wine recommendations

Published in The Post-Star (G4)

11/24/05

Domaine de la Madone 2005 Beaujolais Nouveau, $13.49 at Putnam Wine.
La Forge Estate 2003 Viognier, $14 at Putnam Wine.

If the turkey is too dry and the squash puff is sagging, distract your guests with a glass of good wine. The staff at Putnam Wine in Saratoga Springs picked out two bottles that will add elegance to the table without breaking the bank.

Wineries in the Beaujolais region of France traditionally release their first bottles of the year on the third Thursday in November, inspiring parties around the world. Beaujolais Nouveau tends to be among the lightest of the reds, so it won't overpower the turkey. It's fruity and lively, with an initial taste of black cherry jam that gives way to a subtle peppery finish, according to Putnam wine salesman Peter Zalewski.

The 2003 Viognier is a versatile white wine from the Langueduoc region of France. Although Viognier grapes used to be found only in blends, winemakers have recently realized they deserve to be recognized on their own, explained salesman Curtis Eaton. He described this bottle as "rich and unctuous, without the extensive oak aging of Chardonnay." It has hints of peach and flowers, yet is more structured than some of the fruity whites.

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pets page: cost of owning a dog

Published in The Post-Star (B12)

11/20/05

It’s hard to resist a Christmas present with fur. But before putting a gift tag on that puppy at the pet store, consider the hidden price tag — owning a dog can easily cost several hundred dollars a year.

Purebred dogs are $1,000 or more, depending on the breed. The price is far less if you’re willing to adopt from a local animal shelter. Dogs of all ages and breeds cost no more than $125 at the Queensbury SPCA or Adirondack Save-A-Stray in Corinth.

"We have a lot of mixed breeds, but we’ve also had purebred dogs that people turn in. Sometimes they just got them from the pet store a few months ago," said Matina Baker, a veterinary technician at the SPCA.

Getting a dog spayed or neutered is sometimes more expensive than the dog itself.

"This often isn’t a financial priority for people, but it’s so important," said Meredith Fiel, owner of Adirondack Save-A-Stray. "There’s a tremendous overpopulation of cats and dogs in this country, and not enough good homes to go around."

A vet might charge up to $300 for the surgery, depending on the size and gender of the dog. Some of the older dogs at shelters have already been spayed or neutered, and those that haven’t usually come with a coupon to help cover the cost.

Vaccinations are another necessary expense, to protect dogs from rabies, distemper and Lyme disease. Healthy dogs don’t need much more than an annual checkup, while others might require expensive medication for conditions like diabetes.

"You’re not always going to get a dog that will live 10 years and be perfectly healthy," said Baker. "You need to be prepared for that possibility."

Grooming is a hidden cost that comes with some dogs. This may seem like vanity, but it’s actually a health issue. Clumps of matted fur are often painful for a dog, and can develop into serious skin problems. Long-haired breeds need to be brushed and trimmed regularly, either by their owner or a professional pet groomer.

Of course, Fido will want to be fed, too. The cheapest brands of food are mostly "filler," the equivalent of junk food for dogs, so it’s wise to spend a bit more for the sake of nutrition. Estimating a food budget will depend on the size of the dog.

"My small dog goes through 20 pounds of food in three months, while my two labs go through 20 pounds in two weeks," said Baker. "But if you think spending $30 a month on food is bad, guess what? You’re in trouble. That’s probably the least expensive part of owning a dog."
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License (required): $5-15
Collar, leash and ID tag: $15-30
Food (based on 50-pound dog): $240-$600 annually
Grooming: up to $100 annually
Toys and treats: $5-$60
Kennel, crate or dog bed: up to $100
Obedience school: up to $200
Vet costs:
Office visits: $40 each
Shots: $50-$70 annually
Booster shots: $115-$130
Spay or neuter: $100-$200
Medications: $10-$1,000 annually
Total minimum annual cost: About $360 for a healthy adult dog, $475 for a puppy.
(Source: Adirondack Save-A-Stray)

pets page: dog crazy

Published in The Post-Star (B12)

11/20/05

It started simply enough.

