On-Hudson.com

Little Red LightHouse Festival Saturday September 25th 2010

Warpath Hike Thru DoodleTown Saturday September 25th 2010

Last year's Hudson River Valley ramble history tour was a great success.   Palisades Interstate Park Commission Bear Mountain State Park Hike Into History  Saturday, September 25, 2010  (Rain Date: 9/26) 10 AM start Follow the "warpath" the British took in 1777 to attack Forts Clinton and Montgomery. This hike passes through several scenic historic areas of Bear Mountain State Park including the pre-Revolutionary hamlet of Doodletown, a picturesque lake, and up to a stunning Hudson River vista overlooking the Twin Forts. This 7 mile moderate-strenuous hike includes the panorama offered from Perkins' Peak. While you lunch at the overlook, your guide, local historian Larry Menchini of the Save Washington's Lookout Committee and Bear Mountain State Park, will tell about the British naval strategy.  Hike begins at 10 AM in Bear Mountain State Park's Parking Lot #2.  Bear Mountain State Park can be reached via Exit 19 of the Palisades Interstate Parkway or from Route 9W. $8 parking fee per vehicle. Participants must bring their own lunch and water. For information or to register, please call (845) 496-3804.

5th Annual Classics Under The Gunks Car Show October 9th 2010

http://www.classicsunderthegunks.com/

Remembering Our Heroes 5K Run September 11 2010

http://semperfiparentshv.org/index.htm

 Remembering Our Heroes is geared to remember and honor all of our heroes from 9/11, and for those who served/or are presently serving in the military. We hope that we can teach future generations the significance of this day when our world as we know it changed forever.

Joining us for this special day will be Marines and Guardsmen from Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, NY and soldiers from West Point Military Academy, along with those from our local fire and police departments and emergency response personnel.

Whether you run or walk as a family or a team – pledges and sponsorships are welcomed as finances raised will be utilized by Semper Fi Parents in supporting the military families and services located in this region and in the needs of our military abroad.

The race will end at the VFW Post 170 where food, vendors and static displays can be viewed. We hope that you, your family and friends will join us in the remembrance of this day.

Funds raised are used to support the families and services of our military here in the Hudson Valley and abroad.

1800"s Ship Discovered @ Ground Zero Yields Clues & Theories

http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/new-clues-to-ship-s-history-found-at-ground-zero-dig-site-1.2261225

New clues to ship's history found at Ground Zero dig site

MARIA ALVAREZ

Photo credit: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan | The curved ribs of a wood hull of an 18th century ship poke up from the mud at Ground Zero. (July 15, 2010)

Archaeologists trying to unravel the history behind the 18th century ship excavated from Ground Zero have found some important maritime clues: birdshot pellets, musket balls and small cannon shot the size of golf balls embedded in the ship's wooden planks.

Why on a merchant ship? There were New Jersey "gangsters" who hid in the marshes of the Hudson River and attacked ships as they entered New York Harbor, said Warren Riess, 62, lead maritime archaeologist and historian working on the dig. Some of the remnants also may have come from weapons the ship's own crew used to protect it.

"There were still some pirates in the Caribbean at the time, but there were also gangsters in New Jersey who came out of the marshes and did some nasty things," he said.

The "work horse" merchant ship - discovered earlier this summer at Ground Zero - traveled as far south as the Caribbean, and its merchant sailors were armed with muskets and cannons to perhaps fight off pirates on the turquoise waters of the southern sea, archaeologists say.

More artifacts are expected to be discovered at the site, said Elizabeth Meade of Northport, an archaeologist who has worked at the dig and specializes in history.

The ship was used as landfill to extend the lower Manhattan shoreline and to build more piers, docks and wharves into the Hudson River, Meade said.

"This is extremely exciting," she said of the find, adding the landfill waste that's become a treasure trove of the past will "pretty much tell us how people were living back then."

