Josh Kilmer-Purcell's Blog, page 98
June 21, 2012
The Forest Primeval
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The Oldest Forest
Schoharie County has a fascinating past. Some of our blogs relate to its exciting Revolutionary history, tied in part to the region’s importance agriculturally. Sharon Springs, the home of Beekman 1802, has a remarkable history as a resort town because of its mineral springs. We haven’t yet even discussed Vroman’s Nose in Middleburgh or the remarkable limestone caves of Howe Caverns and Secret Caverns.
Here’s yet another fascinating piece of information: The floor of the world’s oldest known forest is located in Schoharie County.
The March 1, 2012, issue of Nature, the weekly international journal of science, reported that a team from the New York State Museum in Albany, Binghamton University in the city of that name, and Cardiff University in Wales made the discovery of an ancient forest horizon, complete with root systems, dating back about 385 million years to the Middle Devonian period. This discovery occurred in the same area where fossil tree stumps – known as the Gilboa stumps – were found, first in the 1850s, then again in 1920 during the construction of the Gilboa Dam along the Schoharie Creek. The town of Gilboa, after which the dam is named, is about 40 miles to the south of Sharon Springs.
The Gilboa stumps remained unclassified until 2004-05, when fossils of the tree’s intact crown and a 28-foot-long portion of trunk were found. The ancient trees were given the name Eospermatopteris, or “ancient seed ferns,” by Winifred Goldring, a paleontologist based at the New York State Museum. These trees were weedy and hollow and grew something like bamboo; the closest extant trees are thought to be tree ferns and cycads. The discovery and classification of these specimens earned recognition as one of Discover magazine’s “100 top Science Stories of 2007.”
In 2010, during repair of the dam, researchers revisited the site and determined that Eospermatopteris root systems were the most abundant. But they found other fossil remains as well, including those of large scrambling tree-sized plants known as aneurophytaleans. Similar to ferns today and possibly growing as vines, these are thought to have lived among the tall trees. And researchers found evidence of trees belonging to an ancient group of non-seed plants related to modern Lycopsida, or club mosses with their long creeping stems and erect branches. The ancient lycopsids are the oldest known group leading to modern seed plants, as well as the first plants in the fossil record having true “wood.”
Researchers have been working on a visual representation of this tropical wetland area, indicating exact locations of the different plants and respective heights.
The discoveries at Gilboa have led to a greater understanding of the relationships of ancient plants and the complexity of their forests. Moreover, it is theorized that emerging forests played a part in global climate change. During the Middle Devonian period, the Earth experienced a significant drop in global carbon dioxide levels, resulting in cooling and an eventual glaciation. Such growing knowledge of ancient forests and possible effects can be applied to current climate studies.
One of the Gilboa stumps is currently on display in the New York State Museum on Madison Avenue in Albany, some 50 miles to the east of Sharon Springs. The museum’s website is www.nysm.nysed.gov.
The History Boys are
Chris Campbell has made his permanent home in Cherry Valley, NY. The Campbell family dates back to 1739 in this town, situated about eight miles from Sharon Springs. Some family members were captured by Tories and Iroquois allies in the Cherry Valley Massacre of 1778 during the American Revolution and taken to Canada, released two years later in Albany as part of a prisoner exchange. Chris is a rare book and map collector and has had a lifelong interest in history, especially relating to upstate New York and colonial land patents. He was the founder and first chairman of the Cherry Valley Planning Board and has worked as a surveyor and realtor as well as a researcher for the Otsego County map department. His hobbies include Ham radio.
Carl Waldman, also living in Cherry Valley, is a former archivist for the New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown. He is he author of a number of reference books published by Facts On File, including Atlas of the North American Indian and Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes, both originally published in the 1980s and both in their third editions. He is the co-author of Encyclopedia of Exploration (2005) and Encyclopedia of European Peoples (2006). Carl has also done screenwriting about Native Americans, including an episode of Miami Vice entitled “Indian Wars” and the Legend of Two-Path, a drama about the Native American side of Raleigh’s Lost Colony, shown at Festival Park on Roanoke Island in North Carolina. His hobbies include music and he works with young people in the Performance and Production Workshops at the Cherry Valley Old School.
