Seniors, beware ‘dump & run’By Gordon WoodworthChronicle News Editor

Tim and Hilda Olesky of Queensbury thought moving Hil-da’s 84-year-old father nearer to them would be wonderful. It turned out to be a nightmare. Hilda’s father was liv-ing in Penn-sylvania, in a senior apart-ment. But he had been di-agnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and wasn’t taking his medicine regu-larly. “We wanted him to be happy,” Tim said. “He was alone, he wasn’t socializing. He had just lost his wife, and we wanted to fi nd a place where he could be around people.” They say they researched sev-eral local facilities before decid-ing on one, into which Hilda’s dad moved in November 2013. (Editor’s note: The Oleskys asked that the facilities not be identifi ed. “We just want to edu-cate other people so this doesn’t happen to them,” Hilda said.) Hilda said her father seemed to be settling into his new life in the

Hockey: Credit a save to Jack, Ed & fansBy Gordon WoodworthChronicle News Editor

After months of anxious wait-ing and fears of futility, it’s fi nally offi cial — Glens Falls will have an American Hockey League team next season — and seasons be-yond that. At 7:14 p.m. Mon-day evening, the Ameri-can Hockey League an-nounced that its Board of Governors has approved relo-cating the Calgary Flames’ AHL affi liate from Abbotsford, Brit-ish Columbia, to Glens Falls. It’s

9 vie for GOP nod for Wash. Co. judge º 14

25th annualuphill race on ProspectMountainBy Gordon WoodworthChronicle News Editor

The 25th annual 5.67-mile uphill Prospect Mountain Road Race takes place this Saturday, May 10, starting at 9 a.m. You can run it. You can walk it. “We’re trying to encourage more walkers this year,” said race co-director Chris Cifone-Clohosey. “A lot of people walk up the mountain on their own

anyway.” Co-director Jill Ped-erson said, “You can almost power-walk as fast as many run-

Please turn to page 41

By Cathy DeDeChronicle Managing Editor

It was only supposed to be a way to share baby updates across the country with a grandma who wasn’t so good with computers. Instead, Amanda Magee’s blog — her online stories about parenting, work, marriage and life — now reaches 300 to 800 readers a day around the country and even interna-tionally, and one column that was picked up by the Beautiful Blog-ging Website had 7,000 hits a day for two weeks, she reports. The blog has catapulted Ms. Magee to such heady Internet prominence she’s been a guest at the home of Huffi ngton Post founder Arianna Huffi ngton, for a 200-person seminar that included an after-party at Jon

Bon Jovi’s penthouse. Ms. Magee’s work appears regularly on the Huffi ngton Post Parenting site, among others. And she’s one of 10 essayists featured in This is Childhood, a new book launched, yes, in time for Mother’s Day. Ms. Magee, 40, is co-owner of

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The 3 who’ve run in all 24 races — from left, Larry Mancini, Brian Teague and Dan Olden.

Amanda Magee striking it big in the ‘mommy blog’ worldFrom front pageTrampoline Design ad agency in Glens Falls, alongside her husband, Sean, and another husband-wife couple, Derek and Paula Slayton. The Magees have three daughters: Briar, 9; Avery, about to turn 8; and Finley, 6. They live in Queensbury. Ms. Magee said she got started writing when she and Sean were living in Bos-ton with a new baby. Her mom, back in Washington State where Amanda grew up, couldn’t fi gure out how to open e-mail pho-to attachments. “I’ll just start a blog,” Ms. Magee told her, “and you can see it there.” “I’m not a scrapbooker,” she says. “It soon became a way for me to chronicle the early years of the kids and communicate with family. Before I knew it, I was writing every day. It eclipsed chronicling the kids, and became an outlet, something restor-ative for me.” Amanda’s is often a startlingly honest voice. She wrote about a confl ict with one daughter she caught lying. She says that Huffi ngton Post declined the story, con-cerned it was unfair to her daughter. Ms. Magee says, “I did some soul-searching. If you think there isn’t lying in children, you’re nuts.” The parenting site Mamalode did run the piece. It is powerful and thoughtful, fo-cused on communication, with a positive outcome for both child and parent. Ten years into her blog, Ms. Magee de-scribes herself as a “dinosaur” of the on-line world. The genre, called (mostly kind-ly) “mommy blogging” has reached vast proportions. Our own Kate Austin-Avon, who writes the bi-weekly Family Time col-umn, is another local mommy blogger. Ms. Magee says, “I think it’s great that there are all these venues for people to say what they want. No matter who you are or what your issue, you can fi nd someone who is saying something that will resonate with you. It’s like different breeds of dogs.” She worries over the level of “snark” online at times. “There’s some real mean writing and commenting out there.” She says, too, “There are different moti-vations for writers. Some want or need to get some fame, some just want to get free samples, some have a drive to write.” While others have launched whole ca-

