(upbeat music) - [Joleene] Tonight on "WPBS Weekly Inside The Stories", an Oswego county band teacher retires after three decades.

And it's a big deal for the little community of Pulaski.

We'll share his prominent career with you.

And the film industry in Kingston has actually been a boost during the struggling economy.

We'll tell you how.

Also local poet, Jim Farfaglia visits the WPBS studios.

Join us for a small town inspired poem.

Your stories, your region, coming up right now on "WPBS Weekly Inside The Stories".

- [Narrator] "WPBS Weekly Inside The Stories" is brought to you by the Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation, the Watertown Oswego Small Business Development Center, Carthage Savings, CSX, the Oswego County Community Foundation at the Central New York Community Foundation, the Richard S Shineman Foundation, and the Badenhausen Legacy Fund at the Northern New York Community Foundation.

- Good Tuesday evening, everyone.

And welcome to this edition of "WPBS Weekly Inside The Stories".

I'm Joleene DesRosiers.

COVID crippled many businesses.

There's no doubt.

Despite this, last year, over $5 million in direct spending came from the film production sector in Kingston.

This at a time when communities were hurting the most.

Producer, Gal Puckett, has more on how the film industry in Kingston was able to bring $2 million alone to area hotels.

And that was just the beginning.

(people chattering) (upbeat music) Last year, Kingston saw more than $5 million in direct spend into the community from the film center, proving that the forming of the Kingston Film Office was vital in attracting big studio productions to the city's historical locations.

- The Kingston Film Office is now into its fourth year of operations.

And yeah, it's been busy days, that's for sure.

But one of the things.

I've got long ties to the Kingston area.

I've done some teaching within the Queens Film and Media Program.

And involved with the Kingston Canadian Film Festival from the early days and whatnot.

And just would've loved to have based myself here.

And just saw so much potential on the filming side.

And I think one of the things that really kind of opened up and helped the city, and the whole region really recognized that potential, was when we had... First big production was Guillermo Del Toro's "Crimson Peak", where they transformed the entire Springer Market Square into late 18 hundreds.

And I think that just really showed the huge economic impact of it.

- [Gal] The film sector as a whole is booming across the country, especially in Ontario and BC.

Toronto is seeing record levels of production and bursting at the seams.

The forming of the Kingston film office gave Kingston the opportunity to position itself as a viable film production location.

- As there's this, you know, this huge industry coming in, a lot of it on the US side, we're getting record levels of production with streaming and whatnot, so it's been, how do we actually service that right here in Kingston and kind of getting it through.

Because we're that extra step removed, because there hasn't been as much infrastructure, a lot of that, especially in the early days of the film office, since getting going has been building those systems, those processes, that access, streamlining permits, just kind of connecting it all through, and then helping develop that labor pool.

'Cause it's quite expensive to make that move to come and shoot here.

But the reason they'll come is for these incredible anchor locations.

I mean, Kingston has places, you know?

Between City Hall, Springer Market Square, that Old Downtown, the Kingston Penitentiary, these are just locations you can't really find anywhere else in the country, especially in the case of Kingston Penitentiary.

- I'd heard it from filmmakers prior to 2018, saying Kingston needs a film office.

We need some support systems.

We need somebody to sort of steer that ship a little bit, 'cause it wasn't happening.

And so now we have somebody to say, "Well, this is why you should come to Kingston 'cause we have all these pieces in place."

You know, if you wanna shoot in a penitentiary, we have that.

If you wanna, you know... Just logging all the assets that we have here.

- [Gal] With the attraction of several key historical locations, it is the further goal of the film office to have production companies stay longer and shoot broader.

The film industry has deep pockets, but also high expectations, which means a lot of the job for the film office is making sure the access and infrastructure is there so that it is a seamless experience.

- The next really big, big game changer for us was being able to work with corrections and open up Kingston Penitentiary as a location to get that location going to work with the city, and getting City Hall and Springer Market Square, where shows like "Locke And Key" are coming and shooting.

So I think getting the access to those locations, and then it's just been making sure that when productions come in, they really get that gold standard experience.

And that's where we've got, you know, a great team within the film office and within tourism, that's able to make sure that these productions have that experience.

