Month: January 2015
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A Winter Tragedy in the Unforgiving North Country
This is a heartbreaking story of a misjudgment made 87 years ago today. The heart of the sadness is that this is a true event. In the summer of 2014, I was wandering through St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Chateaugay, New York. I was searching for certain headstones to photograph for ancestor-seekers that lived too far…
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The Impossibly Long Life of a Snowflake
It’s a simple act of nature. A billion snowflakes drifting slowly earthward…sometimes rising, sometimes blown sideways…but always downward. If they each made a sound like a bird, someone stepping out onto a frozen porch in the North Country of the Adirondacks would be deafened. But each flake makes a sound only it can hear. It…
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An Ice Queen and Prometheus on a New York City Night
A month ago I wouldn’t be able to stand where I’m standing tonight. Impossible. Unless I was willing to share the same physical space with seven other people. I’m looking down at the skating rink at Rockefeller Center. Four weeks ago, thousands of tourists and locals were cramped in and around the small park that…
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Park Avenue on a Rainy Day
I am standing in the rain at the intersection of the Mythical Avenue and Ordinary Life Street in New York City. If there’s a map at your side, look for where E. 92nd Street crosses Park Avenue. That’s where I am standing, safely protected from the speeding traffic, on the landscaped Mall that separates the…
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The Weekend I Took the Moon Rocks Home
Only on rare occasions (once or twice a month) do I check for the black SUV’s in my driveway or parked around the corner on the road where I now live. I hesitate to give the name of the road–I’m not sure it’s in the Big Computer now. We only moved here in December of…
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The Digital Indoor-Outdoor Thermometer From Area 51
It’s common knowledge that various agencies under the umbrella of the “Federal Government” have been conducting TOP SECRET experiments in highly secure location inside an Air Force Base in California (or Nevada or some such forgotten region of the Great American Desert). This place has been known by many “in the know” people as “Area…