History, Natural History & the Arts
Counting and verification of votes in the 1884 presidential election, as now, was controversial, with Republicans claiming fraud and inaccuracy.
“Republicans are diehard here. All their hope lies in finding a clerical error in the returns,” a Lake George correspondent wrote in a dispatch published November 11th in The Morning Star of Glens Falls. [Read more…] about The 1884 Election Also Brought False GOP Claims of Voter Fraud
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has announced Winter Bird Feeding 101, a free webinar set for this Thursday, November 19th. [Read more…] about Winter Bird Feeding 101: A Free Webinar
Driving north on I-787 approaching Troy you can see an iconic building – a tall red brick building with turrets that looks like a fortress.
It’s at 1 Jackson Street. What I like to call the Fortress of Shoddy. [Read more…] about The Hudson River’s Fortress of Shoddy in Troy
One day as my wife and I and our dogs walked along River Road at Riparius on the Hudson River, my wife said to me in a folksy manner “just think all this water here, is on its way to New York City.”
It’s true the Hudson River has flowed out of the Adirondack Mountains for millennia, southward towards the Atlantic Ocean. And over the last two centuries or so there have been plans to dam the Upper Hudson for one reason or another. Most of those plans have dealt with using the water resources for some down state endeavor. [Read more…] about Hudson River Dam History: The Big Hadley And Glen Dams
In fiction, poetry or song, houses are treated as living organisms. They are noble, respectable, or infamous. There are houses of high rank and those of low repute – houses have human characteristics and their individual biographies.
The Isokon Building in Hampstead tells a striking tale of recent historical events. At the time of completion, it was one of the few modernist dwellings in London’s cityscape; the block of flats housed a number of notable refugees from Nazi Germany; almost simultaneously it served as a recruitment office for Soviet spies. Crucial aspects of post-war American cultural and political developments originated in a few flats in this leafy corner of North West London. [Read more…] about Concrete, Plywood and Soviet Spies
A large V of Canada geese flying noisily over my head – and traveling north, rather than south – got me wondering about the ins and outs of fall migration. Shouldn’t these big birds be flying to warmer climes this time of year?
Why do they travel in that V-formation, anyway? [Read more…] about Migrants and Residents: Canada Geese
For thousands of years, the American elm (Ulmus americana) was the go-to tree for building supplies and home furnishings, kind of a Home Depot of the forest.
For the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and other First Nations peoples, it provided roofing and walls for longhouses measuring over a hundred feet long, as well as for smaller dwellings and outbuildings.
Elm also furnished top-notch material to make items as diverse as ladles, canoes, trays, snow shovels, grain scoops, baskets, and containers of all sizes. [Read more…] about Elms: The Giving Tree
Bent down in an apple field searching for a lost earring, I found a different treasure: a stout mouse-like animal, with a short tail and stubby ears.
It gave me one quick look, then disappeared through a maze of tunnels in the thick autumn grass. I would have loved to follow this meadow vole, like Alice and her white rabbit, to find out where it was planning to spend its winter. [Read more…] about The Life of Voles
A fatal mistake on Sunday evening, November 7th, 1869 resulted in the death of Thomas Brown, agent and superintendent of the Palmer Falls Water Power Company and Woolen Factory in Corinth.
Brown, a Scottish immigrant, had come to the area from Niagara Falls as a speculator with plans to improve the water flow on the Hudson River at Palmer Falls. He hoped to sell or lease rights to the abundant waterpower with property along the Hudson to manufacturers. A canal was added to provide hydropower to an edge tool factory operated by Brown in 1860. [Read more…] about The 1869 Shooting of Thomas Brown in Corinth
The Albany Institute of History & Art has announced “Personal Insults, Street Brawls, and Uncounted Ballots: Electoral Politics in Federalist New York” an online program set for Thursday, November 19th. [Read more…] about Insults, Brawls and Uncounted Ballots: Elections in Federalist New York