- [Gal] Right before COVID, they were able to do a five month trial at the Kingston Penitentiary.

They saw shows like Netflix "Titans", "Murdoch Mysteries", and "Star Trek Discovery".

In 2021, on the heels of COVID, big studio productions like the pilot for Amazon's "Reacher" and the "Mayor Of Kingstown", a big paramount production, brought in millions to the community.

- There's a lot of stuff that people don't immediately think about the economic impact.

So in that case, it was over 2 million in hotels alone, which is huge.

But the employment within the area.

We had about 30 members of the community involved in junior crew roles.

Working as location support personnel, COVID compliance, all these different areas.

We had more than 150 locals in background performer roles.

But then there's, you know, the full gamut of everything from washroom rentals to electricians replacing all the lights, bulbs, ballasts in the penitentiary, Doing all those types of repairs, you know, Herc rentals, massive amounts of equipment rentals.

And it really kind of goes to the whole gamut right down to security.

There's so many ways that the productions are spending.

And then also having the crews within your community are spending a bunch on the day to day.

- [Gal] One of the challenges, because the infrastructure is still being laid, is the expense for production companies bringing in all their own crews and backgrounds.

The Kingston film office is working on that by building databases of resources to provide that local talent.

- Instead of, you know, all the crew coming in from Toronto or from outside, it's so... Well no, bring in your keys, but then hire within the community.

And so we're doing a few really interesting ones where last summer we did a three week feature that shot entirely within the Frontenac region.

And we had people involved in every department, from, you know, lighting to camera to performers, right the way across.

- [Gal] With the film industry as a whole continuing to grow year after year, and the province of Ontario targeting it as a $5 billion industry, there is potential for a massive amount of economical development in Kingston through the film sector.

- We're already seeing on our side, we're able to access more funding to be able to bring in more production.

And I think as we continue to kind of cross over, I think there's gonna be massive amounts of growth.

It's really nice to see Kingston kind of showing up, but it has been a bit of a kept secret about just how much filming there's been going.

So it's nice to be seeing that kind of get out there.

- [Gal] For "WPBS Weekly", I'm Gal Puckett.

- This is the last summer that band director, Jack Jennings of Pulaski, will lead his award-winning marching band students in various parades and competitions.

After 33 years of teaching, 22 at Pulaski Academy in central schools, Mr. Jennings is hanging up his hat.

It's a big deal for the little community, the end of an era, but it's also the start of a new one.

(crowd applauding) (students chattering) - All right, here we go.

Veracruz, let's blow this one up.

Go.

- [Joleene] From the classroom.

(drums drumming) - Whoa.

(marching band music) - [Joleene] To the parade.

22 of those years have been as the band director at Pulaski High School, and each and every time he walked these halls, he says he felt it was more than just punching in.

- Never really looked at it as a job.

This has never been a job.

You just go to school.

I've never once have I have I got up in the morning and said, "I gotta go to work."

Never said that.

Said, "I gotta go to school.

Here we go."

It's a lifestyle, right?

I spent all these years at Pulaski.

I coached volleyball.

I coached track.

I coached football.

I coached cross country.

And I've been involved with so many different things here.

Just a lifestyle.

- [Joleene] For this award-winning band director, it's a lifestyle that has truly had an impact on hundreds and hundreds of young lives.

- I'm really glad that I'm graduating while the same year he's retiring because he almost retired last year, and that would've been kind of awful, because I wouldn't have got to have him for my senior year.

(upbeat music) - Well, it does make me sad knowing that I probably will be the only one to cherish this other than the students are with him right now.

But it...

But I mean, I got the best of him.

- I think he, Mr. Jennings, is the perfect instructor to have.

If you were in another school, I think you would want him.

- [Joleene] Jennings was in other schools early in his career.

He began teaching in 1990.

Following in his father's footsteps as a band director, the eager musician started out at Belleville Henderson Elementary.

But when budgetary concerns became a factor, they had to let his position go.

Not long after, his father, the band director at Altmar-Parish-Williamstown, passed, and the position there opened up.

Jennings stepped in to truly fill his father's shoes.

For 10 years, he led APW musically, until the position at Pulaski High School became available in 2000.

