COMING VERY SOON TO ALBANY Here’s some fun facts—cribbed from a press-release fun-fact sheet—about the College of Saint Rose’s new Massry Center for the Arts on Madison Avenue in Albany. It’s 46,000 square feet in size. It cost $14 million. Its classrooms are already open. According to a bunch of scientific specs I can’t follow, it’s a “green” building. It has a 2,200 square-foot gallery which will host (beginning Sept. 21) what promises to be a terrific opening exhibit, Judy Pfaff: Paperworks, Year of the Dog, Pig, Rat, Etc. It has a 400-seat recital hall which will host opening concerts by the Saint Rose Camerata (Sept. 26), DIVA Jazz Orchestra (Sept. 27) and Saint Rose Jazz Ensemble (Sept. 28). We’ll spotlight some of these events over the next two weeks; watch the Night & Day pages. Now, let’s hope the folks at Saint Rose are satisfied for now and manage to refrain from ripping down any more beautiful historic buildings in Pine Hills.

COMING VERY SOON TO TROY It’s official! It’s happening! And we mean the latter in every sense of the term “happening.” The grand opening of EMPAC is coming soon. Beginning Oct. 3, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s newest marvel will host three weekends of amazing performances, symposiums and workshops. More info to come; for now, visit empac.rpi.edu for details.

AHOY, MATEY! IT’S A PARTY! The Arkell Museum at Canajoharie is breaking out the pirate gear for their grand, family friendly first anniversary party on Sept. 20 from 12:30 to 5 PM. The theme was inspired by the pirate illustrations of N.C. Wyeth, several of which are included in the current Arkell exhibit Wyeth Family Paintings from the Farnsworth Museum. There will be a pirate-in-residence— storyteller Jonathan Kruk—who will perform an original story at 1 and 3:30 PM. From 1 to 2:30 PM, Roland Vinyard will sing stirring sea shanties. At 2 PM, there’s a pirate costume contest with prizes in both the children’s and adult categories. There will be lawn games, refreshments, candy giveaways (courtesy Richardson’s Candy Company) and, at the adjacent Canajoharie Library, a ginormous used book (and VHS/DVD) sale. Sounds like fun, yes? For more info visit arkellmuseum.org, or call 673-2314.

FULL STOP Apropos of nothing, be it known that Sept. 24 is the 5th Annual National Punctuation Day. Polish your periods, clean up your commas, and heed the words of Punctuation Man, Jeff Rubin: “Careless punctuation mistakes cost time, money and productivity.” Here’s a fun game, readers: See how many punctuation mistakes you can find in this issue! (Hell, in this article.)