In Pictures: America's Best Places To Raise A Family

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a great place to live!

Forbes No. 4: Syracuse, N.Y.

Cost-of-Living Rank: 11
Crime Rate Rank: 13
Commuting Rank: 9
Household Income Rank: 72
Home Ownership Rank: 47
Homeowner Costs Rank: 20
Education Rank: 6

http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/04/best-places-family-lifestyle-real-estate-cities-kids_slide_8.html

50 Ways To Spend A Snowday!

Enjoy the snow!

NEW YORK (AP) — Another day, another blizzard. Here are 50 ways to spend a snow day.

Make an abominable snowman. It's like a regular snowman, but less friendly to passers-by.
Practice multiplication and script with your kids. That'll put them in a REALLY good mood. For older kids, break out the practice tests.
Delete all of the expletive-laden "music" from your teenager's Napster playlist on the family computer, while she's not looking.
Make snow ice cream, slushies or 'tinis. Harvest icicles for the latter.
Put on your fanciest evening dress and jewelry, grab your cocktail and pretend you're in an old movie. That sounds a lot better than, "Sit around your apartment and get wasted."
Fill squirt bottles with water and food coloring and make art on the snow. Let your dog help out.
Trudge around town for a store that hasn't sold out on sleds.
Wash the floors by hand. Or use a toothbrush.
Do that mending and ironing you've been putting off since 2004.
Groom the dog. Then suck all the fur off your couch.
Make freeze-ahead dinners. The ones you wish you had right now.
Go rooftop luging.
Get kids the Lil' Capt. Robert Scott Antarctic Expedition playset.
Shovel through piles of climate change theories.
Shred your pile of old documents. Better yet, multitask. Use them to light up the fireplace.
Change the batteries in the smoke detectors, since you forgot during Fall Back.
Find all the lids to the Tupperware.
Play Monopoly with the rules that make the game go slower.
Go through your junk drawer. Do not be afraid.
Clean your silverware and jewelry. Alternatively, pine for silverware and jewelry worth cleaning.
Sort mementos into keep and toss piles. Spend time poring over the keepers — after all, that's why you're keeping them.
Make a master calendar for gift-giving dates. Shop ahead online. Or for yourself. Pretend there are sales.
Invite over neighbors you rarely see for a potluck dinner.
Make a list of all the things you love about your valentine for a card or scrapbook. Make stuff up if you have to.
Actually use those cross-country skis, or skates or showshoes you were always planning to try out after a big snow. C'mon, you can do it!
Scan old photos and make a photo book. Then force the kids to look at pictures of their parents when they were little.
Do your taxes! April 15 only feels far off.
Chug a shot and break open your financial portfolio.
Order seeds and plants for your spring garden. Yes, spring will come eventually.
Update your resume. Hey, it's better than doing it at work and leaving it in the copying machine.
Go through clothes in drawers and closet. Try on and toss.
Upload your CDs, finally. Now, this may be difficult: Toss the CDs and the CD player.
Take out all the beach chairs, umbrellas and boogie boards and make a beach day in the snow.
Google yourself.
Collect all the pennies from the corners of the house, coat pockets, sofa cushions, jeans in the laundry. Maybe you'll have enough for a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Then again, maybe not.
Write a letter. You know the kind, with pen and paper.
Make snowflakes out of paper. Tape them to your windows to block out the white piles outside.
Teach haiku — five, seven, five — and make a book of illustrated snow haiku.
Create air fare alerts for deals to your dream destinations.
Play this fun game with your kids: Let's Clean the Bathroom!
You know that neighbor who won't stop blasting music? That's where your shoveled snow goes.
Play family-friendly spin the bottle with your chore list. Hope it doesn't point to you when it's time to clean toilets.
Mani-pedi, scrub or mask, deep condition. You choose the body parts.
Bubble bath. Turn down the lights, light a candle and pretend you're in a spa. Doesn't do it for you? It's not completely impossible that a real one is open.
Experiment all day on devising the ultimate chocolate chip cookie. Tasting mandatory.
Begin your memoirs.
Take pictures of all your belongings to inventory for insurance. Now do a written inventory.
Sleep. If that doesn't work, make some nookie!
Send hate mail to your friends and relatives in warm-weather places. Or block them on Facebook.
Look at Florida real estate online, so you never have to read this again.

http://blog.syracuse.com/entertainment/2011/01/50_ways_to_spend_a_snow_day.html

I was a fly on the wall at a funeral I'll never forget

It was a funeral which celebrated Syracuse and the incredible life of Mayor William Walsh. 

Cities are built like Lives...with passion, hard work and determination. 

Mayor Walsh was a man of integrity who gave his life to raising his family and to building up our community.

He was driven, not by his ego, but by a strong commitment to a city that he loved. 

We are lucky to have such a wonderful example of leadership, which no doubt, if followed, will bring us continued growth and success.

William Walsh was the Mayor of Syracuse from 1961 - 1969.
He served as United States Congressman for 3 terms starting in 1973.

"In the end he was who he was raised by his parents to be
– a good and gentle man.”

Rest In Peace

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2011/01/family_syracuse_says_goodbye_t.html

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2011/01/william_walsh_former_syracuse.html

"Syracuse is steeped in an irreplaceable sense of place and cohesion difficult to find elsewhere."

"There is as much sense of belonging, more nostalgia, more accumulated aspiration, more embodied history and remembered purpose in the drumlins, streets and neighborhoods here as in any other spot in this nation."

