Like its sister library in Poughkeepsie, the A. J. Williams-Myers African Roots Community Center Library was created to promote literacy through teaching and learning about the African roots experience, particularly in the Hudson Valley.
Mark McKinnon and Alexander Heffner will discuss the historical transfer of power and the future of American politics at the FDR site in Hyde Park. McKinnon, former advisor to two governors and co-creator/host of Showtime’s The Circus: The Greatest Political Show on Earth; and Heffner, journalist/essayist/educator and currently host of The Open Mind on PBS will consider presidential transitions from Roosevelt to Trump, just days before the 45th president’s inauguration.
For many involved in the peace movement of the 1960s, the moment when things began unraveling – when antiwar activists’ hold on the moral high ground became hopelessly slippery – occurred on March 6, 1970, when three members of the Weather Underground were killed in an explosion that destroyed a townhouse at 18 West 11th Street in Greenwich Village, where they were working on constructing a nail bomb in the sub-basement. Two of their colleagues, Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson, whose father owned the building, were upstairs at the time and managed to escape relatively unhurt. Both became fugitives, named to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, and Wilkerson successfully evaded the authorities for another ten years.
Father Richard McKeon, who has been the Church of the Messiah’s rector since 2010, says, “People ask me, ‘Why save the building?’ and I say we have a beautiful building and it has a place in the community.”
This spot was used briefly in Hitchcock’s film North by Northwest: the bit where the train comes to a halt for an unscheduled stop and the Feds get on. It’s thought that the facility could possibly reopen as an active passenger station, if the idea of extending Metro-North’s Hudson Line commuter rail service farther north is ever realized.
When federal agents raided the farm in 1932, they found a vast network of interconnected concrete tunnels designed for quick exits, along with holding tanks and underground bunkers…
Vly-Atwood, known hereabouts as “the Vly,” was a hamlet where people attended school and church, and gathered for social congress. Named from the Middle Dutch word vley or valeye, meaning valley or swamp, the Vly is actually situated in an upland area of the Town of Marbletown, above the buried aqueduct that takes water from the Ashokan Reservoir to New York City, and the Esopus Creek, which flows through a narrow canyon below.
This is the story of two remarkable people who, 51 years ago, envisioned a place where people from near and far could come and research their genealogy or learn about local history – a place where membership was not required, with regular hours, a knowledgeable staff and a collection of research materials that were guaranteed to be there when you needed them.
The Ulster County Courthouse in Kingston is no ordinary place; it’s one of the country’s earliest bastions of democracy
Mount Gulian served as Continental Army headquarters of patriot general Fredrich von Steuben from 1782 to ’83. After the American victory at Yorktown, General von Steuben and other American officers created the Society of the Cincinnati at the site, America’s first veterans’ fraternal organization.