reers from their blogs, “I’ve kept it an off-hours passion,” Ms. Magee says, “though I cheat around the edges of that.” Some outlets that pick up her posts do pay for them, sometimes by the number of hits a post receives. Huffi ngton does not pay, but Ms. Magee said the exposure and credibility it affords her, and even Trampo-line, make it worthwhile. “I think what is most compelling is that my writing has extra facets, the challenge of not being a traditional stay-at-home mom or a traditional full-time worker.” She tried but rejected running ads on her own page, comparing it to “meeting other moms on the playground at Kensing-ton (Elementary School), versus the play-ground at McDonald’s.” For Ms. Magee, writing is the point. “Sometimes, something will hit me and I know I need to write about it, in the way a baseball player just knows he is going to connect with a pitch. Those are the ones that tend to come out in one joyous stream. “I’ll say I need to write, and maybe Sean will do bedtime with the girls, or I will get up at 4 a.m. and write. It usually gets tucked in around the girls.” Fellow bloggers have become her par-enting community. “It wasn’t playdates in person, but there was a lot of swapping sto-ries. I’ve made some really great friends. We do see each other sometimes,” for ex-ample at BlogHer, a convention run by a website for women bloggers. After friend and fellow blogger Dawn Gentz of Michigan died last April from skin cancer, the Magees invited Ms. Gentz’s husband and young sons for two days of respite on Lake George. Ms. Magee says, “With my schedule, if you’re not a client or an organization that I’m involved with, chances are I’m not go-ing to see you. That’s what’s so great about this. You can connect with other moms in the hours that you wouldn’t normally be meeting.” She said, “I have always wanted to be a good parent, like everyone I guess. The barometer for me isn’t what anyone else is doing, but how I feel after I’ve done some-thing. I think about, what are the memo-ries they’ll have of this? If I get upset, will they understand why? As her daughters grow up, they become more part of the equation: “They’ll ask, ‘Are you going to put us on Huffi ngton?’ I’ll ask, ‘Do you want to be?’” A certain poten-tially compromising picture that Amanda fi nds charming, they’ve forbidden her to post “ever.” She sticks to that. She launched into the blogosphere when Huffi ngton Post Parenting senior editor Farah Miller found the story we reprint ad-jacent to this article.

“She contacted me and said, ‘I’m lying on my bedroom fl oor sobbing. I would be honored if you would share your writing with Huffi ngton.’” After it ran, Arianna Huffi ngton herself Tweeted it. “Okay,” Ms. Magee said she realized, “I’m in.” That was December 2012. The book project, This is Childhood, started with two frequent HuffPost con-tributors, Ms. Magee says, who invited 10 favored bloggers to each write an essay set in one year of a child’s life. (Amanda was assigned age 8.) The writers fi rst posted the pieces on their own blogs, then on Huffi ngton. An editor from the website Brain, Child ap-proached them to package the essays as a combination book-journal. Not all sugar and roses. Ms. Magee says it was a challenge coming to contract terms with 10 different writers on the project. Now she aims to complete a book of her own before her 41st birthday. To that end, she’s enlisted husband Sean. “I wouldn’t get to it,” she says, with so much else on her plate. Knowing she’d bristle if only offered straight directives (“time to get going on this”), instead they’ve started a series of “She said/He said” blogs about marriage. As their daughters begin the natural process of detaching, she realizes, “The children are going to leave. If that’s been

your only focus, you’re going to be left with a stranger. To not address that, I do at my own peril.” “It’s a really strong angle,” she says of the dual essays. One post takes a frank look at keeping romance in a marriage when work, kids, house and dinner prep all vie to intrude. His take, understandably, is different from hers. That post, too, has garnered multiple hits and shares. Ms. Magee says she’s known in the Trampoline offi ce for an uncanny instinct that she also brings to bear in her writ-ing. Seems that instinct keeps bearing fi ne fruits.

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Amanda and Sean Magee, with daughters (from left) Avery, Briar and Finley.

Where’s Amanda? Well, everywhere Find Amanda Magee’s blog online at amandamagee.com. Her columns are featured on several Huffi ngton Post pag-es, including Parents, Wedding, Women, Crime, and Third Metric. The book This is Childhood is avail-able online at www.brainchildmag.com and at Amazon.com. She’s also been published online in at mamalode.com and in the Mamalode print magazine, at mothering.com, and on www.scarymommy.com.

A piece written by Amanda: Can I have your hand?By Amanda MageeSpecial to The Chronicle Editor’s note: The article below origi-nally appeared on Amanda Magee’s own blog — then called The Wink, now called AM&A Magee. Seen by a Huffi ngton Post editor, the article was the fi rst one re-published on high-profi le Huffi ngton’s Parenting page. Ms. Magee is a regular at HuffPost now, among other blog sites.

• She asks me each night with an impish grin, “Mama, can I have your hand?” It’s part and parcel of bedtime, this game of gentle tug of war. “Just let me hold your hand, but you’ll be too tired to pull, so you’ll sleep here.” Her eyes shine, big and bright and as perfect as they were in those early weeks of hours spent gazing at her. She quivers with an implicit, “C’mon, mom.” I say ok. Holding hands, I lean toward the door, she makes campy moves to fall out of bed, I swing toward the bed, back and forth we go until I stop.

“I’m too tired. I. Need. To. Sleep,” and I collapse (delicately) over her. I feign magnifi cent snoring and thrashing, she laughs with her whole body. It’s perfect and yet some nights, the ugly secret I try to keep secret rears its nasty head. I don’t want to tug. It’s been a 14-hour-day and I had set my sights on being done before 9. I don’t want a request beyond what I’ve said we’d do. I want someone to let good enough be good enough. I don’t want to be held or cried for and I hate myself for it. I make nice with people during the work day, I banish the futile worry about petty crap that I can’t control and I juggle the balls I create as well as those fl ung at me. We do dinner and homework, playtime and reading. We talk about our day, but somehow at bedtime my elasticity fades. Brittle and jerky. “Mama, can I have your hand?” she asks. “Sure, Fin, go ahead, take my hand.” I bend a knee ready to lurch spec-tacularly for the door before being pulled back. I sway, she pulls me back. When I begin to sway again she says softly, “It’s ok mom, you can just go,” as her fi ngers slip from mine and she lets my hand go, she holds my gaze and then turns to her pillow. The cat’s in the cradle...