Historical society plans NYC bus trip
SCHENECTADY
— A Jan. 12 bus trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is planned by the Schenectady County Historical Society.
Participants can board the bus at 7:30 a.m. from the Stockade or 8 a.m. from Crossgates Mall.
The bus will arrive at the Met at 11 a.m., where everyone can enjoy a day of art and antiquities with collections spanning more than 5,000 years of culture, from prehistory to the present, a journey through the world’s greatest art.
Tickets cost $80 each and include round-trip bus travel and admission to the Met, including access to its newest exhibition, “In Praise of Painting: Dutch Masterpieces at the Met.”
The bus will depart the Met at 5 p.m. and arrive at Crossgates Mall at 8 and the Stockade at 8:30 p.m.
To purchase tickets, go to http://schenectadyhistorical.org/bustrip.
Area sites to host Kwanzaa events
ALBANY — A candle lighting ceremony, performances, workshops, vendors and refreshments will be held from 6 to
8:30 p.m. Wednesday at the State Museum, 222 Madison Ave. will launch a weeklong Capital Region Kwanzaa celebration.
The theme for the evening will be umoja (unity).
Maulana Karenga, professor and chairman of Africana Studies at California State University, Long Beach, created the seven-day festival in 1966 to celebrate family, community and culture.
Local celebrations will be held the next six days as listed below:
■ 6 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, African American Cultural Center, Pearl Street and Madison Avenue, Albany. Theme: kujichagulia, selfdetermination; ■ 6 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, Mt. Olivet Missionary Baptist Church, 1068 Park Ave., Schenectady. Theme: ujima, collective work and responsibility;
■ 4 to 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Troy Boys and Girls
Conference deals with Loeffel dump
CASTLETON — A conference pertaining to potential remediation options for the Dewey Loeffel EPA superfund site in the town of Nassau will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Jan. 5 at the Comfort Inn & Suites East Greenbush-albany, 99 Miller Road, Castleton.
The superfund site, with 46,000 tons of highly toxic waste dumped by
GE, SI Group and others, has polluted Nassau Lake, area groundwater, homeowners’ wells and area streams.
The conference, sponsored by the citizen advocacy group UNCAGED and the Nassau Lake Park Improvement Association, will provide information to the public and elected officials about current remedial technologies available to address the landfill and prepare the public to effectively advocate for its preferred cleanup option. There will be panel discussions by health and environmental professionals.
EPA will evaluate cleanup technologies provided by responsible parties and determine what remediation will be done at the landfill. For more information, call Contact Dan Spilman, 518-488-9406, or spilmandan@yahoo. com.
DNA tools is topic of library program
“Using DNA Tools to Solve Adoption and Other Mysteries” will kick off Season 8 of the Clifton Park-halfmoon Library’s Two Towns One Book program.
The discussion starts at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 12 at the library program rooms.
To register on the library website, go to https://ny.evanced.info/ cph/lib/eventcalendar
Professional genealogist Lisa Dougherty will guide attendees through the basics of using DNA test results, give suggestions for useful online resources, and share her personal family stories in adoption research.
D’amato talks issues during Capitol View
ALBANY — The public affairs firm Gramercy Communications will hold a series of New York statefocused events called Capitol View, hosted at the company’s new public affairs headquarters at Bull Moose Club at 150 State
St. in Albany.
The inaugural event on Jan. 14 will feature former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’amato, who will discuss November’s mid-term election results and the state of partisanship in Washington and beyond, among other topics.
— Staff reports