This Month’s Featured Articles…
The Bridges of the New York State Bridge Authority
As most of us believe, we study history to determine how we arrived at where we are, and to help us determine what is working and what needs to change. The Bridge Authority has historically provided an invaluable, but mostly unrecognized contribution to the Hudson Valley and New York State. The New York State Bridge Authority was created at the suggestion of then-Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, through an act of legislation in 1932, to fund, operate, and maintain the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. The Bridge [...]
Summer 2021-To Europe – and Back?
Our trip to France was planned for late March 2020. My younger brother, Michael, and I needed to get over to see our mother in the Maison de Retraite that she had been transported to the previous December because her cognitive deterioration made it impossible for her to live on her own any more. She had moved to France on her own over 20 years earlier to live in the small but charming house that her mother had built in the French Pyrenees. It seemed an idyllic [...]
A Graceful Life Set in Stone
One of the most impossibly difficult aspects of the human experience is not only death itself, nor comprehending the idea that those we love will at some point no longer be with us, but how our enduring ability to love transforms death into something tragically beautiful. When the car Shea Cohn, age 16, was riding in on Route 44 going into Canaan, CT, crossed over the median and into the path of an oncoming pickup truck on the evening of March 27 of 2020, his [...]
Nothing Is Impossible To Her Who Will
In 2018, when Republican Senator Kathy Marchione announced that she would not seek re-election in Senate District 43, the news immediately raised the collective temperature on a seat suddenly in play for a traditionally competitive district. But for Marchione’s eventual successor Daphne Jordan – competition is in her DNA. As a competitive swimmer, softball and college lacrosse player, Senator Jordan has become accustomed to taking more than a few lumps throughout her life, coming back after each challenge and delivering a few of her own. [...]
SEL-Why is My Kid’s School Teaching About Emotions?
Consider the following exchange I had with “Joe,” the owner of an unnamed inn in the western Adirondacks: It was roughly 9am, and I was waiting for Joe’s wife, who served as hostess, waitress, chef, and (remarkably, still) a charming bartender, to put the finishing touches on the meat lover’s omelet that I had ordered nigh on an hour earlier. It happened to be Joe’s birthday, a coincidence he downplayed by pointing out that he was still “working,” an evident euphemism for ensconcing himself at [...]
