When Pastor Kyle Delhagen writes his sermon every week, he has a prayer on his lips: Lord, your words, not mine.“I’m in love with words,” Delhagen says in this week’s Enterprise podcast.He was installed in late October as the pastor at Hamilton Union Presbyterian Church, established in Guilderland in 1824.Although Delhagen grew up in a pastor’s family, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be pastor or raise his own family that way. “I fought against going into the ministry for a long time,” he said.Delhagen grew up in the Reformed Church in America. His mother’s father was also a Reformed pastor. Delhagen himself was ordained in the Reformed Church.He likes the Presbyterian Church because it is “much, much bigger, much more expansive, much, much more tuned in to issues of justice that were passionate to my heart.”While the Reformed Church in America is one of the oldest denominations in the country, founded in 1628, Delhagen notes it is very small. It has about 200,000 members compared to 1.7 million in the Presbyterian Church.Delhagen loves lots of people in the Reformed Church, he said, but feels it is “tearing itself apart over issues of human sexuality.”“And so I have found myself to be adopted into this denomination,” Delhagen said of Presbyterianism. “And I love it here.”His congregation has taken up the Presbyteran Church’s Matthew 25 vision. In that chapter of the Bible, Delhagen explains, Jesus “talks about that day of judgment when God is going to separate out the people and put at his right hand those who did God’s will and, at his left hand, those who didn’t.“And he says, ‘You know who fed me when I was hungry, you clothed me when I was nakend, you visited me when I was sick and in prison.’ And the people say, ‘When did we do that, Jesus?’ and he says, ‘Whenever you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.’”So churches that adopt the Matthew 25 vision seek to dismantle systemic racism and address structural poverty among other things. Hamilton Union this year focused on hunger, helping the Guilderland Food Pantry and the Regional Food Bank, Delhagen said.Hamilton Union also raised $5,000 to fill a metaphorical ark, through Heifer International, with cows and chickens and goats to help people in undeveloped countries.“I want to challenge my congregation and our community … to look at how issues of race and gender and economics intersect in creating systems of poverty,” said Delhagen.He went on, “There’s a saying that, if a fish washes up on the shore, one might ask: What’s wrong with the fish? If a bunch of fish wash up on the shore you have to ask: What’s wrong with the water?”With poverty, churches and society tend to focus on addressing individual needs, which is important but, he said, we also need to look at the larger picture and address the issues keeping people in poverty. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Will Gibney, at 17, has written a book about the dog that changed his life.“Toshi is my service dog,” says Will in this week’s Enterprise podcast. “He means so much to me because for years he’s been by my side.”Once Will, at age 12, was matched with Toshi, he began to produce the antibodies he needed to fight infections.“Toshi has been life-changing for me,” says Will, explaining why he wanted to write the book. He wants other people with disabilities, who may be scared of being ridiculed and judged, to know they can get service dogs to help them. In the introduction to the book, Will’s mother, child psychologist Laura Assaf, writes, “Will became more independent and mature as he started caring for another being instead of needing everyone else to care for him. The character gifts Will has — his kindness, perseverance, generosity of spirit, and empathy for others — were no longer overshadowed by the incongruent behaviors he demonstrated when his brain was inflamed.”Will has a condition known as PANS, from which Assaf said one in 200 children may have flare-ups although the syndrome is often misunderstood and misdiagnosed. PANS stands for Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome.Will is also immunodeficient, which fewer than 20 percent of children with PANS are, his mother said.Assaf called it a “double whammy” since her son’s body was unable to produce the antibodies needed to fight infections so he spent lots of time getting infusions to try to build a healthier body. He also underwent seven years of long-term suppression therapy on antibiotics, probiotics, and medications to treat symptoms.“When there’s inflammation in the body and there’s inflammation in the brain, then we get behaviors” that can often look psychiatric, leading to frequent misdiagnoses of the condition, Assaf said.When Will’s condition was misdiagnosed by local doctors, his parents pushed to find national experts who understood the condition. Some children with PANS can be treated with a 30-day antibiotic instead of six years on an antidepressant, said Assaf. “It sends them down a very scary and dangerous path,” she said of misdiagnosis.Will’s book, “My Boy, Will,” captures his five years with Toshi in a narrative written for children illustrated with simple expressive artwork created by Will. ****William J. Gibney will be selling and signing his book, “My Boy, Will,” at Colonie Center, outside the entrance to Macy’s, on Sunday, Dec. 12, from noon to 2 p.m. The book-signing will double as a seventh birthday party for his dog, Toshi. All of the proceeds from sale of the book are being donated to Canine Companions, which provides service dogs free of charge. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Kayleigh Reynolds-Flynn has been riding horses since she was born.Her mother grew up riding horses, too.