The archaeological team also found broken plain white and decorative motif china; animal bones and broken crates from a market, or butcher store, she said. Also found were the shells of ship worms, which archaeologists could trace from the warm tropical waters of the Caribbean, said Riess, professor of maritime history and archaeology at the University of Maine.

A 32-foot stern section of the wooden hull is being cleaned and its wood preserved at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab. It has not yet been established if there will be funds available to exhibit the find, said Riess.

"This ship has no monetary value, but it will tell the story of what life was like back then in lower Manhattan," he said.

Also revealed are construction details of the almost 70-foot ship: It is typical of its time, but it used a lot of iron nails instead of the big wooden trundles.

"I'm scratching my head. It would have been expensive at the time to use iron nails on a typical merchant ship," said Riess, adding archaeologists still do not know where the vessel was built.

Meade and other archaeologists are still working at the site as construction crews continue to excavate the World Trade Center's new underground garage.

The archaeologists are carefully washing and analyzing bags of artifacts containing items such as the musket balls, clay smoking pipes used at the time, animal bones and broken dishes, said Meade.

"This will take some time, but we are making progress," she said. "The artifacts will tell us what the ship was used for and how the people on the ship lived."

The team of archaeologists, hired by the Port Authority, will prepare its first preliminary report in the next few months, said Riess.

WaterFord TugBoat Round Up September 9th -13th 2010

http://www.tugboatroundup.com/

The Town of Waterford and the Waterford Maritime Historical Society present Waterford Tugboat Roundup

Welcome to the Tugboat Roundup web site

2010 Tugboat Roundup Schedule

Thursday, September 9th, 2010 

6-9PM   TBR Kickoff Party at the Rusty Anchor in Watervliet

Meet the captains and crews, get a sneak peek at the tugs of TBR 2010 and have a great time while supporting the operation of the Tugboat Roundup!

Friday, September 10th, 2010
12:30PM		Tugs leave Waterford to head south to Albany
2:45PM		Tugboat parade begins in Albany
3:45PM		Tugboat parade passes Troy
4 - 7PM		Live music by George Ward at the Visitor Center
5-6PM		Tugs arrive at the Port of Waterford
6:30PM		Welcoming Ceremonies
7PM		"Zeb - A Schooner Life." Movie shown on the Waterfront Museum Barge No.79 ($5)
7-9PM		Live Music All Nite Long on the M/V Grand Erie
Saturday, September 11th, 2010
9AM-9PM		Vendors, Exhibits, Family activities
9–5PM		Tugboat Tours, Boat Rides
10AM–6PM		Bouncy Bounce at Lock E-2 Park
10AM–12PM		Music by Yesterday’s News on the M/V Grand Erie
10:30-11:30AM		Storytelling and music by Jack Casey on the Waterfront Museum Barge No. 79
11AM		Little Apple Puppet Theater at Lock E-2 Park
12PM–3PM		Pony rides at Lock E-2 Park
1:30–3PM		Canaller Roundtable on the Waterfront Muesum Barge No. 79
12:30-2:30PM		Live Music by Flood Road on the M/V Grand Erie
3PM		Little Apple Puppet Theater at Lock E-2 Park
3:30PM		Tugboat Slideshow by Capt. Jack Wright on the Waterfront Museum Barge No. 79
3- 6PM		Live music by Stringdusters on the Grand Erie
4- 7PM		Live Music by Big Blue Sun with Scott Stockman at Lock E-2 park
6:30–8:30PM		Music by Captain Squeeze and the Zydeco Moshers on the M/V Grand Erie
7 - 8:45		Bluegrass music by TugBitts on the Waterfront Museum Barge No. 79
8:45 (Aprox.)		Fireworks by Alonzo's
Sunday, September 12th
9AM–5PM		Vendors, Exhibits, Family Activities
9:30-11AM		Live music by Lawson on the M/V Grand Erie
10AM–4PM		Tugboat Tours, Boat Rides, Historic Vessels
10AM-1PM		Momentive Performance Materials firetruck open for Exploration at Lock E-2 Park
11AM		Tales of the canal by Capt. Jack Hughes on the Waterfront Museum Barge No. 79
11AM		Little Apple Puppet Theatre at Lock E-2 Park
11AM–4PM		Bouncy Bounce at Lock E-2 Park
11-1PM		Live Music by Nisky Dixie Cats on the M/V Grand Erie
12:30PM		Line Throwing Competition at Battery
1PM		Little Apple Puppet Theatre at Lock E-2 Park
12:30 - 2:30PM		Capital Brass at the Battery - Sponsored by Momentive Performance Materials
1-3PM		Live Music on the M/V Grand Erie by the Boys of Wexford
2PM		Tugboat Nose-to-Nose Competition
4PM		Awards Ceremony at Visitor Center
Monday, September 13th
Flotilla kick off. Bid farewell to the vessels headed west to the World Canal Conference in Rochester.

