A Day at The Races

 

Forty-one year old John Velazquez on the day he secured victory number 694 at Saratoga, to become the historic racecourse’s all-time leading rider.

John Velazquez secured the title as the track's all-time leading rider.

The 41-year-old jockey registered victory number 694 - See more at: http://www.saratogawire.com/article/1345/130727-saratoga-race-course-jim-dandy-stakes/#sthash.53ypiXFB.dpuf

John Velazquez secured the title as the track's all-time leading rider.

The 41-year-old jockey registered victory number 694 - See more at: http://www.saratogawire.com/article/1345/130727-saratoga-race-course-jim-dandy-stakes/#sthash.53ypiXFB.dpuf

Cool Jazz on a hot summer afternoon

Tony Bennett surrounded by a majestic aura

Chris Bergson wrung blues licks from the rosewood neck of his cherry-red guitar.  Layers of gospel chords seeped out the organ from atop the gazebo. Several hundred yards away, across the great lawn and down inside the pavilion of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band rocked a New Orleans-infused version of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Midway between the two stages - where their sonic polyrhythms merged and co-mingled in the air - you could find everything you ever needed to know about America. 

Sunday’s finale of the two-day Saratoga Jazz Festival featured a varied collection of artists whose respective tones spanned several continents.  Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who hail from South Africa, provided eight sweet, synchronized voices that slid down easy across the Avenue of the Pines in a set which included selections from their ‘Graceland” collaboration with Paul Simon in the 1980s. 

Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy opened his songbook to the page of tunes that have influenced everyone from The Rolling Stones to Eric Clapton, wrenching low, mournful tones from his Fender Stratocaster in a set list of songs that included “Hoochie Coochie Man,” and "I Just Want to Make Love to You." He also provided some moments of levity. “Hello Saratoga,” said Guy, who last appeared at the Saratoga Jazz Festival in the summer of 1993. “It’s been so long since I’ve been here I’m going to play something so funky, it smells.”

An afternoon ceremony featured the dedication of a star in SPAC’s Walk of Fame in honor of the late jazz legend Dave Brubeck, whose 13 appearances at SPAC through four decades place him at the top of the list of most frequent performers at the venue.

“His white hair would fly, his feet would tap, and his whole body would rock,” recalled SPAC President Marcia White of Brubeck’s most recent appearances at the venue, in 2006 and 2009.  

Marcia White, Brubeck Family

“His light will continue to shine and he will be represented here in Saratoga,” said Brubeck’s daughter, Catherine Brubeck Yaghsizian, who attended the ceremony Sunday with her son and nephew. “It’s sad he’s not here to see this, but my father said all along that there is a fifth member of the quartet -  the audience  – and that audience is still here today.”

She also shared a quote her father had made about one of the reasons he believed in jazz: “The oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It’s the same anyplace in the world, that heartbeat. It’s the first thing you hear when you’re born — or before you’re born — and it’s the last thing you hear.”

McCoy Tyner

Saturday’s set featured Legendary pianist McCoy Tyner, best known for his work with John Coltrane in the 1960s, who performed with his quartet and was joined by guest guitarist John Scofield.

Big Sam’s Funky Nation warded off a brief afternoon shower with with a combo of hot beats, wild horns, and a shaking-the-amphitheater version of the Funky Donkey 

Sunday evening, Tony Bennett also invoked Brubeck, with a performance of “That Old Black Magic,” which was based on collaboration between the crooner and Brubeck a half-century earlier. Bennett performed a 60-minute set in strong voice and style that transcended his 86 years, finger-snapping to the upbeats, gesturing to the soloing wizardry of his four-piece band, and blowing kisses to an audience delighted to hear both, his songs of love long gone and of love everlasting.

n the neighborhood where I grew up, Tony Bennett was a hero. It is a place where brick-faced apartment buildings still bear black and yellow signs that point to a fallout shelter; where the marker that told you that you had made it in this world was measured by the ownership of a two-story home, with a patch of flowers and a few feet of lawn that was all your own.