This is where he's been for the past 22 years, educating, engaging, and encouraging his students regularly.

- I want these kids to succeed, work hard, love each other, help each other out, be one big family, and then just go out and blow it up.

You know, one of the things that great teachers do, and it's certainly true of the other Mr. Jennings, is he brings the best out of people.

And it's not just kids.

It's his colleagues, it's his administrators, his family.

And he expects that of everyone else.

So I think that's his legacy.

- [Joleene] That legacy is deeply admired by the staff, and is sure to continue with incoming band director, Bill Whaley.

Whaley is no stranger to the district.

He's the band teacher for the elementary and middle school students.

He can also be found leading the pack at every marching band parade right next to Jack Jennings.

- He and I work really well together.

We've been the best of friends forever.

And we have common philosophies.

A lot of band directors are all about high scores at NYSSMA Festivals and things like that.

And Jack and I are more about getting as many kids involved as we can, no matter what their level is, and making sure that they're having a great time doing it, and feeling a part of a group.

- [Joleene] The awards, the banners, the accolades are fantastic, but the wins aren't the driving force behind the crimson in blue, the kind of people these students turn out to be is.

And the way there doesn't have to be complicated.

- It's pretty simple.

It's just do the best you can.

Remember who you are.

Remember where you came from.

Remember all the love you get from your friends, from your teachers, from your family.

And just do the right thing.

Take care of your business, do the right thing, and things all... You do that, doors open, red carpets get rolled out.

It's pretty good.

It's pretty good.

- [Joleene] Like all good things, this iconic man's career has come to an end.

But he's ready.

Just ask him.

- I have thought about this retirement and this decision.

I don't have any reservations about it.

There is a great music faculty here at Pulaski, and they're ready.

Bill, my colleague, is ready to step up.

We have Amy here.

We're gonna hire great.

I just feel good about the whole transition.

It was important for me to get this music department through COVID.

It was important to make sure the kids kept playing.

'Cause a lot of schools just threw in the towel.

(drums drumming) I can hang my hat on that.

I can hang my hat on the fact that these kids have been successful for so long on the drum line, the marching band, the Washington DC trips, (students chattering) all the... Just the ways we have represented Pulaski.

- [Joleene] What would your message to him be?

- Hmm.

Have a great retirement.

(chuckles) (marching band music) Yeah, he's earned it.

- [Joleene] In the village of Pulaski for "WPBS Weekly", I'm Joleene DesRosiers.

As storms and droughts increase and sea levels rise with climate change, forested wetlands up and down the Atlantic coast are transforming from vibrant ecosystems to landscapes filled with dead or dying trees.

The accelerated spread of these ghost forests has ecologists alarmed and eager to understand what effect they'll have, both regionally and globally.

(birds chirping) - [Emily] A ghost forest is a very clever name for a kind of unfortunate new habitat type we're seeing growing on the coast.

And it's a place where you have a lot of dead trees, large areas of contiguous forest that are just gone.

(melancholy music) - [Ryan] My emotional response is to mourn the loss of those trees.

But scientifically, I say, "What was the combination of stresses that caused this particular stand of trees to bite the dust."

- [Marcello] We've been doing this now for close to a decade.

And in that time we've already been seeing changes.

If these things are changing on a time scale where I can see it, what's gonna happen for this landscape, you know, by the time my kids grow up?

My name is Marcello Ardon, and I study ecosystem ecology and biogeochemistry of streams and rivers.

- [Emily] And I'm Emily Bernhardt, and I am a biogeochemist and aquatic ecologist.

- [Ryan] And I'm Ryan Emmanuel, and I'm a hydrologist.

- Believe it or not, back in 2004, this was a really large 440 acre farm that was purchased by a group of developers who decided to turn it into a wetland.

Because we were studying this wetland restoration project, didn't even occur to us that saltwater would get here.

And we recognized a year after the first intrusion event happened, that we had gotten to near brackish conditions in much of this wetland.

- And that's what kind of led us into this research of salt water intrusion, and trying to understand if the patterns we had seen in this restored wetland were also happening in the broader area of the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula.

- The Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula is a landscape that's dominated by water.

