My America...Journeys

STORM KING ART CENTER...VISIONS OF SILENCE

noreply@blogger.com (Warren D. Jorgensen) — Tue, 01 May 2007 10:53:00 +0000

I LOVE THIS PLACE…

STORM KING’S SILENT ALLURE

By
Warren D. Jorgensen

I make it a policy to tour any new area via bus on arrival, to get a larger overall view of the area, which is how Jean and I wound up on the on the tramway that transports visitors around the 500 acres of Storm King Art Center.

Within minutes of the start of the ride, we were coming up on what appeared to be another of the monumental sculptures that dot the landscape. It was a box-like frame of shining steel and glass, shoved kitty-corner into the side of the hillside; a singularly distinctive stainless steel and glass contemporary work. Not my cup of tea, but impressive, nonetheless. As odd as it sounds, the towers seemed to fit into the natural scene surrounding it.

“Nice,” I said, “I wonder who did it”, as Jean unfolded the guide on her lap, her finger trying to connect the dots with the artist’s listings. Before she had a chance to answer, the driver enlightened us and pointed up my almost total ignorance on the subject of modern sculpture
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“On your left, ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer said “is our new elevator shaft that will connect the grounds to the upper level”. Paula folded the guide and put it back in her purse, smiling smugly.

There are art parks, and there are art parks, but The Storm King Art Center, set amid the rolling hills of the Hudson Valley, always draws me back when I need a day to clear my mind, relax the body, and set the world right. This where I come to gain respite from the world; a place so quiet that a library is a cacophony of noise by comparison. Strolling the lush green slopes, it is easy to get lost in time and space, to be at once calmed and excited by monumental works that weigh upwards of several tons.

These and the monumental works of art created by the artist’s heart and hand blends with the natural landscape so well that it is difficult to tell where the hand of man and the forces of nature separate.

These are works created by some of the most famous and widely recognized sculptors in the world, and the permanent home of the Alexander Calder collection. The Orange and black steel works of this most notable of American sculptors is spread out over “Calder Hillside”, free-forms standing out in stark contrast to the adjacent David Smith work venerating that artist’s vision of womanhood. I am drawn however to Alfred Hrdlicka’s “Golgatha”, a willowy shadowed vision of the mysteries of womanhood that somehow always reminds me of the women I have known or would like to have known. I guess it’s a guy thing.

Isamu Noguchi’s “Momo Taro” does not appear so much a work of art as a place to stop and rest, its marble pieces inviting visitors to just sit and rest a while. Somehow, with this piece, everyone seems to break the rule against touching or playing on the sculptures, probably because it seem so much a part of the natural landscape.

The center is now in the fifth year of a seven year planting schedule that will add fields of grain, alfalfa, buckwheat, oats and wildflowers alongside the pathways that meander through the park. This will complete the blending of earth and sky, the hand of man and nature’s bounty into one whole.

And appearances are always deceiving, assumptions shattered so easily, as if I had not already learned that.

As we came around to the end of the tram ride, I noticed four glass enclosures, each covering what appeared to be industrial machinery. Never one to pass up an opportunity to stick my foot in my mouth, I nudged Paula.

“Hey, that’s neat”, I said. “They’ve even got the water treatment plant on display”. Our friendly driver once again put me straight. “Just ahead of us, ladies and gentlemen, is Magdalena Abakanowicz’ Sarcophogi in Glass Houses”

Well, like they say, I may not know art, but I know what I like. WDJ

AN ADIRONDACK STATE OF MIND

noreply@blogger.com (Warren D. Jorgensen) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 13:13:00 +0000

AN ADIRONDACK STATE OF MIND

More years ago than I admit to, while on a cross country skiing adventure, I came to the shore of a lake in the Adirondack Mountains. Before me was an unbroken snow-field, untouched, unmarked, bathed in the soft red-gold glow cast by the last rays of the setting sun. The only sound was that of my heartbeat, the only movement my breath vaporizing in the winter air. I felt as if I were the first human on the face of the earth.

The Adirondack Mountains are not just a place on the map. They are a truly unique, prime—and possibly solitary—example of progressive environmental thinking in a time when none existed. Legislated into existence in 1882 in an amendment to the state constitution, they comprise a patchwork of private, public and corporate lands bound together and preserved for the public good. They are the “Forever Wild” six million acres forming nature’s roofless cathedral; with many floors and hundreds of rooms. The Adirondacks are a state of mind.

