Winners of Play in the Parks App Contest

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The New York State Chief Information Officer and Office for Technology (CIO/OFT), the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) have announced the winners of the NYS Play in the Parks App Contest.

The NYS Play in the Parks App Contest was an application development contest for graduate students at the NYU-Poly announced in April. Graduate students of NYU-Poly were challenged to create a web-based or mobile application proposal to help citizens discover the beauty and history of the New York State park system.

A panel of judges from the New York State Empire 2.0 Committee, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation and NYU-Poly selected Yigit Kiran’s project proposal &#8220Park Wise&#8221 as the grand prize winner. Mr. Kiran will receive a $2,000 scholarship provided by NYU-Poly and will develop his proposal as part of an unpaid internship at CIO/OFT. Mr. Kiran is a computer science student from Istanbul, Turkey.

&#8220Park Wise&#8221 is aimed at helping users obtain information on what they see as they travel through parks by using the newest technological trends in human computer interaction. &#8220Park Wise&#8221 will be developed as a mobile application to assist visitors of New York State parks. Individuals using the application can learn about the unique and historic sites in New York parks by pointing the camera of their mobile device at a key point of interest. For example, if users point a camera at the Helderberg Escarpment located in Thatcher State Park in Albany, they would learn it is one of the richest fossil-bearing formations in the world.

In addition, &#8220Park Wise&#8221 will feature a navigation application. While wandering the parks, &#8220Park Wise&#8221 will allow users to see their current location and where they are headed. &#8220Park Wise&#8221 users will also have the ability to take photos of their experiences and share them on Facebook, comment on key points of interest, and read other users comments.

Two proposals were also selected as second place winners and each team will receive a $1,000 scholarship to NYU-Poly. The second place team winners were Kunjan Sanghvi, Nisarg Shah and Yogesh Trivedi- and a team comprised of Marvin Charles and Ram Kumar. Honorable Mentions in the contest were awarded to Avinash Vutukuri and Barn Durukan, who will each receive a $500 scholarship to further their educational goals.

Historic Huguenot Street Elects New Board Members

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Historic Huguenot Street of New Paltz has elected three new members, including a key official from the Belgian Consulate, to the organization’s board of trustees. The elections occurred at the group’s annual meeting.

Christina Bark, Susan Ingalls Lewis and Edith Mayeux were welcomed to the board. Christina Bark is experienced as a corporate leader, attorney and entrepreneur. Most recently, Bark served as a Global Leader of Business Affairs and Chief Counsel for Oliver Wyman, a leading international consulting firm . She holds degrees from Vassar College and Stanford Law School.

Susan Ingalls Lewis is an Associate Professor of History at the State University of New York at New Paltz, where she teaches courses in American history and women’s studies. Lewis is an accomplished author and has held several leadership positions in the Mid Hudson Valley, including terms on the Rosendale Library and the Century House Historical Society in Rosendale. She holds degrees from Wellesley College and the State University of New York at Binghamton.

The third new member of the board of trustees is Edith Mayeux. Mayeux is the Trade Commissioner for the Wallonia Region of Belgium at the Consulate of Belgium in New York. Mayeux was born in French-speaking Wallonia, which is the ancestral home of the founders of New Paltz. In her current role, Mayeux helps companies from Wallonia access the U.S. market. Mayeux holds a degree in Modern Languages from the Ecole d’Interpretes Internationaux and in Applied Economics from the University of Mons, Belgium. She lives in Manhattan.

Mary Etta Schneider, president of Historic Huguenot Street, says of these new members, “We are so fortunate to have these three incredible women join our board of trustees. Each brings very special skills and perspectives. We are especially thrilled to have Edith Mayeux join our board. Historic Huguenot Street’s connection to Wallonia is a distinctive part of our history and we hope this can be the beginning of a growing relationship with our ‘homeland.’”

Also, Stephen Pratt Lumb of Dutchess County, himself a descendant of eleven of the twelve founders of New Paltz, returned to the board after a short break. Thomas E. Nyquist and Stewart P. Glenn of New Paltz were re-elected, as were Mark A. Rosen of Stone Ridge and Eileen Crispell Ford of Norwalk, Connecticut, who is also a descendant of the community’s founders.

Historic Huguenot Street, located on the banks of the Wallkill River, is where small group of French-speaking Huguenots settled in 1678. Today, just steps from downtown New Paltz, the site features seven stone houses dating to 1705, a burying ground and a reconstructed 1717 stone church – all in their original village setting. HHS offers six acres of landscaped green space and public programming to the local community and visitors from around the world. For more information about Historic Huguenot Street, visit www.huguenotstreet.org or call (845) 255-1660.

Picnic in the Park at the Adirondack Museum

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The Adirondack Museum will celebrate National Picnic Month on July 10, 2010. Activities are planned from 10:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. All are included in the price of general museum admission. Children twelve years of age and younger will be admitted FREE of charge as part of the festivities.

&#8220Picnic in the Park&#8221 will include displays, tableaux, special presentations, music, a Teddy Bear’s Picnic just for kids, cookbook signings, demonstrations, menus, recipes, hands-on opportunities, and good food, as well as the museum’s new exhibit, &#8220Let’s Eat! Adirondack Food Traditions.&#8221

Visitors are invited to bring their own picnic to enjoy on the grounds or purchase sandwiches, salads, beverages, and desserts in the Cafe. Picnic tables are scattered throughout the campus.

