William and Andrew Smith – jocularly known in their own lifetimes as “Trade” and “Mark” because that’s what it says under their portraits on the cough drops boxes – were geniuses at marketing.
Saturday, Dec. 2: There will be a presentation by Tom Rinaldi and Rob Yasinsac, explorer/author/photographers who together created the book Hudson Valley Ruins: Forgotten Landmarks of an American Landscape. The pair have focused their research on lesser-known historical sites where, “in spite of their significance, these structures have been allowed to decay, and in some cases, to disappear altogether.”
Sunday, Nov. 19: This salon-style event will feature author and historian Rosemary Nichols and the famed musical duo Jay Ungar & Molly Mason. Well-known for their expert curation of American folk music, Jay and Molly’s music was featured in Ken Burns’ PBS landmark series The Civil War.
Perhaps it’s time that the adventures of this bold, brave, prodigiously talented Hudson Valley native be rediscovered, in her own words and pictures.
The book is positioned as a celebration of nature’s fragile ecosystems and of the David v. Goliath community members (for David’s tactics, in this case, were largely litigatory) banded together to protect them. But in the moment-to-moment of the prose and in the very consciously balanced, 360-degree management of his facts, Mabee reveals himself mostly as a fastidious historian and no polemicist at all.
Sunday, Nov. 5: “The Right to Vote: 100th Anniversary Commemoration” exhibition opens with lecture by Charles Ford. The Museum was founded by locals interested in preserving the history of the communities taken by the building of the reservoirs.
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.
Thursday, Oct. 19: Kennedy is the author of several books including Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War. Freedom from Fear tells the story of the New Deal’s achievements, without slighting its shortcomings, contradictions and failures. It is a story rich in drama and peopled with unforgettable personalities, including the incandescent-but-enigmatic figure of Roosevelt himself.
Friday-Sunday, Oct. 13-15: The event includes a full schedule of historical reenactments at different locations and a number of supplementary activities that include a Colonial grand ball, exhibits, a cemetery tour, a bucket brigade competition and Redcoat and Militia camp tours and demonstrations. Most events are free to attend.