To the graduates of 2013: Have a great life. You are exiting the academy and venturing out into the world at the collision point of two world altering events—the first successful cloning of a human embryo and the news that the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide has reached just shy of 400 parts per million.

While the Syracuse City School District is pleased to have obtained $31.5 million in state aid for seven struggling schools, the head of the city’s teacher’s union says that the money, while welcome, isn’t the answer to the problems his members face every day in classrooms and hallways.

People who say they want to legalize marijuana for medical use remind me of guys who say they read Playboy for the interviews. Sure you do.

If a voice from upstate is heard at all in Albany, it is likely to be that of state Sen. David Valesky. . . unless you want to count Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy, whose influence in the Capital, if it exists, has thus far been kept well out of public view.

The district is batting 1.000 in its efforts to attain state money for struggling schools. In March, it learned that all seven applications submitted to the state for “Innovation Zones” have been approved by the state Department of Education; $31.5 million will be available beginning with the next school year for seven of the lowest performing schools in the city, designated by the state as “priority schools.”

The Syracuse Fire Fighters Union is pulling out all the stops in its battle against Mayor Stephanie Miner’s plan to reduce Fire Department staffing and to take one fire engine out of service.

“How could you miss the fact that the guy you were, you were informed by a foreign intelligence service you have a radical in your midst? We can’t track him to Russia. We lose him going to Russia and coming back as far as an interview.

It took that long for DeVesty, now 50 and the mother of two young adult boys, to rip that hand from her mouth and speak about what happened to her. In the past three years, she has devoted her life to enabling other abused men and women find their voice and a path to healing through a fast-growing project she calls the Clean Slate Diaries.

Lelisa Desisa, 23, of Ethiopia, won the men’s race in a time of two hours, 10 minutes and 22 seconds. Desisa has been known as a 10,000-meter runner and a half-marathon (13.1 mile) specialist until this year. He came to Central New York in 2010 and won the Boilermaker Road Race in Utica.

When Alfonso Davis gathered his supporters at Sophistications Cafe on Saturday, April 13, to announce that he was running for mayor of Syracuse, he never mentioned the name of Mayor Stephanie Miner, the incumbent he seeks to oust.