June 20, 2012
5 Beautiful Things
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This new feature is designed to inspire you to look at the world around you, to take note of the season at hand and to capture it – in memory or on film – for posterity. I will be choosing five photos each week for Beekman1802.com with this aim in mind. We’re calling the feature, The Five Most Beautiful Things In The World This Week
Waterside
There must be something in us – something in our genes, which springs from our evolutionary heritage that makes us crave the shore. During the summer months, I must be near a body of water or at least have the soothing realization that I can access a shoreline if I really wanted to. I don’t do well in land-locked locales. Here in Toronto we are blessed to be on the edge of one of the world’s largest lakes (Lake Ontario) and access to beaches and boardwalks is as simple as a streetcar ride south. My favourite kind of shoreline is, of course, one that abuts an ocean. Nothing is as humbling, or as calming as the reassuring sound of the sea’s ebb and flow. And few pleasures are as exhilarating as taking the plunge into its mysterious waves. If you are near a body of water, take advantage of its thrills. The season is short.
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Photos:
1. Standingelements.tumblr.com
2. Oldbrandnewblog.com
3. Throwsomeglittermakeitrain.tumblr.com
4. National Geographic
5. Bippityboppityboo.tumblr.com
Thayendanegea
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Thayendanegea (translated from the Iroquoian as “he places two bets”) was born in the Ohio Valley in 1742, while his parents were on a hunting trip away from their home in the Mohawk Valley. His father died soon after his birth; his mother eventually remarried Mohawk chief Nikus Brant, and Thayendanegea became known as Joseph Brant. He grew up near what is now Canajoharie (about 10 miles to the north of present Sharon Springs). William Johnson, an Irish land speculator and trader living in the region, encouraged Joseph to attend the Anglican Mohawk mission school, and Joseph became close friends with William’s son John Johnson and nephew Guy Johnson. William Johnson later married Joseph’s sister Molly Brant.
As a teenager Brant participated in the French and Indian War, serving under William Johnson at the Battle of Lake George in 1755. The next year, Johnson was appointed superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Department. Brant, who sometimes acted as interpreter for Johnson with the Iroquoian-speaking tribes, also served under the Irishman at the Battle of Fort Niagara in 1759. In 1761-63, Brant studied at Moor’s Indian Charity School (later becoming Dartmouth College). While there, he helped tutor fellow student Samuel Kirkland in Iroquoian. Kirkland would go on to become a missionary to the Oneida. In 1763, Brant fought alongside the British against united Algonquian tribes in Pontiac’s Rebellion, an uprising in the Great Lakes region, led by the Ottawa Indian Pontiac. After William Johnson’s death in 1774, Guy Johnson became the new regional superintendent of Indian Affairs, and Brant acted as interpreter for his childhood friend.
In 1775, soon after the outbreak of the American Revolution, the two traveled to England. Brant met many notables. Among them were the writer James Boswell; the painter George Romney, who painted the Mohawk’s portrait; and King George III and Queen Charlotte. Brant reportedly did not kneel before the king and grandiosely kissed the queen’s hand.
On returning to North America in 1776, Brant participated in the Battle of Long Island between Loyalist and Rebel troops, then, with two companions, slipped though enemy lines and traveled back to Iroquois lands. He was soon commissioned a colonel by the British and traveled among the Iroquois tribes to win them over to the Loyalist cause. The Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca threw their support to the British; the Oneida and Tuscarora supported the Rebels, in large part because the missionary Samuel Kirkland – Brant’s friend from school – had been working among them. This was the first time any of the Six Nations had taken up arms against one another since the formation of the confederacy centuries before.
At the Battle of Oriskany in August 1777, Brant led an Indian contingent against troops under General Nicholas Herkimer. He also led his warriors in many frontier raids, often in conjunction with the Royal Greens under his childhood friend John Jonson, now a general, and the Tory Rangers under Colonel John Butler. In 1778, Brant, operating out of Onoquaga, a Mohawk village on the Susquehanna River, led many successful raids on settlements in the region, including Cobleskill and Cherry Valley. His men burned houses and barns and drove away livestock, but spared settlers unless they fought back. At Cherry Valley, some 40 inhabitants were captured and taken to Fort Niagara, including some of blogger Chris’s ancestors.
