Archive

“The total mass of plastics on earth now exceeds the total mass of all mammals,” writes former Johnsburg resident Bill McKibben, citing a new Swedish study that found that chemicals “with diverse risk potentials” now surpass our ability to ... Read More

“Perhaps my most deeply rooted hobby is to understand the mechanism of simple and familiar natural phenomena,” Dr. Irving Langmuir once wrote. That “deeply rooted hobby” led to a Nobel Prize in 1932, awarded the Lake George summer resident ... Read More

Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi was among the first to argue for women’s political equality on the basis of physical fitness; there is nothing inherently, naturally delicate about us, she said after years of treating women. It’s quite possible that Mary ... Read More

America’s relative decline as a world power can be felt not only in a recalibrated balance of power. The art world feels it too. For much of the twentieth century, Winslow Homer was regarded as the quintessential painter of American life.  It ... Read More

Much of the blue limestone used to construct the New York State Capitol and the Brooklyn Bridge was quarried from the shores of Lake Champlain. The massive stones were sent across the lake, through the Champlain Canal and down the Hudson River aboard ... Read More

There is no proof that Abraham Lincoln ever read  Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” but two new books, “His Greatest Speeches: How Lincoln Moved the Nation” and “The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de ... Read More

Our representative in Congress, Elise Stefanik, is among the Republican women whose careers have received a boost from their association with Donald Trump – an unapologetic misogynist.  As the political historian Leandra Zarnow writes ... Read More

Brian Mann arrived in Saranac Lake roughly twenty-five years ago to open North Country Public Radio’s Adirondack bureau. Since then, he’s come to be regarded as one of the state’s most talented journalists – an assessment affirmed by National ... Read More

Many hike and hunt in the Adirondacks. Only a few volunteer their time and skills to search for those who lose their way in the 6 million acre park. When a hunter from Tupper Lake went missing in St. Lawrence County in November, members of Adirondack ... Read More

Its evocative place-based name notwithstanding, there is nothing narrowly regional – that is, parochial –  about the Adirondack Theatre Festival. “The Adirondack Theatre Festival has a history, not only of participating in ... Read More