Sainte Marie Among the Iroquois: Thoughts on a Historic Site

We have often discussed history and its interpretation on this blog. The analysis of historic sites has not always been favorable (such as my discussion of the FDR house and the Wilderstein House). I’m happy to say that today I visited Sainte Marie Among the Iroquois, a historic site between Liverpool and Syracuse and—despite my fears—was impressed by the quality of the historic interpretation.

Sainte Marie Among the Iroquois is a reconstruction of a small French fort/mission post/diplomatic station that existed on the shores of Onondaga Lake from 1656-1658. The fort itself was part of an ongoing struggle for the control of the Great Lakes basin. The Iroquois Confederacy was at the height of its power, having just defeated its rival, the Huron Confederacy in 1650, followed by victories over the Erie, Susquehannocks and the Neutrals in the early-1650s. This is important to note as there is an idea that native peoples inevitably decline after European contact falters when we look at the Iroquois, whose power only grew for a century after European contact.

The French, on the other hand, had lost their trading partners (the Huron, Erie and Neutrals) and were therefore cut off from supplies of furs (in fact, as a result their corporate government collapsed in the early 1660s). Mohawks were raiding deep into New France and for a period of time blockaded the city of Quebec itself. The creation of the post on Onondaga Lake was a move to circumvent the Mohawks and deal directly with the Council of the Confederacy. The fact that the French abandoned the site so quickly in 1658 that they left behind even their tools shows the fragility of the French presence. For a chronology of the 17th century wars, check out this website.

I approached Sainte Marie today with some trepidation, having heard from some friends that visited as children that it didn’t provide a profoundly deep understanding of its context and was quite Eurocentric. While this may be true of the original fort site, the addition of a modern museum had done wonders to the site. While it may have portrayed the Jesuit missionaries in a particularly good light, I have to commend the site for giving context to the place of Sainte Marie in the little-told stories of the imperial wars of the 17th century (with the French, Dutch and Iroquois empires being the dominant players) and for providing a place for the Iroquois. The native peoples are not “folklorized” (for comments on the negative sides of folklore, check out this site), but are shown as economic and political players, the Iroquois Confederacy and its constituent nations are shown as actives participant in these struggles and the lifeways of both peoples (Iroquois and French) are shown side-by-side. This is an important, but little discussed period of North American (and Upstate) history and Sainte Marie has placed itself well to interpret it to the public, an admirable goal.

The fort itself was a bit run-down in a few places (the paper signs were disintegrating and some of the walls had seen better days), but the interpreters were fantastic. I traveled with my partner and her 10-year-old son and the re-enactors gave him personal attention, allowing him to try all sorts of tools and describe how day-to-day life was in a frontier fort. This was probably possible because it was a wet day and there were few guests, but we still appreciated their enthusiasm and knowledge.

I highly encourage a visit to Sainte Marie among the Iroquois. The site is open yearly on weekdays from 9am to 3pm and until mid-October on the weekends from 12-5pm. Admission is highly affordable, $3 for adults, $2.50 for seniors, $2 for children and kids under 5 for free; moreover, there is a $10 family rate. After mid-October, admission is free, though donations are accepted. Here is a map on how to get there.

As a side note, I found an interesting little essay of alternative history that asks, “what would have happened if the Hurons won the wars of 1648-1650”? Interesting reading for the student of Upstate History. For another link, here is a perspective on the Iroquois from the view of New France, from the Quebec History Encyclopedia.

-Jesse

What could make someone want to leave New York and move to Buffalo?

A few days ago, New York Magazine featured an article about a young couple who abandons Brooklyn to move to Buffalo. New York Magazine has always been a publication in love with its city, and that's something I can respect, and I was pleased that the article moved from a position of "why are these people so crazy" to one more like "ok, I can understand this." They also have a great shout-out to Buffalo Rising.

I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts on the article, I myself was troubled when they referred to Buffalo as "a kinder, cheaper, easier, more manageable mini-New York." Buffalo (and you could insert most any Upstate post-industrial city) is not a mini-NYC (which is part of their appeal to many) and moreover, is more than a cheap place to rent for New Yorkers who can telecommute.

I welcome people to come back and move into our semi-abandoned cities, though I become worried at articles like these which have no problem with the idea of hordes of New Yorkers snatching up every "creative class" job, driving up urban rent prices and thereby reinforcing the cycles of poverty in which so many Upstate families are entrapped. One factor the article's author didn't note was that Buffalo Homecoming, an event he visited, is aimed at bringing back those who have left and want to come home, not just anyone who wants cheap rent.

So, my message to folks look up the Hudson, is: yes, come on up, enjoy the cheap rents (and the cheap beer), the beautiful fall colors and the human-sized communities, we could use your help in getting ourselves back on our feet. But please don't come up and assume that this is a mini-New York and, more importantly, recognize that living here is more than a commitment to cheap rents, it's a commitment to bettering your adopted home.

-Jesse

Stops Along the Way #4: Case Road in Broome County

One’s first driving experiences have the potential of being tremendously profound. Raised in protective households, often in homes isolated even from their neighbors deep in the suburbs, for many young people driving is their first experience of being beyond the monolithic eyes of family and school. As I write this, I know that many readers imaginations will immediately turn to late-night parties, but I mean a type of liberation that is more subtle and more profound. It is the chance to experience the world on ones own terms.

A decade ago, soon after I received my license, I was driving home on an early summer evening up Case Road from Robinson Hill Road in the Town of Union (in Broome County). I was taking the long way home from some activity just because, well when you’re the driver you can do things like that and I wanted to savor the freedom of curves on dark country roads.

As I turned up Case Road, I was passing a pasture on my left and something made me stop. I pulled the car over on the shoulder by the ditch and got out. I looked out over the pasture and I remember the scene, it has been seared into my memory. Beyond the barbed wire fence, mist curled over the rough field (they’re never as level as a yard) and around the feet of sleeping cows. Beyond there was a dark line of trees and above that was an incredible yellow moon, one of the largest I have ever seen, hanging in the air. Sixteen year-olds rarely have the vocabulary of beauty and the mystical to properly describe such moments and even today I struggle to put it into words. I do know that the Romantic poets had a concept of the “sublime,” an experience with the nature that was not the loveliness and congeniality of beauty but instead the encounter with the empowering spirit of the world. It is not a pleasant experience, but a shaking one, something akin to the Old Testament prophet who hides from the Word of God.

While I can not now, and perhaps will never be able to, properly describe my experience on Case Road that night, I do know that whenever I pass that pasture—usually in the light of the day—I slow down for a moment and reflect.

-Jesse

Stops Along the Way, is a column created to highlight those places in the paths of our lives where we pause. These are the little spots in life where we rest for a moment, gain knowledge, joy or assistance before continuing upon our myriad of journeys. These places are not destinations in the proper sense of the word, but are the planned or unintented links in the chain that makes up a trip.

“Stops along the Way” celebrates the journey itself and hopes to call into question the goal-driven values that speed up and depersonalize our lives. Instead it promotes a view of life as a process—one in which we do not always have a goal in mind and never know the fully control the direction of.

To submit your Stops along the Way, please email us at york.staters (at) gmail (dot) com. Please feel free to visit our Mission Statement and Submission Guidelines with any of your questions. We look forward to hearing from you.