Dawn Segedi got her first dog, a sheltie named Wizard, as an antidote to obsessive compulsive disorder.

"I was a total clean freak. I cleaned the house with toothbrushes and toothpicks, and wouldn’t let my kids get a speck of dirt on them," she said. "Getting Wizard helped me learn to live with having dog hair on the floor."

When 39-year-old Segedi developed social anxiety disorder last year, she again turned to dogs for help. She bought a Yorkshire terrier named Zeke as a "therapy dog," and was soon hooked.

"I just fell in love with their docile personalities, and the way they bond with you," she said. "They’re exceptionally loving."

Now, she owns 11 dogs: eight Yorkies and two Pomeranians, plus Wizard. Not to mention the cat and the gerbils.

A look at Segedi’s yearly expenses offers an extreme example of the cost of becoming a dog owner.

"My vet bills this year total $6,150 so far, not including shots," she said. "Dental care is another $105 each per year."

Tack on the cost of food, collars, leashes, dog beds, and clothes — yes, clothes, from poodle skirts to winter parkas — and her pets get even more expensive. When the four Yorkies she got from Brazil recently developed respiratory infections, she spent several thousand dollars on inhalers and oxygen treatment.

Segedi may recoup some of her initial investment, however. She’s starting her own breeding business, Adirondack Mountain Tiny Dreams, although she doesn’t plan to part with any of her current pets.

"Some days, my family loves it," said Segedi, who is married with two kids. "Some days, they hate it.

"The best thing is when telemarketers call. I get all the dogs barking, and they just hang up."

These days, Segedi won’t even let visitors peek inside her home, since it’s being remodeled to make more room for the dogs. "It looks like a cyclone went through there!" she said with a laugh.

On a recent morning, her pants were covered in muddy paw prints after playing with the dogs in the backyard, but she didn’t seem to care. She cuddled one of her newest pets, Laci, a Yorkie whose owner died in Hurricane Katrina.

"I have no regrets," she said. "I mean, look at this face."

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video recommendation: Baran

Published in The Post-Star (D4)

11/18/05

Baran 2001. Written, directed, and produced by Majid Majidi. Starring Hossein Abedini and Zahra Bahrami. 94 minutes. Rated PG for language and brief violence. In Farsi and Dari, with English subtitles.

This film offers a rare and intimate glimpse into modern Iran, a part of the world that most of us will never see first-hand. The script is simple, and the acting a bit amateurish, but the message is powerful.

"Baran" is set mostly on a construction site in the capital city of Tehran, where more than 1.4 million Afghan refugees have ended up after two decades of war in their homeland. Most employers won't hire them without a national ID card, so they struggle to make a living as day laborers -- sound familiar? Some things are the same in any language.

The first character we meet is Lateef, an impish, handsome young Iranian who runs the kitchen at the building site. His boss, Memar (Mohammad Reza Naji) employs dozens of undocumented Afghan immigrants, and Lateef considers himself above them because he has an ID card. He also has a hot temper and a streak of arrogance.

When one of the Afghan men falls on the job and breaks his foot, Memar hires the man's son, Rahmat, to replace him as the family's sole breadwinner. But Rahmat is silent and frail looking, and it becomes quickly evident that he isn't capable of heavy labor.

Memar shows a soft side when he decides to give Rahmat the job of cooking for the workers instead of firing him. This means kicking an infuriated Lateef out of the kitchen and in with the rest of the construction crew.

Lateef devotes the next few weeks to making Rahmat miserable, until a surprise revelation stops him in his tracks: Rahmat is actually a girl, Baran.

In one beautiful instant (and remember, beauty means suspending disbelief), Lateef falls in love with Baran, who is unaware he knows her secret. He abruptly channels his vengeful passion into a self-sacrificial quest to make her life easier.

Watching Lateef's transformation from a selfish jerk into a humble hero is at turns comical and heartbreaking -- but writer/director/producer Majid Majidi doesn't shy away from the reality that love can't always conquer all.

