Tuesday, May 3, 2022

OurStoryBridge national oral history program receives IRS charitable nonprofit status

The Internal Revenue Service has determined that OurStoryBridge Inc., originally released September 29, 2020 as a program of the Keene Valley (NY) Library, has met the requirements for 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit status. OurStoryBridge Inc. at www.ourstorybridge.org is a free tool kit for producing crowdsourced oral history projects collecting and sharing a community’s unique history online.

OurStoryBridge supports the creation of three- to five-minute, locally created audio stories with related photographs, as well as their online accessibility, by posting them on individual websites that
appeal to both young and old and can be produced at low cost.

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Saturday, April 23, 2022

Fort Ticonderoga receives $500,000 in federal funding, opening May 7 for 2022 season

Ahead of their grand opening for the 2022 season on May 7, Fort Ticonderoga President Beth L. Hill announced that Fort Ticonderoga was recently awarded a $500,000 appropriation to help support the restoration of the historic fort walls.

“Following years of advocacy for preserving Fort Ticonderoga, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer has secured $500,000 for the restoration and rehabilitation of the iconic fort walls,” said Hill. “Senator Schumer visited Fort Ticonderoga in August 2017 and promised then to fight to deliver funding to repair the site’s aging walls, and in his first omnibus as majority leader, Senator Schumer delivered support to Fort Ticonderoga, a significant national historic site.”

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Saturday, April 2, 2022

This month in Almanack history: Top stories from past Aprils

Adirondack carouselHere’s a look back at top stories from Aprils in past years:

In 2020: Additional clarification of the “NY PAUSE” definition of “non-essential” businesses has resulted in the shuttering of boat launches, marinas and golf courses across the state. READ MORE

Also from 2020: Introverts unite! (From a distance). Tim Rowland comments on how introverts are reacting to social distancing. READ MORE

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Thursday, March 31, 2022

Adirondack Experience announces new virtual ‘Dacks Drinks series

The Adirondack Experience, The Museum on Blue Mountain Lake, (ADKX) announces their new virtual program series – ‘DACKS DRINKS. This series, co-sponsored by the Albany Public Library, will highlight local flavor – from the adventurous rum-runners of the early 20th century to today’s craft brewers infusing their brews with tastes from Adirondack forests. The series will feature two free online sessions, A Taste of Tupper with Garret Kopp from Birch Boys and Josh Weise and Tanner Hockey, Brewers at Raquette River Brewery on Wednesday, April 13 at 7 p.m. and History with a Twist – Adirondack Bootlegging with Niki Kourofsky, editor at Adirondack Life, and Stacia Takach from Lake Placid Stagecoach Inn on Wednesday, April 20 at 7 p.m.

‘Dacks Drinks

Wednesday, April 13, 7 pm: A Taste of Tupper with Garret Kopp from Birch Boys and Josh Weise and Tanner Hockey, Brewers at Raquette River Brewery

Meet two of Tupper Lake’s taste-making companies as Raquette River Brewing and the Birch Boys share their stories and offerings. Discover their unique collaboration to create Chugga Chugga Chaga Honey Brown Ale, an English-style brown ale made with sustainably harvested Chaga mushrooms. Josh Weise and Tanner Hockey from Raquette River Brewery will wrap up the evening with a few tips on how to infuse local flavor for home brewers.

About the speaker: Garret Kopp grew up in Tupper Lake and began harvesting Chaga mushrooms and selling them at local pop-up markets with his grandmother when he was 15. He created the Birch Boys while in college and today, the company leases 220,000 acres of private land in the Adirondacks for sustainable Chaga harvesting, making products like teas, tinctures, and skin care products. Kopp is also a certified mushroom identification expert & licensed NYS guide.

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Monday, March 28, 2022

Telling Our Stories: The Adirondack Story Project

We are blessed to have quality news outlets in the Adirondacks – local newspapers and magazines, social media, and including, of course, the Adirondack Almanack and Explorer. These resources are place-based and provide us with the current news and events. They also serve as archival records for future generations.

Since 2014, I’ve shared a number of my stories on the Adirondack Almanack. There are more avenues for telling one’s stories now, eight years later, primarily through the perfection of online resources because of the Covid-19 pandemic and our resultant isolation.

