All articles filed in history

How long has it been? Twenty years? Twenty years since the Capital District Islanders skated around the ice of RPI’s Houston Fieldhouse? Yeah. It has been that long. I remember when the CD Islanders came to the area – it was in response to the International Hockey League putting a franchise (the Albany Choppers) in…

Once upon a time, the Adirondacks were filled from one end of Route 9 to the other with amusement parks. Most of them have faded away, others have evolved under the aegis of new ownerships.  You might remember some of those classic nams – the Land of Makebelieve, 1000 Animals, Gaslight Village… In the past,…

In case you hadn’t heard yet, according to this Times Union article last month, a portion of the Albany County Rail Trail will be opened soon for public use. As announced on the Rail Trail’s website, and as  followed up on the Bethlehem blog, the Albany County Legislature, the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy and the…

It’s about 10:15 Sunday night.  I was about to go to bed; I had just finished my blog post for Monday morning, about using old film for a photo project.  As was my habit, I checked my twitter account to see what was going on.  There were reports on twitter that President Barack Obama was…

It’s a sad but poignant joke.  Because of situations involving my family, I attended several different elementary and junior high schools between 1968 and 1981.  I’ve half-snarkily called my educational experience “The Twelve,” in that from kindergarten in Slingerlands Elementary School to my senior year of high school with Street Academy, I was enrolled in…

You may or may not know the story of Erin Davies.  Let me give you the Reader’s Digest update. In 2007, Erin Davies’ 2002 Volkswagen Beetle was vandalized.  Some cretin spray-painted “FAG” and “U R GAY” on her vehicle, simply because the girl had the unmitigated gall to put a rainbow reflector on the rear…

Some of my favorite childhood moments involved spending summers in Boston with my grandmother. During those times, I could get away from issues involving my family, and I could spend some peaceful time with my Grandma Betty. She lived in a small blue cape-style house in West Roxbury, and if I behaved myself all week,…

While clearing out some boxes of old junk, I came across this vintage cookbook.  It may have been printed in the mid-1960’s or early 1970’s, and it was produced by an organization called the Albany County Home Bureau. Okay, this caught my attention. The spiral-bound cookbook featured dozens of recipes from Capital District homemakers and…