Taste of the Region #15: (U-Pick) Blueberry Jam in 10 easy steps

It is blueberry season and the group expedition to the bushes is an old Northeastern tradition. In Ralph Waldo Emerson's eulogy for Henry David Thoreau, he claimed that “he had no greater aspiration than to be captain of a huckleberry party.” Of course, it's sometimes easier to collect berries than it is to eat them before they go bad. Blueberries freeze relatively well, but one of the finest ways to keep them is in the form of blueberry jam.

The following recipie for simple blueberry jam is based on one from my housemate Zay, who got it from her grandmother. She calls it "blueberry crack" for its addictive sweetness and I'll swear by its deliciousness. After the recipie are resources for more information about canning and how to find a u-pick farm near you. For the more adventurous, here is a guide to finding wild blueberries. Good luck!
-Jesse

Ingredients
Blueberries 4 c.
Lemon Juice 2 tbsp.
Sugar 4 c. (this can vary, see below)
Pectin 1 pkg

Supplies (details here)
Jar Funnel
Jar Grabber
Large Pot (16-20 quart)
Large spoons and ladles
1 canner (a huge pot used to sterilize the jars)
Mason jars, lids and rings (note that jars and rings may be reused by not lids)

1. When choosing blueberries, remember “garbage in, garbage out.” If you won’t eat it now, it won’t get any better if put into jam and can in fact ruin an otherwise good jar. Wash and sort your blueberries, removing stems, rotten and un-ripened berries
2. Sterilize your jars, either by using the “sterilize” function on a dishwasher, or by washing them in hot soapy water and then boiling the jars for 10 minutes and keeping them hot until used (you can do this by putting them upside down on a clean cloth or keeping them in a dishwasher set at “heated dry.”
3. Heat the lids (to make the glue gummy) in boiling water for a few minutes and then keep them warm.
4. Crush your berries, either with a potato masher or in a food processor.
5. Prepare your pectin (if you’re using dry, instructions are on the box) or just mix in liquid pectin.
6. Bring blueberries, pectin and lemon juice to boil.
7. Add sugar. Check your box of pectin to determine how much sugar is appropriate. You can also substitute juice (such as apple, grape, peach) at a little less than half your suggested sugar amount.
8. Bring back to a hard boil for 1 minute.
9. Test the jam—does it stick to a spoon like jam should?—if so, you’re done, if not add a bit more pectin and repeat steps 8 and 9.
10. Fill the jars up to a ¼ of an inch from the top and wipe off any spillage on the rim. Put them into boiling water of the canner. Keep them in the boiler at least 5 minutes, check your pectin box for more instructions.

Remove the jars and let them cool. Your jam is done!

For spiced jam add 1/4 teaspoon each cinnamon, cloves and allspice to fruit along with lemon juice.

Recipes
Simple recipe
Detailed instructions for jam making
Variant recipes
Sugarless recipe

Canning Resources
How do I can? from the National Center For Home Food Preservation
USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning

Upstate U-Pick Farms
A nice, regionally-organized list of blueberry u-picks
New York-wide List (scroll down, it's a pretty short list)
Finger Lakes U-Pick
Central New York U-Pick

Young Naturalist

Every child goes through a “bug phase.” Mine far outlasted brief forays into stamps, dinosaurs, fossils, rocks and minerals, though I still have a “Herkimer diamond” from that period. In my pre-teen years, I invested heavily in baseball cards, collecting not just individual heroes like Stan the Man or favorite teams like the Dodgers but complete annual sets. I remember the thrill of trading for a Solly Hemus that completed the 1958 set.

Some would claim that my fascination and involvement with stream life clearly indicates that my bug phase endures to this day. Others, less charitable, seeing a foray with a Cub Scout Pack poking with sticks in the muddy bottom and taking the occasional soaker, would walk away muttering something about arrested development.

My bug phase was supremely unscientific. Though immersive, it had its limits. Even at its height, I was deathly afraid of spiders. Let the fearless scoff, but my autonomic nervous system would fairly shriek in the presence of a little baby spider. Of course, the worst place in the world for a person fearful of spiders is a lakeside cottage.

The porches, railings, stairs, windows and shutters of the cottage were festooned with webs to trap the gnats and flies hatching in clouds off the stream and lake. Thousands of spiders guarded and worked these meshes, especially active in the evenings when the cottage lights attracted moths and craneflies to the snares in the windows. My fear wasn’t lessened by watching spiders at work biting and wrapping their prey. I wondered how THAT would feel. Even worse, the dark corners of the cottage’s kitchen and dining room seemed to spawn huge hunting spiders whose size was augmented by the shadows. I mean, they not only inhabited the shadows but were big enough to cast their own.

My reaction to spiders was so strong that I wouldn’t willingly share the same room, car or boat with a spider. Every time we took the boat out to go fishing on the lake, there were lots of spiders under the seats, in the oarlocks and under the gunnels. Knowing what was coming, my uncles would sweep the boat out with a broom, but when a spider was found, it was a good question whether I’d stay inboard long enough for the tiny, inoffensive spider to be flipped over the side. I was very careful where I put my hands during these fishing trips.

Across the creek and north along the shore, our neighbors were the Bishops. Sherman “Doc” Bishop was a gentle biologist and naturalist employed by the University of Rochester. His speciality was herpetology, and his book on the salamanders of New York originally published in the 40s has been kept in print to this day. His wife’s family had owned cottages on Canandaigua Lake for generations.

Doc Bishop died young, in his fifties, when I was four years old, but I remember him well. I don’t remember his face. Though I’ve seen many photographs of him, I don’t recognize him that way. I couldn’t pick his face out of a crowd. It was his hands I knew.

The porch railings, old wooden bridge over the creek, and dock pilings provided the large open spaces favored by the large, orb-weaving spiders late in the season. Doc was fascinated by the orb-weavers. Their intricate webs would shimmer in the early morning sun as they caught a breeze off the lake. I remember him plucking the bulbous bodies of the female spiders from their webs, like you’d pick a fruit. He would caress them with his thumb and, holding them in the palm of his hand, hold out his hand to me, to introduce us.

-by Stephen Lewandowski

I’m Sick of the Color Green, or, Why the Carousel Mall can never be Eco-Friendly.

If you’ve taken a walk through the Carousel Mall in Syracuse at any time in the past year, you’ll have noticed that it’s been green-ified. Exploiting its captive audience of shoppers to the greatest extent possible, the people that own Carousel have been shamelessly selling the proposed expansion and ‘greenification’. Posters hang from every wall, an interactive map sits at the bottom of the atrium and everything from railings to walls have been painted varying shades of green. I didn’t know ‘going green’ was meant to be taken so literally.

The people of Syracuse are ambivalent on the subject. For some, the expansion of the mall means jobs and that’s what Syracuse needs. For others, the Mall is an example of the increasing popularity of green ideology: one friend explained to me how the ‘common people’ need to be educated by corporations about the importance of the environment. Perhaps he saw the Carousel Mall as some sort of modern Rachel Carson. Of course there are those who see Carousel with a bit more skepticism.

As someone concerned not only about the environment, but also the state of our local communities, the domination of corporations on our political, economic and social lives, and the broader cause of social justice, I find Carousel Mall’s turn towards green to be infuriating. Why?

Because a mall can never be green.

Never.

Even if they build everything from penthouse suites to urinals out of recycled toothpaste containers and power their buildings by organic, free-range, cruelty-free hamsters running on little wheels for union wages. Why?

1. Malls emerged out of a car-culture and a car-economy. At the heart of the Carousel people’s promise to economic transformation is that it will bring in business from around the northeast. Of course, the assumption is that they will drive to Central New York. No matter how many solar panels they put on the roof, the are still built off of a gas-devouring culture of automobiles and highways.