The persistent frontier raids convinced General George Washington to send an army into Iroquois country under John Sullivan and John Clinton. In the Sullivan-Clinton campaigns of the spring and summer of 1779, Rebel troops razed some 40 Indian villages along with hundreds of acres of crops and orchards. Afterward, Brant led his warriors in raids along the Ohio Valley.
During and after the Revolutionary War, officially ending in 1783, many of the Iroquois departed their ancestral homelands for Canada. Brant retained his commission as a colonel, drawing half-pay. In 1784, he arranged for a land grant from the British government on the Grand River in Ontario. The original settlement, at the site of where he crossed the river, became known as Brant’s Ford – later Brantford. There Brant founded a Mohawk Episcopal chapel and worked on Iroquoian Mohawk translations of the Book of Common Prayer and the New Testament’s Gospel of Mark.
Brant continued to play a leadership role for the Mohawk. In 1794, he was received at Philadelphia by now-President George Washington and later attempted to negotiate a peace accord between the United States and tribes of the western Great Lakes, who had rebelled under Little Turtle in the Miami War.
Both of Brant’s first two wives had died years before of tuberculosis – Margaret in 1765 and her sister Susanna in 1771. He lived in Canada with his third wife, Catherine, daughter of the Irish trader George Croghan and a Mohawk woman. Brant died in 1807. His fourth son by Catherine, John Brant, became principal chief at the Six Nations Reserve at Brantford in 1830.
Joseph Brant is considered a Revolutionary hero in Canada. He is also honored in Cherry Valley and neighboring towns as a local success story, a great military leader, and for his showing mercy to settlers during raids.
The History Boys are
Chris Campbell has made his permanent home in Cherry Valley, NY. The Campbell family dates back to 1739 in this town, situated about eight miles from Sharon Springs. Some family members were captured by Tories and Iroquois allies in the Cherry Valley Massacre of 1778 during the American Revolution and taken to Canada, released two years later in Albany as part of a prisoner exchange. Chris is a rare book and map collector and has had a lifelong interest in history, especially relating to upstate New York and colonial land patents. He was the founder and first chairman of the Cherry Valley Planning Board and has worked as a surveyor and realtor as well as a researcher for the Otsego County map department. His hobbies include Ham radio.
Carl Waldman, also living in Cherry Valley, is a former archivist for the New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown. He is he author of a number of reference books published by Facts On File, including Atlas of the North American Indian and Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes, both originally published in the 1980s and both in their third editions. He is the co-author of Encyclopedia of Exploration (2005) and Encyclopedia of European Peoples (2006). Carl has also done screenwriting about Native Americans, including an episode of Miami Vice entitled “Indian Wars” and the Legend of Two-Path, a drama about the Native American side of Raleigh’s Lost Colony, shown at Festival Park on Roanoke Island in North Carolina. His hobbies include music and he works with young people in the Performance and Production Workshops at the Cherry Valley Old School.
Thayendanega
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Thayendanegea (translated from the Iroquoian as “he places two bets”) was born in the Ohio Valley in 1742, while his parents were on a hunting trip away from their home in the Mohawk Valley. His father died soon after his birth; his mother eventually remarried Mohawk chief Nikus Brant, and Thayendanegea became known as Joseph Brant. He grew up near what is now Canajoharie (about 10 miles to the north of present Sharon Springs). William Johnson, an Irish land speculator and trader living in the region, encouraged Joseph to attend the Anglican Mohawk mission school, and Joseph became close friends with William’s son John Johnson and nephew Guy Johnson. William Johnson later married Joseph’s sister Molly Brant.