Images are more important than words in Majidi's work, giving it a cultural transcendence beyond subtitles. It's only in retrospect that viewers realize that Baran didn't have a single line in the script. Her eyes said it all.

"Baran" is available at Crandall Public Library. If you enjoy it, check out Majidi's other visually stunning films -- "The Color of Paradise" and "Children of Heaven."

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enterprise: Religious commune opens cafe

Published in The Post-Star and on poststar.com

11/15/05

CAMBRIDGE -- Members of the Twelve Tribes of Israel community have mostly kept to themselves in the 25 years since they started a communal farm on the outskirts of town. Now, they're interested in getting to know their neighbors better over a cup of coffee -- or yerba mate, a drink brewed from an herbal stimulant.

The group is putting the finishing touches on its new Common Ground cafe, which will open on Main Street sometime this winter. It will feature homemade, organic food, in a wood-walled space meant to be inviting.

"I think the name of our cafe says it better than anything," said Bob Racine, a Twelve Tribes member. "We want to get to know people. We want them to know why we live this way. It's too big a step to say, 'Oh, come on over to my house,' but going to a cafe is a little bit more of a neutral place."

Racine has lived in Cambridge for about seven years. His name within the group is Shoresh, which means "root" in Hebrew. Most of the members have taken a Hebrew name, because their faith emphasizes the Jewish roots of Christianity. They try to live like the early Christians by sharing all their money and possessions.

Of course, the early Christians didn't have to deal with the Internal Revenue Service.

Most churches and religious charities are tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the tax code, but their employees still pay personal income tax. In groups like the Twelve Tribes, however, the employees' personal incomes and the group's business income are all combined in a communal treasury, so paying taxes gets complicated.

Twelve Tribes is a unique kind of tax-exempt business the IRS classifies as a "501(d)," under a small subparagraph of the tax code created for "religious and apostolic organizations." This means that the group's members are taxed on a "pro rata" basis of personal income, as if the treasury had been divided equally among all of them.

"It's a way to avoid double taxation," explained Racine. "We don't look to get out of paying taxes, but we do expect to be taxed justly because we are different."

He pointed out that Twelve Tribes pays property tax on its 112-acre farm in Cambridge because "we believe it's a legitimate tax," even though they could argue for exemption as a religious group.

Any income from the cafe will be added to the group's shared treasury, along with revenue from its Common Sense line of natural body care products.

Twelve Tribes has 38 communities throughout the nation and world, and operates 10 other Common Ground cafes in the United States and Canada, including ones in Ithaca and Rutland, Vt.

Its Oneonta community is also planning to open a cafe, although it has run into some opposition from town officials.

The Cambridge Common Ground cafe will be located in the former King Bakery on Main Street. Men from the Twelve Tribes group have been working on it in their spare time, using natural materials like driftwood and fallen branches to transform it into what looks like a cozy mountain cabin.

Most locals said they're looking forward to eating at the new cafe, regardless of the religious beliefs behind it.

"We've gotten nothing but positive response. People in town have even stopped by to help us work on it," said Bill Johnson, a Twelve Tribes member known as Reya (friend). "It's been nice." #
LOGGING ON
www.comingtocambridge.com www.twelvetribes.org

profile of a stein artist

Published in The Post-Star (D1)
11/14/05

His parents wanted him to be a lawyer. He wanted to be Van Gogh.

Then Tom O'Brien became something no one predicted: a stein sculptor.

He's created more than 34 ceramic steins for Avon in the last two decades, with commemorative themes that range from cougars to the U.S. Postal Service. They're "tchotske," he admits, but collectors snatch them up by the tens of thousands each year.

"Am I going to argue with what sells?" he said. "My favorite artist is Van Gogh, but he never sold a painting in his life."

O'Brien got into the business through a chance encounter in the mid-1980s, after he left a job as an advertising art director to become a freelance illustrator. Then a neighbor stopped by his home to sign some real estate paperwork, and noticed "Hercules," one of O'Brien's first sculptures.