Syracuse Post Standard 1/8/11

To the Editor:

Sean Kirst’s columns are always a treat, and his Dec. 29 piece recollecting his 20 years in town brought tears to my eyes.

Many of us have marveled from the same views he described. From the panorama atop Woodland Reservoir on South Geddes, and from Schiller Park’s intimate vista down upon the church spires and chimney smoke plumes, I’ve also said to myself, my hometown.

I arrived too, 33 years ago for social work graduate school, and stayed. And stayed and stayed. The more I’ve learned of Syracuse past, the deeper and richer my connection has grown to the people, organizations, architecture, the lands, lakes and woods of home. I’ve grown roots

We may be a struggling, Rust Belt, has-been city, but by God, there is as much sense of belonging, more nostalgia, more accumulated aspiration, more embodied history and remembered purpose in the drumlins, streets and neighborhoods here as in any other spot in this nation. From our native predecessors who worshipped our lake to the nation-building laborers whose work still stands, from Jermain Loguen’s abolitionists to the anti-war/social justice tradition recognized the world over, from three centuries of lacrosse to Syracuse University’s latest undefeated basketball squad, Syracuse is steeped in an irreplaceable sense of place and cohesion difficult to find elsewhere.

Kirst captures what a lot of us feel. Thanks for his eloquence.

Gary Weinstein
Syracuse

http://blog.syracuse.com/opinion/2011/01/sean_kirst_column_captures_aff.html

Syracuse is...Creative Talent Improving And Becoming Competitive At The Highest Level

If the last few days have been any indication...Syracuse, in general, is headed for a spectacular year.

Syracuse University athletic teams have been remarkable as of late in the national spotlight and could be viewed as a metaphor for whats happening here as a community: 

Creative Talent Improving And Becoming Competitive At The Highest Level.

We'll keep the support and momentum going and will enjoy watching each other succeed.

Happy New Year!

What A Great Day For Everything Syracuse

Tune in to ESPN at 3:20.

Syracuse: In the eye of the beholder, one beautiful town

By Sean Kirst / The Post Standard

Tuesday morning, before I left for work, I made a call to Ray, a mechanic at Ed & Frank’s on South Avenue. A headlight was out on our van, and I wondered if I could stop by later in the week to get it fixed.

“Stop by now,” Ray said. So I drove to the garage on my way downtown. Ray took a break from what he was doing. He came out and fixed the light.

A mechanic you can trust, who’s there when you need him. I’ve lived in towns where I never found anyone like that, and maybe it doesn’t sound like that big a deal, but it helps to explain why we’re still in Syracuse.

It’s been 20 years. That hit me last week, a day or two before Christmas, as I was standing in line at the Columbus Bakery on Pearl Street. As you get older, you fully appreciate the little pleasures. One of my favorite rituals in this town is getting some black coffee at Freedom of Espresso, and then walking over to Columbus for a loaf of bread that smells about as good as anything on earth.

As I waited, I got to thinking about how my family is closing out 20 years in Syracuse, and just how much we’ve come to love this place. The funny thing is, we had zero connection when we arrived. I had been working at a paper in Niagara Falls, and my wife and I needed better jobs. We both had ailing parents and we didn’t want to leave the region, so I sent applications to every big paper at this end of the state.

They hired me here. I started off in a bureau in Oswego, and The Post-Standard eventually brought me into Syracuse. I “came downtown,” as we called it at the paper, with limited knowledge of the community: I knew the Iroquois Confederacy was born near Onondaga Lake. I knew Lee Alexander was a brilliant mayor whose self-destruction broke the city’s heart. I knew about the famous green-over-red traffic signal on Tipperary Hill.

That was about it. We were nomads, and we were used to moving around, and we had no belief that we’d settle in Syracuse. We started off with a flat in a noisy college neighborhood, but everything changed on the day we moved into our second apartment, on South Geddes Street. That night, the dog and I took a walk to the top of the nearby Woodland Reservoir. I turned and saw the lights of the city rolling toward the horizon, and I thought:

My God. What a beautiful town.

Which it is, even if it hardly gets projected that way. We discovered that Syracuse is a magnificent place for moonlight sledding, because it is a city of vistas. I love the view from Tipp Hill, in which the spires of Sacred Heart and the faraway Church of the Assumption line up like celestial goal posts, or the view from Schiller Park of the rippling farmland beyond the city, or the incredible view that opens up as you near Syracuse on Interstate 81, and you see the towers of downtown tucked into the green folds of the valley.

As for daily life, we’d always dreamed of finding a neighborhood where our kids could walk to school and play kickball in the street, a place where they’d grow up with friends from a wild hodgepodge of experience.

By good fortune, in Syracuse, that fell into our laps.

So we stayed. My wife became a teacher in the city schools, and I came into a job that for me is as good as it gets. Any notion of going elsewhere slipped away. The door of our house, in a city neighborhood, is within a few minutes’ walk of quiet trails in the woods. In the autumn, we can drive to pick apples in 10 minutes. I still treasure my monthly visits at the Regional Market with Louie, the same barber who gave my kids their first haircuts.

And despite many instances locally of sheer political madness, we’ve found solace in thoughtful friends — true believers — who dare to think Syracuse can be great ...

Which it is, depending on what you see and what you want. Twenty years ago, we arrived with no plans to settle here. Then you wake up one day surrounded by neighbors that you love, in a city whose grand vistas never fail to lift your heart.

No one says it. It just happens. You realize you are home.


http://www.syracuse.com/kirst/index.ssf/2010/12/syracuse_in_the_eye_of_this_be.html