I want to introduce readers of the Almanack to a project for recording audio stories which began a few years ago through the Keene Valley Library. To date, this Adirondack Community Story Project has collected over 250 three-to-five-minute audio stories on the historical and social cultural history of the Town of Keene.

» Continue Reading.


Sunday, March 27, 2022

The Forest for the Trees: Remembrance of Frank Dorchak by his son

frank dorchak

By F. P. (Frank) Dorchak

It was 2:20 p.m. February 20, 2022.

I stood in the middle of my dad’s workshop, listening to the drone of the space heater switching on and off against the howling winter swirling and eddying outside the building. I imagined my dad, here, by himself…working on all his woodwork under the bright LED lighting lining the ceiling and beams…calming, classical music playing in the background…puffing on a pipe when he was smoking, otherwise not…his presence—honed from a lifetime of being underwater, in the woods, and helping and leading others—permeating everything. Hands confidently and skillfully manipulating wood to conform to his will, his specifications…smoothing it over…verifying its obedience…

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Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Paul Schaefer and the making of an Adirondack map

The Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks had hired me the previous winter. It was now the spring of 1987. Windows and doors were again opening to the hope and then the reality of spring’s warmth. The director of the Schenectady Museum William (Bill) Verner had given me, practically rent free, a desk and telephone from which to begin work as the Association’s first executive director in over 60 years.

It helped that Bill was a member of my board of trustees, and that his knowledge and love for the Adirondacks and Adirondack history from a home base in Long Lake was long and deep.

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Thursday, March 17, 2022

Newcomb AIC: Aldo Leopold Day set for March 19

“That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.” – Aldo Leopold 

Guests are invited to kick off the arrival of spring by celebrating Aldo Leopold Day on Saturday, March 19 at the Adirondack Interpretive Center (AIC) in Newcomb. Leopold was considered by many as the father of wildlife conservation. Participants have the opportunity to attend an individual program or spend the entire day at the AIC to take part in the whole slate of events which includes a seminar, a bench building workshop, and a film. Pre-registration is required, as space is limited. Interested parties should register by emailing aic@esf.edu or Click here to register. Location: Adirondack Interpretive Center, 5922 State Route 28N, Newcomb, NY 12852.

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Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Digging into Native Americans’ history in the Adirondacks

native american pottery shards

A young boy on my tour last year asked a simple question, “were there Indians here?” With nowhere else to go, I repeated the worn-out line that Native American people used the Adirondacks as hunting grounds. It was an unsatisfying response, for both of us. As Sagamore’s historian, I knew as much as that kid about 98% of the area’s human timeline.

I quickly found a small but growing body of research on Native American history in central and northern New York State. I also learned that these topics, this knowledge, is not new. From my perspective, I could dig into books and articles about the academic pursuit of knowledge. But, Native Americans have been telling their own stories from the beginning. To properly answer that boy’s question, Sagamore needs to welcome the perspectives of the people about whom we’re speaking.

The Eurocentric university-based perspective and the Native American oral history perspective are often presented in concert, each welcoming the other. I reached out to John Fadden at the Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center in Onchiota, New York. John’s father Ray Fadden and his family, who lived in the Mohawk community of Akwesasne, opened the center in 1954 so that the general public “may acquire the knowledge needed to better understand the history, culture, contemporary realities, and the potential future of Native Nations.” The center remains northern New York’s leading source for discovering a variety of perspectives on Indigenous people.

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Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Timbuctoo Institute would build opportunity in the Adirondacks

john brown and timbuctoo

By Aaron Mair

The Adirondack Park is a national treasure because our ancestors had the foresight in the 1880s and 1890s to protect its forests and waters as a legacy for future generations to inherit and enjoy. Creating the Forest Preserve and the “forever wild” clause of the state constitution were bold, new ideas.

Now, more than 120 years later, we can see how smart our ancestors were. The Adirondack Park was transformed in less than a century from a smoldering mess of wildfires, clear-cut forests and muddy rivers into the world’s largest intact, temperate deciduous forest. Today, it hosts most of the rare forest wildlife, wilderness and old-growth forest remaining in the Northeast.

