Hugh Reynolds: Zimet got stung

The fact is that few people are swayed by rhetoric at these affairs, but for the losing side it sure was fun.

Team Zimet did make one noticeable tactical blunder, however. With about 45 voting supporters in the house — about 130 committee members actually voted — Zimet took the podium to dead silence. Cahill’s placard-waving zealots, by comparison, greeted their boy with roars of approval. If there was anybody on the fence at that point, it should have kicked them into the Cahill camp.

Cahill was nominated by Kingston alderman-at-large Jim Noble, who read a speech that could have been written by the candidate. Noble noted that Cahill’s safety-net legislation “will save taxpayers in Kingston five percent this year.” This was just about the first time any Kingston public official has supported Cahill in the so-called sales-tax crisis. Mayor Shayne Gallo is firmly in the county executive’s camp.

About that bee sting.

I entered the hall about half an hour early to find Zimet sitting in the lounge greeting arrivals. With the assignment deadline looming, I wasn’t in a mood for small talk, so when Zimet said she’d been stung by a bee, I dismissed it as just another example of Susan playing the victim.

Apparently she told a few others, because inside the crowded convention hall, committee members were buzzing. Was Susan allergic to bees? Would she require medical treatment? Would she have to leave the convention before being nominated? Was Susan seeking a sympathy vote? Can bees vote? Did Cahill have anything to do with this?

The answers to almost all those questions was no.

Sheriff Paul Van Blarcum giggled the crowd with his Elvis “thank you very much” imitation. Cahill came up Elvis-empty in his brief remarks. “I’m really more of an Elvis Costello fan,” he explained.

Another old Elvis song popped into my head on my way home, something to do with honey bees. Research confirmed “I Got Stung (by a sweet honey bee)” was released in October 1958 as Elvis was leaving for army duty. Zimet would have been about four years old. Pity Cahill couldn’t have dredged that one out of his memory bank.

Can you dig it?

Cemeteries being one of the more fascinating places in any community, Friends of Historic Kingston have announced guided tours of Kingston’s six graveyards, beginning with Montrepose Cemetery on Sunday at 2 p.m. with former Friends president Pat Murphy leading tip-toes through the tombstones. The weekly tours will interrupt for a lecture on architecture and landscaping of city cemeteries by Dr. Bill Rhoads of New Paltz. Believe me, if anybody knows where the bodies are buried, or at least where they used to live, it’s this eminent architectural historian. Dr. Bill will hold forth at 2 p.m. on July 27 at the Kirkland Hotel Senate Room in Kingston.

The tours will wind up with Renee Van Dyke guiding visitors through the African American Cemetery off South Wall Street on Aug. 3 at 2 p.m. Renee’s grandfather, Len Van Dyke, was Kingston’s first African-American alderman in the early 1960s. His Rondout district was literally wiped out by urban renewal.

The Hurley Historical Society has been conducting its cemetery tours for years, and with a twist. On Halloween, residents have been known to dress up in colonial garb to guide visitors through the hamlet’s cemetery behind Main Street.

Former town historian Don Kent, hale and hearty at 96, lives in the Spy House on Main Street where condemned British spy lieutenant Daniel Taylor was held before being hanged from a nearby apple tree in 1777. Dressed as Taylor, with rope and pasty white face, Kent, one of the town’s good guys, was a sight to behold on Halloween. “I never scared any kids,” said Kent, “but I sure frightened the guide one year.”

Deer drops in

Last week’s invasion by a young deer of Hudson Coffee Traders café on Wall Street in Kingston had the wags reaching for one-liners, as in:

Was the young doe trying to avoid jury duty at the courthouse across the street?

Was she confused by Kingston’s dismaying one-way street patterns?

Did she really, really need a coffee fix?

Was she being chased by the mayor for going the wrong way on Wall Street?

The bewildered deer was captured inside the shop, virtually unharmed, and transported to freedom near Kingston Plaza. Could her next stop be “Just a Buck?”