It was odd reading today that parts of Bannerman Tower, a landmark castle on Pollepel Island in the Hudson River near Fishkill collapsed over the weekend.

According to the story from our partner, The Poughkeepsie Journal, as much as 30 to 40 percent of the burned-out structure’s front wall collapsed and perhaps half of the east wall toppled as well. Officials of the Bannerman Castle Trust believe the collapse took place Saturday or early Sunday morning.

What makes the story stand out to me — other than my historical interest in the structure — is that it was featured over the weekend in a repeat episode of NBC Universal’s lifestyles program, LX.TV 1stLook. I’m thinking I saw it early Saturday evening, but it’s available here.

In the episode, Enjoying the Last Days of Summer, co-host George Oliphant kayaked to the island from Cold Spring, meeting up with Thom Johnson of the Bannerman Trust to climb a trail through the island’s greenery to reach both the Bannerman Tower and the small Bannerman family residence and take in the expansive views of the Hudson River.

Both were built by Frank Bannerman VI after he bought the island in 1900. A fire in 1969 burned out most of the tower’s internal structure, leaving the walls standing.

Members of the Bannerman Castle Trust, which oversees the property bought by the state in the 1960s, have yet to visit the island to assess the damage, but plan an emergency meeting of the group for Monday.

Marcia Isaacson of New City describes herself as a senior citizen who, in this age of computers, e-mail and the Internet, feels like she’s moving in the slow lane of the information highway.

But hearing about President Barack Obama’s intent to give his $1.4 million in Nobel Prize money to charity, she wants to make a suggestion.

Problem was, she thinks she has no voice. At the very least, her voice as a private citizen would be too soft to carry.
And taking the old, tried and true methods of writing a letter to the president — or even a letter to the editor — would mean her voice might be heard too late to matter since she has no computer.

So here’s Marcia Isaacson’s suggestion, Mr. President.

“The money should go to help the women and children of those lost in our two wars and to the homeless veterans of other wars. Something is owed to the families of the very young soldiers who are leaving wives and children behind.”

She and her ex-husband spent time at Fort Hood, in Texas, the scene of another recent American tragedy, she says. That was in the Korean War era, when her ex was stations there.

She says she realizes that Iraq and Afghanistan are wars Obama inherited, but, she says, he can still do some good by helping those who have suffered greatly in them.

She asked that I pass her thoughts on to someone who might listen.

The latest wire service reports from Oslo say only that the money that attaches to the Nobel Prize will be donated to charity, but that there’s been no decision by the White House as to where it will go.

Perhaps the president will hear a single, simple suggestion above the crowd.

Reading about Westchester’s proposed budget for 2010, which is heading for consideration this week, I couldn’t help but notice a couple of similarities with Rockland’s budget, which was approved Thursday night and is awaiting County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef’s  signature.

First off, Westchester, too, is trying to tighten its collective belt, reducing expenses and trying to keep taxes under control.

There, as here,  County Executive Andrew Spano submitted a budget proposal calling for a tax increase, in Westchester’s case, a 4.9 percent bump. Like here, the County Board is now trying to trim that down. Rockland’s County Legislature managed to slice the county’s proposed tax increase in half, working with Vanderhoef and his staff.

But more interesting is the fact that community groups that review the Westchester budget each year are raising questions about sales tax revenue projections.

They have been an issue in most Rockland budgets this decade and are again going into 2010. This year’s projection for budget purposes turned out to be high, as might be expected in a time when consumers are holding tight to what they might have though to be their disposable income.

Westchester’s advisory groups also are concerned that the county won’t raise $16 million in revenue through Playland Amusement Park, which didn’t meet its revenue projection this year.

Rockland doesn’t own an amusement park — and good thing, given the tragedies that have played out there in recent summers— but questions about revenue projections in Rockland extend beyond sales taxes to mortgage taxes, which have also fallen short f revenue projections because of the real estate downturn.

So, we’re not alone in our concerns as we enter a new fiscal year, hoping for better times and better results.

For as long as anyone around here can remember, the easiest assignment someone at The Journal News could get was a What’s in a Name? feature.

The articles looked behind the names of towns, streets, churches and other geographic or historic points of interest and explained the origin.

We learned that Haverstraw was derived from Haverstroo, the Dutch for oat straw, which grew in the river area.

We learned that High Tor mountain takes its name from the Old English, torr, or rocky peak. High Tor, we learned was a place where Revolutionary War troops set fires to alert those below that the British, indeed, were coming.