“My favorite picture I have is of me when I was probably about three or four months old with my mom sitting on our old horse, Bandy,” Reynolds-Flynn says in this week’s podcast.Her mother would take her on trail rides as a baby and she would fall asleep in her mother’s arms on the back of a horse.Now an adult, Reynolds-Flynn’s passion for horses has not faded. She lives in Alaska with her financé, Travis Perkovich; her horse, Tango; and their husky puppy, Gimli.She has bred a mare named Girlfriend and is expecting a foal in June. The gestation period, she explained, is 340 days or roughly 11 months.This fall, Reynolds-Flynn became Berne-Knox-Westerlo’s first graduate to earn an American FFA Degree, the top honor earned by fewer than 2 percent of the more than 730,000 Future Farmers of America members.Her family ran a business in Knox, providing carriage rides for weddings and special occasions like holiday sojourns around Stuyvesant Plaza in Guilderland. She described a “white Cinderella carriage” pulled by Belgian horsesBehind the fairytale was a lot of work, feeding the horses every day and gradually desensitizing them to the hurly-burly of modern traffic.A young horse would be paired with an old horse who was “basically bombproof,” said Reynolds-Flynn as they traveled a two-mile circular route along two busy roads to get back home.Reynolds-Flynn took classes in agriculture at BKW from Micaela Kehrer and joined the FFA.At 16, she won the People in Agriculture competition at the New York State FFA convention after making a presentation on State Police canine handlers — her dream job at the time.After graduating from BKW in 2019, she went to the State University of New York College of Agriculture and Technology at Cobleskill. Reynolds-Flynn started in the canine program and said she had a lot of fun working with dogs.But she came to the realization that her true passion was working with horses and she majored in equine husbandry.She moved to Alaska to be with her fiancé. They live in Soldotna, population 4,000, on the Kenai Peninsula at the edge of a two-million-acre wildlife preserve.“It’s almost like the Hilltowns,” said Reynolds-Flynn of the small-town atmosphere.She works in a shop that melts down lead, putting it into molds to make weights for fishermen’s nets.Reynolds-Flynn tried salmon fishing herself this past summer, donning waders and standing hip-deep in the Kenai River. “It’s almost like fly fishing,” she said.Her major focus outside of work is on her horse, Tango. Because she competes in barrel racing — she started at the Altamont Fair — she is training Tango on endurance and bending into turns.She likes challenges and has stepped into traditionally male roles, like being a volunteer firefighter in Knox.Her biggest thrill was receiving her American FFA Degree on Oct. 30 at the national convention in Indianapolis. Up to 60,000 members from across the country assemble for the annual convention.Earning her degree involved more than just an academic record or FFA membership for three years. She also had to demonstrate outstanding leadership, complete at least 50 hours of community service, earn $10,000 and invest $7,500, and work in excess of 2,250 hours in agriculture.Reynolds-Flynn has this advice for others who might want to follow in her footsteps: When it seems like it’s getting tough, just keep on pushing through it and there’s always light at the end of the tunnel. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Eric Reimer is a pastor who tweets.He is the new pastor at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Altamont. “The word of God …,” said Reimer, “needs to be proclaimed wherever people are. The Lutheran movement itself exists largely because of changes in the way people communicate.”Martin Luther’s ideas in the 1500s had been expressed before by other theologians, but Luther was able to print them and distribute them quickly before they could be repressed, said Reimer, leading to the Protestant Reformation.“And then once his ideas were out there, he took advantage of things like using woodcuts to make interesting illustrations to accompany his catechism, so Christian teachings and instructions would hold people’s attention,” Reimer said.Luther was also an advocate of translating the scriptures from Latin into languages people spoke and could easily understand.Whether it’s on Twitter or Facebook, Reimer said, the church should be where “God’s people are.” He went on, “And so whenever there are ways to advocate for peace or to care for one another or to love our neighbor, the church should show up and proclaim that.”In his job as a pastor, Reimer says on this week’s Enterprise podcast, “A lot of what I do is creative.” This includes writing sermons and inventing fresh approaches to Bible study. His job also involves relationships, providing spiritual care in homes and hospitals. This has been complicated by COVID-19 restrictions, Reimer said, and some of his congregants he has met only through screens.As a teenager, Reimer worked at a Lutheran summer camp — and continued to work there for seven summers. One of the things that attracted him to Altamont was its proximity to the Adirondacks. He floundered when he first went to college, Reimer said, but was grounded by his desire to return to work at the Lutheran summer camp. “Being there for others … was what I was called to do,” he said.He discerned his call to the ministry at the camp, Reimer said, as he likened being a pastor to being a counselor for life. He described his work as a lifelong cycle of sharing joys and sorrows with a group of people.The outdoor aspects of the camp, like hiking on the Appalachian Trail, he added, reinforced the importance of working together and caused intense bonding.Being there for others, as Reimer put it, sometimes involves people you don’t even know. As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, Reimer closed with a challenge.