There have been others who have made their mark in Astoria, which sits at the west end of Queens, geographically located in New York City, but in reality, not. Pitcher Whitey Ford, and singer-songwriter Melanie Safka grew up here, as did actor Christopher Walken, and writer-musician Dito Montiel. Here, at one end of Steinway Street, they have been hand-crafting the world's great pianos for nearly the past 150 years. At the other end of the avenue named for the family of German immigrants, they have been making movies since the 1920s, sometimes re-arranging the architecture in the neighborhood for fictional adventures upon the silver screen.

Tony Bennett was born in a different era, but, like most of these things, he has survived the change of generations. He was born Anthony Dominick Benedetto, the son of an Italian-born grocer on Aug. 3, 1926. Surviving residents in the neighborhood where he grew up still talk about seeing him starting out as a singing waiter at Riccardo's restaurant, or watching him perform at The Red Door club, which stood beneath the El - where the McDonald's is now, they tell you.

Bennett dedicated “The Good Life,” to Lady Gaga - with whom he is collaborating on a new album, recalled that his first big singing break was granted him by Pearl Bailey, and how Bob Hope recommended he “economize” his birth name - Anthony Dominick Benedetto – in to the stage-friendlier Tony Bennett.  Bennett’s promenade of hits included Hank Williams’ “Cold, Cold Heart,”  a swing-time rendition of “For Once In My Life,” Irving Berlin’s “Steppin’ Out With My Baby,” “The Shadow of Your Smile,”  “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” and “Smile (though your heart is breaking”), in a graceful nod to Charlie Chaplin.

Some City Flags

 

The Final Finish Line

Saratoga’s top jockey in 2012 announced his retirement on Thursday, in the aftermath of a head injury he suffered in a spill at Aqueduct earlier this year.

Dominguez winning the Yaddo Stakes at Saratoga Aug. 2012

“It is extremely difficult for me to announce that due to the severity of the injuries I sustained in an accident at Aqueduct Racetrack on January 18, 2013, my professional riding career has come to an end,” Ramon Dominguez announced, in a prepared statement.
“While I hoped and even expected to be able to return to the saddle, as a result of my injuries and upon the advice of my treating physicians, it has been determined that I will no longer be able to pursue my career as a jockey.”

The 36-year-old began riding horses at the age of 16 in Venezuela. Last summer, he finished the season as Saratoga's most winning    

 jockey, with 68 first-place finishes and nearly $4.9 million in earnings.

“Ramon distinguished himself immediately upon moving his tack to New York in 2009,” said P.J. Campo, NYRA vice president and director of racing. “He won numerous meet riding titles and many of our top races, en route to becoming New York’s leading rider for each of the past four years.” 

Dominguez, who secured the last three Eclipse awards as North America’s top jockey, expressed gratitude to his family, fans, and fellow riders for their support in the months following his accident. “My riding career has brought happiness and success beyond what I ever expected,” he said.

Murder, mayhem and a touch of madness: in the aftermath of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln

LOUDONVILLE - The noises had been heard for decades, floating into the bedroom from a spot behind the wall.

At first, there was the eerie sound of giggling. Then, a woman's anguished cry would follow the startling cannon of a single gun shot, ripping into the darkness of night. Over the course of a half-century, and precisely at the stroke of midnight on April 14, residents would report seeing the ghostly image of a sad-eyed man creaking back and forth in his rocker. The man, they said, bore a resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States.

Abe Lincoln's artifacts on display at Saratoga Springs History Museum

There were four people seated in the State Box at Ford's Theatre that Good Friday evening in 1865. Another 1,700 theatergoers paid between 25 cents and $1 to watch the staging of the play 'Our American Cousin.' The president sat in his rocking chair at the right side of the box, next to his wife Mary Todd.

To their right, 28-year-old Maj. Henry Reed Rathbone sat with his fiancé Clara Harris, who had chosen a white satin dress to wear for the special occasion.