 

The Waterford Tugboat Roundup began in 1999 as a way to preserve and promote the maritime industrial heritage of the New York State Canal System and other adjoining inland waterways. The tugboat history of the region, and particularly Waterford, is especially rich. For most of the 20th century, tugboats lined the shores here, whether waiting to lock up through the magnificent “Flight” or competing for some day work with a local company.

The ubiquitous sight of these smoke-belching work horses festooned with manila and wood fendering, decks bunkered with coal against a back drop of elaborate detail work that tended to belie the strict functionality of these old girls, has been replaced by that of sailboats, cruisers, and catamarans lining the docks.

For one weekend each year, however, Waterford’s historic waterfront is transformed back into a rendering of its commercial heyday during which names like Godfrey, Coyne, Bushey, Matton, Kehoe, and Cowles figured so prominently. Tugs new and old moor stem to stern for adulation and education, enchanting the young and reminding the young at heart of days gone by.

The event is sponsored annually by the Town of Waterford and the Waterford Maritime Historical Society, in addition to many generous corporate sponsors. Usually held the weekend after Labor Day, the festival has grown steadily and attracts approximately 25,000 people to this sleepy canal town in the heart of upstate New York’s Capital Region. In addition to tours of the vessels and other displays, there is an ample supply of music, food, children’s activities, vendors, boat rides, fireworks, and family fun.

The Waterford Tugboat Roundup – where maritime history comes alive.

 

New York Renaissance Faire Thru September 26th 2010

http://www.renfair.com./ny/

Saturdays, Sundays & Labor Day

Aug.7 - Sept. 26, 2010

Sterling Forest • 10am - 7pm Tuxedo Park, NY • Ph: 845.351.5171

Fort Montgomery Historic Site Presents The Fall Evening Lecture Series Schedule

Fort Montgomery Visitor Center

New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation

Palisades Interstate Park Commission

Fort Montgomery State Historic Site 

in partnership with 

The Fort Montgomery Battle Site Association

present

Fall Lecture Series

Thursday, September 16th , 7PM - Claudius Smith: Revolutionary Rogue or Robin Hood?

Claudius Smith was a controversial figure during the American Revolution, hailed by some as a champion of charity, but eventually hung by others as a thief and a profiteer. Come to your own verdict after author Patricia Edwards Clyne’s, evening lecture “Claudius Smith: Revolutionary Rogue or Robin Hood”; Patricia Edwards Clyne is the author ofHudson Valley Faces and Places; Hudson Valley Tales and Trails; and Caves For Kids in Historic New York. Book sale and signing to follow lecture.

Thursday, September 30th ,7 PM - The Hudson Valley's Provincial Corps: Loyalist Troops in Sir Henry Clinton's 1777 Highlands Expedition

Our Patriot forefathers are often remembered, but what about the day’s conservatives, the loyalists? Learn more about those that decided not to rebel and their military campaign against Forts Montgomery and Clinton. Evening Lecture by Todd Braistead, loyalist scholar, and member of the 4th battalion, New Jersey Volunteers.