"He said, 'Would you like to work for me?'" O'Brien recalled. He took the job at a commercial studio which designed decanters and beer steins for Avon. His steins proved so successful that he soon began working with Avon on his own.

"It was more like 'Oh, great, a job!' than 'I'm so happy to make steins!'" he explained. "But it was kind of fun, and I enjoyed the fact that it made more money than most other jobs."

Making a stein takes about two months, from the drawing board to the final mold. O'Brien turns the wood for the stein's base on a lathe in his basement, then applies clay and sculpts it into a detailed relief. He sends a urethane cast of this to Ceremarti in Brazil, the world's largest stein manufacturer, which makes the final ceramic product.

Avon stopped calling on O'Brien three years ago when it decided to switch to "licensed steins," replacing his unique creations with celebrity-themed tankards made by Anheuser-Busch.

That gave O'Brien more time to pursue his true passion -- portraiture.

"I love portraiture more than any other aspect of art, because I can say what the subject feels about themselves, and what I feel about them," he said. "I try to express their personality using only their face."

He uses the skills he learned from stein-making to create "portraits in relief," in which three-dimensional faces emerge from a flat backdrop that can be hung like a painting. His subjects are typically friends, neighbors, and family members.

Currently, he's working on a terra cotta relief sculpture of a young girl named Sophie, his friends' granddaughter. He chose to depict her as a mermaid with two faces. One has a giddy grin; the other a menacing pout.

"She has such a dramatic personality, and I wanted to show that," he explained. "She can change her mood in an instant."

Avon had a change of mood this year, too. The company brought back one of O'Brien's steins in its latest holiday catalog. This one depicts animals from the African Serengeti, including lions, elephants, and zebras.

Now 70, O'Brien's life is full of art. He lives in Hadley with his wife of 36 years, Renee O'Brien, an artist best known for her work with a pinhole camera. Their small home includes one studio for Renee's paintings and photographs, and two more for Tom's portraits and steins.

The couple met in art school, and lived in Long Island until six years ago.
Their son, Aaron, is a lawyer.

"How do these things happen?" joked O'Brien.
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Health: chronic pain management

Published in The Post-Star (B1)

11/13/05

Sometimes, pain is more than a symptom of illness. It is the illness.

Physicians recognized this 40 years ago, when pain management emerged as a sub-specialty of medicine, but public awareness remains low.

"There are few illnesses with an adverse public health implication as great as chronic pain," said Dr. Russell Portenoy. "Yet we haven't widely accepted the reality that pain is an illness in its own right, and that should be the foundation for every conversation about it."

Portenoy is the chairman of the department of pain management and palliative care at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. He recently conducted a survey that found at least 30 percent of Americans had experienced, within the past year, pain that lasted for three months or more -- in other words, chronic pain.

Chronic pain can be triggered by a disease that causes tissue damage, such as arthritis, or by a terminal illness like cancer.

In some cases, however, people experience pain even though their body appears to be physically healthy. Nervous system dysfunction seems to be at the root of such cases, but that's about all doctors know at this point.

"We call those cases idiopathic," Portenoy said, "which basically means we have no idea."

Little funding is available for researching pain as a disease, although the pharmaceutical industry has invested heavily in developing medications that temporarily reduce the sensation of pain.

Portenoy supports the long-term use of opioids like morphine and Oxycontin for chronic pain. At the same time, he hopes the medical community will someday understand the neurology of pain well enough that his patients may no longer need drugs.

"The amount of time devoted to pain management in medical school is minute," he said. "It's strange, since pain is the number one reason that patients see doctors."

There are only about 9,000 licensed pain specialists in the United States, and more than 30 million Americans suffering from chronic pain, Portenoy said.

"The implication is that there is no possible way for chronic pain to be managed only by pain specialists. Primary care doctors must step up and address the problem," he said. "We have a problem of access."

Neither Glens Falls nor Saratoga has a pain management division in its hospital. Patients in this region who suffer from chronic pain have few treatment options. They can seek referral to a specialist in Albany, or try alternative therapies like acupuncture and chiropractic care.

