This Month’s Featured Articles…

It’s a phenomenon most have encountered. The first light snowfall of the winter season fails to accumulate on our modern roadways, but the perceptive driver notes a white dusting that outlines an ancient roadbed in the adjoining woods. Nor is this the only extant vestige of a prior century’s transportation system. Mile markers stand as stone monoliths on the outskirts of towns, while hitching posts and carriage steps are still found around village greens. Roads, then and now The presence of these artifacts should not [...]

Decades after its initial debut, the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome museum and airfield continues to lure aviation enthusiasts, history buffs, veterans, and families alike. Every summer crowds flock to the active airfield in Rhinebeck, NY, to catch the spectacular weekend air shows and browse the museum’s extraordinary collection of vintage aircraft, which date back to 1900 to 1937. Aviation enthusiast The late Cole Palen was the pilot, aircraft preservationist, and founder of the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome. The Pennsylvania native spent much of his childhood in Dutchess [...]

The phrase ‘Truth and Justice’ has lost some of its luster in today’s lexicon, more a pop culture artifact evocative of a titular comic book hero or a serial crime drama than the foundation of our American legal system. In the year 2020, the once-canonized notion seems to be even further mired in cynicism – with more than a few justifications – in a world of social media barrage and divisive discourse. Still, the embers of that notion remain alive in many of our local [...]

The very nature of radio broadcasting in the United States has gone through what Shakespeare termed a “sea change” in the 100 years since KDKA in Pittsburgh, PA, took to the airwaves on November 2, 1920 to announce that Warren G. Harding had defeated James D. Cox in the presidential election. Harding won in a landslide. The few residents of western Pennsylvania and neighboring Ohio who had receivers found that out the night before America’s daily newspapers carried the news. Radio had the advantage of [...]

It was a sunny day in the Capital on Wednesday, March 4 1885. As the newly elected, 22nd President of the United States, Grover Cleveland placed his left hand on the Bible his mother had given him when he was 15 and took the oath of office under pleasant skies and in front of a congenial crowd in Washington, DC. History remains quite uncertain where Belva Ann Lockwood was during the historic gathering, though it cannot forget the struggles she endured in her efforts to [...]