall, which the Boston Globe reported on its opening in 1903 was “a place of entertainment that European musicians who were present that evening say excels in beauty anything of the kind they ever saw.”

GUILDERLAND — The four-way race for three Guilderland School Board seats features incumbent Emilio Genzano, three-term member Catherine Barber who retired a year ago, and newcomers Jennifer Charron and Christine Hayes.

GUILDERLAND — Catherine Barber served three terms on the school board — in each election garnering the most votes — before retiring last year when she was the board’s vice president.

After a year as an outsider looking in, she’s decided it’s time to run for a fourth three-year term.

GUILDERLAND — Jennifer Charron, who has two children in Guilderland schools, would like to use her business acumen to reduce the budget without cutting teachers, she said.

GUILDERLAND — Emilio Genzano, who has been on the Guilderland School Board for three years, says he wants to use what he’s learned to help the schools weather the economic storm.

GUILDERLAND — Christine Hayes is making her first run for school board because, she said, “I want to give back to the community and be a voice for the students.”