"The most common regions I treat in terms of chronic pain are the neck, back, and headaches," said William Tackett, a Queensbury chiropractor.

Tackett works with the muscles and joints to improve circulation, which can relieve inflamed nerves, but said he believes most chronic pain is caused by "a misfiring in the brain."

"It's the brain taking something that would otherwise be a non-painful stimulus, and interpreting it as pain," he said.

Tackett said chiropractic adjustments have made some chronic pain patients more comfortable, although he can't offer them a cure.

"I'm a hero to them if I can reduce their pain by 50 percent, because of how much pain they're in," he said. "I know darn well there's only so much I can do for them. There's only so much anyone can do for them, until we understand the brain better."

That's not a message that most patients want to hear.

"People tend to view disease as being a matter of a broken organ that they can take to a physician, like a mechanic, and get fixed," Portenoy said. "In fact, most diseases cannot be cured, only managed. Physicians really are chronic illness managers."
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LOGGING ON
To learn more, log on to:
Beth Israel Medical Center's Pain Management Dept: www.stoppain.org
American Pain Foundation: www.painfoundation.org
American Pain Society: www.ampainsoc.org
National Chronic Pain Outreach Association: www.chronicpain.org

Where everybody knows your name...

Published in The Post-Star (G1)
11/03/05

Six bars rub shoulders along the first 500 feet of Caroline Street, just off Broadway in Saratoga Springs.

Locals can easily slap a few labels on most of them, but Desperate Annie's (or "D.A.'s," as regulars call it) is harder to typecast. It attracts both cops and college kids; hipsters and aging hippies; the barely 21 revelers and the over-the-hill drunks.

"This is the kind of place where cops can sit down with criminals and not worry about work getting in the way," said Isaiah Rees, 34.

Rees has been a bartender and bouncer at D.A.'s for nearly a decade, but he's a newbie compared to John Branson, who has worked behind the bar for 25 years.

"It's a family of sorts," Branson said.

The only rule, he said, is don't be a "jerk," although he used a different word.

Nothing is especially spectacular about the place at first glance. It has the dirty floors and dim lighting of many neighborhood bars, with decor that looks straight out of the free box at a yard sale.

It might be the huge jukebox that draws people in, or the hundreds of postcards plastered on the ceiling -- a collage of bare breasts and cheesy vacation photos sent in by loyal customers.

It's probably not the stuffed deer head wearing sunglasses mounted on the wall behind the bar that keeps customers coming back.

More likely, it's the bar's lack of pretension. If Desperate Annie were a real person, she'd be the girl who was popular in school because she never tried to be. She would be nice to everyone, while making her closest friends feel like they belonged to some special club. And, miraculously, she would never age.

"When you're in your 20s, and trying to find your home away from home, that's what this place can be," said Justin Wilcox, 34, who lives in the city and has been a regular D.A.'s customer since his college years. "There are certain things a regular can count on, that will always be here -- like cheap drinks, and the Simpsons pinball game."

Wilcox said he's outgrown spending five nights a week at the bar, but other customers are more dedicated. Kevin Roberts, 43, stops in at D.A.'s almost nightly.

"I've been coming here for 25 years, since I was a college student," said Roberts. (The drinking age was 18 then). "It's mellow and comfortable. Nothing ever seems to change."

That's just what the bar's owner wants to hear.

"I bought this place in 1993, and the only things I've added are the deer head and the picture of Elvis," said D.A.'s owner, Travis, who goes by his last name only.

He goes by one name, Travis said, "to keep some mystique" and if you want to hang out in his establishment, you'd be wise -- even if you can discover what it is -- to avoid using it, because he's very touchy about it.

Depending on whom you ask, the Annie who inspired the bar's name 30 years ago was either a local girl who was underage and desperate to get inside, or a rather promiscuous lady who would do anything for a drink.

More desperate men than women show up in D.A.'s these days, but the all-male staff is eager to fend off the "meat-market" label that can get slapped on bars.

"No one gives you any trouble here. Women can come here and feel comfortable. They know that the bouncer will talk to anyone who's bothering them," Rees said.