As a teenager Brant participated in the French and Indian War, serving under William Johnson at the Battle of Lake George in 1755. The next year, Johnson was appointed superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Department. Brant, who sometimes acted as interpreter for Johnson with the Iroquoian-speaking tribes, also served under the Irishman at the Battle of Fort Niagara in 1759. In 1761-63, Brant studied at Moor’s Indian Charity School (later becoming Dartmouth College). While there, he helped tutor fellow student Samuel Kirkland in Iroquoian. Kirkland would go on to become a missionary to the Oneida. In 1763, Brant fought alongside the British against united Algonquian tribes in Pontiac’s Rebellion, an uprising in the Great Lakes region, led by the Ottawa Indian Pontiac. After William Johnson’s death in 1774, Guy Johnson became the new regional superintendent of Indian Affairs, and Brant acted as interpreter for his childhood friend.
In 1775, soon after the outbreak of the American Revolution, the two traveled to England. Brant met many notables. Among them were the writer James Boswell; the painter George Romney, who painted the Mohawk’s portrait; and King George III and Queen Charlotte. Brant reportedly did not kneel before the king and grandiosely kissed the queen’s hand.
On returning to North America in 1776, Brant participated in the Battle of Long Island between Loyalist and Rebel troops, then, with two companions, slipped though enemy lines and traveled back to Iroquois lands. He was soon commissioned a colonel by the British and traveled among the Iroquois tribes to win them over to the Loyalist cause. The Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca threw their support to the British; the Oneida and Tuscarora supported the Rebels, in large part because the missionary Samuel Kirkland – Brant’s friend from school – had been working among them. This was the first time any of the Six Nations had taken up arms against one another since the formation of the confederacy centuries before.
At the Battle of Oriskany in August 1777, Brant led an Indian contingent against troops under General Nicholas Herkimer. He also led his warriors in many frontier raids, often in conjunction with the Royal Greens under his childhood friend John Jonson, now a general, and the Tory Rangers under Colonel John Butler. In 1778, Brant, operating out of Onoquaga, a Mohawk village on the Susquehanna River, led many successful raids on settlements in the region, including Cobleskill and Cherry Valley. His men burned houses and barns and drove away livestock, but spared settlers unless they fought back. At Cherry Valley, some 40 inhabitants were captured and taken to Fort Niagara, including some of blogger Chris’s ancestors.
The persistent frontier raids convinced General George Washington to send an army into Iroquois country under John Sullivan and John Clinton. In the Sullivan-Clinton campaigns of the spring and summer of 1779, Rebel troops razed some 40 Indian villages along with hundreds of acres of crops and orchards. Afterward, Brant led his warriors in raids along the Ohio Valley.
During and after the Revolutionary War, officially ending in 1783, many of the Iroquois departed their ancestral homelands for Canada. Brant retained his commission as a colonel, drawing half-pay. In 1784, he arranged for a land grant from the British government on the Grand River in Ontario. The original settlement, at the site of where he crossed the river, became known as Brant’s Ford – later Brantford. There Brant founded a Mohawk Episcopal chapel and worked on Iroquoian Mohawk translations of the Book of Common Prayer and the New Testament’s Gospel of Mark.
Brant continued to play a leadership role for the Mohawk. In 1794, he was received at Philadelphia by now-President George Washington and later attempted to negotiate a peace accord between the United States and tribes of the western Great Lakes, who had rebelled under Little Turtle in the Miami War.
Both of Brant’s first two wives had died years before of tuberculosis – Margaret in 1765 and her sister Susanna in 1771. He lived in Canada with his third wife, Catherine, daughter of the Irish trader George Croghan and a Mohawk woman. Brant died in 1807. His fourth son by Catherine, John Brant, became principal chief at the Six Nations Reserve at Brantford in 1830.
Joseph Brant is considered a Revolutionary hero in Canada. He is also honored in Cherry Valley and neighboring towns as a local success story, a great military leader, and for his showing mercy to settlers during raids.
The History Boys are
Chris Campbell has made his permanent home in Cherry Valley, NY. The Campbell family dates back to 1739 in this town, situated about eight miles from Sharon Springs. Some family members were captured by Tories and Iroquois allies in the Cherry Valley Massacre of 1778 during the American Revolution and taken to Canada, released two years later in Albany as part of a prisoner exchange. Chris is a rare book and map collector and has had a lifelong interest in history, especially relating to upstate New York and colonial land patents. He was the founder and first chairman of the Cherry Valley Planning Board and has worked as a surveyor and realtor as well as a researcher for the Otsego County map department. His hobbies include Ham radio.