Shortly after 10 p.m., the third act of the comedy had begun. John Wilkes Booth crept ever closer to the entry door of the State Box.

Albany connection

Rathbone was born in Albany in 1837, where his father, Jared Rathbone, served as mayor from 1838 to 1841. A banker and merchant by trade, when the elder Rathbone died, he left young Henry sufficient money that would ensure he would never need to work a day in his life. The young man enrolled at Union College.

His widowed mother Pauline remarried. Ira Harris, himself a widower, was a prominent Albany judge who would soon become a New York state senator.

Harris owned a summer cottage just outside Albany, in the neighborhood of Loudonville. Loudon Cottage, as it came to be known, was built in the 1830s and served the Harris family through the 19th century.

Harris had two sons and four daughters, one of whom was named Clara. At the time of her father's marriage to Pauline Rathbone, Clara was either 10 or 20 years old -- depending on whose records you choose to believe. A decade later, Henry and Clara -- stepbrother and stepsister -- had designs on wedding plans of their own, as they sat alongside the Lincolns in the Ford Theater box.

Historic murder

It was about 10:15 p.m Friday, April 14, as Booth crept inside the door, gun in hand. The shot hit the president just behind his left ear. Rathbone rose to grab him, but he was too late. Booth dropped the gun and drew out a long knife, repeatedly stabbing Rathbone across his upper body.

Dazed and bloodied, Rathbone nonetheless tried to assist the president. He and fiancee Clara -- her white satin dress turning crimson as it saturated with blood -- helped escort the mortally wounded Lincoln to a boarding house across the street. The next morning, Lincoln was pronounced dead. Rathbone collapsed from his injuries, but survived the physical attack.

He and Clara retreated to the Harris summer house in Loudonville. She couldn't bear to dispose of the blood-stained, white satin dress. Instead, she hung it on a hanger out of sight. Exactly one year later, she first saw the ghostly image of Lincoln.

She had the closet sealed by a secret brick wall, the dress hang-ing inside the wall like it was in its own tomb, where it remained long after Harris moved away. Years later, guests would hear and see similar visions.

In July 1867, shortly after his 30th birthday and on the eve of his wedding, Rathbone resigned his position with the army, and the couple began traveling around the world. They had three children -- two boys and a girl. The circumstances of Lincoln's assassination however, continued to gnaw at Rathbone.

Friends who visited with the couple in Albany when they returned to spend the summer of 1882 at the Harris farm noticed Rathbone's increasingly violent temper, as well as his becoming noticeably morose and troubled. He suffered delusions and lived in constant state of fear.

His wife also noticed her husband had developed a strong jealousy toward her and fears that she would leave him.

More tragedy

A year and a half later, the family continued trekking around the world and spent Christmas Eve in Hanover, Germany. Early on Christmas morning, the sound of gun shots rang out in the home where the family was staying. The three children slept a bedroom away.

Moments later, Mrs. Rathbone was discovered on the bed, bleeding to death from multiple gun shot and stab wounds. Rathbone stood next to the bed and dropped his gun on the floor. Three chambers remained loaded. He picked up a dagger and proceeded to stab himself several times.

A few days later, Mrs. Rathbone was buried in Germany. The funeral was attended by many friends of the dignified family.

Her husband, much as he did when stabbed by Booth 18 years earlier, recovered from his wounds. As the couple's three children boarded a boat headed for Albany, where they would be raised by the Harris family, their father was committed to a German asylum for the insane, where he would spend the rest of his life. Rathbone lived until he was 73 years old.

Still, his wife's blood-stained, white satin dress continued to hang in a secret closet in Loudonville. And for visitors to the old home, which became an early 20th century boarding house, the ghostly visions and cries in the night continued.

Around the time of Rathbone's death in 1911, legend maintains that one of the Rathbone sons -- now fully into adulthood -- broke down the brick wall of the secret closet, took a flame to his mother's white satin dress and burned it to ashes.

Rathbone was buried in Germany next to his wife. By the early 1950s, there were no more visitors coming to the Rathbone graves. The couple's remains were dug up and disposed of.