Thursday, October 28th , 7PM – Haunted Hudson Valley

Join Linda Zimmerman, author and ghost hunter, on a tour of some the valley’s most haunted historic places! In addition to hearing about Linda’s latest investigations, find out what Linda discovered during her investigation of Fort Montgomery! Book sale and signing to follow lecture.

Thursday, November 4th, 7 PM - A British Soldier’s Story

Roger Lamb was one of over 50,000 British soldiers who served in the American Revolution. During his eight years in America he served in two major campaigns, was captured twice, and twice escaped captivity to rejoin the British Army. This is his story as told by Historian, Don Hagist. Slide Presentation followed by book sale and signing.

The Evening Lecture Series is proudly sponsored by the Fort Montgomery Battle Site Association. All lectures will be held at the Fort Montgomery State Historic Site Visitor’s Center, located at 690 Route 9W in Fort Montgomery, NY 10922.
For more information, please call (845) 446-2134.

18th Annual Great North River Tugboat Race & Competition September 5th 2010

http://workingharbor.com/tugrace_home.html

Our September tugboat race draws an enthusiastic crowd to Manhattan's Pier 84.

Tug Race Home l  About & History  l   Race Results  l   Tug Photos

18th Annual Running of the Great North River Tugboat Race & Competition Vikings on Megan Ann (c) Bernard Ente 2009 Sunday 5 September, 2010 Pier 84, North River Hudson River Park, NYC, NY 10:00 AM – Parade of tugs from Pier 84 to the start line near 79th Street Boat Basin. 10:30 AM – Race starts – From 79th Street Boat Basin to Pier 84 – one nautical mile. 11 AM – Nose to nose pushing contests and line toss competition. Noon – Tugs tie up to Pier 84 for lunch and awards ceremony. 1 PM – Awards ceremony. Tugs depart at about 2 PM. ALL DAY – Exhibits on the pier from maritime organizations, the towing industry, maritime museums, USCG, PANYNJ and other maritime government organizations. Plus activities for kids, maritime skill demos, music and more. Sponsored by the Working Harbor Committee, Capt. John Doswell, Executive Director, in conjunction with Capt. Jerry Roberts (founder of the event) and the Tugboat Race Steering Committee. This year’s race will be dedicated to the memory of Donald Sutherland,  tugboat and maritime photographer and  writer supreme, who passed away on  24 May 2010.  He cannot be replaced and will be  missed by the entire towing and  maritime industry in  New York Harbor and beyond.

Circle Line  Tug Race Spectator Boat 5 September 2010 - 9:30 am to 11:30am Only $30 Best viewing will be on the Circle Line Spectatot Boat as we follow the tug boats up the Hudson River to the starting line and then race with them back down to the finish line at Pier 84!   Click Here for Tickets   Tugboat Raffle Win a great framed linited edition tugboat print or tickets for 2 to ride on a historic tug boat First prize "Dangerous Race"  by Marguerite Chadwick-Juner A framed limited edition print of a tug and barge mixing it up with a sailboat race from Tug Boat BayValue - $165 Second Price (2 chances to win)  Narrated Hidden Harbor Tour® for 2  on board W.O. Decker On a Friday before Sunset in October from the Seaport Museum Raffle tickets: $5 – 5 for $20     Click Here for Tickets   Tugboat Race Flyer Tugboat Race Press Release

Events  l	Hidden Harbor Tours®  l	Tugboat Race l	Educational Programs  l	Maritime Resources  l	About Us  l	Contact Us
©Copyright 2009/2010 Working Harbor Committee
455 West 43rd St.  New York, NY 10036 212.757.1600
All photos © Copyright  Bernard Ente  unless otherwise credited.
Web design by  Myra Resnick

"Mark Twain: A Skeptic"s Progress" Thru January 2nd 2010 @ Morgan Library & Museum

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/nyregion/27twain.html

New York’s Huckleberry Friend

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Mark Twain’s portrait at the Players, a club he helped found and that is still flourishing on Gramercy Park. Hanging above it is a pool cue said to be his.

