From the mid-1840s to about 1920, the shores of this island in Tivoli Bays served as the unlikely setting for a collection of Mayan sculptures brought more than 1,700 miles north from their points of origin. Back then, canoe excursions by moonlight were the height of dramatic entertainment. Explorers were folk heroes and on a steamy August night, it would have been easy to imagine you were moving up a previously uncharted river, with natives gazing out from the darkness.

Sunday, Oct. 22: New Yorkers get to start celebrating the centennial of women’s suffrage nearly three years earlier than the rest of the country. The 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was formally adopted on August 26, 1920. But it was in a referendum on November 6, 1917 that 54 percent of New York’s all-male voters approved the addition of a women’s suffrage amendment to our state constitution, after it had been approved by two successive State Legislatures.