They are home to 100,000 people and 4,000 bears, hosting ten million visitors a year. They are High Peaks—forty six with elevation over 4,000 feet--and shadowed glens, rustic falls and dead-calm lakes and pools, rivers that become streams that connect lakes and flow constantly with the movement of nature’s clock. They have been this way since the beginning of time. Timeless, they are what you need when you want to suspend all physical, emotional and mental connections to the “real world” of man made high rise canyons, and suburban angst.

The Adirondacks have always called out to the wild in man, drawing those who explored the valleys, climbed those mountains, forded those streams, and canoed those lakes and rivers. They were so isolated that the source of the Hudson River, Lake Tear-In-The-Clouds, was not discovered until seventy years after the Lewis and Clark Expedition had reached the headwaters of the Columbia River. The explorers, hunters and trappers who first came here evolved into the venerable Adirondack Guides of legend, with their distinctive Adirondack Guide Boats, the waterborne symbol of that wild.

Theodore Roosevelt came here as a sickly child, wandering and exploring these woods, publishing his “Birds of the Adirondacks” in 1877. It can be said that his love of the outdoors, the love that would eventually give the country Yellowstone and its vast National Park System was born in his soul here. Here also is where Winslow Homer immortalized the Adirondack spirit in his watercolors.

William West Durant, a developer with dreams created the hallmark of Adirondack architecture. “Great Camps” were the wilderness estates of America’s elite, where they enjoyed the illusion of roughing it. Thirty-five Great Camps still exist, almost all in private hands. Durant’s 27-building 1,526-acre Sagamore was sold to the Vanderbilt family, who used it as their summer retreat until 1954, when it given to the state. All but eighteen acres became state land, and it functions today as a privately owned educational and environmental center. Santanoni Camp is open year round, its 12,000 acres home to ski and hiking trails, camp sites and a variety of environmental programs. In true Adirondack spirit, however, it takes a seven mile walk to reach it. Wawbeek, with two of the original 19th century buildings still standing is commercial lodge and hotel, providing visitors with the ambience of rustic living complimented by full service restaurants and amenities. For those with pockets deep enough to handle the $14,000 a week rent, Dry Island offers dominion over your own private 12-acre, 4-year old “Great Camp” on Saranac Lake.

In a one week stay, from a rented room or cottage—the latter is preferable—the diversity is all within no more than a short drive in any direction, including up. You can turn each day into a new sight, a new taste, a new sound, or no sound at all.

You can bushwhack to the summit of Mt. Marcy, the highest of the forty six High Peaks, or ride a gondola to the top of Whiteface, the fourth highest. Whiteface is also the only peak that permits auto traffic to the summit, just as most of the lakes are off limits to any form of motorized traffic.

You can you can throw a line and split a fresh-caught trout over an open fire for breakfast, and enjoy Tex-Mex or Italo-Greek, or pheasant with a caramelized sauce and Vermont Cheddar tart in Honey Guinness syrup for dinner. All in the same day.

You can canoe the more than fifty eight lakes of the St. Regis Canoe area or lounge on a tour boat with full service on Lake Placid; rent or buy—if you can handle the five-figure price tag—an Adirondack Guide Boat, or paddle one vicariously at the Adirondack Museum, where you can sample the entire history of the park and its people.

You can cycle the seventy-nine mile “Teddy’s Trail”, or pull up a chair and watch Freestyle Olympic hopefuls perfect their aerobics on plastic ramps into swimming pools.

The host of two Olympic Games, Lake Placid is the multi-faceted diamond set in the shadow of the High Peaks region, the epicenter of Winter Olympic sport activities available nowhere else in the country. You can ride make a bobsled or luge run, or envelope yourself in your own fantasies on the same ice where twelve American kids beat the Russians at their own game in 1980.