So, is D.A.'s the neighborhood Cheers? The place where everybody knows your name?

"Yeah, I guess it really is," Branson said. "We're like Cheers with bad language."

On a recent Friday night at about 11, three young twenty-somethings wandered down Caroline Street and through the doors of D.A.'s. They showed the bouncer their IDs and waited for his approval.

"I've never been in here before," the guy told his two female companions.

He looked around, taking in the jukebox, the postcards, the deer, and the clusters of people talking and laughing.

"Cool," he declared.

investigation of Lake George accident continues

Published in The Post-Star (A1) and Poststar.com
11/5/05

The National Transportation Safety Board released a toxicology report Friday afternoon indicating that the captain of the Ethan Allen had no drugs or alcohol in his blood 46 hours after the tour boat capsized on Lake George, although his urine tested positive for alcohol consumption within the previous 80 hours.

Richard Paris, the vessel's captain, provided voluntary blood and urine samples to investigators two days after the tragedy that left 20 senior citizens dead.

According to Warren County Sheriff Larry Cleveland, Paris told the NTSB on Oct. 3 he had not ingested alcohol since the Thursday night before the accident.

But in Friday's press release, the NTSB stated Paris told them he had consumed alcohol the night before the accident.

"Yeah, that was confusing," said Cleveland, after reading the release. "But I don't think he (Paris) changed his statement. We got all our information from the NTSB, so I don't know how to explain that conflict."

Terry Williams, a spokesman for the NTSB, said he would look into the discrepancy but provided no further comment on the toxicology report.

"It's too early to draw any conclusions on it," he said.

The NTSB used a newly developed method of urine analysis called "EtG testing," which detects ethanol glucuronide (EtG), a by-product of alcohol consumption. A sample of Paris' urine provided on Oct. 5 contained EtG at a level which toxicologists said can confirm alcohol consumption within the previous 80 hours.

The results of the toxicology report were not surprising, said Cleveland.

"We fully expected that they would come back with something in that 80-hour time period," said Cleveland. "But even if he had anything to drink after the accident, it would have showed up. That's the problem."

Cleveland said he's skeptical the EtG test proves anything useful to investigators. "We would never use this type of test in police work," he said. "It doesn't tell you how much alcohol was consumed, or exactly when ... Nobody should draw any conclusions based on the EtG about his condition at the time of the accident. It's scientifically impossible."

Cleveland said he interviewed Paris less than an hour after the accident and saw no obvious signs of alcohol consumption, such as bloodshot eyes or slurred speech.

"I say it now, and I'll say it again; he was not under the influence at the time of the accident," he said. "We have no reason to believe he lied at any point."

Paris, who lives in Queensbury, said he volunteered for the tests because: "I wanted to clear some things up." He denied Friday that he ever told investigators he had been drinking the night before the accident.

"To my knowledge, I never said that," he said by telephone Friday. He said he's doing "OK" since the tragedy but has "lost a lot of faith in the press." He declined to comment further without consulting his attorney.
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a video story!

Check out my foray into multimedia reporting...a video documentary of an old-fashioned place called the Boston Candy Kitchen (which is in Glens Falls, NY...not Boston!).

This is why I'm not a sports writer.

Published on Poststar.com, Web exclusive

11/02/05

Cambridge and Salem are the kind of places that feel like they could be the set for a movie about small-town America. Life moves at a slower pace than in the big city, and no one gets too riled up about anything.

Except, of course, football. Their varsity boys football teams will face off for the Class D section title on Saturday.

A few days before the big game, a reporter set out to find out whether high school football was on everyone's minds in these small towns.

What she found was that even when people say they don't follow football, they do. Everyone knows about the rivalry between the Cambridge Indians and Salem Generals, and most can tell you that Salem is the only team Cambridge lost to this season.

A handful of locals gathered at the Cambridge Diner around lunch time, including Danny Foster, a retired educator. He lived in Cambridge for 30 years before moving down the road to North Hoosic, and he's been an Indians fan for years.

