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Harvest time in the country

HARVEST TIME IN THE COUNTRY

Adozen deer pass swiftly and silently through the wood in the waning light. The mercury on the thermometer drops hesitantly as the harvest moon rises over the Blue Mountain. Frogs, Crickets and Cicadas join Katydids in the evening sonata, perhaps for the la fin du concert of the year. Later, the ruffle of feathers in the darkness will herald the arrival of the Horned Owl flying at the speed of night as it pursues its prey. Bears go through our...

Map of Fort Ticonderoga

FORT TICONDEROGA: THE GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN/LAKE GEORGE In my Fort William Henry post, I described the French and Indian War between France and England in North America.  Fort Ticonderoga is a good point to open a discussion on the geography of the war.  The major waterways in this part of far eastern New York are the Hudson River, the Richelieu River, Lake George and Lake Champlain.  The Hudson River flows southward from near its source close to Lake Tear of the Clouds, north of Albany.  Overland, from the Hudson...

Tulips on display in Albany, NY

TULIPS PUT ALBANY, NY IN FESTIVE MOOD

For the second year in a row, the city of Albany, NY is holding their annual Tulip Festival virtually. Customary activities such as luncheons, Dutch street scrubbing, the coronation of a Tulip Queen and the Royal Tulip Ball will be replaced with virtual programming, though music throughout the month will be live at different venues. Festival goers are free to wander among the tulip displays in Washington Park, and small, guided tours will be held on an appointment basis.  The remaining  activities...

George Orwell 1984

WHO CONTROLS THE PAST CONTROLS THE FUTURE

Today, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell sent a letter representing the demands of 37 Senate Republicans that the administration pull their support from the 1619 Project, a controversial program promoted in 2019 that, in the words of the Daily Mail “takes slavery and puts it in the center of the American narrative” four centuries later. This is an example of what is sometimes termed a paradigm shift, or a change in fundamental assumptions.  Such as from the Genesis account of our beginnings to evolution....

Pentecost Sunday title

TONGUES OF FIRE

“On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently. As the sound of...

Troubled waters during the French and Indian War

WE VISIT FORT WILLIAM HENRY

The Seven Years’ War is not very well known in this country. Winston Churchill called it “The first World War” since it was actually fought on five different continents.  It’s difficult to point to a single event that historians agree was the casus belli.  Was it the Prussian invasion of Saxony in Europe?  A dispute over the boundaries of Arcadia? A skirmish, perhaps, in western Pennsylvania between British forces who were badly-led by a twenty-two-year-old officer named George Washington in which a French envoy...

Post cards from last century

POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE–VOICES FROM THE LAST PANDEMIC

I found several dozen letters and personal accounts from the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918 in the U.S. on the CDC website, and I’ve included some here as a context of what our ancestors experienced back then, and in terms of what we’re going through now. You can see that during the flu pandemic, people were urged to stay home, limit social activities, and churches and schools were closed even as now. By and large, Americans back then saw it as their...

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