Routes 28 and 30 are the major two-lane blacktops through the park, but to rush through here is to deprive yourself of the essence of the park. To experience the park is to live it, breath it, and to feel it. Then at the end of the day enjoy a sundowner on a split-log deck overlooking a lake at sunset. This is the sojourner’s life inside the Blue Line. I’ve done it before, and most assuredly will do it again.WDJ

TAMPA GASPARILLA DAYS PIRATE INVASION

noreply@blogger.com (Warren D. Jorgensen) — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 17:02:00 +0000

TAMPA'S OTHER BUCANEERS

PHOTOS HERE

In 1904, Tampa, Florida suffered the first of its pirate invasions when forty brigands of the high seas, albeit on horseback, rode into town. Lack of a ship not withstanding, they were honoring the notorious if mythical 18th century pirate Jose Gaspar. They were Foul-smelling, ill-clothed, scruffy, bearded, broken toothed, and scarred. Bent on general mayhem, they forced the mayor to surrender the keys to the city, then proceeded to loot and pillage the then sleepy little cigar making capitol.

They’ve been doing it every year since. In January, an estimated half million people will welcome them back to the Gasparilla Pirate Fest.

The Gasparilla Days Parade is more than just five hundred thousand people gathered along the world’s longest continuous walkway. It is more than just beautiful young women yelling themselves hoarse for penny-a-pound beads--that for one day at least are coin of the realm--more than a gathering, more than a party, more than the donning of Halloween costumes and prancing around safely behind gobs of makeup, false teeth and imitation scars. It is the multi-hued and many faceted history of this city itself, past and present; and for the visitor, it is more than just a parade.

The original forty “Pirates” formed Ye Mystik Krewe of Gasparilla, whose number grew to seven hundred members of the established business and commercial community. In February, they will sail into the harbor aboard the SS Gasparilla. Their takeover will be complete as they lead twenty-seven Krewes, representing the diversified history and culture of the fort that became a village that became a city, its high rise office buildings gleaming in the noonday sun. For Tampans it is Mardi gras, St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo all rolled into one.

There will be English privateers, Spanish nobles, Buffalo Soldiers,peasant rebels, riverboat gamblers, and distaff Krewes celebrating a Greek Goddess and the lives of little known but nonetheless notorious female pirates of the Caribbean. There does not seem to be any rational explanation of why all of these bloodthirsty ladies were Irish, though.
No matter the notorious or frivolous image they wish to project, all the Krewes are in fact social clubs, sponsoring community help programs and fostering a connection to the ethnic and social roots of the community.

For the visitor, the festivities begin when Children’s Parade kicks off the week long celebration and Ye Mystik Krewe “Pirates” battle the city once again with their "Piratetechnic" fireworks display. Once again, they will win, once again paving the way for the actual “invasion"..

For the entire week, the city is a buzz of anticipation, offering visitors the opportunity to sample many of the historical, cultural and gustatory icons the city has to offer.

1886 was a pivotal year in Tampa history. It was then that railroad baron built a railroad line to the then sand covered cow town. He completed the Tampa Bay Hotel, his monument to excess in 1891. A prime example of American Gilded Age extravagance, it was a quarter mile long, had 511 rooms, topped with gold minarets that were visible from anywhere in town. It was complete with electricity, telephones and amenities that could well have set the tone for today’s international hotels. In 1899, The Rough Riders—with 30,000 troops with 20,000 horses and mules--camped on its 150 acres awaiting the orders to sail for Cuba, while Theodore Roosevelt wrote his daily letters home to his wife from the downstairs study.

Today, the gold minarets still gleam, standing as a tribute to the untold riches of Tampa Bay history as a National Landmark and Museum. http://www.plantmuseum.com/ The dresses of early 20th century of Gasparilla royalty are here, many designed by Anne Cone Lowe, who also designed Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy’s wedding dress and bridesmaids gowns.

And once again, the present-day Rough Riders, http://www.tampa-roughriders.org/ will march five hundred strong to celebrate their charge up San Juan Hill.

Across town, Ybor City, also founded in 1886—prophetically the same year that the Statue of Liberty was unveiled—would become home to more the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Spain, Cuba and Italy. They would produce more cigar makers than Havana, establish a vibrant entrepreneurial and mercantile hub, and in the process create one more facet to the multicultural pastiche that is Tampa.

Cuban immigrant Casimero Hernandez opened a little corner coffee and sandwich shop in 1905. His granddaughter would marry into the Gonzmart family. They would take over the Restaurant and today, under the guidance of fifth generation Gonzmarts, the six Columbia Restaurants http://www.columbiarestaurant.com/ are flourishing throughout Florida. Cezar Gonzmart was one of the founders of the Krewe of Sant Yago http://www.kreweofsantyago.com/ in honor of Spain’s Patron Saint James.