Carl Waldman, also living in Cherry Valley, is a former archivist for the New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown. He is he author of a number of reference books published by Facts On File, including Atlas of the North American Indian and Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes, both originally published in the 1980s and both in their third editions. He is the co-author of Encyclopedia of Exploration (2005) and Encyclopedia of European Peoples (2006). Carl has also done screenwriting about Native Americans, including an episode of Miami Vice entitled “Indian Wars” and the Legend of Two-Path, a drama about the Native American side of Raleigh’s Lost Colony, shown at Festival Park on Roanoke Island in North Carolina. His hobbies include music and he works with young people in the Performance and Production Workshops at the Cherry Valley Old School.
June 18, 2012
The Chatter for June
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We’ve lobbied really hard for Garrison Keillor to give up life in Lake Wobegone and move to Sharon Springs, but thus far he has not answered our letters or returned our calls.
Sharon Springs has beautiful people and above-average children, too, so on to Plan B.
What is a small town village without a small town paper to keep track of what everyone is doing?
Leila Durkin, proprietor of The Village Hall Gallery, is now editor of our own little paper.
Each month you can check back here for a new issue and follow the lives of the real village people. If you pay a real visit, you may even want to submit a story idea of your own!
You may not live in small town, but at least you can pretend.
See below for the June 2012 Issue
Gartending: The Ibsen
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For the Spring and Summer growing season, we bring you a new feature at Beekman 1802, the Soused Gnome. He’ll teach you how to “gartend”–create perfect seasonal cocktails using fresh ingredients from the garden.
As a boy my parents would take me to Europe for extended “working” vacations. My parents were keen on European travel and used these trips as a means of education that was not available in books. I was encouraged to eat all meals with them instead of in the hotel room, like many of my peers were forced to do by their parents. Beer, wine and liquors were always served and I was encouraged to sip along with my parents- different liquors for aperitif, excellent wines with dinner and after dinner a fine Martinique Rhum or a Cognac to finish the meal. In Italy I have fond memories of Grappa, in Normany it was Calvados, in Brazil Cachaca and in the Scandinavian countries it was usually a mixture of fire driven Aquavit and cooler, more sensuous fruit based liqueurs.
Klaus, the Soused Gnome hails from Germany, a country very fond of fruit liqueurs and strong drinks. He has told me (not in so many words…but..) to try to feature a Williams Pear liqueur that (I) just discovered at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic/Independent Spirits show.
pür•spirits is sitting right in front of me. The tall, elegant bottle with frosted glass finish is like an emotional rescue for my palate. I’m quite fond of this liqueur!
Sitting next to the pür is a bottle of Krorogstad Aquavit. Caraway seed and fire driven liquid from Portland, Oregon mixes well with the pure pear essence from the liqueur. Then in keeping with the theme of fresh from the garden I’ve added a selection of thyme and mint to the mixture. Not as a garnish but as an infusion!
The Ibsen Cocktail
to warm the coldest nights or cool down the hottest days of the coming summer!
Ingredients:
Chunks of ice from an ice-house. 5 pound chunk will be perfect
pür•spirits from Germany
Krogstad Aquavit from Portland, Oregon
Fresh Thyme and mint in a cheesecloth bag
Crushed Blackberries and Raspberries
Seltzer Water
Pre-preparation:
A couple days before making this cocktail place a cheesecloth bag of mint and thyme inside a bottle of Aquavit and set into the fridge.
Cocktail Preparation:
Lightly crush the blackberries and raspberries with a muddler
Add some fresh ice to the cocktail shaker
Add 2 Shots of the Krogstad Aquavit infused with the thyme and mint and 1 shot of the pür•spirits Williams Pear Liqueur to the shaker
Add four drops of Bitter End Moroccan Bitters
Shake briskly for 30 seconds
Serve in a coupe’ glass (like an old fashioned Champagne glass) Cut some nice chunks of ice from your five pound block of ice (very celebratory!) and drop into the coupe’ glass
Splash some seltzer over the top of the ice to reveal the fizz
A veritable mind eraser!