2. Malls Centralize Production. A walk through Carousel sees most of the same stores one sees in malls in Massachusetts, Florida, California and Hawai’i. The stuff inside them are almost universally produced in places across oceans and borders. Everything in that mall is shipped there, often thousands of miles. If Carousel Mall were to be truly green, they would be talking about building a Gap factory in one of the city's many brownfields.

3. Malls are artificial places. Carousel claims that it will build a miniature Italian summer in its expanded grounds. Now, like all Central New Yorkers, during the winter I wouldn’t mind occasionally jumping into Florence in June. Especially when I’m shoveling and snow has gotten into my boots. But to actually reproduce it under a bubble is an unsustainable project. Part of being green is not just consuming green stuff, but in making our lives line up better with the natural cycles that surround us. The attempt to completely control our environments—through means like jacked-up AC, anti-biotic sprays—has caused innumerable problems (like summer brownouts and superbacteria resistant to anti-biotics) while never giving us the control we desire. Carousel is not only continuing this trend but ramping it up a notch with its promises of utopian summers in a CNY winter.

The key here is the idea that green-ness does not exist only at the point of sale. The things we buy in a mall have histories before they ever arrive at the store. The materials they were produced out of were extracted from some natural resource, which was then transported to be processed somewhere else which was then transported to be turned into a product somewhere else, which was then transported to a distribution center which was then transported to the mall. Malls are absolutely crucial in reproducing that type of economics and this is something that the Carousel Mall can never escape from, its built into its very fabric.

When I make this argument, my friends will often say, “but why make such a big deal, isn’t what Carousel is doing better than nothing?” The great religious teachers know that false piety is more dangerous to a faith than blasphemy: after all Jesus stood up to the pompous priests of his own faith, not the oracles of the Roman gods. When Carousel claims to be green it makes it more difficult for people to separate out what ‘green’ means. Carousel sucks at public monies set aside for green projects, cutting the supports out of real eco-friendly ideas. Moreover, it makes people complacent: “Carousel Mall’s green now, we don’t need to change other things.” Finally it distracts the energies of the people who are protesting it (such as this essay) who should be working on more productive tasks than attacking a mall expansion.

-Jesse

Growing Roots

It had been a poor year for fishing, so the game warden, Ben White, could scarcely believe his eyes when Old Jack walked into the bait shop on City Pier with a string of huge fish. Old Jack had caught his limit for almost every kind of fish going. Must have been sixty pounds of fish there.

Ben said, “Well, I’ll be damned, Jack, that’s quite a catch. Haven’t seen many fish this season, but you being an old hand on the lake, you must know the right spots and what they’re feeding on.”

Old Jack said, “Yep.”

Ben asked, “I haven’t caught a fish for weeks. I’d sure like a nice bass to take home to the wife tonight. Suppose you could show me how to get one?”

Old Jack said, “Yep.”

They got into Old Jack’s boat and buzzed down the lake a couple miles. At Stony Island, Old Jack stopped, anchored the boat, then reached under his seat and pulled out a stick of dynamite. Lighting it off his cigar, he tossed it over the side. Ka-whump! Fish floated to the surface and Jack used the net to haul them in, all kinds.

Ben was flabbergasted. “I been a game warden for twenty years, and you been fishing this lake twice that. You know that ain’t legal, Jack. I’m going to have to take you in.”

Old Jack turned halfway in his seat, fished out another stick of dynamite, lit the fuse on his cigar and handed it to Ben.

“Well,” he said, “you come to fish or talk.”

***

Who Are You?

The poacher takes game outside the law. It should be clear from my name that I have no special license to use Native American materials for my own purposes in my writing, yet I do. My lineage consists of some lately arrived folks (from Poland to Chicago in 1911) and some early arrivals (from Scotland to Virgil, NY in 1800), with that scant hundred years making the difference between early and late. But what’s more important than early or late, this race or that, are the roots that I’ve put down into this place, as an individual, as part of a family that’s been in one place for two hundred years, and as part of family that knows how it feels to tear loose those roots and live as strangers.

Given a choice, I’d speak of myself as a peasant. Village people living close to the land still exist in the world; they even hang on here in America despite the erosion caused by the mechanical material culture and intrusive media. Some people might question whether it’s possible to choose to be a peasant; they ask if choice and peasantry aren’t mutually exclusive terms. However, I made my choice to live in this place, to stay close to my roots, raise my own food and cut my own wood for heat, and to pay attention to what I learn from living this way. Can I be a peasant?

Peasants were traditionally part of the land itself. When property was sold, they went along with the deal. Peasants learned early their kinship to the native flora and fauna. Owned in much the same way, trees, animals and peasants existed on sufferance as part of a lord’s domain. Peasants took game and firewood stealthily, without license or legal claim other than that of need, availability, and skill.

I approach writing as a poacher, and if caught writing without a license can only claim that the stories came to me. I look around and keep my ears open. I read landscapes, watersheds, maps and books, and poems and stories come to me from attention, study and contemplation. I know you’ve overheard someone say a poem more than once, but if you weren’t quick enough to write it down, I was.

I’ve always wondered if the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) way-of-life wasn’t formed by their reading of the upstate New York landscape. I wonder, too, if by paying close attention to the same patterns and cycles, our lives wouldn’t take a shape like theirs. My writing was poached from others’ land and lives. I admit to listening. I took them, and I’m not sorry. But I didn’t take them for myself alone- here are some for you.

***

Ganondagan
Ganondagan State Historic Site is a piece of land, roughly 550 acres in extent and comprising two adjacent hilltops in the Town of Victor, at the northwest corner of Ontario County, NY. It is the only historic site in New York dedicated specifically to the interpretation of life of the aboriginal people of New York, who called themselves the Onundawaga, or People of the Great Hill, and were called by others the Seneca of the Iroquois Confederacy.

Ganondagan was the site of a large Seneca village destroyed by a French military expedition that crossed Lake Ontario for that express purpose in 1687. Historians and archaeologists value Ganondagan for its strict provenance, as artifacts found there can be dated between its 1655 founding and its 1687 destruction.

The word Ganondagan itself denotes a place of habitation, with a reference to “the essence of white,” which some have attributed to a profusion of wild plum blossoms and others ascribe to its history in aboriginal peace-making. Ganondagan is reputed to be the burial place of the woman who first accepted the Gaiwiio, teachings translated as the Good Mind, brought by the peacemakers who founded the confederacy of groups known as Haudenosaunee, “longhouse people” or Iroquois.

The development of Ganondagan as a State Historic Site is particularly striking for the direct involvement of modern Onundawaga in its acquisition, management, and interpretation. The educational goals of Ganondagan State Historic Site are trifold: to interpret the seventeenth century life of the Onundawaga, to celebrate the peace-making impulse and its fruits, and to act as a center of modern Onundawaga culture.

Ganondagan was dedicated as a park and cultural center three hundred years to the day after its destruction by the French and their allies in July, 1687, and its Friends group numbering over 700 has provided leadership and funding for programs to bring history alive.

***

Thanks
One of the first Iroquois words you’ll hear at Ganondagan is nya:weh. You might hear some different pronunciations and see various spellings, but the meaning is always the same: thanks. When Site Manager Pete Jemison speaks the Thanksgiving Address, you hear an elaborate message of thanks. When Program Director Jeanette Miller wraps up a mailing, the committee might hear a quiet nya:weh from her.