Fifty-One years after Casimero opened his doors, Bern and Gert Laxer opened the doors on an equally modest restaurant. But modesty does not fit into the Bern’s Steak House http://www.bernssteakhouse.com/ lexicon. With its thirty food charcoal grill, 1,200 gallon fish tank, a 212 page wine list and a wine cellar holding 90,000 bottles of the fruit of the vine, Bern’s has become renowned throughout Florida. In 2002, Laxer’s son David partnered with Chef Jeannie Pierola to take Bern’s into the 21st Century. Progeny of Cuban-Spanish parents, Jeannie Pierola has combined her eclectic tastes and myriad skills to create her “One World Under Food” at the sleek Side Bern’s. To visit Tampa and not sample her One World Cuisine is to have led a deprived life.

On parade day, a well fed and walked-out visitor would be well advised to arrive early, because the rising sun will shine on lawn chairs and sleeping bags of bead hungry early arrivals. By noon, it will almost be possible to walk across the bay on the decks of the thousands of boats that greet the SS Gasparilla as it sails triumphantly into the harbor and disgorges the seven hundred members of Ye Mystik Krewe, joined by their fellow Tampans and whoever wants to join the fun. It is a garish, noisy, celebration of Tampa, with ship after ship, castle after castle, carrying gaudily and sometimes outrageously dressed Krewes. And for one day, Tampa will be theirs—and yours.WDJ

Erie Canal Story in Print

noreply@blogger.com (Warren D. Jorgensen) — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 12:39:00 +0000

http://drivesubaru.com/Fall06_RoadTrips.htm
Another version of my Erie Canal story, finally in print. Go here for more photos
This one had an odd beginning, but it has become something of an obsession with me, and I'm glad it finally made it into print.

AN ESSEX BOAT BUILDER...

noreply@blogger.com (Warren D. Jorgensen) — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 00:03:00 +0000

HAROLD BURNHAM CARRIES ON A SHIP BUILDING LEGACY
SEE PHOTOS HERE
When Harold Burnham lays the keel for one of his hand-crafted wooden boats in the boatyard he has owned since 1995, He is carrying on a family tradition that dates back to 1819. His boatyard is on land where ancestor Oliver Burnham operated a yard five generations ago. Harold is the 28th Burnham to carve out a career in the shipwright’s trade, operating the only full time boat yard in Essex MA today.

Essex set the standard for American fishing boat construction during the 18th and 19th century. At one time, one out of every seven sailing boats in America was built here.

He was born into a culture of sailing and boat building; getting his first taste of boat building at the knee of his father Charles. Neighbor and mentor Brad story a now-retired full time boat builder showed him that he could make a living at it

When he was ten, he began building dories with his brother and sister under Charles’ watchful eye, selling each to build the next. When he was in High School, he restored small Beetle Cats support his sailing habit.

A degree in Maritime Transportation from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy led to five years at sea as a merchant marine. He returned home to dry land to marry his wife Kim and open his boat yard. He hasn’t worked a day since. “A man who does what he loves never works a day in his life”, he says.

His dream is to build replicas of traditional New England fishing vessels like those his ancestors built; pickup trucks of the sea, built as necessities. He uses everything from the ancient adze to modern power tools and like most craftsmen he is loathe giving up his secrets..” It’s largely an eyeball thing”.he says.

His first job came when Tom Ellis, a contractor and antique store owner decided to build a Gloucester schooner. He met with Harold to discuss his needs in 1996. and hired him on the spot.

Work began in October 1996 and Harold worked seven days a week, sometimes eighteen hours a day, weathering the brutal winter to create a masterpiece of the shipwright’s art.

The Thomas E. Lannon slid down the ways in June 1997. It is a 90-foot, 51-ton twin masted Gloucester Schooner, built completely by hand; mahogany above the water line, white oak below, with a nine foot draft under 1700 square feet of sail.

The tradition of Essex Boat building, created over the past two hundred years by his ancestors, is in good hands.