Serves 2-3.. I err to the side of 2 persons
June 15, 2012
Gartending: Home on the Grange
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For the Spring and Summer growing season, we bring you a new feature at Beekman 1802, the Soused Gnome. He’ll teach you how to “gartend”–create perfect seasonal cocktails using fresh ingredients from the garden.
I used to live up in Maine. One thing that Maine has that I’ve never really seen anyplace else in the country is the Grange Halls. With the demise of the family farm, the importance of the Grange Halls has actually remained vibrant, keeping the old ways alive. Maine has a plethora of Grange Halls in the less touristy, older towns as a stark reminder of what was and what may never be again.
The temperance movement started up in Maine but this drink is firmly rooted in the period of time after prohibition ended up to today. Maine is in many ways akin in appearance to the Norwegian landscape. Harsh and relentless winters still make this place inhospitable to most visitors. You need real fortification in the form of powerful alcoholic beverages to stave off the freezing winds that cut right through you.
Aquavit or water of life from Krogstad in Portland, Oregon of all places- harken to the ancestry of many of Maine’s first inhabitants. The flavors of caraway seed and licorice are just made for the botanical notes of Gin from Aviation.
Add to that the hauntingly floral and complex flavors of St. Germain. You have a cocktail that is world’s away from a plain Martini and as elegant as anything that you can pour down your throat.
The gar-tending element of this cocktail is a mash of freshly picked radishes. I just love the way they add depth to this drink and spice that is unexpected. Once they are strained from the final result the aromatics and elegance of the radish will charm your friends into another world of cocktail rationality.
The Grange Hall Cocktail
will quench the thirst of 2 very thirsty friends
Ingredients:
2 Shots Krogstad Aquavit
2 Shots Aviation Gin
2 Tablespoons simple syrup and 2 Tablespoons St. Germain
6 freshly picked radishes (really well scrubbed and chopped into a small dice)
Fresh Mint for garnish
Preparation:
To a cocktail shaker muddle the radish dice into a paste to reveal the aromatics
Add the simple syrup and St. Germain, then fill the shaker ¼ with ice
Add the liquors
Shake and strain into well-chilled Martini glasses and garnish with a sprig of fresh mint
Warren Bobrow is the Food and Drink Editor of the 501c3, non profit Wild Table on Wild River Review located in Princeton, New Jersey. He has published over three hundred articles in about three years on everything from cocktail mixology to restaurant reviews and travel articles. Learn more from his website, The Cocktail Whisperer, or by visiting his blogs at The Daily Basic, Foodista, and Williams-Sonoma
June 8, 2012
Gartending: The Full Brazilian
For the Spring and Summer growing season, we bring you a new feature at Beekman 1802, the Soused Gnome. He’ll teach you how to “gartend”–create perfect seasonal cocktails using fresh ingredients from the garden.
Brazilian Cachaca is not Rum. Sure it’s made from sugar cane, but the difference is quite stark on a flavor perspective. Rum is drier in the flavor profile- with a much different finish. I’m especially fond of Sao Cachaca because of the USDA Certified Organic element of the liquor. And hailing from Brazil this is meaningful for me, primarily because it shows that the Brazilian people are as concerned with sustainability and organics as we are here in the United States.
The Pere Chartreuse is an ancient group of monks who live on the edge of civilization in the French Alps. They produce an herbal liqueur that packs quite a punch, nearly 120 proof by volume! The color Chartreuse actually is named after their lovely green tinged liqueur. But I must warn you. Although quite potent, you won’t be able to taste very much of the power of this drink. The combination of Cachaca and Chartreuse is perhaps one of the strongest drinks in my lexicon of dangerous cocktail.
What makes this drink so exciting is the addition of Cynar, the artichoke flavored Amaro from Italy. Cynar is quite popular in the country of Argentina and for good measure. Prior to WWII thousands of Italians immigrated to Argentina. They brought with them their thirst for strong liquor and mystery. The mysterious flavor of Cynar mixed with Chartreuse and Cachaca is a twisted drink from the very heart of darkness.
