By: Chuck Miller
What's Up in the Neighborhood

What’s Up in the Neighborhood, October 16 2021

So new readers to this blog might be wondering why I do a Saturday recap of the great photos and stories from my personal blogroll.

Let me recap for you.

Years ago, this blog was part of a collection of community-written blogs that were featured in the Albany Times Union’s blog portal. The portal featured TU staff writers who blogged alongside the community writers. And every day, the print edition of the TU would feature some of the bloggers, whether they were community or staff, for showcasing. It was a nice touch.

Then, the TU dropped the print feature entirely, focusing instead on one staff blogger’s writings exclusively. The community blogs were treated like chaff. In defiance, I took one day a week out of my personal blog – at that time, it was Thursday – and showcased ten community bloggers. Eventually, that effort got the TU to reinstate the print feature, and it ran off and on for a few years.

I left the TU in 2017, but I continued the blog showcase, now featuring seven bloggers from the community, as well as seven bloggers from other portals and areas. The TU’s treatment of the community bloggers was so piss-pour at the time, that one of the community bloggers – David Kalish – actually copied my blog recaps (with my permission) for his blog .

At around that time, the wonderful local blog All Over Albany – which featured a Wednesday recap on their portal – announced they were shutting down. I immediately went through AOA’s blog listings, pulled as many of their showcase blogs into my portal, and moved my blog recap to Saturdays. The “What’s Up in the Neighborhood” blog title actually matches the old AOA blog recap.

Eventually, however, the TU just gave up on the blog portal. A series of double-standard, heavy-handed suspensions against several community bloggers brought the TU so much bad press, that they shut down the portal completely. Meanwhile, I continued to add to my blogroll, adding several writers and photographers, dropping a few who went inactive for too long a time … and here we are today.

Got all that? Fantastic. There’s a test tomorrow, bring a #2 pencil and a bag of chips.

Okay, enough exposition, time to showcase the blogs. And they include this week:

Have a great weekend, everybody!