KEY WEST: A STEP BACK IN TIME

noreply@blogger.com (Warren D. Jorgensen) — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 00:15:00 +0000

MORE PHOTOS HERE

Topside, the waning rays of the setting sun bathed the eclectic grouping that gathers each evening for the sunset ritual on Key West's Mallory St. Pier. They probably didn't know it, but they were standing on the birthplace of the Florida Keys.

"You will naturally inquire how we live, and the reply is very simple; by and through wrecks. Stop that and we cease to live". So wrote attorney Charles Walker to a friend in 1840, clearly defining what made this little dot of coral scrub pine and sand the richest city per capita in the United States for almost sixty years.

Between 1810 and the Civil War, before Hemingway, before Faulkner and Dos Passos, before Truman--Capote and Harry--before Flagler and his folly, before the two lane blacktop that connects but a few of the 800 keys, before there were T-shirt shops every twenty feet on Duval Street, Key West was a booming, vibrant, rough-and-tumble town that owed it's good fortune and very existence to the five-mile wide reef three miles offshore, and the Louisiana Purchase.

Upwards of 150 ships a week circled the horn of Florida, bringing raw goods from the delta to the markets up north; hard goods and supplies from the industrial north to the south. It was an arduous trip, and each year, providence, poor navigation, bad weather, and lack of lighthouses combined to wash hapless wooden-hulled ships onto the reef. In 1842, for example, fifty ships were dashed on the reef, in 1855, sixty-nine.

In 1821, John Simonton, a New Jersey businessman and wrecker, bought Key West from Spaniard Pablo Salas and established a wrecking station. He was joined by other adventurer/entrepreneurs—hard nosed Yankee businessmen, New England fishermen and Britons from the Bahamas, the original Conchs--who took up the wrecker’s dangerous but lucrative pursuit. Spotting towers dotted the shoreline and wreckers would put out at first light after the sighting of a wreck, remove the passengers, and establish salvor’s rights Warehouses were centered on Mallory Square, which was owned then by Asa Tift, the second richest man in Florida and wrecker extraordinaire.

Key West became a society focused on wrecks, wrecks, and more wrecks. The treasure was not gold, silver or stones, but the everyday things of life: cotton, dry-goods, industrial machinery, anything and anything that could be redeemed for cash, including slaves, and in one instance, a steam locomotive which took wreckers three days to float and return to port In 1880, Mary Munroe wrote to a friend that "A wreck was the most wished for and thoroughly enjoyed thing that could happen."

Little remains of what was salvaged. It was a cash business, and the goods were moved quickly. The legacy the wreckers left was Key West itself. The homes they built, the signature conch architecture. The Hemingway home, the James Audubon house and the Curry Mansion, all open to the public, were built by wreckers.

The Oldest House In Key West is now the Wrecker’s Museum, complete with furnishings and out-buildings, showing the rewards and lifestyle enjoyed by those men who deigned to challenge the sea successfully. Built in 1929 by wrecker Captain Francis B. Watlington, the two buildings comprise a sterling display of the 19th century lifestyle, so far from Washington, so close to the sea. The main house, where the family, including their nine daughters lived, and The kitchen house--in keeping with southern style and tradition, is separate from the main house—If you can’t stand the heat, move the kitchen, so to speak.

Many other homes still in private ownership, such as the Heritage House built by Hog Johnson, and the Porter Mansion, can be seen on a walking tour of the island.

On August 5, 1856, the packet ship Isaac Allerton, with a cargo valued at four hundred thousand dollars set sail from New York, bound for New Orleans, racing against the oncoming hurricane season. It lost. It foundered in a hurricane over five-fathom deep Hawk’s Channel and dashed up on Washerwoman Shoals.

The five year-old Key West Shipwreck Historeum is a re-eation of the original Asa Tift Warehouse on Mallory Square complete with an eighty foot spotting tower. Every two hours, every day, there is a show and a tour that opens the early days of Key West to the visitor’s eyes and ears. While there's more than a touch of hokum and a flair for the showmanship that would do wreckers proud, there is also a sense of history here.