This cocktail is served slushy style over a mound of crushed ice, in a sterling silver julep cup. The cup frosts over, treating the imbiber with a frozen lip and memorable experience. A splash of CANE SYRUP Coca Cola makes this drink very dangerous!
The Too Late to Call Cocktail
for about three soon to be plastered guests
Ingredients:
2 Shots of Cachaca from Sao (USDA Certified Organic)
2 Shots of Chartreuse (Green)
2 Shots of Cynar
Fresh Lime Juice (About ½ cup)
5 oz CANE SUGAR Coca Cola – Essential for flavor. Use the CANE Sugar variety (found at Mexican Grocery stores)
Preparation:
To a pitcher add all the liquors along with ¼ fill of ice cubes
Add the lime-juice
Stir and strain into some frozen julep cups or short rocks glass filled to overflowing with crushed ice
Finish with a splash of CANE sugar Coca-Cola
Warren Bobrow is the Food and Drink Editor of the 501c3, non profit Wild Table on Wild River Review located in Princeton, New Jersey. He has published over three hundred articles in about three years on everything from cocktail mixology to restaurant reviews and travel articles. Learn more from his website, The Cocktail Whisperer, or by visiting his blogs at The Daily Basic, Foodista, and Williams-Sonoma
June 6, 2012
5 Beautiful Things
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This new feature is designed to inspire you to look at the world around you, to take note of the season at hand and to capture it – in memory or on film – for posterity. I will be choosing five photos each week for Beekman1802.com with this aim in mind. We’re calling the feature, The Five Most Beautiful Things In The World This Week
Dining Alfresco
Food just tastes better outdoors – especially if it’s freshly picked or homemade. Each summer I look forward to picnics with family and friends. Often it is the scouting for quaint outdoor locations that yields the most fun. In Toronto it can be an exciting challenge with so much concrete around. The discovery of a new park or a private section of beach along the shores of Lake Ontario, though, is always a treat. My goal this summer is to explore some of the islands that are just offshore. Taking a 10-minute ferry ride is simple enough. Once we’re there I imagine we’ll find the perfect little spot under a maple tree. We’ll roll out the blanket and lay out our delicious picnic foods: egg salad, potato salad, fresh greens and plump cherry tomatoes, strawberries, grapes and other munchables. The day will go too quickly, I’m sure, just like the season itself. Below are five beautiful images to inspire you to eat outdoors this weekend!
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Photos:
We’ve Got the Beats
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Poetry Farm
The name East Hill is a familiar one. Many communities have hills of that name lying to their east. One such hill lies to the east of Cherry Valley in Otsego County. It has been known by other names throughout the years – Brimstone Mountain, Mount Independence, Signal Hill, and Tower Hill. It is the primary watershed of the Cherry Valley Creek, feeding the Susquehanna River that runs all the way to Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.
From the vantage point of Sharon Springs, East Hill might be called “West Hill” since it lies to the southwest of that Schoharie County community. From different vantage points on East Hill, one can catch vistas of parts of both Cherry Valley and Sharon Springs, as well as the Adirondacks of New York, the Green Mountains of Vermont, and the Berkshires of Massachusetts. Due west, rolling hills give way to prairies and plains, the next highest point being the Rocky Mountains. Nestled on East Hill, on a dead end road, is a ramshackle farmhouse with a rich 20th-century history.
Allen Ginsberg was a renowned poet as well as a pivotal figure in the Beat movement of the 1950s and the counterculture revolution of the 1960s-70s. Born in Newark, New Jersey, to Louis Ginsberg, a high school teacher, and Naomi Levy Ginsberg, poet and political activist, he was raised in nearby Paterson. He attended Columbia University in New York City where he became friends with fellow students Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. Later, in San Francisco he became a close friend of Neal Cassady.
Allen’s book Howl and Other Poems was published in 1956 by the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco owned by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The long poem “Howl” was a call for liberation from inhumanity and intolerance. In 1961, Kaddish and Other Poems 1958-1960 was published. In the long poem “Kaddish,” Ginsberg explored his relationship with his mentally troubled mother, who had passed away in an institution in 1956. During the 1960s and 1970s, Ginsberg was an advocate for gay rights and opposition to the Vietnam War. He is credited with inventing the phrase “flower power,” dating back to 1965, a slogan of peace rallies. He also became known for experimentation with LSD and for practicing Buddhism.