"It's interesting to watch the kids develop from Pee Wee football on up," he said. "It's really fun to identify a good player at 6 or 7, and watch how they progress."

He plans to be at Saturday's game in Hudson Falls, wearing a Cambridge sweatshirt with the name and number of a former player -- his grandson, Justin Schmigel. Even though his grandson graduated several years ago, Foster still enjoys watching the games.

So, is football a big deal around here?

Foster raised his eyebrows and put down his burger.

"Yeah," he said slowly, in the tone a dairy farmer might use if you had just asked whether milk comes from cows.

"I mean, it's a rural town. It's not like on Saturday you have a choice of 300 things to do," he explained.

A few miles north in Salem, things were even quieter, but there were a few telltale signs of football rivalry. Outside Bain's Auto, the owner had strung up a white sheet painted with a football, the names and numbers of all the Salem players, and the words "Rough and Ready, Salem Generals Are #1."

Inside the local hardware store, a handful of local men gathered around the counter when the reporter dropped the word "football."

"I think this'll be Salem's year," said David Linendoll, a store employee. Earlier in the day, he had listened as two customers had placed a bet on Saturday's game. One man was from Salem, and the other was from Cambridge.

"I won't say how much, but they bet more than I would have put on a football game," he said.

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Cider producers get a raw deal

Published in The Post-Star (D1)
11/02/05

This is the last fall that customers in New York can enjoy the taste of raw apple cider.
A new law requires all cider sold in the state after Jan. 8, 2006, to be treated with ultraviolet light or pasteurized so that it is 99.99 percent free of bacteria.

Cidermakers will either have to invest about $15,000 in equipment to kill potential pathogens in their product, or stop making cider. Some small local orchards are choosing the latter.

"We can't afford the equipment, and we're going to have to close down our cider business after all these years," said Frances Clough, who runs Stetkar Orchards in Saratoga Springs with her husband, Charles.

To make their cider, the Cloughs use a century-old, tractor-powered press called "Old Faithful," which is one of the main attractions at their small orchard and farmstand.

"All my customers are very, very angry about the law," said Clough. "They're going to write letters to protest it."

For the last eight years, New York cidermakers have put mandatory warning labels on all raw cider, to let customers know that it could contain unhealthy bacteria. That hasn't stopped many people from buying it, however. They say it tastes better.

"Customers want the option to buy what they want to buy, and I think they should have it," said apple grower Jim Perry.

His business, Perry's Orchard in Eagle Bridge, will also stop making cider after this year. He produces only about 2,000 gallons of cider a season, and can't afford the investment needed to comply with the law.

Perry isn't giving up without a fight, however. He's leading an effort to get the law amended, by circulating petitions and flyers asking people to write to their state legislators, the Farm Bureau, and the Apple Association.

"It's an uphill battle," he said. "But I'd feel bad if I didn't try."

About 50 growers in the state will be affected by the new law, said Perry, and he's called all of them.

"I'm not the only one who will have to shut down my cider business," he said. Small growers will be hit the hardest, but Perry said he talked to a few who make as much as 10,000 gallons of cider a year and still can't afford the equipment.

According to a legislative memo, the cider bill was prompted by a recent episode in which more than 300 people were reported to have become ill from drinking raw cider, and "the cost (to producers) is certainly minuscule when weighed against the great public health benefit that will be derived."

Perry said he researched the Clinton County orchard where people were sickened, and he's not convinced that cider was the culprit. Even if it was, he said, the Apple Association and Farm Bureau should have pinpointed the source of the pathogens and spread the word to other growers.

"It really burns me up that they didn't warn all of us about whatever caused it, so it wouldn't happen again," he said. "Instead, they come up with this bill. I haven't yet uncovered the hidden agenda."

Although he doesn't think the law can be repealed, he has a compromise in mind.

In Washington County and several other counties in New York, dairy farmers can get a permit to sell raw milk directly to their customers. Perry thinks the same opportunity should be extended to the cider industry.

"Why should cider be more regulated than milk?" said Perry. "It's not any more dangerous."
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