To commemorate Earth Day, the Great American Cleanup starts this weekend and other events will be held through the week next week.

You can read this article by staff writer Laura Incalcaterra about the events, but here’s a quick list:

Saturday

• The Palisades Community Center, 675 Oak Tree Road, holds an Earth Day Fair from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The emphasis will be on “reduce, reuse and recycle,” and there will be a tag sale, children’s events, and recycling collection areas for used cell phones, ink jet cartridges, eyeglasses and sunglasses, and household batteries. Adults and children can submit a design by noon and a winner will get to paint a Keep Rockland Beautiful trash can.

• The Great American Cleanup, organized locally by Keep Rockland Beautiful has several cleanups that welcome walk-in volunteers who don’t have to sign up in advance. The meeting places:
8:30 a.m.-noon: Hillburn Youth Center, 77 Fifth St.
9 a.m.: Congers Station Park, Lake Road; Montebello Village Hall, 1 Montebello Road; Farley Middle School, Route 210, Stony Point; Suffern Village Hall, 61 Washington Ave.; Back to Earth Natural Foods Market, 306 S. Main St., New City.
10 a.m.: Nanuet train station, off Prospect Street; Orangetown Town Hall, 26 Orangeburg Road, Orangeburg.
11 a.m.: Spring Valley Commons parking lot, off Slinn Avenue.
Noon: Corner of Maple and Twin avenues, Spring Valley.
Get more information at online or by calling 845-708-9159.

Tuesday

• Nyack Earth Days begin. Costume-making workshop for April 26 parade, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.; panel discussion on solar energy and greening your home or business, 7 p.m. At Nyack Center, Depew Avenue at South Broadway. Free.

• Rockland Community College’s Earth Day Information Fair, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., outside the library. Local environmental groups and vendors of environmentally friendly products, such as hybrid cars, will be present. Live raptor show and a disc jockey. Food, prepared by students in the hospitality program, will be available for $5 per plate.

• Hungry Hollow Co-op, Route 45, Chestnut Ridge, holds an open house, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with free samples of earth-friendly household-cleaning products, and information about sustainable agricultural practices.

Some of you might remember how several residents on a Congers street were fuming when they found out that Orange and Rockland Utilities planned to remove 50 to 70 trees in their neighborhood. I wrote about it last summer and staff writer Hannan Adely recently wrote about similar issues in Orangetown and Clarkstown:

Trees come down; homeowners not happy
Residents have two more weeks to fight tree clearing

You can also check out a video of a recent protest in Blauvelt here.

Now that the issue has resurfaced, Clarkstown Supervisor Alexander Gromack said he plans to reach out to the state Public Service Commission again to ask them to reconsider the tree removal policy. He also said he wrote a letter today to Gov. David Paterson seeking his support.

Gromack said in a statement: “While we work to preserve open space, the PSC mandates the destruction of trees. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Last summer, Gromack wrote to the PSC when he found out that hundreds of trees were slated for removal. He asked the state to revert back to the tree trimming policy they instituted prior to the blackout in 2003, which was caused when a tree fell on transmission wires in Ohio. The state never responded. We’ll have to see what happens this time.

On Saturday, I spent a few hours with the family of fallen soldier Justin Garcia as they celebrated his son’s first birthday. Relatives said Vincent Justin Garcia, or, little Vinny, as the family calls him, has many of his father’s mannerisms. I shot some photos and video at the party so you can check it out for yourself.

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Fallen soldier’s son has his first birthday party

Don’t forget that the next public forum on developing Clarkstown’s comprehensive plan is scheduled for this Thursday at Clarkstown North High School. Officials said they’re looking for suggestions from residents on what should be included in the comprehensive plan, which they want to complete in 2009. Some of the topics include housing, recreation, transportation and cultural resources.

The workshop begins at 7 p.m. and ends around 9:30 p.m. and is one of several meetings to discuss the plan.

UPDATE: The meeting was actually held on Monday, Feb. 4 and we missed it. There is no meeting scheduled for Thursday. Sorry for any inconvenience!