In 1974, with poet Anne Waldman (sister of blogger Carl), Ginsberg founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute, a college affiliated with Tibetan Buddhism in Boulder, Colorado. That same year, he won the National Book Award for The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971, finally gaining formal recognition by the literary establishment. Ginsberg also wrote a number of songs, performing them on the harmonium. He also collaborated with many well-known musicians, including Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Bono, Patti Smith, the Clash, the Fugs, and Phillip Glass. He appeared in Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” film clip in 1965, the opening of the documentary about a Dylan tour entitled Don’t Look Back.
In 1966, during the Vietnam War, Ginsberg formed a nonprofit organization, the Committee on Poetry (C.O.P.), to assist small presses and impoverished poets, funded in large part by his poetry readings. In 1968, the organization purchased a farmhouse and about 80 acres on East Hill in Cherry Valley, some six miles from the village of Cherry Valley. Ginsberg hope was that it serve as “a haven for comrades in distress,” giving them a place to get off drugs and work on artistic projects. He invested heavily in the property. Rather than bring in electricity from faraway existing lines, he had propane lamps and heaters installed. An Ashley woodstove also provided heat. A small windmill generated electricity. And a hydraulic ram pump used gravity to feed water to indoor plumbing.
Ginsberg retreated to what became known as the “East Hill Farm” or the “Committee” to meditate and write, especially during the summers of 1968 through 1973. At the farm he began working on setting some of William Blake’s work to music for release on the Beatles’ Apple Records label. The poet Peter Orlovsky lived there full time until 1972.
Among the many writers who spent time at East Hill Farm, in addition to Allen and Peter, were Charles Plymell, Ray Bremser, Lucien Carr, Herbert Huncke, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Gegory Corso, Robert Creeley, Carl Solomon, John Giorno, Jim Carroll, Barry Miles, Ann Charters, Andy Clausen, Michael Brownstein, Bob Rosenthal, Shelley Kraut, and Anne Waldman (and her brother, blogger Carl). Filmmakers Barbara Rubin, Harry Smith, and Gordon Ball also lived there. Among the visual artists who visited were Claude Pelieu and Mary Beach.
Ginsberg contracted liver cancer and passed away at his New York City apartment in 1997. Most of his books remain in print. The East Hill Farm, is still managed by the Committee on Poetry, part of the Allen Ginsberg Estate.
Gordon Ball has written a memoir of the three years he spent in Cherry Valley on East Hill as farm manager, entitled East Hill Farm: Seasons with Allen Ginsberg (Counterpoint, 2011). From this work one can a sense of different cultures – local culture and counterculture – coming into contact with each other and doing surprisingly well.
The History Boys are
Chris Campbell has made his permanent home in Cherry Valley, NY. The Campbell family dates back to 1739 in this town, situated about eight miles from Sharon Springs. Some family members were captured by Tories and Iroquois allies in the Cherry Valley Massacre of 1778 during the American Revolution and taken to Canada, released two years later in Albany as part of a prisoner exchange. Chris is a rare book and map collector and has had a lifelong interest in history, especially relating to upstate New York and colonial land patents. He was the founder and first chairman of the Cherry Valley Planning Board and has worked as a surveyor and realtor as well as a researcher for the Otsego County map department. His hobbies include Ham radio.
Carl Waldman, also living in Cherry Valley, is a former archivist for the New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown. He is he author of a number of reference books published by Facts On File, including Atlas of the North American Indian and Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes, both originally published in the 1980s and both in their third editions. He is the co-author of Encyclopedia of Exploration (2005) and Encyclopedia of European Peoples (2006). Carl has also done screenwriting about Native Americans, including an episode of Miami Vice entitled “Indian Wars” and the Legend of Two-Path, a drama about the Native American side of Raleigh’s Lost Colony, shown at Festival Park on Roanoke Island in North Carolina. His hobbies include music and he works with young people in the Performance and Production Workshops at the Cherry Valley Old School.
