Enid Mastrianni

Amy & Enid Go To Archeology Camp in Albany

August 30, 2022 by Enid Mastrianni Leave a Comment

During the pandemic, I watched every episode of the BBC reality archeology program, Time Team, which ran for twenty years. The show condenses three days of archaeological exploration of a site into a one hour episode. Not only did I watch every episode, it is fair to say that I became obsessed with archaeology in general.

About halfway into the pandemic, I discovered that my friend Amy had become similarly obsessed. So when I found out that the Underground Railroad Education Center in Albany, New York was offering an opportunity to volunteer to participate in a five day dig they had planned for August, I called Amy and said, “Wanna do it?” She replied, “Hell yeah!” [Read more…] about Amy & Enid Go To Archeology Camp in Albany

Environmental History:
Prestonia Mann’s Polluted Stream

August 1, 2014 by Enid Mastrianni 1 Comment

In 1896, New York City resident Prestonia Mann purchased an Adirondack estate in Keene and set about to create a summer community based on the 1840s Massachusetts Transcendentalist utopian experiment, Brook Farm. She sent an invitation to her circle of acquaintances – mostly progressive social reformers and educators – describing the place she named Summer Brook in homage to the earlier colony:

It includes a large common hall, a cottage, and about twenty acres of land traversed by a fine trout brook. The region—at the northern end of Keene Valley—is in the noblest part of the great wilderness. The land lies 2,000 feet above the sea, upon a small plateau jutting out from among the foot-hills of Mount Hurricane, in the midst of wild and rugged scenery, commanding a splendid mountain range from Whiteface on the north to Tahawus on the south.

Unfortunately, a hotel upstream, The Willey House, was dumping all of their raw sewage into the same “fine trout brook”, known as Gulf Brook. [Read more…] about Environmental History:
Prestonia Mann’s Polluted Stream

Fracking Photo Project Returns To Antique Methods

January 2, 2014 by Enid Mastrianni 2 Comments

The ease and affordability of digital photography has won over almost everyone on the planet. Kodak went bankrupt in 2012, darkrooms have disappeared, and film is an extirpated species. Reacting to the ethereal impermanence and pervasive newness of digital photography, some photographers have gone back in time to reawaken antique photography processes.

Whether it’s love for a printed-on-real-paper tangible object, a longing for the time when saying you were a photographer meant you had arcane training and chemistry skills, or a lust to accumulate gear, the movement to recreate daguerreotypes, tintypes, ambrotypes and other obscure 19th century processes is well underway. The popularity of the contemporary photographic antiquarians who embrace the old methods is documented in a 2011 film aptly called, “Artists and Alchemists.” [Read more…] about Fracking Photo Project Returns To Antique Methods

Dutchess County:
Digging For An Underground Railroad Station

December 11, 2013 by Enid Mastrianni 5 Comments

No one knows when African Americans first settled at Baxtertown, but in 1848 the Zion Pilgrim Methodist Episcopal Church was built. The church burned and its roof collapsed in 1930; all that remains visible is a grove of trees on the property of Ron Greene.

Greene, a retired social worker, began researching the history of his land in 2010. “I’ve been hearing about a church here for years.” he said. What he discovered inspired him to lead the effort to get the site recognized as historically important. [Read more…] about Dutchess County:
Digging For An Underground Railroad Station