According to the town of Colonie historian's office, the Loudon Cottage house was sold in the late 1920s. Its new owner moved the cottage 500 feet south to a location on Cherry Tree Road, where it remains to this day.

Sniper takes aim at schoolyard

The view today from the school yard to the sniper's second floor window.

It was 11:30 on a Friday morning in December and the children were in the school playground making believe they were monsters, or earth men, or chasing each other in a game of tag.

In the apartment complex across the street from the playground at St. Peter’s Elementary School, building super Jim Rodgers visited George McCode in his second floor apartment to discuss a $102 rent bill that was due. Seventy first- and- second –grade students were across the street playing their outdoor games.

The stores on Broadway and inside the Pyramid Mall were preparing for the holiday season. For residents in and around the city there was a lot going on. There was a local screening premier of Diana Ross’ “Mahogany” at the Saratoga Cinema at 7pm and Louis and Sally Killen were staging their style of British folk-singing downtown at Lena’s café. Some simply decided to cash their paychecks and set the four bucks aside it would take to purchase the tickets to see Asleep at the Wheel at the Great Saratoga Music Hall later in the month.

McCode told the super he thought his wife had already paid the bill, paid it before she left with the couple’s young daughter and headed for Georgia. She had not, the super informed the 32-year-old McCode, who a month earlier received an honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy after serving at the Kesselring site in West Milton. As McCode called his wife on the telephone from his residence inside the Gaslight apartment complex, third- grade teacher Lillian Pratt led 40 more students to the playground outside, where they joined their younger elementary schoolmates shortly before noon.

It could happen here, city police officials in Saratoga Springs said 38 years later at a recent public meeting in the echo of the Sandy Hook school shootings, held to discuss the department’s readiness in dealing with active shooters. Last week in Albany, police staged a simulated hostage rescue at vacant apartments at a public housing complex, conducting training, they say, to save lives. And a few days ago Saratoga Springs Police announced a new partnership with the city school district to increase security and provide public elementary schools with an increased police presence that will go into effect on April 2.

In the late morning on the first Friday in December 1975, McCode hung up the telephone after talking with his wife. A demolition crew tore through the Empire and Brooklyn hotels north of his apartment on Hamilton Street. The Saratoga Springs Urban Renewal Spring Valley North Project was leveling land to make way for a city center. On South Broadway, Natale American hosted a used car sale in a lot parked with Camaros and Gremlins, Hornets and Torinos. A ’69 Volkswagen Bus could be got for $1,595. Realtors offered four-bedroom Victorian-style colonial homes fitted with fireplaces for $29,900, financing available. At City Hall, the council voted to cut $7,500 in appropriations to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, sending venue general manager Craig Hankenson to embark on a grass-roots fundraising drive to meet budget demands.

Shortly before noon, in the playground on St. Peter’s, third-grade teacher Lillian Pratt heard what she thought were fireworks, coming from the Gaslight Apartments across the street. Second-grade teacher Judy Vetrano heard four pops. When she looked across the schoolyard, she saw a little girl lying down in the corner of the playground, blood streaming from her foot. Daniel Insetta, the school guard on duty, heard the pops – first one, then another, then two quick shots - and called police. The children were hustled back inside the classrooms of the elementary school building. Some were crying. Two 7-year-old girls were injured. Kim Bemis was brought to Saratoga Hospital to remove the bullet from the heel of her foot. Moira D’Andrea returned to her classroom with a slight wound from a ricochet bullet which caught her in one of her feet.

When police arrived and sealed off the area, they headed for the housing complex that overlooked the schoolyard across the street. Forcing their way through the barricaded door of McCode’s second-floor apartment, police found four spent 22-cal. shells next to an open living room window. A fifth shell was located next to the 32-year-old man, who was discovered lying on his bedroom floor, bleeding from his head. He died early the next morning at Ellis Hospital in Schenectady.