 MICHAEL POLLAK

BACK in Hannibal, Mo., Jane Clemens had no idea that her 17-year-old son, Sam, her sixth child, had gone so far East to be a journeyman printer. She was surprised by a letter, his earliest known to survive, postmarked Aug. 24, 1853:

“Well, I was out of work in St. Louis, and didn’t fancy loafing in such a dry place, where there is no pleasure to be seen without paying well for it, and so I thought I might as well go to New York. I packed up my duds and left for this village, where I arrived, all right, this morning.”

The four-month sojourn was Samuel L. Clemens’s first visit to Manhattan — before piloting up and down the Mississippi, before christening himself Mark Twain, before the California gold fields and a certain jumping frog and immortality.

Mark Twain was a lifelong traveler, and his footsteps are all over New York City. Many of them are detailed in “Mark Twain: A Life” by Ron Powers (Free Press, 2005). Twain returned many times, renting, lecturing, being lionized and trying to raise money. Other Twain sites are better known, but on this, the centennial of his death, his ghost haunts a Twain enthusiast in New York.

There is Cooper Union in the East Village, where in May 1867 this Western humorist’s debut New York speech did for him what a speech in the same building had done forAbraham Lincoln seven years earlier — triumphantly cemented an outlander’s reputation in the East.

That year Twain attended Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims, still at 75 Hicks Street in Brooklyn Heights, to hear the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher — Twain would later speak there himself — and within a few days, got caught up in a plan of Beecher’s for an excursion to Europe and the Holy Land. Twain went, and his satiric travelogue “The Innocents Abroad” was a hit. A fellow passenger, Charlie Langdon, introduced him to his sister Olivia, whom Clemens married.

There is the Players, a club still at 16 Gramercy Park, which was founded in 1888 by Twain, the actor Edwin Booth and 14 other men of the arts. There is the old Delmonico’s, most likely the one at 44th and Fifth, where he was toasted on his 70th birthday, and the Lambs Club (at 130 West 44th Street, since sold) and the Century Association, a club still at 7 West 43rd Street, a few of the many places where he spoke.

There was also the brownstone, long since demolished, at 3 East 66th Street, where a dying Gen. Ulysses S. Grantstruggled in pain to complete his memoirs, and where Twain, Grant’s publisher, frequently called to cheer up his hero.

Brief lodgings by Twain included hotels, now defunct, at 16th Street and Irving Place, Broadway and Prince, Broadway and 24th, and the surviving Gilsey House (now co-ops) at Broadway and 29th. Twain’s ghost has reportedly been seen at 14 West 10th Street, where he lived in 1900-01 (and where, in a gruesome postscript, Joel Steinberg beat Lisa Steinberg, age 6, to death in 1987).

When the four-story house at 21 Fifth Avenue, at Ninth Street, where Twain lived from 1904 to 1908, was demolished in 1954, after an unsuccessful drive to save it, the loss was mourned in Pravda.

From 1901 to 1903 Twain leased Wave Hill, an 1843 estate in the Riverdale section of the Bronx where the young Theodore Roosevelt had spent two summers. Twain built a parlor in a chestnut tree and wrote of the formidable winter views of the Hudson:

“I believe we have the noblest roaring blasts here I have ever known on land; they sing their hoarse song through the big tree-tops with a splendid energy that thrills me and stirs me and uplifts me and makes me want to live always.”

The chestnut tree and its parlor are gone, but the building, the elaborate gardens and the view are still there, and open to the public.

