Along the Canal
June 2013
One
of the pleasures I never have sufficient time to indulge is the opportunity for
an uninterrupted time to read. My choice of reading material is diverse and may
be a novel, history, biographies or whatever looks interesting at the time.
When our children were small I specialized in short stories for obvious
reasons. Travel, especially by air or
train, provides that opportunity; reading in the car not so much and never on a
boat. There is so much to see when you are on a boat, especially on the canal.
Vicky Daly
You Never Know What You’ll
Find
One
of the pleasures I never have sufficient time to indulge is the opportunity for
an uninterrupted time to read. My choice of reading material is diverse and may
be a novel, history, biographies or whatever looks interesting at the time.
When our children were small I specialized in short stories for obvious
reasons. Travel, especially by air or
train, provides that opportunity; reading in the car not so much and never on a
boat. There is so much to see when you are on a boat, especially on the canal.
.
I had an A #1 opportunity to read early in May and I took
it. We were returning from a tour of the National Parks in the Four Corners
area. (If you have not been there, go! The parks and the landscapes between them are magnificent.) The tour ended
in Las Vegas before a lengthy flight home which involved a change of planes in
Denver and then again Chicago before arriving in Rochester. To prepare myself
for that much sitting I picked up that morning’s NY Times in the Las Vegas
airport at 4:30 AM. And read I did - all
the way home, finding two items which
pleased me greatly and which I want to share with you. It’s so nice to find positive references in
the papers. I need to tell you I read the ‘soft’ stuff first in the papers. It
sort of cushions all the bad news on the state, federal and international
level.
A delightful find in the Arts section of the Times,
5/15/13, was an article by Joseph Berger on a new exhibit of the Museum of the
City of New York ( a great place to visit ). The exhibit is entitled “A
Beautiful Way to Go: New York’s Greenwood Cemetery”. It was the first
residential cemetery in the area, as opposed to church, private and military.
What pleased me was the following:
As
the exhibition points out, the cemetery was founded a dozen or so years after
the opening of the Erie Canal, which turned New York into the umbilical cord
between Europe and the Midwest and fueled the city’s explosive growth.
We
all know this to be true, but it is very nice to read it in the NY Times.
Every
Wednesday there is a section of the NY Times devoted to Dining. That particular
paper had a featured article entitled “Turning A Colorblind Eye to Spring:
Twenty Wines for $20 each, minus preconceived notions” by Eric Asimov. A
preconceived notion he references is that New York State wines are not worth
one’s attention. BUT, among the European and California wines that day was
listed a Pinot Noir from Red Tail Ridge
Winery on the west side of Seneca Lake.
The labels of all Finger Lakes wines list their Finger Lakes location. I
believe it is a law. That is good for everyone. If this is of interest to
you, take a look at Summer in a
Glass: The Coming of Age of Winemaking in the Finger Lakes. It is about the wines but, even more, it is
about the people who make it. Evan Dawson, whose name may be familiar to
television viewers in the Rochester area, is the author. It is a good read.
And
on the local level: Congratulations are in order for the 3 new Eagle Scouts:
Chris Heckman, Boy Scout Troop 166, Macedon, and Stephen Lucas and Jeremy
Unterborn, Scout Troop 96, Palmyra. They are fine young men who have
accomplished much and, as their leaders remind them, much will be expected of
them in the future. I have no doubt that they will continue to make us all
proud. Congratulations, too, go to Pat Gorthy, author of Peppermint Summer, A young
girl’s journey on the Erie Canal in 1860 to visit her grandparents’ peppermint
farm in Lyons. Not just a delightful read, the book preserves and
shares an important part of Wayne County and Erie Canal history. A portion of
the proceeds from sales of the book will go to the Hotchkiss Building museum in
Lyons.
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