Arts and Entertainment

Last week I asked: Who was Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State? William Seward. A mini-vacation is a wonderful thing. Sometimes things just happen without planning. We have season tickets at Merry-Go-Round Playhouse and they inadvertently […]

I think the Erie Canal is one of the most under promoted treasures of New York State. The building of the Erie Canal is considered an engineering marvel on the scale of the pyramids. In the early 1800s when New York governor, DeWitt Clinton proposed building a waterway that would connect the navigable Hudson River to Lake Erie by a 300-mile canal through the wilderness, Thomas Jefferson said, “It is a splendid project and may be executed a century hence… but it is a little short of madness to think of it at this day.”

Cooking classes or experiences are a fun and delectable way to learn about a local culture. When John and I were at the Pan Pacific Niwana in Bali, Indonesia, we participated in a cooking class. We have found that people are happy to share their culture and during a cooking experience we often learn more about a local culture the goes beyond the culinary aspects.

Visiting the Culinary Institute of America has been on my Bucket List for years and now I can finally cross it off. John and I had a wonderful guide, Bo Nu, a lovely young lady from Korea who was in her senior year at CIA. I asked her why she chose CIA and she said, “It was the best culinary college that offered a Bachelor’s Degree.”

Talk about making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Whoever came up with the idea to turn an old railroad bridge over the Hudson River into a walkway gets an “Atta’ Boy.” The railroad bridge was built in 1889 and was in service until 1974. Through the cooperation of public and private groups, the Walkway Over the Hudson Historic Park opened in 2009 making it the longest footbridge in the world.

It had been years since we visited Franklin Roosevelt’s home in Hyde Park. Since then the Henry A. Wallace Visitor and Education Center has opened where they have a twenty-minute film, “Rendezvous with History.” The film is a wonderful overview of the Roosevelt years and brought to mind how he changed the fabric of American society. We often have trouble putting current problems in an historic perspective.