In fact, if there is one spirit or philosophy behind Haudenosaunee culture, it is the feeling of thankfulness, at finding ourselves here, recognizing our role, and feeling the connection with the whole creation. So it should be no wonder that the Friends group that supports the site and organizes educational activities regularly expresses its thankfulness for the active support of its members, funders and volunteers. Probably it goes deeper than thankfulness as we commonly think of it because, literally, there would be no Friends group without the community’s support.

I often wonder if a more fully developed tradition of thankfulness would make a difference in mainstream American culture and suspect it would in several ways. Someone’s bound to say, ‘Well, we Christians say grace over our food,” and I’d retort just as quickly, “Yes, but what about the farmers? Do you remember them?” Nothing against the Christians and all others who ask a blessing on their food (they are about to eat it after all), but I wonder if the dinner blessing is sufficient to cover the plants and animals sacrificed to our hunger, the earth, water and sun which make growth, and the farmers who tend this part of the creation.

The Thanksgiving Address is used by the nations who make up the Haudenosaunee as an opening and closing invocation attending many rituals and observances. Listening attentively to the Address, you hear the speaker making his or her way carefully through the universe, noticing and thanking not only the Creator but the varied elements of the Creation. The Address itself is attention to these elements, and during its speaking both the speaker’s and hearer’s attention are “made one,” with one another and with the Creation. Perhaps the Address is attention in a way similar to wampum, which commemorates and records agreements and in its physical being denotes care and seriousness of purpose.

Our American culture would be changed by a greater general attitude of thankfulness. Thankfulness would slow our rate of consumption of the natural world. If we took the time to wonder, notice and appreciate where our food comes from, for example, we’d pay more attention to how it is produced, by whom, and how it tastes. Perhaps we’d eat less, and certainly we’d eat more slowly. Perhaps we’d consider hunting, gathering or gardening more of our own food.

What does it mean, anyway, that we are now mostly a nation of consumers? What happened to the producers? What is it we consume, finally, if not the Creation itself? Is there a hurry to complete this meal? All sorts of other questions could be asked here- like, is there enough for everyone?- but you are now aware of the trajectory of the inquiry, and I don’t have to ask them. You know best how the questions present themselves to you.

Let’s call the Creation by another name for a moment; let’s call it Nature, which certainly covers a lot of ground. Nature provides bountifully for us. But we consumers of Nature seem to have come to the conclusion that it would be better if we told Nature what we want, if we forced Nature to produce more and to our specifications, and if we designed Nature to serve our needs. We haven’t been shy about making our demands on Nature and seem willing to “throw away such parts” as don’t suit us at the moment.

Could we continue this rampage if we hadn’t banished thankfulness? Can we simply step aside to watch the whole roaring engine of consumption speed past, or is it necessary that we toss a branch toward the spokes of the crushing wheel?

It feels as though we are completing another annual round, and spring is poised to burst forth on a new natural year. Have you noticed that in the middle of February the cardinals, many of whom have hung around the feeders quietly all winter, begin to sing? Their song, waking us up first thing in the morning, sounds like, “Here, here, here. Birdy, birdy, birdy.” They’re singing about a fresh start: looking for mates, territory and stuff to build a nest. Once that’s done, they quiet down again.

We pause a moment to thank our friends in the Friends. Our members are strong and active. Volunteers regularly step forward to take on tasks and events, even the tough often-thankless ones, even the ones that have no clear ends, that just roll on and on, like the job of educating children. Corporations, local businesses and private foundations have helped us through the year. Despite the world’s troubles, which are many and sometimes seem never-ending, at Ganondagan we can model cooperation and understanding, true peace-keeping.

-By Stephen Lewandowski

Merry Christmas

For those who will be celebrating tomorrow, I want to share a piece of sermon that has been said at my home congregation (the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Binghamton) since I was a child, "Christmas Always Begins at Midnight" by A. Powell Davies:

...in legend upon legend, and story after story, Christmas always begins, not with daybreak and the coming of the morning - but at midnight. It was at midnight that the primitive observances began - or as near it as their reckoning could bring them. It was in the darkest hour of the night - not in the glow of morning - that the shepherds of the legend heard the angels sing. And of course, the Three Wise Men were guided, not by the sun, but by a star.

The legends have grown both beautiful and fanciful. Yet they have never drifted out of the darkness into a premature daylight. They have stayed quite close to the inner truth from which they draw their substance: the truth that man must find his faith, not in the daylight but in the dark. If he is ever to come to the light of morning, he must carry his own light with him through the night.

Please enjoy this day and give light and love to the world.

-Jesse

Stops Along the Way #3: Green Lakes State Park

For your viewing pleasure is this shot of Green Lake, the centerpiece of Green Lakes State Park, a true ecological and aesthetic gem outside of Fayetteville. It's incredible green-blue color comes from the fact that it is a meromictic lake, which means it has distinct layers of water that do not mix. For more description, check out the Park's wikipedia page. The meromictic lakes at the Park, Green and Round, are two out of seven total in North America.


This is the third in our series of Stops Along the Way.

Blogging Again

Loyal York Staters,

After an over-long hiatus, we're back on the blogging scene. Jesse has begun writing again, Natalie is editing and will hopefully write soon (give her some slack, she just started graduate school at Cornell this semester), we've also got a number of submissions from Steve Lewandowski that we'll be putting up. Exciting things.

For those of you who may have sent us articles or important comments over the past six months or so, we have fallen criminally behind in our email and apologize for our laxness. Especially if you have sent us a submission, we would greatly appreciate it if you could resend it to york.staters@gmail.com. We promise to put them up this time around. If you haven't sent a submission, this is a good time to think about it, we'd love to hear your thoughts from Olean to Plattsburgh or White Lake to Oswego (here is a link to our submission guidelines).

This link, "Upstate needs to secede from state to succeed," was sent to us by Fenrir.

Filling in a geographical gap in our blogroll, we're adding Wandering the Tug, a site located in the Tug Hill Plateau and managed by John. John has also given us three books to add to our Upstate Reading List: The Boyds of Black River, Rome Haul, and Drums Along the Mohawk all by Walter Edmonds.

Finally, we were thrilled to be mentioned in the Syracuse Post-Standard for the article on the Westcott Cinema two weeks ago.

Hope to hear from all you in the near future.

Best Wishes!

-Jesse (co-editor)

A Word---To Give, Take, Keep

J. Sheldon Fisher 1907-2002

When I was first elected to office, the municipal attorney sent me a letter on official business, and I saw with shock that it was addressed to “The Honorable.” I was shocked because it hadn’t occurred to me that the simple matter of running for office and being elected would confer any such titles. As I thought more about it, though, it seemed there was a point to the honorific: in running for election, I had spoken about the need to protect the public trust. In voting for me, the public had conferred that trust, and in taking the oath of office, I had given my word that I would not only protect the community’s health, safety and general welfare but that I would do so within a framework of State and federal laws. At first blush, though, I wondered what I had gotten myself into.



Local historian Sheldon Fisher’s passing has reminded me to review the position he held, without virtue of election, as an exemplary man-of-honor. In his case, it was his faithfulness to history and his insistence on the immediacy and pertinence of history that attracted first my attention then my trust and admiration.



Sheldon Fisher also exemplified the virtues of staying at home, which he accomplished to a remarkable extent. He was born a Fisher after all, born in Fishers, NY of generations of Fishers, and the tiny hamlet of Fishers always remained the heart of his universe. He knew that any inquiry has to be located somewhere, both as a point of origin and perspective, and he found Fishers to be as good as any and better than most for him. He recognized that tiny events in Fishers might be vitally contacted to massive, world-shaking events unfolding elsewhere on the globe. For example, we know that the Mormonism began in upstate New York before embarking on its epic continental journey. Fisher’s research uncovered significant details of the religion’s origins among families living in a swath from Palmyra to Mendon and including, yes, Fishers. He lived a life of inquiry and imagination that could see, in William Blake’s terms, “the world in a grain of sand.” Fishers was his grain of sand.