“It’s always appropriate to give thanks,” he said. “And whether you’re a Christian or not, I think we can all benefit from the act of actively giving thanks and looking for things to be thankful for.”Reimer challenged podcast listeners “to spend the week looking for different reasons to be thankful … to have gratitude. And I will then challenge you to find new ways to express that gratitude to others. And to help build relationships and spread love.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The longtime head of Youth and Family Services at the Voorheesville library, Gail Brown has just been named Public Librarian of the Year by the New York State Library Association.Her goal is to create a community of learners. While she focuses on kids, her tendrils reach to nurture their parents and grandparents, too, as well as into the community at large.In one library project, Brown paired kids with veterans so that young people would understand the sacrifices of war. The Military Memories and Veterans Voices project made history come alive and Brown believes it is something the kids will carry with them for the rest of their lives.She recalls in this week’s podcast how one young man who loves history was paired with a Korean War veteran. “Mrs. Brown, this is better than any textbook,” he told her.Brown had started her career as an English teacher. She paused in her teaching to raise her own children and decided to become a librarian because it allowed her to be more creative in her pursuits, not restricted by set curricula.Brown was also instrumental in 2019, before the pandemic, in launching Voorheesville’s first Screen-Free Week.Read the full article here: https://tae.news/ifc See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Merton D. Simpson has always had a sense of his African ancestry and his Blackness.He was born in Charleston, South Carolina and raised in Brooklyn so he says he’s always known the deep divisions in the United States.“My mother has just turned 89 years old and she’s a master teacher,” says Simpson in this week’s podcast.As a first-born son, he has his father’s name. “My father was one of the foremost African art dealers in the world. He also was at the vanguard of the expressionist art movement with Picasso and Romare Bearden,” says Simpson. His father was an artist himself and also a jazz musician.Simpson is an Albany County legislator, representing Arbor Hill, Sheridan Hollow, Washington Park, and West Hill.He came to Albany in 1978 “for a job” — as a senior minority group personnel specialist for Civil Service.“My job was to get employment in New York State government for Blacks and Hispanics who had been traditionally neglected by Civil Service,” said Simpson. As a lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit, Simpson v. New York State Department of Civil Service, Simpson won a long legal battle, securing a $45 million settlement for more than 4,000 Black and Hispanic state workers and job applicants who claimed a Civil Service test was biased.The litigation stretched from 1997 to 2010. “It was a long but historic and necessary fight ….,” said Simpson. “People were promoted on the basis of a test that didn’t legitimately test their knowledge, skills, and abilities and also was tremendously discriminatory.”He also said, “Had I not stopped that test, it would have been used in every state in the country.”While a friend continually encourages Simpson to run for Congress, he said, “I can do more in the Albany County Legislature in real terms than I could in Washington because of the tremendous gridlock.”He recently spoke passionately at a legislative committee meeting on expanding the county’s version of the CROWN Act and elaborated on that with The Enterprise. (See related editorial.) CROWN stands for Creating a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural hair.“When it comes to the CROWN Act, what we see is another manifestation of the denial of the legacy of racism in America,” said Simpson. The committee was discussing adding headcoverings to the list of protected hairstyles, which Simpson described as “a longstanding feature of Black people in America and that’s a cultural transition from our history in Africa.”He went on, “We actually have present situations here in Albany County where people have been denied employment rights or been treated in an inappropriate way because of their hair preferences, which has nothing to do with their ability to do their job.”He recognized there could be jobs where certain hairstyles would present a hazard but said, “When it comes to a question of: well, you just think it’s nice to have short hair, then that’s a problem.”Traditional black hairstyles can help some people do their jobs better, says Simpson, stating that the New York City Police Department for many years has not had restrictions on how Black officers wear their hair.“In many communities, to see people who have sort of indigenous hairstyles endear them to the community,” said Simpson.He’s an advocate of community policing done by people who are part of the community “because there’s a knowledge, understanding, and a commitment to that community.