Tea Island photographed by Seneca Ray Stoddard, circa 1880 I love Lake George, islands and tea, so it was inevitable that I write something about Tea Island. The southernmost island in the lake, it has agreeably posed for many photographers. One of the best known is Seneca Ray Stoddard, who in his Lake George; A […]
On occasion, one experiences a confluence of comments on the same subject that amounts to a sign, a call to action. And so it was last week when Shannon and Marcia both mentioned cheese. Shannon turned my attention to a list of legendary parties that included President Andrew Jackson’s Cheese Party at the White House. […]
My wife thinks I have gone around the bend because I have begun watching golf on television. I have never played golf, unless you count courses with a windmill hole. But I enjoy watching, and I have a regimen that I find very fulfilling. First, I place a pint of excellent beer within my reach. […]
Big Bertha I didn’t know my Aunt Mary. She was my grandfather’s sister, and he never said a word about her. But I do know that in May of 1916 she helped out at a 10-day bazaar raising money for the widows and orphans of German soldiers who had fallen in battle in the Great […]
One of my favorite parts of the Pittsburgh Zoo is a shadowy doorway between the bear pits, with an inscription showing the dates for their start and completion, 1936-1937, and crediting the Works Progress Administration. I’ve read that this exhibit was the first effort at the zoo to do more than cage the animals, to […]
In 1968, my fraternity brother, Bud Shulman, and I, felt it was time to teach our younger brothers how to tap a keg of beer. The lesson, almost a sacred ceremony, took place in the kitchen of the Delt house at 115 College Place on the Syracuse University campus, a dry campus, but what of […]
I grew up in a family that taught its children to distrust and dislike Roman Catholics. My father’s father believed that if John F. Kennedy became President, the Pope-o-Rome (one word) would relocate to Washington D.C., and rule the nation. I believed his attitude came from his rural Baptist background, a distrust of The Other, […]
