The other day as I was walking along Holland Avenue in the city of Albany, New York I spied something with my two little eyes taking place at that lovely old apartment complex on Holland between Walgreen's and Delaware Avenue. The beautiful shrubs which had not been trimmed in ages had become stubble sticking up out of the ground. The windows that once were in place in the apartment building had been replaced by plywood, you know that ugly plywood made out of wood shavings and paste. The plywood that replaced the windows didn't fully cover the space where windows once were making it likely that the elements can and will undermine the apartment complex. As I was thinking about this as I was walking I couldn't help but think of the historic Tudor homes lying intentionally vacant for years on the other side, the southside, of Holland Avenue across from Walgreen's and the VA.
The reason that both the apartment complex and the Tudor homes are lying vacant and have been left to decay is not difficult to fathom. Now that Holland Avenue and New Scotland Avenue have been transformed from more residential areas into areas zoned for business at the behest, no doubt, of Albany Medical Center and its cheerleaders, owners of these properties, worshipers of the great golden green god Mammon, see dollar signs in them there properties. All the while the city of Albany twiddle their thumbs in wonder and look the other way making one wonder if they too will accrue profits from the destruction of these properties thanks to that old time American past-time of the greasing of palms.
I have learned a lesson from my excursions along Holland Avenue. The lesson I have learned from all of this is that Kathy Sheehan the supposed Democratic reform candidate that many believed would be the messiah that Albany had been waiting for for seventy some years who would finally turn over the tables of Albany's old machine politics moneymakers and bring back life once again to this once great ancient city by the Hudson was yet another of those false messiahs. Meet the new boss, new mayor Kathy Sheehan, much the same as the old boss, former mayor Jerry Jennings.
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