. These are not the canon, emeralds, silver and gold on display at Mel Fischer's Maritime Museum down the street. They are simpler things; a gentleman's top hat and a lady's lace glove, shoes, silverware, china by the barrel, household goods, candlesticks and merchant's scales; jewelry, buckles, buttons and broaches; scales and telescopes, ivory and meerschaum, inkwells and paperweights; all things very ordinary, all bits and pieces of people's lives and business in 19th century America. These are artifacts of how they lived. It is hard not to be transported back in time, just a little.

I look out to sea, close my eyes, and I can almost hear a wreck being ground up on the reef. Well, almost. WDJ

THE ERIE CANAL ROLLS ON

noreply@blogger.com (Warren D. Jorgensen) — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 21:08:00 +0000

The Erie Canal had its role in history literally cut out in that period before the beginning of time by receding ice flows; by dint of geographic anomaly it was the only east-west water route through what we now call the Appalachian Mountain chain, used by Native Americans for hundreds of years between the Hudson River and the Great Lakes

With the arrival of the white man, design followed dreams, and following the American Revolution, a series of jerry-rigged canals connected the inland waterways between the Hudson River and the Great Lakes.

In 1807, a failed entrepreneur and speculator named Jessie Hawley, while serving time in a Canandaigua debtor’s prison, wrote a series of articles detailing his ideas and laying out the first viable plan for a canal system connecting the river and the lake.
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On July 4, 1817, newly elected Governor De Witt Clinton oversaw the first shovelful of dirt that was turned in Rome for what was called by detractors, “Clinton’s Ditch” connecting with Utica, fifteen miles away. It changed the face of North America forever.

Completed in 1825, It was forty feet wide at ground level, four feet deep, and twenty eight feet wide at the bottom. It was a magnificent accomplishment, the 19th century equivalent of the first moon landing. Obstacles were met with ingenuity and brute strength, hand tools and dynamite as they built over, cut through, or went around them.

At the Eastern end, they built nineteen locks to circumnavigate the seventy foot high Cohoes Falls and the Mohawk River, to raise the barges one hundred and seventy feet from the Hudson River to the Mohawk Valley Plateau. In Lockport, they cut and blasted their way through the Niagara Escarpment, a seventy-five foot high wall of solid granite, creating five locks that would carry barges out to the Great Lakes.

PHOTOS HERE

Where they found rivers, valleys and swamps, they reached back to Roman designs and built eighteen aqueducts, bridges of water over water. They cut and meticulously fit limestone blocks for aqueduct piers, sidewalls and locks, invented concrete that would adhere under water and pioneered techniques that would eventually be used to build the Panama Canal. They did it all by hand, and they succeeded, cutting a 363-mile monument to determination and will across the state in seven years.

With a total east-to-west lift of 675 feet, the first Erie Canal served its purpose far beyond anyone’s expectation or wildest imagination; within a year of its completion, 2,000 boats, 8,000 men and 9,000 horses were employed on the canal. Within twelve years of its completion, What had been a wilderness frontier was slowly peeled back to a vast three hundred mile long farming and commercial corridor.

Cities such as Rome and Syracuse, towns like Cohoes and Amsterdam grew and prospered with the demand for finished goods, while small towns along its banks, such as Camillus, Jordan, Port Byron, Fairport, Gasport and Lockport came into being to serve the canal traffic and the western New York farmlands.

The Mohawk Valley and western New York absorbed hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers, entrepreneurs and farmers. Some came and stayed, others went on as the canal accelerated the nation’s westward movement.

The present day canal system—completed in 1917-- is a modern, sophisticated waterway, with locks three hundred feet long, forty four feet wide, providing lifts of ten to forty feet, capable of transporting thousands of boats, ships and people annually. And it almost came to a complete end.

Since 1983, there has been no commercial barge traffic. It is used entirely by pleasure boaters and tour boats. It has been saved and preserved for future generations by people with vision; in some cases reaching back to the canal’s past to preserve its future.

In the 1970’s, the historic value of these empty ditches began to surface in the public consciousness.

Rome’s Erie Canal Village is a glimpse of how the preservation movement began. Twenty-two buildings and homes were donated and moved here and it offers the only horse drawn canal boat ride in existence.

In Camillus, they re-created the Sims General Store, stocked with donations from attics across the state, built a gate keepers shack, Unique to Camillus is an eight-foot high section an orginal lock unearthed from the clay where it had been buried one hundred and fifty years ago, and the hand-cut stone piers that supported the Nine Mile Creek aqueduct, standing today like New York’s Roman ruins. Built between1838-1842, it is the only one of the original the canal’s thirty-two aqueducts still in existence. .

