File under bee. We had a cousin who died in charming Niskayuna, New York. Due to the current…read moreAdministration's total screw up of the airlines industry, we took Amtrak with its 10% Military / Veterans Discount, with a bus transfer from the Schenectady, NY train station, to and from for the funeral. While there, we visited the very high-quality ranked Niskayuna High School. The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. -- Dr. Seuss Did you know that Niskayuna High School Library has honey bees that have made it their home since 2016? I didn't until my recent visit. This review focuses on my discovery of and visit to the Niskayuna High School Library Honey Bee Interpretive Center. Science teacher Paul Scott's first task was to get approval to bring a beehive into the school. "Make sure you start with the people who are most likely to be affected by it," advises Scott, who first consulted the school nurse about allergy concerns and the grounds crew before obtaining permission from the principal. Thousands of honeybees busy themselves inside the school's observation hive, built and installed by Scott and another teacher in 2016. People who don't want to interact with the bees aren't forced to as the location of the hive was no afterthought: The media center, with its large windows overlooking an enclosed courtyard, is a prime and safe location for students to watch bees exit and enter the hive through the pipe that connects the hive to the outdoors. And it's a hub of activity at the school. You might think, what do bees eat there? Don't worry, bees can fly up to 5 miles from their hive to collect food, but there are plenty of trees and other plants blooming throughout the city. Each beehive could have up to 60 thousand bees, and while many are out foraging for food, about 2/3 of the colony stays home to clean, care for the young, make honey, guard the hive, and take care of the queen bee. Donna McAndrews, the school's library media specialist, developed a "bee corner" around the hive, displaying books and informational posters related to bees. What happens when a bee moves to a new hive? They have a house-swarming party! That was proudly told to me by one of the students there. The library staff is friendly, professional, helpful, smart, family-friendly, and disabled-friendly. "What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." -Dr. Carl Sagan, Cosmos "I'm tired of that stupid phrase, "the birds and the bees" which is supposed to represent "the facts of life" or the beginnings of the sex instruction of the young. Why for heaven's sake, has anyone ever tried to explain sex by talking about the birds and the bees? What have the birds and the bees to do with it? IT'S THE BEES AND THE FLOWERS. Will you get that through your head? IT'S THE BEES AND THE FLOWERS. The bee travels to one flower and picks up pollen from the stamens. The pollen contains the male sex cells of the plant. The bee then travels to another flower (of the same species) and the pollen brushes off onto the pistil, which contains the female sex cells of the plant. ... Now in the human being ... we don't rely on bees to do it for us." -- Dr. Isaac Asimov, US Army Veteran, scientist and Grand Master science fiction author P.S. Don't message me because in spite of my several complaints to yelp, for years now I am unable to open up any messages in yelp to me :-(

It's that time of year... concerts!…read more All my kids went to Niskayuna Schools and now my grandkids are going here. Located in a small town/suburb of Schenectady New York and is ranked very high in the state. Go Niskayuna Warriors!