On his first New York visit Sam got a cheap room on Duane Street and was soon setting type at a printing house at 95-97 Cliff Street, in Lower Manhattan. He saw a number of Broadway plays and, on a day off, thrilled with teenage delight at the New York Crystal Palace exhibition in what is now Bryant Park. “ ’Tis a perfect fairy palace — beautiful beyond description,” he wrote his sister, Pamela.

He marveled at the Croton Aqueduct system and complained of Broadway crowds not unlike those jostling in Times Square today. In a letter to his older brother, Orion, he wrote: “When I get in I am borne and rubbed and crowded along, and need scarcely trouble myself about using my own legs; and when I get out it seems like I had been pulled to pieces and very badly put together again.”

But what he loved the most, he told Pamela, was the Printer’s Free Library, probably at 3 Chambers Street, with more than 4,000 books.

Next month the Morgan Library & Museum will showcase some of its collection of Mark Twain manuscripts, letters and artifacts that relate to his ambivalence toward encroaching modern age in a special exhibition called “Mark Twain: A Skeptic’s Progress,” to run through Jan. 2.

Two essential Twain sites outside the city are in easy reach of New Yorkers: Elmira, N.Y., where he is buried; and Hartford, where his Victorian Gothic home has been restored and is now a national landmark.

Beginning in 1871 Twain and his family spent more than 20 summers in Elmira at Quarry Farm, owned by his sister-in-law, Susan Crane. Mrs. Crane surprised him in 1874 with an octagonal writing room, designed to resemble a riverboat’s pilot house, overlooking the Chemung River. It was Twain’s most productive period; much of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “Life on the Mississippi,” “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” “The Prince and the Pauper” and other works were written there.

In 1952 the study was moved to the Elmira College campus, where it is staffed by student guides. Quarry Farm itself, now owned by Elmira College, is a home for visiting Twain scholars. Hamilton Hall at the college displays memorabilia from Twain’s summers in Elmira.

Mark Twain’s restored 19-room 1873 mansion in Hartford is known both for its ornate architecture and for its Victorian modernism — like central heating, a burglar alarm and one of the first telephones in a private residence. An exhibition through January examines Twain’s legacy.

Twain’s ambivalent attitude toward the New York he kept visiting shows in two of many quotations. The first is from an 1885 notebook:

“All men in New York insult you — there seem to be no exceptions. There are exceptions of course — have been — but they are probably dead. I am speaking of all persons there who are clothed in a little brief authority.”

And in an 1867 letter, reflecting on the city’s impersonality, he spoke for the ages: “I have at last, after several months’ experience, made up my mind that it is a splendid desert — a domed and steepled solitude, where the stranger is lonely in the midst of a million of his race.”

CENTURY ASSOCIATION 7 West 43rd Street, Manhattan; (212) 944-0090,thecentury.org.

COOPER UNION 30 Cooper Square, East Village; (212) 353-4100, cooper.edu.

THE PLAYERS 16 Gramercy Park South (a stretch of East 20th Street); (212) 475-6116,theplayersnyc.org.

PLYMOUTH CHURCH OF THE PILGRIMS 75 Hicks Street, Brooklyn Heights; (718) 624-4743, plymouthchurch.org.

WAVE HILL Independence Avenue and West 249th Street, Riverdale, the Bronx; (718) 549-3200, wavehill.org.

Outside the city:

TWAIN STUDY AND EXHIBIT Elmira College, Elmira, N.Y.; (607) 735-1941,elmira.edu (search for Twain’s study).

MARK TWAIN IN ELMIRA Chemung Valley History Museum, 415 East Water Street; (607) 734-4167, chemungvalleymuseum.org.

WOODLAWN CEMETERY (Twain grave) 1200 Walnut Street, Elmira; (607) 732-0151,friendsofwoodlawnelmira.org.

MARK TWAIN HOUSE & MUSEUM 351 Farmington Avenue, Hartford, Conn.; (860) 247-0998, marktwainhouse.org..

A version of this article appeared in print on August 27, 2010, on page