“Every time somebody acts like, hey, it can’t happen in Saratoga Springs, I say, it already has happened in Saratoga Springs,” city Assistant Police Chief Greg Veitch said, 38 years later.

Forty-five minutes after the shooting the building superintendent received a money-telegram from the man’s wife with payment for the rent bill that was due. Kimberly Bemis recovered from the bullet wound, graduated from Saratoga Springs High School in 1987 and later relocated to Stillwater. Moira D’Andrea became a three-time Olympian speed skater in the 1980s and 90s. She relocated to Canada, where today she instructs others in the sport.

When a child with Ice Cream ruled the day

The building stood vacant on Division Street for the longest time, sealed tight in its red brick frame and dwarfed by the 21st-century skyline of million-dollar condominiums nearby.  A silver bowl that once caught the cigarettes of all who entered clung to a wall near the entry door - a reminder of the layers of lives that passed through. Now the building no longer stands.

Kathy LeRoux was 7 years old when she moved to the city's West Side, across the street from the building. It was 1951, and she said she can remember skipping into the place with a dime and strolling out with a chocolate ice cream cone. She would then find a patch of grass out front, where she would be joined by other children from the community who were doing the same thing. It was a neighborhood routine that would last until she became an adult and left for secretarial school in Albany.

April 29 would mark the anniversary of the day Ralph and Floyd Ellsworth sold their first order of ice cream at the Division Street plant that bore their family's name.

A few years ago, the entire operation suddenly closed up one day, and its employees, who had numbered 125 five years earlier, were laid off. Company CEO and third-generation owner Gerald Ellsworth initially expressed hope of re-opening in a matter of weeks, but his hopefulness was soon followed by attorneys talking about possible foreclosure.

The Ellsworth Ice Cream Company grew from humble beginnings in 1933 to branding its own ice cream and transporting the flavors on delivery trucks to dozens of grocery stores and pharmacies across the region.

A small retail store was part of the factory. Michael Wilcox worked his way through high school during the early 1960s by muscling scoops of ice cream into cones on the retail end, as well as handling endless molds of frozen pops that would come tumbling down conveyer belts in the factory.

"In the back we had a crew of seven or eight guys, and we could do 16,000 to 18,000 dozen popsicles in an eight-hour shift," said Wilcox, a touch of marvel in his voice. "The retail part - it was kind of an inconvenient convenience store for the neighborhood. It was good if you wanted eggs, ice cream and milk. If you wanted other items, it was not so good," he laughed.

Wilcox is in his 60s today, and on Thursday afternoon, after disposing of the past, he thought about what the ice cream plant meant to the city in the present. "You know, they ran that business for a long, long time," he said. "It was very sad when it closed."

A new dawn rising

Wyatt Burky, 1-1/2 years old and topped by a flock of blond hair sat, mostly silently, next to the towering sculpture, far from the eyes of the firefighters and police officers and residents, amused by the magical powers of a single strand of string which he turned over in his small hands.

When his hands grow larger, they will hold history books that will teach him about the day the towers fell on a blue sky morning, before he was born. They will show images of fires that burned through the night, and explain the sound of hundreds of emergency locators that chirped beneath the ruins. They will tell him how the photographs of the missing clung to storefront windows in Lower Manhattan several months after the buildings fell, and he will learn of the candlelight vigils, the eerily silent skies, the loss of nearly 3,000 people on a single day and the countless more who were lost across the world when the country fought the long war.

He will be told by his mother, Anna Burky, a psychiatrist who worked on that day at the veterans hospital in Albany what a difficult day it was for those who fought in the country’s other wars, and how they knew what the ramifications of the events of that day would mean. "And we’ll tell him what it is to be part of this community, to not forget" she said, watching her young son at play in the shadow of the memorial, when all the world’s magic in a young mind can be delivered by a single piece of string.

Rainy Day Friday at Yaddo

A cool April drizzle sprinkles the lower ponds at the Yaddo arts colony on Friday
afternoon, where writers write, musicians de-compose and literary poachers search for Poe's ghost in the neon gloom.