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What began as a path traveled by Native Americans became a plank road for European settlers and now is suburban Guilderland’s major thoroughfare — Route 20.Route 20 seemed long to Bryan Farr when he was kid, traveling with his family every summer from the Fingers Lakes where they lived to the Darien Lake, an amusement park near Buffalo.But, as a young man, he embraced the entire length of the historic highway, driving through 12 states from Boston, Massachusetts to Newport, Oregon in two weeks: 3,365 miles from coast to coast, America’s longest highway. Farr describes it as a once-in-a-lifetime trip on this week’s podcast.Farr, a meteorologist with a penchant for photography, took pictures along the way and planned to put together a book. He wrote to the towns he had traveled through and asked them to write three things about the town. He was sent three-page emails in return.As his interest in the history of the route burgeoned, Farr founded the Historic U.S. Route 20 Association, a labor of love.Farr will be speaking, through Zoom, to the Guilderland Historical Society at 7 p.m. on Nov. 18. The public is invited to the free event. Details on how to join the meeting are posted at www.guilderlandhistoricalsociety.org.Farr knows the history of the route intimately. The stretch between Albany and Buffalo, he says, almost became defunct in the 1850s because the Erie Canal was so popular.As automobiles started replacing horse-drawn conveyances in the early 20th Century, Farr says, “Good roads were hard to find.” In 1921, the Federal Highway Act allocated funds to states; each was to pick their best roads.Leaders met regionally and then, in 1925, Farr said, all the regions met to connect the dots. The act laid the groundwork for a national highway system.That’s when the numbering system for highways was developed, with the lowest numbers for roads running north and east and the highest for roads going south and west. Even numbers were for east-to-west roads; odd numbers for north-to-south roads. A zero at the end of a route, as in Route 20, means it’s a cross-country highway.Such a numbering system was useful, Farr notes, before the age of GPS when travelers had to find their own way.Once the roads were numbered, roadside motels and cabins popped up, Farr said, noting motorists could travel only 100 or 150 miles a day and would stop along the way at the mom-and-pop businesses, often with a shop, restaurant, and gas station — and sometimes a kitschy attraction.“Roadside architecture really started to bloom,” said Farr, as a landlocked lighthouse or a giant teapot beckoned to travelers.By the 1950s and ’60s, traffic became so intense that, in some places, it could be backed up for a mile or more. Once superhighways, like New York’s Thruway, were built, some of the towns along the old Route 20 dried up almost overnight, said Farr.Cherry Valley, west of Guilderland, became a ghost town, Farr said, describing the Thruway as “the nail in the coffin.”One of his association’s goals is to highlight small towns so visitors return there. Recently, Iowa gave Route 20 an historic designation, which took several years to secure. There are now 250 signs across Iowa to help travelers follow the historic Route 20 there.Farr and his association were following a similar approach in New York State. Both the Guilderland Public Library and Gade Farm in town posted signs, noting they stand along Route 20. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Gary Kleppel is a sheep farmer who likes coyotes.He is perpetually aware of the ecological balance of which he is a part.Every morning, Kleppel and his border collie bring their 30 sheep from barn to pasture and then, every night, return them to the barn.Overnight, coyotes eat all the vermin in the pasture. There are no rats in the Kleppels’ barn.In ecology, Kleppel explains in this week’s podcast, there is no competition; rather, there is co-opetition. “We cooperate and we compete,” says Kleppel.Kleppel, who has a Ph.D. in biology and, for 15 years, directed the graduate program of Biodiversity Conservation and Policy at the University at Albany, came to farming by way of oceanography.When he and his wife, Pam, who is now retired from her job as a business manager for Albany Law School, bought Longfield Farm in Knox, it wasn’t farmed. There were just five plant varieties on their 16 acres; now there are 51 varieties.He rotates the places where his sheep graze, perpetually creating fresh pastures. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In 1914, John Daniels wrote “In Freedom’s Birthplace; a Study of the Boston Negroes.” Eighty-five years later, his son, Jack Daniels, wrote “Discovering the Forgotten History of African Americans in Schoharie County.”The language like the location had changed, but the mission was the same: To uncover and tell a largely unwritten part of American history.Jack Daniels writes in the introduction to his 1999 book, “I hope there will be others who wish to add to or amend the historical record; also to keep it up to date.”Starting today, Oct. 21, the Schoharie County Historical Society is hosting a series of discussions on Jack Daniels’s book.Katherine Hawkins is leading the first session and says one of the goals of the series is to inspire what Daniels had requested 22 years ago — that the history of Blacks in Schoharie County be updated and added to.She stressed that anyone is welcome to come to the free sessions, which will be held at 7 p.m., starting Oct. 21, and will continue monthly through April at the Schoharie Presbyterian Church.Daniels died in 2012 at the age of 96. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Two creative men from Altamont have gathered ghost stories from village residents and surrounding areas into a book. Neither is a stranger to imagination and yet they have labeled these stories as true.Tom Capuano, a retired professor, once wrote a book-length narrative poem on the founding of Altamont, grounded in history but with imaginative creation of characters. He raises sheep now in an 18th-Century barn on land that both figure prominently in some of the ghost stories.Thom Breitenbach, an artist who lives in a castle he built on the hillside above the village, wrote and produced a musical about Hieronymus Bosch, a 15th-Century Dutch artist who, like Breitenbach, creates imaginative creatures. In Breitenbach’s musical, those creatures come alive.So where does each draw the line between imagination and reality? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.