Born in 1969 as the seventh of eight children to two Harlem-raised parents, I benefited from both the inner-city life of Queens, New York and childhood summers spent on a farm in rural upstate New York. Academic, professional, and physical accomplishments have punctuated my life. An adventurer by nature, I became the first African American to hike to the top of every mountain in the northeast US over 4,000' (115 of them) by September of 2000. At that time, less than 400 people had accomplished this feat; whereas thousands have scaled Mount Everest. My home city’s iconic landmarks create a psychological veil that blinds people to the vast open spaces that dominate New York State.
This well-researched book presents a balanced account of the true heroism performed by escaped slaves, church abolishionists, anti-slavery societies, and vigilance committees to free their fellow citizens. Myths related to tunnels, quilts, and yard statues are explained, as well as the legendary contributions of John Brown and Harriet Tubman. My life’s travels have unknowingly placed me on the path of the underground railroad countless times. From shopping with my family as a child in Ogdensburg where African Americans crossed the St. Lawrence River into Canada to have owned properties in Essex, Clinton, and Franklin Counties along the trails to liberation.
A historian investigates evidence for the existence of the Underground Railroad in upstate New York.
Because of its clandestine nature, much of the history of the Underground Railroad remains shrouded in secrecy—so much so that some historians have even doubted its importance. After decades of research, Tom Calarco recounts his experiences compiling evidence to give credence to the legend’s oral history in upstate New York.
As the Civil War loomed and politicians from the North and South debated the fate of slavery, brave New Yorkers risked their lives to help fugitive slaves escape bondage. Whites and Blacks alike worked together…
I first saw Amish people in New York during the mid-1970s while spending summers on my family’s abandoned dairy farm in St. Lawrence County. We (Jeffersons) arrived in 1972, and a Swartzentruber Amish community settled nearby in 1974. Although we overlapped with our simply living county neighbors for ten summers (my parents sold our farm in 1985), I knew very little about them. This book provides readers with a college-level education on the inception, migration, internal conflicts, socioeconomic and sociopolitical lives of the Amish.
In a book that highlights the existence and diversity of Amish communities in New York State, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner draws on twenty-five years of observation, participation, interviews, and archival research to emphasize the contribution of the Amish to the state's rich cultural heritage. While the Amish settlements in Pennsylvania and Ohio are internationally known, the Amish population in New York, the result of internal migration from those more established settlements, is more fragmentary and less visible to all but their nearest non-Amish neighbors. All of the Amish currently living in New York are post-World War II migrants from points to…
This book can be more aptly titled “Life”. Klinkenborg’s musings over an eleven-year span while maintaining his farm in upstate New York’s Hudson Valley go well beyond the allotted time and location. His many astute observations about nature, animals, and people are expertly framed with blunt and humorous analogies. The Interlude and final chapter ("Coda") state the importance of the sciences exploring cosmology, biology, and archeology and why knowledge morphs through history. A must-read for any urbanite or suburbanite curious about country living.
Verlyn Klinkenborg's regular column, The Rural Life , is one of the most read and beloved in the New York Times. Since 1997, he has written eloquently on every aspect, large and small, of life on his upstate New York farm, including his animals, the weather and landscape, and the trials and rewards of physical labor, as well as broader issues about agriculture and land use behind farming today. Klinkenborg's pieces are admired as much for their poetic writing as for their insight: peonies are the sheepdog of flowers," dry snow "tumbles offthe angled end of the plow-blade as if…
Divergent, yet shockingly similar, life experiences are chronicled in Greenville and my own book. A poor white family from Long Island with eight children sent one son to live and work on a farm in the Catskill region during the 1950s. Harsh living conditions downstate with an alcoholic father and abusive mother were replaced upstate with a loving uncle, welcoming peers, and athletic success. Circumstances changed again dramatically, and the author tidies up the chaos that was his father’s life by visiting the farm 45 years later.
Inspired by a troubled family history, this “book of grace and dignity . . . will be around for a long, long time” (Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin).
In this “terrific” novel, award-winning author Dale Peck recounts the childhood of his father, Dale Peck Sr. (Jonathan Safran Foer). Raised in poverty with seven brothers and sisters in suburban Long Island, terrorized by an abusive mother, Dale Sr.’s life changes when his alcoholic father dumps him at his uncle’s dairy farm in upstate New York. There, he begins to thrive, finding real love and connection with his…
As books by academics are apt to be, this wonderfully rich account of the history of New York’s Finger Lakes region is replete with references, quotes, and poetic stories. Tall begins with the manner in which the Iroquois Confederacy was divided and driven out during the Revolutionary War, and progresses through the influences of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, a heavily guarded military base, and struggles with blight in Geneva, New York. “Place” is explored through the lenses of the natural environment, language, religion, psychology, racism, and more. Indeed, Tall’s approach to understanding the community she adopted can be replicated on lands all over the world.
Why does a particular landscape move us? What is it that attaches us to a particular place? Tall's From Where We Stand is an eloquent exploration of the connections we have with places-and the loss to us if there are no such connections. A typically rootless child of several American suburbs, Tall set out to make a true home for herself in the landscape that circumstance had brought her-the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.
In a mosaic of personal anecdotes, historical sketches, and lyrical meditations, she interweaves her own story with the story of this place and its…
In the early 1970s, when author Jonathan T. Jefferson (a.k.a. "John-John") was a young child, his parents did something unprecedented for a working class African American family from Queens: They bought an old, dilapidated farmhouse in Upstate New York's dairy country as a summer home for them and their eight children. Initially fish out of water, over the next decade the Jefferson family became part of the landscape, the children eagerly anticipating those precious weeks of adventure in cow country.
Echoes from the Farm is Jonathan Jefferson's way of sharing the childhood memories from those years that have guided his interests throughout adulthood. Through those memories, he also shares a special part of his family's love and the love that was shown to them in a unique place in the American tapestry. He would not trade his childhood farm experiences for anything in the world.
Journey with John-John as he reminisces about collecting apples for his mother's homemade apple sauce, jumping out of a barn window into piles of hay, and warring with one of his older brothers. Laugh heartily as you read about how one of his friends mistook a porcupine for a bear, the frogs' legs he collected for dinner, and his close encounter with the longest snake ever seen in North America. Enjoy the way his most vivid recollections are brought to life by wonderful illustrations. And be inspired to embark on your own adventure to build precious memories for you and your family.
Every picture tells a story, but it’s not always the one we expect or remember. Christmas Actually is a festive drama about family and forgiveness and a snapshot of modern family life, addressing Instagram to motherhood and everything in between.
Why Christmas? My publisher wanted my new novel to have a festive theme, specifically set in Australia–sun, surf, sunburn, and prawns. Christmas in Australia is very different from Christmas in the UK, USA, and Canada. We typically wear shorts and t-shirts, eat salad and seafood for Christmas lunch, and play beach cricket in the afternoon. Despite the season, conflicts, secrets,…
Time spent with family can be challenging, especially at Christmas actually…
Kate Cavendish is stuck in a rut. That is until a former colleague contacts her and offers her a chance to fulfil her lifelong dream of becoming a successful photographer.
With her focus pulled in all directions by her children, her pregnant sister, her newly-dating mother, and the niggling worry that her husband might be having an affair, Kate is filled with self-doubt.
Then as the countdown to Christmas begins, and memories of her own childhood resurface, Kate’s anxiety deepens – both personally and professionally. Can she move on…