As a young man I remember seeing Sheldon Fisher and Canandaigua City Historian Herb Ellis, two old men even then, standing in a downpour of rain and sleet at the Council Stone on the main street. They were observing the anniversary of a treaty signed in 1794 by groups representing two nations meeting in Canandaigua. One group stood for the Seneca Nation, whose authority stemmed from their identification of certain local landscape features as their place of origin. But after defeat in war, their long residency was drawing to a close and they were on their way out- to reservations, to Canada, across the continent, bound elsewhere.



The other nation, represented by a hatchet-faced commissioner with a reputation for hard and fair dealing, was the new United States, whose authority had been established by a successful war of independence with the world’s premier colonial power. The weather on the day that the treaty was signed wasn’t recorded, but it’s not too difficult to imagine it as a bleak, cold, gray November day with a hint of snow in the air. My hometown, Canandaigua, was at that time a frontier settlement of a couple hundred people huddled around their chimneys.



Sheldon Fisher is worthy of honor because, despite the actions of our government in the 1960s to appropriate Seneca land for a dam project, he insisted on honoring the treaty. He felt as though it was his word that was given on November 11, 1794, and he would honor his word, whatever others did. We should all try to have such a WORD. The Seneca stayed away from the treaty commemoration for a number of years because they regarded the U.S. action as bending if not breaking the treaty and hoped in vain to embarrass the U.S.



Having a word requires that we give it without conditions and with as full a knowledge of consequences as possible. A word isn’t a word to the extent that we assign conditions to it: “I’ll keep my promise if/when you do.” Likewise, a true word to give requires that we live with all of its consequences.



I’m reminded of our friends the Friends who, when they were branded as Quakers, remarked, “Why yes, we do quake in the presence of the Lord,” and accepted the name as a legitimate, secondary title for their church. In their early days, they were constantly in trouble with religious and secular authorities for what they would and would not do. One of the bones of contention was the swearing of oaths.



The Quakers would not swear to the truth of anything; they considered that once having spoken the truth and said their “word,” no amount of attestation, declaration, God’s witness or notarization would alter the truth of that word. Swearing to the truth of a true statement was in effect gilding the lily, and they would no more swear than they would wear gaudy clothes (They insisted that bright dyes were intended to hide the dirt, and they preferred plain, clean clothes.) For authority, they pointed to a passage in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus says, “Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay.”



The world is full of conflicting allegiances, multiple perspectives, and contrary interpretations. There can be every shade of gray and confusion on all sides about the shades. We employ specialists to exploit the confusion to gain an advantage. The exponential growth of the attorney and actuary populations supported by our society attests to the sharpness of the instruments now being used to split hairs. Written contracts and treaties stretch into multiple volumes in which every circumstance and condition is imagined, probed, explicated and dissected. By contrast, Sheldon Fisher’s lifetime business was conducted as a matter of word, with perhaps a handshake thrown in for good measure.



Perhaps part of our current problem is our hyper-literacy. We expect that everyone we encounter will also be literate, and the records of decisions will be written down and kept so that they can be consulted in the future when the parties have forgotten the details of their agreement or have passed the agreement on to new parties. But not everyone is literate now, nor were they in the past. In part, the collision of the Seneca and the United States was part of a long history of literate people trying to impose their idea of an agreement on people whose idea of their word was quite different.



Clearly the Iroquois believed in reaching agreements with others (the Iroquois “League” was formed by such a device), and records of agreements were kept with wampum belts. The wampum belts functioned as mnemonic devices to facilitate the recitation of agreements in public. The other party to the agreement, the U.S., recorded words on paper (even if the Seneca could only make an “x”), copied the papers, then hid their copy in a vault in a distant capital. Our memories seem to have atrophied just as the written clauses have multiplied.



In the matter of giving, taking or keeping a word, some believe that it matters who knows, remembers and keeps track; others do not. Some believe that a word given is a public matter and others that it is a private function.



I think that the function of a word has private and public aspects. The public aspects are easiest to describe. On our side, giving and taking a word in public usually involves a ceremony, and the ceremony invokes some sacred principle to witness and protect the word.



On the other hand, the Seneca have consistently used metaphorical but secular imagery, speaking of the Canandaigua treaty as a chain, with full knowledge that the way a chain binds can be assuring or painful. The chain they speak of could be decorative since it’s made of silver. Left unattended, the chain binding the parties could become tarnished and ugly. The Seneca insist that the chain binding the two nations of people together in friendship must be periodically taken out, inspected and polished so that it will continue to be an ornament, a thing of beauty and not a tarnished hindrance.



The Seneca’s meaning isn’t obscure: the word needs to be exercised in public. It reminds me of a Jewish tale about the angel that attends every friendship. Without friendship’s proper exercise, the angel dies, so friends are required to see one another, to speak and to share. It matters less what they do so long as they do something together as friends.



The private word is more difficult to describe because it has an inchoate aspect going beyond language’s expressive ability. A person may give his or her word to him or herself, without notifying any other party. Probably we all know someone who’s dedicated to a task for a reason not immediately apparent. For example, a person may undertake work simply because that work was the unfulfilled wish or goal of a friend who’s been unable to complete it because of sickness or death. The word may also bind two people, and marriage is the best known example. In fact, the most common ceremonies of marriage invoke conditions, “in sickness and in health,” in order to nullify them. Beyond marriage, a word may be given within a family, extending common allegiance and protection to all of that blood.



Beyond the family, most word-giving and –taking becomes a public ceremony with attendant ritualism. Perhaps a better question about the nature of the word is how it is distributed- how far it reaches and who may make a claim on it. Exemplary people of honor often extend the circle in which their word will be kept beyond their families, friends and associates, beyond their clans, tribes and nations, and even beyond “people like us,” to include all humanity, the whole creation. Sheldon Fisher’s circle of responsibility had a center in Fishers, NY, not a place we, or he, might have chosen. But from Fishers, the circle extended to include all sorts of unlikely people and places and, most strikingly, deep into history and far into times to come.



-by Stephan Lewandowski

Alive

The second-hand store is a cluttered labyrinth carved out of a much larger building, once a department store, which explains the mysterious ups and downs of navigating its full extent. For example, the only way to go up to several floors of stored furniture above is to walk down a short flight to the basement. From the subterranean level, you catch the elevator up run by a short jaunty fellow in a hat. He will leave you off at whatever floor you say and he always, as he assures you, comes back for you later.


There’s a ceremony in using the elevator. The door is held shut by a heavy bar latch, which he undoes by lifting and shifting with a clang. He rolls back the segments of doors and shows you in. He may doff his hat. Once loaded, he closes several doors, latches and a heavy metal safety-gate before beginning operation. The elevator is not self-aligning; it responds to his handling of a massive switch, and once he gets near a floor, he fine-tunes it with little twitches. At the floor, he repeats the ceremony of pulling switches, bars and gates in a certain order to let you out.


For a little while, he experimented with a tips tray held aloft by a piece of secondhand statuary, but not for long. I don’t think he had any takers. He always has his eye out for you and when you step down into his basement area, he’s right there asking if you want a ride up. Somehow he can make you feel vaguely embarrassed for not using his services.