Ron Trotter charters out seven double-ended European style canal boats, each weighing upwards of twelve tons catering to well heeled Canal cruising buffs seeking a leisure week on the water.

“The European canal systems--Germany, England, France and the Netherlands--have extensive canal networks, but physically, they can’t hold a candle to the Erie Canal”, he says.

“With their history, they do have the infrastructure, though...I mean, every town and village has restaurants and canal-side facilities which we don’t have. Yet”. That is changing, as towns all along the canal gear up for new development that they hope with change the face of upstate New York

The canal is timeless. At speeds of less than ten miles per hour a visitor can travel from the eastern edge of the Adirondack Mountains to the Finger Lakes vineyards, to Lake Ontario and Erie. It rolls on, rising and lowering, still the essence of men’s hopes and dreams, it’s potential still to be realized.

THE HUDSON RIVER STONE CUTTER

noreply@blogger.com (Warren D. Jorgensen) — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 16:26:00 +0000

THE STONE MAN OF HAVERSTRAW

In 1988, Ted Ludwiczak, who had seen more of life than most of us will ever see, moved to a house on the bluff overlooking the Hudson River in Haverstraw, NY.
And it is here where his second, or maybe third or fourth life—he has seen so much that is hard to tell--began.

PHOTOS AND SLIDESHOW

Born in Poland, he escaped that communist country on a cargo ship, beginning a perapatic journey that would carry him from India to Saudi Arabia to Egypt and back to Europe, where he found work first as a tour guide and then as a translator for the US Army.

In 1956, he came to the U.S. and eventually found work and his own business grinding prescription lenses; a precursor to his love of stone and the art of carving. Today, he is one of the more interesting characters and a truly gifted man living in Rockland County, celebrated locally and selling his stone carvings through a New York gallery.

He had no idea that his life would take this turn. After buying the house, it didn’t take him long to see that winter storms and hurricanes were eating away at his unprotected shorefront property. “I was traumatized” he says now.
And he decided to do something about it. Sixty and Retired, he had nothing but time. “I got bored, and I had to do something”, he says

He cut the forty two steps from his back yard to the water line and built a concrete seawall. It was pretty simple, if arduous. All he had to bring was the cement. He had water and dirt right there, and this being Rockland County, he had stone in spades.
But when it was finished, the wall was bare and uninspiring. That’s where serendipity took its turn, spinning his life to its present course.

He found a stone, that as he put it, “spoke to me”

It had holes where eyes might be, and a gash where a mouth could be imagined. He got a railroad spike and hammer, and began chipping away, creating his first head in less than one day. But it looked lonely.

“He was sad”, Ted says of his first creation. “He needed company, so I carved another one”. By the end of the summer, he had adorned his 65 foot seawall with forty two carved heads. And he hasn’t stopped since.

He works just about every day, using nothing more than simple hand tools and a small grinder which he set up against the outside wall of the house. Using whatever is at hand, basalt, granite, marble, quartz, and the ever-present red sandstone the lies around here in abundance, he has carved over a thousand heads which stand all over his front yard, on the slopes leading to the river, and on walls and shelves all over the small home where he has surrounded himself with figments of his imagination made real in stone.

“They are my family” says the father of two, grandfather of three. “That’s why I brought them in here”, he says, waving to the shelves around his small living room. His creations are not modeled on any mythological creatures that they resemble, and certainly do not resemble any real people. Nor does he name them, although he used to. He lets each stone speak for itself, creating his fantasy world “I can’t wait for the day to begin so I can get out and start carving”, he says.

AT TICONDEROGA, HISTORY COMES ALIVE

noreply@blogger.com (Warren D. Jorgensen) — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 19:54:00 +0000

In 1755 Europe was engulfed in what many consider the real First World War, pitting Britain and France and their respective allies for world dominence extending from the Eastern European plains to the wilderness of the North American colonies. Fort Ticonderoga, New York would play a central role in those violent times.

A hotly contested trade battle for control of the North American colonies became a shooting war in 1755, and it would turn the history of North America around forever. To Americans, it is known as the French and Indian War, and it was "The War That Made America".