- [Emily] We have the Pamlico Sound in the south and the Albemarle Sound in the north.

We have the big alligator river sort of cutting down through the middle of this peninsula.

- [Ryan] Ecologically speaking, this used to be all dominated by wetlands.

Tends to have very organic, rich, peaty soils.

And it's a system that would sequester a lot of carbon in the soils.

- The Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula has a history of large scale commercial agriculture, vast tracks of land that are used for corn, soybean, crops like that.

No matter where you go on the peninsula, you can see some type of artificial drainage infrastructure.

- [Marcello] You can even use Google Earth and Google Maps, and you can see some of these changes, you know, on your computer.

- Even though they were made to drain water from the interior out to the estuary, there's the potential for them to serve the opposite purpose.

You can have storms that push salt water deep into the interior, often through ditches and drains that may not have flow control structures or other protective measures.

- Now, when you have a drought, the sounds get saltier, in part 'cause they're evaporating, and in part because they're not getting fresh water off the landscape, so you start to see those salts mixing up.

- [Ryan] You could actually have gradients of salt water that penetrate deep into the interior through these ditches and drains.

One of the impacts of climate change is a likely increase in the number and severity of droughts and the intensity of storms.

In both of those cases, we're actually influencing different types of salt water intrusions.

- The thing that's actually happening is that salt is getting into a landscape and killing individual organisms, be they trees or microbes.

So it's actually happening at a very granular scale.

But what we wanna know, and I think what most people wanna know, is how the coast of North Carolina is going to change as a result of saltwater intrusion.

(upbeat music) Well, our team is a hydrologist, two by biogeochemists, a plant ecologist, and a social scientist, all trying to think about how can we bring our expertise to bear, and this really multi-layered difficult question.

- [Ryan] We're collecting data from more than a dozen sites around the peninsula.

- [Marcello] We measure the water chemistry.

We measure the water level, nutrients are there, how much salt is in there.

We also monitor the soils, the chemistry of the soil.

We look at the greenhouse gas emissions.

And then we've also started measuring greenhouse gases from trees.

Is the tree functioning like a chimney?

Is it taking gases that are being produced by microbes in the soil and releasing them out into the atmosphere?

Or is it more like a cork?

And is it actually helping to keep gases that the microbes are producing in the soil, within the soil?

- [Ryan] All of these things are monitored continuously at a handful of sites around the peninsula, but we also have handheld tools that we can use to make spot checks as we drive around broadly.

- What we would really like to do is link what we're seeing with vegetation, areas where we know there's saltwater intrusion occurring, to what we are seeing in the soil.

So yes, there's salinization here.

This is what the trees do when that happens.

- [Marcello] Using geospatial data, we can try to see if what we see in these small places are gonna apply to much larger areas.

- We're currently using digital elevation models to assess how vulnerable the landscape is to salt water intrusion.

We're using these algorithms that tell us how water concentrates and flows across the surface, and how connected or disconnected different parts of the landscape are to one another.

Combining those metrics in ways that allow us to come up with an estimate of vulnerability.

And when I look at those maps, I get a sense of the magnitude of this problem.

Some of those salts can stay behind in the soils, so you may see reduced yields in crops.

And there are forests nearby.

That could be one of the factors that leads them to become ghost forests.

We think that ghost forests are spreading throughout the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula, and throughout many parts of the Eastern US.

It's the pace of sea level rise and the intensity of human modification of the landscape have accelerated that process.

I've never worked on a project where the change is happening at such a rapid time scale.

- It is possible that we might not fully understand this problem before it's too late.

This area is actually one of the highest sea level rise rates in the country.

- You could be very fatalistic and say, "Just let it go underwater."

And I think that would be unfortunate if that's the decision that we make.

There's the enormous standing stock of carbon in the trees and the soils of all these coastal wetlands that could be lost back to the atmosphere.

And then there's the biodiversity loss.

If we lose these so fast, we're just gonna lose this really important ecoregion.

Where we can be hopeful is that there are a lot of things that we could do to manage this landscape differently than just abandoning it to the sea.

- One of the things we hope to do with our research is to provide decision makers with tools that they can use to potentially mitigate some of the effects of salt water intrusion that are caused by ditches and drains.