Of course, we aren’t really used to being transported by others. We’d rather jump in and go. His service comes from an entirely different tradition. He invites you in. He asks you to go up. He implies that what you need must be on the upper floors reachable only by his elevator. He’s always sort of around. Probably he cleans up, fixes washing machines and moves the furniture around when he’s not transporting customers, but I’ve never seen him do so. He knows me by sight now, and our encounters have become a short-hand: he says “Today?” with an upward gesture of his head. When I say “Nope,” he gives me a look like I don’t know what I’m missing.
Today he gave me a start. I came looking for a special bowl of a certain size, and I found two right away at a good price on the main floor. I was short of time. Why did I go downstairs at all? I brushed past the Book Nook full of musty sheet music and coverless magazines. As I went down, I caught a whiff of the ever-present sewer gas, no worse than usual but no better either. I think it comes up from the next level down, the sub-basement, which must be dug nearly to the level of the nearby lake. It must have been difficult to get the sewer in so deep, but maybe it’s not quite deep enough, judging by the smell.


He was suddenly beside me, hat pulled low. He glanced up and recognized me. “Hey,” he said, “up today?” but before I could say, “Don’t think so,” he started telling me his story. He pulled his lip aside to show me a big space where his teeth used to be. “Yeah, I broke one and it got infected. They took out four. Now I’m waiting for my false teeth to come in.” It looked bad for him, and he looked bad too- worn, tired, and he seemed to have shrunk in his clothes. He was poking around with a broom, sweeping the floor, and didn’t seem to care much if I went up or stayed.


Something new in the store caught my eye. In the back of the basement, where it used to be dark and moldy, it was now shiny. There was a curtain hanging from the low ceiling, separating a new, bright space from the old basement. I walked past rows of slumping armchairs, absurd lamps, and stained couches, and as I went back, I could see past the curtain.


They must have broken through the cellar wall into a new part of the old basement. From where I thought it used to end, the cellar continued back, and someone had dry-walled and painted an all-white room just big enough to contain eight church pews with a lectern facing them. Behind the lectern hung a large golden cross bathed in light.


There was no one in sight, except for the sweeper. I looked around. The room was meticulously clean and bright. The benches were polished and carefully arranged. Even the floor was freshly painted and unmarked. The sweeper took no notice of my discovery of the new room, but I was suddenly afraid of being caught in the basement shrine by whoever worships there.


“So how you doing today?” he asked as I started to hurry out.


“Oh, I’m okay,” I said, “and I already got what I want. I left it at the front desk- just have to pay for it on the way out.”


“Come back when you got some time to go for a ride,” he said, the dust from his broom rising around our ankles.


-by Stephen Lewandowski

Citizens, Consumers and the struggle for the soul of Upstate Communities

I aim in this post to examine the concept of a ‘citizen’ in our Upstate communities and the slow erosion of this idea before the new concept of a ‘consumer.’ Today, we tend to view ‘citizenship’ as a relationship between an individual and a State, a government. By saying “I am a citizen of the United States,” one implies foremost a relationship with the United States government, including both rights and responsibilities. School citizenship classes or larger citizenship campaigns typically aim to increase participation in the activities of the government. This has not, however, always been the case.

The concept of a citizen arose in contrast to the political situation of being a subject. Once, this was the primary form of political allegiance in Western nations (like British Subjects). A subject’s primary loyalty is to a sovereign, such a King, Pope or Emperor. Power emanates from this central figure who is elevated above others. The key is that subjects are related to one another only by their relationship to the sovereign.

Citizenship, however, was originally a relationship between citizens not between citizens and the state. Citizenship permeated every element of life. We can see this fascination with life in a ‘Republican System’ in the writings of authors like Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America. This changed the fundamental nature of politics: privileges granted by the sovereign were replaced by (universal) rights, duties given to the sovereign were replaced by responsibilities of the citizen as a member of the community. The state was re-imagined from being the emanation of the power of the sovereign to an agent acting on behalf of the citizenry. While the government was defined by its citizenry, citizenship went far beyond a relationship to the state. These ideals were summed up in the slogans of the era: “All men [sic] are created equal,” and “Liberty, Fraternity, Equality.”

As the Enlightenment revolutions (most notably the French) swept the Western world, they also reconfigured the very space of the European cities. The most iconic transformation was the reshaping of Paris by Baron Haussmann. Caldiera writes:

At the core of the conception of urban public life embedded in modern Paris are notions that city space is open to be used and enjoyed by anyone, and that the consumption society it houses may become accesssible to all. Of course, this has never been entirely the case, neither in Paris nor anywhere else… These
modern urban experencies were coupled with a political life in which similar values were fostered. The modern city has been the stage for all types of public demonstrations. In fact, the promise of incorporation into modern society included not only the city and consumption but also the polity. (From “Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation,” pg 94)

While this promise of universal inclusion has never been achieved, this does not make it any less of a worthwhile goal; the successes (if only partial) of movements like Civil Rights, Women’s Liberation, etc, are because they have forced inclusion, not because they have rejected the possibility of it occuring.

Yet, it is this basic society of inclusion, the ideal of equal citizens working in fraternity [sic] for liberty, that is today under siege in our communities. Across Upstate New York, we can see the creep of the privatization of space. In Buffalo, there are plans for the first gated community in Amherst (here’s an editorial). In Syracuse, DestinNY proposes to create a privately-owned (but publically subsidized) sealed fantasyworld only accessible by car. Barnes and Noble or Borders replaces the public library. Elevated freeways cut across Syracuse, Binghamton and smaller cities of the Mohawk valley, paralyzing neighborhoods and allowing the owners of cars to avoid all contact with the communities they pass over. Yards become ever-larger, separating mcmansions even as suburbs push further away from central cities. Cars become an absolute necessity for moving from one private parking lot to another in order to do basic shopping.

Is this not an outright rejection of the project of citizenship? We are privatizing public space, creating a situation where one’s status as a consumer replaces that of a citizen. No right exists to enter and inhabit these faux-public spaces—it is only one’s position as a potential purchaser. We need to look no further than the 2003 arrest at the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, NY of a man for wearing a peace t-shirt to see the fragility of the illusion of true public space within the modern mall. It is profit, not the high-minded goals of liberty, equality and love, that guide these consumer-business relationship. The creation of these privatized enclaves (especially fortified areas like gated communities)—and the interrelated withering of true public spaces—“are not environments that generate conditions conducive to demcracy. Rather, they foster inequality and the sense that different groups belong to separate universes and have irreconcilable claims.” (Caldiera 104)

Without true public space, there is no chance for citizens to enact true citizenship, to develope intimate, difficult relationships with one another. Without the enactment of true citizenship upon the ground, our conception of citizenship will continue to wither to a vestigial loyalty to the State and our communities will fade into nothing.

-by Jesse

Dreaming of a New Westcott Theater

Citizens of Syracuse's Westcott Nation, lovers of cinema and defenders of the besieged independent media all have reason to mourn this week. The Westcott Cinema is closing. One of a dying breed, the Cinema is a single screen, independently owned movie house. Certainly, the owner of the structure will look for an alternative tenant, but there are enough empty storefronts in Syracuse for one to guess that finding someone to occupy a run-down, single-screen theater might not be the easiest prospect. There is a good chance that it will go un-occupied for some time to come.