By about 6 a.m. this morning the bus scheduled to leave from St. Joseph’s Church in Spring Valley for Washington, D.C., still hadn’t arrived yet; and the about 55 people heading to the nation’s capital to participate in the 35th annual March for Life rally, instead, attempted to keep warm, idling in their cars.

Today hundreds of people from the Lower Hudson Valley will join thousands others to protest the 35th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, the landmark 1973 case that legalized abortion.

As those departing from St. Joseph’s sipped their coffees and waited patiently in their cars that were parked against the backdrop of a frosty dawn sky, I talked to a few travelers to see what lured them out of their warm beds so early in the morning.

(The Donahues of Stony Point. One of about 55 families heading from St. Joseph’s Church in Spring Valley to the nation’s capital to participate in the March for Life. From left to right: Ryan, 16, Shannon, 4, Thomas, 6, and Chris, 40.)

Just a reminder that Clarkstown officials are holding their next public forum on developing the town’s comprehensive plan on Thursday, Jan. 24, at the Congers Community Center. The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. and last until about 9:30 p.m. People are invited to offer suggestions on topics such as housing, recreation, transportation and cultural resources.

The workshop is among several meetings that officials are going to hold in Clarkstown to get input from the public. Town officials said they hope to complete the comprehensive plan in 2009.

In fact, Clarkstown officials plan to spend much of 2008 studying, consulting, planning and evaluating. There’s the energy audit, the mall study, the parks and recreation forums and housing for volunteer emergency services among many other issues the town is looking at.

As Clarkstown Supervisor Alexander Gromack said in a phone interview yesterday afternoon: “2008 is the year of the plan.”

Gobble gobble, I’m back and here with another Week In Review.

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After the break, check out the links to related articles, videos and blogs. Note: These Week In Reviews only show portions of the videos our photo staff puts together, so be sure to view the full videos by clicking the links.

Former Clarkstown Town Board member Ann Marie Smith has announced she will run for the County Legislature’s 11th District seat, currently held by Legislator Theodore Dusanenko, R-Valley Cottage.

Smith, a Democrat, also refuted comments made by Rockland Republican Committee Chairman Vincent Reda who said yesterday that Smith had wanted to run for town supervisor as a Republican.

Smith said she was invited as a guest to the Clarkstown Republican Committee convention and was told by some members that they were disappointed in the low turnout. Smith said Reda then approached HER about changing her enrollment, which, though some Republicans were somewhat serious about it, she took as a joke. Smith said that if she wanted to run as a Republican she would have gone through proper channels.

With Smith’s version of events and Reda’s having nothing in common I wonder if Smith will be too eager to accept another invitation to a Republican convention.

Meanwhile, her Legislature race is getting very crowded. There are two Democrats in the running and one Republican. Dusanenko, surprisingly, did not get the Republican’s nomination even though he’s been in the seat for more than 30 years. He hasn’t said whether he’d be mounting a campaign on his own.

Hey—it worked for Joe Lieberman.

Vinnie Reda, Rockland Republican Committee chairman, took a break from his Cocoa Beach, Fla., trip to read off the names of the Republican candidates vying for Clarkstown seats.

They are: Frank Borelli Jr. and John Miele for Town Board; Wayne Ballard, an incumbent, for superintendent of highways; and Duncan Lee and Thomas Mascola for town justices.

“I’m very exicited,” he said. “I think we have a wonderful selection of candidates.”

Vincent Monte, Rockland Democratic Committee chairman, said the party was still screening candidates for Clarkstown seats.

As most of you have probably heard, Captain America is killed in an issue on newsstands today. For a take on the superhero’s death, we spoke with Brian Cunningham, editor of Wizard, the comic buyers magazine based in Congers. Here’s what he had to say:

On how the Wizard staff took the news …

Well it’s a huge deal, I mean it’s almost the death of Superman all over again, you hate to see your favorite comic superheroes turn out that way, it’s a sad day … It’s a tidal wave of grief on the one hand and on the other it’s a major event everyone wants to be in on.