More Photos Here
To the leaders and generals on both sides, the colonists were held in low regard, considered little more than pawns in their grand game, but a vital asset in the war in the wilderness that neigher understood. Both powers were to be proved sadly mistaken in this assumption.

The the native American Indians, particularly the six nations of the Iroquois Confederation of Central New York were courted and entreated with gifts and promises of sovereignty in return for their allegiance to one or the other of the great powers. They were lied to.

It was a war that extended from present day Pittsburgh, through the Ohio Territories and across New York's Mohawk Valley to Lake Champlain. This was the main water route from Canada, and in 1755, the French made their deepest incursion into the colonies, building the breasworks of what they named Fort Carillon at the confluence of Lake Champlain and Lake George, thereby controlling both and directly threatening New York, two hundred miles to the south.

The British attacked on July 8th, 1755, and in one afternoon, suffered one of the greatest defeats in the history of the empire, losing 1900 men of the vaunted Black Watch in a vain attempt to take the fort. Their second attack in 1759 was successful; they renamed it Fort Ticonderoga, controlling it for the remainder of the war.

For two days each June, 1,100 re-enactors and history buffs converge on this historic fort for the â€œGrand Encampment of the French and Indian Warâ€?. For three days, campsites spread out over the fields where the English attacked on that fateful day, campfire smoke permeats the air as the Engish and French armies prepare for "war", reinforced by their colonial and Indian allies.

Roger's Rangers, the precursor of the US Army Rangers form the largest group of colonial re-enactors, in their distinctive green frontier uniforms and jockey hats. Loyal to the crown, they were instrumental in England's ultimate success in the war.

"You can smell the history, see the history here", says fort Director Nicholas Westbrook. "The French and Indian War is seriously and undeservedly neglected in our schools", he says.

The encampment began in 1991 with 35 participants, history buffs with a particular interest in those pre-revolutionary days. Today draws 66 re-enactment groups from across the country, entertaining 2, 500 visitors over the weekend. Visiting hours are daytime only, and to sit back and witness the "Battle".

As the French canons defend against the attacking English, faux-wounded warriors are carried off the field, prisioners are taken and "tortured", all in the spirit of fun and the opportunity to demonstrate a piece of history that is directly responsible for the creation of the American experiment.

â€œThis place is hallowed ground to us,â€? says participant Jon Soule, the creator and Commander of The French Royal Rousillion Regiment. speaking of the emotional ties re-enactors have towards the fort where so many fought and fell. "We've had the opportunity to bring Ticonderoga back to life, and we did", he says.

"The encampment events are a perfect kind of time machine for young people", says (Name here). "The French and Indian War has been seriously and undeservedly neglected in our history books".

Re-enacting is a family hobby, where computer-age children get a living history lesson, living it in some cases, getting a taste for what life may have been like before ninety nine per cent of everything they take for granted was invented or even dreamed of. there will be no cell phones ringing, no electricity, no wi-fi. Even the porto-sans are cleverly hidden.

Dedicated re-enactors are deadly serious about their roles, too. Many do extensive research into historical archives to accurately recreate personas based on actual characters of the time. Uniforms are custom made and hand-tailored, and all paraphrenalia and accoutrements are accurate to the time period in question. For many, reenacting is a way of life.

Dan Schrothe, a school teacher from Liverpool, N.Y., agrees. â€œItâ€™s when I can step back in time to an entirely different life,â€? he says. â€œWe can only scratch the surface of reality.â€?
At the end of the war, veterans settled on land grants given to them by the British Crown, gravitating to the area around the saw mill. They formed the nucleus from which the town of Ticonderogaâ€”incorporated in 1804.

In 1820, abandoned and falling into disrepair, the fort was purchased by William Ferris Pell, a New York merchant and entrepreneur hoping to capitalize on the steady flow of tourists who began visiting the fort in the 1780s. Three generations of Pells set about restoring the fort and amassing one of the largest collections of 18th-century artifacts in the country.

In the museum, powder horns, swords, bullet pouches, uniforms, and bits and pieces of the lives of the men who fought and died here are on display. Some were donated, much was unearthed from the slopes and hills surrounding the fort over the past two hundred and forrty eight years. Some pieces are still being unearthed. The fort officially opened to the public in 1908.

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