Westcott is a fantastically aberrant neighborhood. For starters, it (like its cinema) is an increasing rarity: an integrated neighborhood. While this most certainly refers to the presence of both whites and blacks within the area, this doesn’t encapsulate the diversity found in this little outlying area. Women in saris pass those in the latest hip-hop fashions. University professors rub elbows with psychics and shamans. At the Credit Union, one is as likely to hear Spanish as English. Our yearly festival features music from places as varied as Havana, the Bronx, Ghana and Nashville.

More than simply an abundance of cultural roots, we also enjoy a fantastic network of community institutions: neighborhood associations, a thriving business strip, a community center, a farmer’s market, a branch library, numerous churches, a neighborhood credit union and a co-operative grocery.

I am sure that various community-oriented minds around the Westcott Nation read ‘opportunity’ into the closing of the Cinema. Space is a precious resource, especially at the convergence of Westcott and Harvard streets and there are many that would love to see their dream come to fill that space. Undoubtedly, someone is thinking of re-opening Westcott once again as an art theater. This is both my hope and my great fear.

It seems to be consensus that something different has to be done. The previous tenant, Nat Tobin, was an experienced cinema owner (he also runs the Manlius Art Cinema) and a great lover of the art form, yet was unable to sustain the enterprise. According to the Post Standard (on October 18th, 2007):

…people have shown interest in creating a new theater on the site that would
show either first- or second-run films. Several local business people have
suggested partnerships in new ventures, including a coffee shop, at the
location. Others have proposed the theater become a venue for live
entertainment…

What is it that I fear about these developments? Simply put, the harmonious cohabitation of numerous racial and cultural groups within a neighborhood is a balance that needs to be continually worked on to be maintained. Sitting on Westcott on a Friday night, one sees both groups of whites and blacks, but they are almost always segregated. I rarely saw anyone that wasn’t a middle-aged, middle-classed and white attending the old Westcott Cinema. The only institutions that pull off this integration well—from what I can see—are the Community Center and the Credit Union, and both of them have had to work hard and, more importantly, consciously at maintaining this balance.

I fear an art cinema, community run or not, that claims to appeal to the ‘community’ but in fact aims only at the wealthiest, whitest and most prestigious of clientele. A place that takes its cues solely from Sundance and where the term ‘foreign film’ rarely extends beyond the art scenes of Western Europe and its Latin American imitators. A place like the misnamed Little Theater in Rochester with its attached jazz club and French pastry shop. I fear a resurrected cinema of fancy coffees, expensive pastries and high brow films—another agent of gentrification.

Do I dislike art films? Am I opposed to liberal-minded documentaries? Of course not, I firmly stand behind cinema that aims for something higher than profit. Yet, I also stand behind a cinema that aims to be a truly community affair. What do the citizens of Westcott Nation—white and black, native and immigrant, young and old, working and middle class—want to see on their screen?

My imagined cinema would show the standard fare of art flicks and documentaries, but also feature popular films from the burgeoning film industries of India and China, second-run Hollywood films to undercut the popularity of corporate cinemaplexes, and bizarre kitsch films like the Rocky Horror Picture Show for nothing more than sheer fun. I see it as a place spiced up with stand-up comics and musical acts, both local and brought in from the outside. I fantasize of each film being preceded by a short produced by a student from a local high school or university. However, in the end, I hope that my dreams carry only as much weight as any of my other neighbors.

How could this be arranged? I see two options for organizing a dream like this: non-profit, or a cooperative of some sort (perhaps a consumer co-0p like the Real Food Co-Op or perhaps a worker-owned one). All of these options would leave control of the destiny of our cinema in the hands of our neighbors.

As we move towards one of these options, we might do well to take a lesson from the Art Cinema of Binghamton. When the old, privately owned, single-screened, Art Theater burned down a few years ago, the cinemaphiles of Binghamton organized screenings of art films in homes and sympathetic places of business. These screenings raised money, attracted attention, built a sense of fellowship among activists and provided the basic framework of an organization that would eventually open a new Art Cinema downtown. If we are to undertake these actions, we must take care to not only respect but also celebrate the beautiful, empowering and, ultimately, fragile diversity that is Westcott.

-By Jesse

York Staters in Poetry: Ezra Pound

In an obscure canto of the world-renown poet Ezra Pound's mildly obscure work, The Cantos, we find two references to Upstate New York:

Canto CXIV

...Gems sunned as mirrors, alternate.

These simple men who fought against jealousy,

as the man of Oneida.

Ownership! Ownership!...

...to reign, to dance in a maze,

To live a thousand years in a wink.

York State or Paris--

Nor began nor ends anything...

Pound received his masters degree from Hamilton College(Clinton, NY) in 1905, before living abroad and settling in Italy. York Staters has talked about the Oneida Community before, so I won't go into that, but he also refers to George MacLeod's Iona Community which was founded about 50 years after the Oneida Community turned into Oneida Glass and was influenced by the the Oneida theory of living spirituality.

Because of his seemingly stream-of-conscious writing I can't really tell you what he's talking about; since he starts by quoting Voltaire then laughing at a Scottish economist who died in poverty, then ended this section with the dream of a young fruit seller who wants to write. Oh yeah, there's a chinese character, some french and italian too in this rather short three page poem.

Submitted by Joe

Editors Note: Thanks to everyone who has inquired as to our whereabouts...we're still here! Co-editor Jesse is in Cornwall, United Kingdom, doing research, and I have been bogged down with work and lack of internet connection. But there are good things on the horizon...after our summer slumber, York Staters will awaken again as Jesse returns from overseas and I relocate to Ithaca where I'll be starting graduate study at Cornell in the fall. In the mean time, posting will be light, but if you have a submission you'd like to make to York Staters, we're happy to post it. Check out the submissions guidelines and send us a post, or send any ideas, or just a hello to york.staters[at]gmail.com.

York Stater of the Month: Johnny Hart

Yesterday, April 7th, cartoonist Johnny Hart passed away. A native of Endicott, NY, he passed away at age 76 in his home in Ninevah. Nationally, Hart will probably be best known for his two most famous cartoons: B.C. and the Wizard of Id. According to the Press and Sun Bulletin: "Hart's B.C. comic strip was launched in 1958 and eventually appeared in more than 1,300 newspapers worldwide with an audience of 100 million."

However, in his home community of Broome County, Hart has transformed his style of cartooning into an emblem of local identity. His work adorns the logos of the Binghamton Dusters (former hockey team), the BC Transit, the Broome County Parks, the BC Open and the Broome County Icemen. Growing up next door to a Broome County Park, I fondly remember the smiling "Dudley the Dinosaur" logo adorning the entry sign. The coalescence of the name of the comic "B.C." with the abbreviation for Broome County has been a piece of local lore for at least as long as I have been alive.

Hart has long been controversial locally because of his strong conservative Christian faith--and his willingness to express it through his cartooning. In 2001, his Palm Sunday strip (which always revolved around Christian themes) caused an uproar by implying that Christianity had supplanted Judaism. Honestly, I've never been a big fan of B.C. not simply because of its annoying preachiness, but because I never found it that funny, but I was suprirsed by the controversy, considering that it is pretty standard Pauline theology. That said, I always felt that Hart's Christianity was good hearted and that his strip was aimed towards a different audience than myself.

The purpose of this salute and honor, though comes from Hart's long-time dedication to the community of his birth. Not only did he remain in Broome County--not usually considered a center of the graphic arts--but he also dedicated much of his work towards providing the County with a distinctive aesthetic look. Today, as we mourn that man, we can take some consoliation in knowing that he would probably be pleased that the distinct style remains with us and has passed from being his own possession to one of the community as a whole. B.C. has become Broome County and for that we thank Mr. Hart.