Gerald F. Neary Elementary School, we found, was named for a former principal who died too young.

We learned that deNoyelles Circle in Garnerville was named for historian Dan deNoyelles, who was a good friend of the source for many of the What’s in a Name pieces, Thomas F.X. Casey, who died Saturday.

Neary, too, had been a friend of Casey.

But most anyone who knew him, who had the chance to listen to him speak about the Revolution, the brick industry, James A. Farley  or the Tappan Zee Bridge, wanted to go back, to hear more.

The newspaper turned to him often, not just for the hundred or so What’s in a Name features by staff and freelancers, but any time we needed a cup of history.

He’ll be missed by other historians around the county and by all of us who do daily history in the newspaper.

Families trying to get the ashes of their loved ones who were killed at the World Trade Center removed from a landfill on Staten Island will have an appeal of their lawsuit heard Dec. 18.

Oral arguments will be heard at the same federal courthouse in Manhattan where the government plans eventually to try five terror attack conspirators now held at Guantanamo Bay.

The federal lawsuit was brought by 17 families on the grounds that they were denied the right to give their loved ones a proper burial in accordance with their individual religious beliefs.

U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who had earlier tried unsuccessfully to get the parents and New York City officials to negotiate a settlement, ruled against the families in July 2008.

In his decision, Hellerstein wrote, “Plaintiffs have no right in an undifferentiated, unidentifiable mass of dirt that may or may not contain the remain of plaintiffs’ loved ones.”

But the families say they were initially told ashes from the Trade Center, once sifted for body parts and evidence, would be segregated from trash at the Fresh Kills landfill. They are certain the material, called “fines,” contains the ashes of their loved ones.

The issue has been so emotional that it resulted in the formation of World Trade Center Families for Proper Burial, which has gathered more than 23,000 signatures on a petition supporting their cause. Six Rockland women who all lost adult children in the terror attacks formed a local chapter and made trips to New York City and Albany and campaigned actively to be heard.

One, Mary Novotny of New City, carries a wad of her son’s identification and credit cards that were found during the sifting process at Fresh Kills. If those items were found there, she’s certain his ashes are among those that were plowed into mounds of household waste at the dump.

World Trade Center Families for Proper Burial has alerted its network of families and supporters that the Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments on their appeal Dec. 18 at the courthouse at 500 Pearl Street, just blocks from Ground Zero.

“Leaving our dead in the Fresh Kills garbage dump is an atrocity and a national disgrace,” the e-mail from Families for Proper Burial reads. “We need as many as possible to be present in court to show that this is an issue of utmost and universal importance.”

I’d like to be sympathetic to the family that feels they got a bait-and-switch treatment from the Orangetown Mighty Midgets, but as the dad of a former travel player, I’m finding it hard.

I’m also finding it hard to believe that travel soccer — and other sports, too, I’m sure — are having to resort to formal legal contracts to try to keep things in line.

Our kids, no matter how skilled and no matter how driven, are kids — first and foremost.

We want to offer them the best coaching, best competition, the best environment in which to grow their talents.

But they aren’t pros and at 12 years old, I’m thinking the emphasis should be on keeping them safe, learning the game and its nuances and having fun.

It wasn’t always fun for my son and that was partly my fault.

But when I signed him over to a travel baseball program — one of which played about 80 games the summer he was with them — his baseball development was in their hands.

I gave the coaches space and expected my son, who was a little older, to deal with them if he had any issues with them regarding position, playing time or anything else. There were times when either he or I saw things differently than the coaches, but I kept my distance. He had to face the issues and work them out.

In my eyes, it was part of the maturation process, both as an athlete and an individual.

There were times when Sean’s coaches changed and we both wanted the old one back. But we hoped the overall experience would work out well and usually it did.

I knew from the beginning that if it didn’t — if he got hurt, wasn’t getting playing time, got disaffected  or lost interest — we were going to be out the money, which sometimes was double what is at issue in the Mighty Midgets situation.

Perhaps the need for contracts is an indicator that we’re all taking this a little too seriously for the players’ good, especially at 12 years old.

I know, if I had it to do over, I’d do lots of things differently and if I”m lucky enough to have grandchildren, I’ll try to guide their development  in light of what I learned.

Ya see, I’ve got this screenplay. It’s for a thriller that has nothing whatsoever to do with a late-night talk-show host.