What caused people as far away as New York City to act?

 

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Sunday, March 13, 2022

Challenges of Researching Local History: The Grist Mill at Cooper’s Falls

Cooper's Falls

Tracking down documentation of historic sites can be a real challenge, especially so here in the Adirondacks when the historic site may be little known or perhaps the site even lost in enveloping forest growth.

Some time ago I was approached by friend Evelyn Greene. Evelyn is a daughter of the famous Adirondack environmentalist, Paul Schaefer, and is a great explorer of the local woods. Evelyn told me about an abutment near a picturesque waterfall on the North Creek stream, about 3.6 miles upstream of where the steam enters the Hudson River at the village of North Creek. She wondered if I knew anything about it and wondered if there had ever been a mill there. Despite all my research on 55 historic sites in the Town of Johnsburg for my first book, Echoes in These Mountains, I replied I knew nothing about it.

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Friday, March 11, 2022

Three Reasons You Are Alive Today 

gladys with gun

A WWII Tale of Close Calls and Near Misses

Everyone I know has a story or two that goes something like this: “I might not even be here today if it weren’t for…” We all have close calls, dodge accidents, or do crazy things in our youth and most of us live to tell the tale. But those near misses are the reason our children and grandchildren are here too. This is one such collection of WWII tales from my family, now passed down to my two grown daughters.

» Continue Reading.


Monday, March 7, 2022

Scarlet fever: Keene’s struggles to contain an outbreak harkens to today

keene scarlet feverScarlet fever is something we don’t have to think about any more.  However, more than 100 years ago, this childhood killer struck fear into the hearts of parents everywhere, including the little town of Keene.

On March 4, 1912, in the face of a frightening scarlet fever outbreak, the Keene Town Board of Health took emergency action.   The Board ordered “that the church, school houses, library, neighborhood house and Keene Valley Club House shall be closed until further notice.”

Today, in the midst of our Covid-19 turmoil, the disputes over vaccines, masks, and other government-scientific recommendations, it is hard to imagine a citizen board of health exercising that kind of power—to declare the church and the schools and the library closed.  Boom.   “Mo(tion) carried,” says the official one-page document, hand-written in pencil.

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Friday, February 18, 2022

The Voluntary Professionals Behind the Adirondack Research Library

Many organizations introduce their work with the words “were it not for the volunteers, we could not…” That can be justifiably said of the Adirondack Research Library (ARL), formerly part of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks (AfPA).

This largest Adirondack collection outside of the Adirondacks launched in 1979 as part of Union College’s Schaeffer library. It then moved and in 1985, courtesy of then Museum Director Bill Verner (formerly curator with the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake) occupied a corner of the Schenectady Museum. In 1988, ARL became a committee of the nonprofit Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks (1901-2010). Following the untimely and sad death of Bill Verner, in 1989 the Schenectady Museum’s next director told us we had to move out. So, for the next 15 years the AfPA and ARL rented space below a dental laboratory in Schenectady. Suffice it to say, that situation was less than ideal. We made the best of it but dreamed of better opportunities. Much better opportunities.

» Continue Reading.


Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Bones, Metals, and Medals: Figuring Out the History of Ice Skating

olympic oval ice skating rink The lighting of the torch in Beijing on February 4th signified the beginning of the XXIV Olympic Winter Games, where many of the athletes are wearing ice skates as they compete for medals in figure and speed skating and ice hockey. While many people will watch these talented athletes on television, others will brave the weather and go to the local pond or outdoor rink to pass the puck or to simply skate in the crisp winter air.

» Continue Reading.



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The Adirondack Almanack

The Adirondack Almanack is a public forum dedicated to promoting and discussing current events, history, arts, nature and outdoor recreation and other topics of interest to the Adirondacks and its communities

We publish commentary and opinion pieces from voluntary contributors, as well as news updates and event notices from area organizations. Contributors include veteran local writers, historians, naturalists, and outdoor enthusiasts from around the Adirondack region. The information, views and opinions expressed by these various authors are not necessarily those of the Adirondack Almanack or its publisher, the Adirondack Explorer.

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