-Jesse

Press and Sun Obituary

Rochester: A City of Quality

Straight from 1963, this piece of the past was sent to us by Joe...

Here is the original link

-Jesse

Theory of Salvation

Kurt asked me today, so I presume you’ve been wondering too, what is my theory of shopping at the Salvation Army? We were standing in the middle of the library and talking pretty loud, but that’s okay today because the college is on break. We weren’t disrupting others and the librarians were amused.

Kurt came in to check his e-mail while I was taking a break from tutoring, and I joked, “Do you ever wear that sweater anymore? That one I recognized from the Salvation Army?” It was a tannish-brown hand-knit the cuffs of whose sleeves would have swung below my knees.

He said that he’d like to wear it more but “the cats have found it. Yeah, first one, then the whole bunch, nesting there.”

“Big enough for all of them and maybe they like the color,” I joked.

Then he asked me, “Where you and I are aficionados of the Salvation Army, do you have any tips or special methods?”

“Well, I’m glad you asked,” I said, “I do have several theories and use them regularly. For example, I thoroughly empty my mind at the front door. In my experience, the worst thing that you can carry into the Salvation Army is an expectation. So I try not to think about what I need.”

Usually it works, and I walk through the doors with a minimum of preconceptions, if any. I try
to take it as it comes. Let it come to me. “You know, mystic stuff like that.”

Actually, I said that I thought of shopping the Salvation Army as trolling. “You let the bait down in the water, you sit back, maybe somebody else is steering the boat, you can’t see the lure at all after a while, it’s just out there somewhere, and you wait.”

Kurt showed me the pair of boots he’d just bought for $3. “Wow!” I said, “they still look like new.” We briefly compared notes on what we would and wouldn’t buy secondhand. We agreed on underwear (definitely not) but differed on towels. Shoes have always been iffy with me, unless they look unworn like Kurt’s find. Doesn’t Galway Kinnell have an awful poem about Goodwill shoes?

I used to think that there was a right and a wrong way to do anything, including shopping the Salvation Army. More recently, I have become aware that there are numerous right ways to do things. I still secretly think, however, that I may have discovered the best way to shop the Salvation Army. That accounts for my willingness to share my theories and methods with Kurt. Maybe it’s all a little overwhelming for him.

“First, I walk the length of the store and always start from the back, in the appliances and furniture.” That seems odd even to me, because there’s very little or nothing in those categories that I need. He suggested that I might be attracted by the books, which are also at the far end of the store. I thought not, since my bookshelves at home already overflow, and there has been some complaint about my buying habits. “I just like starting from the back, probably like reading the newspaper from back to front.”

After scoping the bookshelves, appliances and furniture in the back room, I come back out to Housewares in the main room. Kurt said, “Yeah, every once in a while, there’s a dynamite highball glass in here- big heavy bottom.” What was the last thing was I bought in Housewares? Was it the framed, signed photograph of middleweight champion prize-fighter Carmen Basilio inscribed, “To my good buddy, Angie, best wishes”?

Is there a logic to what shows up at the Salvation Army? Are there tides of goods like oceans dragged around the globe by the moon? Currents of clothing, littoral drift of dishes, shoe seiches, toy tsunamis, and scarf surf on the storefront beaches? Goods wash up here for us to pick over. If we knew those tides, could we wait for what we want?

After Housewares, I cut across to Linens. Nothing catches my eye. The other day there was a khaki army blanket that looked at least fifty years old. The moth holes had been darned with brilliant embroidery floss. It caught my eye as a relic- butterflies are free- but I didn’t want to own it. It disappeared from the store within a day.

My final sweep of the store involves Men’s Clothes, and Men’s Clothes are displayed on two tiers of three major racks running almost the length of the store. Pants and sweaters; heavy shirts, suits and jackets; long-sleeved shirts below and short-sleeved shirts above. Kurt points out that prices seem to have risen recently, and that explains why I’ve been looking for the special color ½ price tickets more than usual.

I’ve been specializing in green shirts for the past few years, but it’s become clear that I have more green shirts than I can wear. Almost everyone knows that I’m usually dressed in some shade of green, but probably most of them don’t realize that the shirts all come from the same place. Now, when I buy a new one, one has to be returned.

The Men’s Clothes section is a museum of style and fiber. There’s an attraction to the occasional, grubby red plaid hunting woolens, the bright dashikis, and the pastel polyester leisure suits. Things which are good and valuable- by virtue of their unique style or definite utility- pass through the store quickly. Two days is a long time for something good- however outlandish- to linger, so it’s best to shop light and often. Of course, later, sometimes, I wonder. To what occasion would I wear a NYS Fruit Testing bowling shirt?

Anyway, once through Men’s Clothes in three long passes, I’m ready to exit back onto Main Street. Maybe I’ll give the Jewelry counter or Ladies Coats a glance, but seldom more than that.

I realize that I’ve gone on too long with Kurt. He glances toward his computer screen. I feel the need to justify my enthusiasm with more than claims of economy so I try a new tack. With his big bushy beard and funky clothes, Kurt might go for this, so I try, “Yeah, you know, it satisfies my hunter/gatherer instincts. The Bushman poking with his stick at a promising spot probably feels much the way I do scanning the racks for warmth, style, and value.”

Kurt smiles and turns to his e-mail.

***

SLOW DOWN
The trade trail on
Main Street is well-marked
ascending slightly
leading away from the lake
into the wind, toward
the Salvation Army store
The walk is cold and snowy
the hunter-gatherer’s head is
covered, pulled in, hood buttoned up
sunglasses covering his eyes
cloth gloved hands and feet
protected by wool socks and boots
The wind stings his face
snow freezes on his cheeks
he approaches the front door
and finds the store all dark
a hand-written message in the window
“Closed dew to weather”

***

-by Stephen Lewandowski

A long-time York Stater, Steve has published eight books of poetry and his poems and essays have appeared in regional and national environment and literary journals and anthologies. An environmental educator, he is a founder of the Coalition for Hemlock and Canadice Lakes and has worked with numerous environmental and community organizations in the western Finger Lakes. His most recent book of poems, One Life, was published by Wood Thrush Books of Vermont. His work is either forthcoming or recently published in snowy egret, Bellowing Ark, Pegasus, Hanging Loose, Free Verse, Avocet, and Blueline.

Back from vacation

Hello everyone, I'm back in the swing of things here in Syracuse, hoping that we get a bit more of March's lamb and a bit less of the lion in the coming weeks.

In my internet surfing I tend to accumulate, or are sent, links to interesting Upstate sites and events and I think that it's a good time to share a few of them.

Where License Reigns with all Impunity A fascinating anarchist study of the traditional Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) polity. This essay was sent to me by the author, Stephen Arthur.

The Best Apples
Information on growing, buying and eating antique apple varieties.

Doc's Little Gem
The map location of my new favorite 24-hour diner, here in Syracuse. This was sent to me by Mike.

"We're in this together": Vermont's Cooperatives Join Forces
Long-time readers will know that I am a big proponent of the cooperative movement. Here is the latest developments from our neighbors in the Green Mountain State.

Rare White Deer Versus Ethanol: Conservationists at odds in Seneca A continuation of our earlier story on the Ghost Deer of Romulus (Part I and Part II of that story can be found here). This link was sent to me by Laurie.

Hope everyone is doing well and weathering the end of winter.

-Jesse

Traveling

Our co-editor Jesse will be traveling and far from a computer until the 17th. He will begin posting again at that time.