But ya know. I don’t think I’d try the marketing approach that’s got a CBS News producer in hot water.

But you gotta give his attorney credit for thinking up an imaginative defense.

But will a jury ever buy that something like, “Leave $2million in small bills — no, wait, make that a check made out to me — under the third rock from the Southern Boulevard entrance to the Bronx Zoo. Get it there by midnight or you’ll never see your (fill in the blank) again”  is just a really cool marketing ploy?

Believe that’s just offering someone the right of first refusal and I’ve got the old Yankee Stadium I’d like to sell ya.

It’s an odd juxtaposition of stories.

On one hand, Rockland County government extends the period people get to catch up with their unpaid property taxes before the parcel can be put up for foreclosure auction.

Good thing, given the state of the economy.

But the day after the County Legislature extends the period from two years to three, some taxpayers get notices from the county that they didn’t pay their quarterly county property tax bill due in October.

Why? Well, they never got the customary notice from the county that the bill was due.

Sure, people should know. And yes, the notice was a courtesy. But with lots of people scraping by financially, any bill that doesn’t show up is a bill that’s not getting priority. Those bucks get sucked up by higher priorities — like the bills one has in hand.

The county is looking into why the notices didn’t go out and scrambling to figure out how to make the situation right.

People are now in the hole, not only for the bill they owed, but for interest, a processing fee and according to the letter we got in Nanuet, penalties as well.

This isn’t just a case of the notices not going out.

Realizing that she hasn’t seen the notice, my fiance called the county and was  assured that, no, her account was up to date and that nothing would be due until January.

Not so, it turns out.

Legislature Chairwoman Harriet Cornell says the lawmakers will do whatever they can to rectify the situation.

Because state law precludes the county waiving the fees, the legislature will have to act to make refunds of the fees legal.

Legislator Alden Wolfe, who pushed the extension on paying off back taxes, first tried to get it enacted in August, but it took until November,

Let’s hope his colleagues can make this fix faster than that.

If you see girls with pink hair in Suffern, they’re not getting a jump on Halloween.

They’re doing their part to help fight breast cancer.

Lisa Daly of Montebello, who owns Salon Atelier at 95 Lafayette Avenue in Suffern, has installed about 275 pink hair extensions for girls and women who donate $10 to Pink Hair for Hope, a program coordinated by extension manufacturer SO. CAP. USA as a benefit for the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Last year the program raised more than $480,000 nationally during September and October.

Daly and stylists at Salon Atelier got certified to do extensions recently and got a late start on the fund-raiser, beginning about two weeks ago.

They will wrap up their participation for this year Thursday evening, when there will be light refreshments between 6 and 8 p.m. for those who come in to make a donation and get their burst of pink hair.

The response this month, Daly says, has been far beyond what she might have expected. “I’ve had to call several times, asking for more hair,” she says.

Just this afternoon, she says, about 20 girls came through with their mothers — some with their grandmothers along, too.

“We’ve had mothers, grandmothers, Girl Scout groups, girls from Hal Block and Tornadoes Soccer programs. Some have even made donations without taking the extensions,” which get bonded to the individual’s hair.

Daly, whose mother is a breast cancer survivor, has worked at the salon since she was 17 and became its owner just about five years ago.

Over that time, she says, “I’ve seen so many customers who have had breast cancer and one of my friends from Montebello has just been diagnosed.”

Next year, Daly says, the salon will lengthen its participation, beginning in mid-September and lasting through October.

It’s something she wants to do, she says, because “breast cancer touches so many people and it’s so dear to my heart.

Good to see the Department of Transportation get the new James A. Farley Memorial Bridge done, not only on time, but ahead of schedule.

Looks like offering a financial incentive — in this case $900,000 on a $14 million project — worked to motivate the contractor to get it finished.

The DOT has taken it’s far share of heat here for numerous bridge projects in Rockland that got stalled by engineering or design problems, issues with contractors or some combination.

It’s happened in Monsey, Montebello, Tallman and elsewhere, but the  all time winner was in Sparkill, where the DOT started work, realized damage to the bridge was worse than anticipated and required pulling the entire structure down.

That one got delayed over and over because the steel for the replacement wasn’t immediately available.

It cost merchants and it had residents hopping mad as time using detours dragged on and on.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the case this time around and the DOT and the contractor — Harrison & Burrowes Bridge Constructors of Glenmont, N.Y. — deserve credit for beating the deadline with what looks to be a replacement that will last.