Bucket Lists and Daily Life We’re in the mad dash now. Kids in college, new job ramping up, house showing need for repairs, retirement saving, mileage on the cars, Bodhi needing more meds, appliances acting up, stuff accumulating, stuff we seemingly need, stuff we definitely don’t need, should we stay or should we go now?…
Sleeping Giant The Metacomet Ridge runs roughly along the Connecticut River from the Vermont border through Massachusetts and into Connecticut. In that state, close to Long Island Sound in Hamden, is Sleeping Giant State Park. This is a part of the Metacomet Ridge and for my money the most interesting formation in the entire ridge….
To Dance with the Sky In Tonawanda, New York the Erie Canal meets up with the Niagara River. Bridges like this one were designed to raise and lower based on boat traffic. However, the sheer expense of building drawbridges the length of the canal was deemed prohibitively expensive. As a result they scrapped the plans,…
Here in the northeast, there are a few things that mark the change from early to late spring. Many tend to show up in decorative patterns on my windshield as I drive around the northeast or park my car outside for any length of time. Bugs and pollen are the two leading indicators that late…
Overlooking Halifax and the harbor beyond it is the Citadel. Situated high up on a hill, the star-shaped fort has sweeping fields of fire for the soldiers who manned it. Both rifle fire and the cannon designed to swivel to provide a wide arc of fire on any ship daring to challenge from the harbor…
Pier 21 People in the United States look to Ellis Island as the port of entry for many of the immigrants to our country. In Canada, Halifax was that port, and Pier 21 was where people were either welcomed or turned away. I visited Pier 21 on a rain-soaked day a year ago. Like Ellis…
Richardson’s Tavern When the Erie Canal was being constructed, it ignited the local economy along its length first as laborers moved in and eventually as the travelers on the canal moved through the area. One such boomtown was Perinton, a canal town with a tavern located alongside the Erie Canal where travelers could get a…
Memento Mori “Do not wait for life. Do not long for it. Be aware, always and at every moment, that the miracle is in the here and now.”– Marcel Proust On the north side of 50 your perspective changes. I’m more inclined to take the side trip to see something new than I was at…
Taming the Mohawk River The Erie Canal was first proposed when Thomas Jefferson was President. The sheer expense and amount of labor that it would take were much more than Jefferson could imagine, and he described it as a “little short of madness”. However, the upside for a canal that would open up the west…
On the edge of a lawn on County Road 42 in Fishers, New York is a seven foot pyramid built in 1959 to honor a man named Pabos. Pabos was a Basque explorer who traveled deep into the wilderness of North America only to die here 400 years ago on June 10, 1618, a little…