- Rather than it being an on or off switch where it has to be either we build a ditch or we plug it, can we find ways where we allow water to move in one direction, but not maybe allow it to move in another direction, or even maybe trying to figure out if there are maybe crops that would be more salt tolerant that are growing out here?

And the same thing for these wetlands.

Restoring it to what used to be here historically is probably not gonna be the smartest idea.

And starting to think about what species are gonna do well, can we use those species for restoration?

(tranquil upbeat music) - If we do nothing, and we continue to farm, we continue to build infrastructure as if these forests and these systems are not going to change, then we might be in for some really rotten surprises in a few decades.

- [Emily] I think humans can have a huge impact on both whether new ghost forests develop, whether current ghost forests expand, and also what happens now, once a ghost forest exists on the landscape.

Do we leave them?

Could we manage them in a way that we might actually move more rapidly into a sort of a salt marsh ecosystem?

I think there's a lot of interesting decisions that we could begin to make.

They're not gonna be forest in those places probably again, but they might be something equally interesting and beautiful.

- WPBS loves to bring you regional artists, musicians, and poets.

And tonight is no different as we introduce you to a Oswego County poet, Jim Farfaglia.

(drum drumming) - I'm Jim Farfaglia, a writer from Fulton, and I had a long and interesting career working with children.

I taught school and ran an overnight children's camp, which I enjoyed very much.

But all through that career, I thought about something I've enjoyed all my life, which is the written word, reading, writing.

And so when I'm retired, I took some classes, and met other writers, and started exploring that world, and gravitated toward poetry, which I love the challenge of taking a concept or an idea and having it fit into a small space on a page.

In fact, one of the programs I do is called postcard poetry, where I write an original poem on a postcard and send it to people who would like to receive one.

The poem I'm gonna read today is called "The Seasonal Truth", and it came from one of my favorite activities, which is spending time outdoors and observing the beautiful country we have here in Central and Northern New York.

The poem's call the "Seasonal Truth".

"A Seasonal Truth".

Only during a Northern New York winter, when spirits often feel buried, can I watch a rabbit hop onto a snow drift and rise up on its hind legs to nibble from the higher branches of a succulent shrub, enjoying something so life-giving, like seeing my first sign of spring, long dreamt of, but unreachable, till I've made it through a long, hard winter.

(upbeat music) - And that does it for us this Tuesday evening, join us next week for a fresh look inside the stories.

Along Lake Ontario's eastern shore, the OBI Land Trust preserves land that is accessible to you.

Discover places to visit and appreciate including wildlife preserves.

And across the us and Canada, more and more bikers are out and about.

We have tips to share to maximize your safety and enjoyment while out on the trails.

Also, Ottawa vocalist, Renee Landry, shares her powerhouse vocals.

If you aren't a fan yet, you just might be after hearing her.

Meantime, we wanna tell your story.

If you or someone in your community has something meaningful, historic, inspirational, or heroic to share, please email us at wpbsweekly@wpbstv.org, and let's share it with the region.

That's it for now, everyone, we'll see you again next week.

Goodnight.

- [Narrator] "WPBS Weekly Inside The Stories" is brought to you by the Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation, dedicated to improving the wellbeing of communities by helping disadvantaged children and families.

Online at www.dmjf.org.

The Watertown Oswego Small Business Development Center, a free resource offering confidential business advice for those interested in starting or expanding their small business.

Serving Jefferson Lewis and Oswego counties since 1986.

Online at www.watertown.nysbdc.org.

Carthage Savings has been here for generations.

Donated time and resources to this community.

They're proud to support WPBS TV.

Online at www.carthagesavings.com Carthage Savings, mortgage solutions since 1888.

Additional funding provided by CSX, the Oswego County Community Foundation at the Central New York Community Foundation, The Richard S Shineman Foundation, and the Badenhausen Legacy Fund at the Northern New York Community Foundation.

- When spirits often feel buried, can I watch a rabbit hop onto a snow drift and rise up on its hind legs to nibble from the higher branches of a succulent shrub, enjoying something so life giving, like seeing my first sign of spring, long dreamt of, but unreachable, till I've made it through a long, hard winter.