[Leica] Recession/Crisis in the Hudson Valley

[lrzeitlin at optonline.net (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

On Apr 14, 2009, at 5:14 PM, Bruce wrote:

> but what has replaced this decline? or has youth just moved away, and
> whereto?


The population in most of the communities has remained stable or  
slightly declined for several decades. Young people see no future in  
staying near home unless there is a family business they can inherit.  
Towns near NYC have become bedroom communities for commuters. They  
have no industrial base. There are several large tech companies  in  
the region, most notably IBM, but they offer employment to the  
intellectual few. And even they have outsourced many jobs to Asia.  
Towns further away from big cities have simply declined. Property in  
upstate NY is comparatively cheap. Cities as far west as Rochester  
are suffering the fallout from Kodak layoffs and the bankruptcy of  
Global Crossing. Most of my son's 1985 and daughter's 1990 high  
school classes moved away. Following college a substantial number  
went into New York's financial industry to be in the center of the  
action - and you know where that got most of us. After a stint in the  
Navy during the first Iraq war, my son got an MBA from the Univ. of  
Indiana business school and ended up running a portion of Sony/ 
Ericsson's US television operation, based in Atlanta. My daughter  
ended up a TV writer/producer for an ABC affiliate station in a major  
market. My next door neighbor's kid is a Microsoft millionaire and  
3000 miles from home. The average distance from us of members of our  
immediate family is 400 miles. And that is an improvement. For a  
while it was over 2000 miles.

The tragedy is that the Hudson Valley is an incomparably beautiful  
area. The river cuts through the Appalachian mountain range and  
presents vistas equal to the best of the Norwegian fjords. My  
Norwegian wife certifies that this is a fact. It has been called the  
most picturesque waterway in America and nurtured the first purely  
native art movement, the "Hudson River" school. I've cruised down the  
Rhine and the Hudson and the Hudson is far prettier - but it has only  
one castle and that made of concrete. It does have the summer homes  
of the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Roosevelts on the shore to make  
up for being castle impaired. European photographers, if you doubt my  
assertion, take a trip on the Hudson and see for yourself.

In fact, as soon as I finish editing the 20,000 or so photos I've  
spent the past year scanning into iPhoto, many of the Hudson Valley,   
I'll start posting them.

Larry Z