The event will showcase &#8220Great Adirondack Picnics&#8221. Ann S. O’Leary and Susan Rohrey will illustrate how the use of design and menu planning can create two Adirondack picnics. A Winter’s Repast, En Plein Air &#8211 an elegant New Year’s Eve celebration will be set in a lean-to. The Angler’s Compleat Picnic will feature local products in a scene reproduced from a vintage postcard. Both women will be available from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. to speak with visitors, and provide menus and recipes to take home.

To round out the elegant picnic theme, Chef Kevin McCarthy will provide an introduction to wines and offer tips on how to best pair wines with picnic foods. The presentations will be held at 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.

Special presentations will be held in the museum’s Auditorium. Curator Hallie E. Bond will offer &#8220Picnics Past in the Park&#8221 at 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Varrick Chittenden, founder of Traditional Arts of Upstate New York (TAUNY) will present &#8220Good Food Served Right: North Country Food and Foodways&#8221 at 1:30 p.m.

In addition, Sally Longo, chef and owner of Aunt Sally’s Catering in Glens Falls, N.Y. will offer &#8220Fun Foods for Picnicking with Kids&#8221 in the Mark W. Potter Education Center. &#8220Savory Foods and Snacks&#8221 will begin at 11:30 p.m. &#8220Sweet Treats and Desserts&#8221 will be presented at 3:00 p.m.

Museum visitors can create their own Adirondack picnic fare at home. From 11:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m., regional cookbook authors will sign and sell their work in the Visitor Center. Participants include the Upper Saranac Lake Cookbook with Marsha Stanley- Good Food, Served Right, with Lynn Ekfelt- Northern Comfort with Annette Neilson- Stories, Food, Life with Ellen Rocco and Nancy Battaglia- and Recipes From Camp Trillium with author Louise Gaylord.

Tom Phillips, a Tupper Lake rustic furniture maker, will construct a traditional woven picnic basket in the Education Center from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Visitors will discover displays about &#8220Picnics and Food Safety&#8221 as well as the many uses of maple syrup (recipes provided) with the Uihlein Sugar Maple Research and Extension Field Station staff.

Guided tours of the exhibit &#8220Let’s Eat! Adirondack Food Traditions&#8221 are scheduled for 11:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m., and 3:30 p.m.

Singer, songwriter, and arts educator Peggy Lynn will give a performance of traditional Adirondack folk music under the center-campus tent at 2:00 p.m.

The Museum Store will be open from 9:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., featuring a wide array of North Country-made food products as well as a special &#8220farmer’s market.&#8221

Fur, Fortune, and Empire: A History of American Fur Trade

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&#8220The fur trade was a powerful force in shaping the course of American history from the early 1600s through the late 1800s,&#8221 Eric Jay Dolin writes in his new comprehensive history Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. &#8220Millions of animals were killed for their pelts, which were used according to the dictates of fashion &#8212- and human vanity,&#8221 Dolin writes. &#8220This relentless pursuit of furs left in its wake a dramatic, often tragic tale of clashing cultures, fluctuating fortunes, and bloody wars.&#8221

The fur trade spurred imperial power struggles that eventually led to the expulsions of the Swedes, the Dutch, and the French from North America. Dolin’s history of the American fur trade is a workmanlike retelling of those struggles that sits well on the shelf beside Hiram Martin Chittenden’s 1902 two-volume classic The American Fur Trade of the Far West, and The Fur Trade in Colonial New York, 1686-1776., the only attempt to tell the story of the fur trade in New York. The latter volume, written by Thomas Elliot Norton, leaves no room for the Dutch period or the early national period which saw the fur trade drive American expansion west.

Dolin’s Fur Fortune, and Empire, is not as academic as last year’s Rethinking the Fur Trade: Cultures of Exchange in an Atlantic World by Susan Sleeper-Smith. It’s readable, and entertaining, ranging from Europe, following the westward march of the fur frontier across America, and beyond to China. Dolin shows how trappers, White and Indian, set the stage for the American colonialism to follow and pushed several species to the brink of extinction. Among the characters in this history are those who were killed in their millions- beaver, mink, otter, and buffalo.

Eric Jay Dolin’s focus, as it was with his last book Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, is the intersection of American history and natural history. Readers interested in the history of the New York fur trade will find this book enlightening for it’s connection of the state’s fur business with the larger world as the first third deals with the period before the American Revolution, when New York fur merchants and traders were still a dominate factor. Yet, like last year’s Sleeper-Smith book, Dolin’s newest volume is simply outlines the wider ground on which the still necessary volume on the fur trade in New York might be built.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

Hyde Collection Presents Aaron Copland Lecture

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As part of The Hyde Collection’s Celebrating Wyeth’s America event series, the Museum will host a lecture by Dr. Suzanne Forsberg titled Another American Legend: The Music of Aaron Copland on Sunday, July 11, 2010.

Copland was the nation’s first to achieve international fame and produce compositions that sounded distinctly American. His music helped to identify the American landscape of Andrew Wyeth’s time.

Slated for 3 pm in the Helen Froehlich Auditorium, Forsberg’ s presentation will include video clips and CDs that illustrate Copland’s life and representative compositions.

Dr. Suzanne Forsberg, a graduate of Harvard University and New York University, is professor of fine arts at St. Francis College. She has lectured at the New York City Early Music Festival and her scholarly work on the early classical symphony has appeared in encyclopedias and journals, as well as in the series The Symphony, 1720-1840.

This talk is free with paid admission to the Andrew Wyeth: An American Legend exhibition or with a donation to the Museum. The talk is funded by New York Council for the Humanities.

For details on the Andrew Wyeth: An American Legend exhibition, which runs through September 5, 2010, and on all Celebrating Wyeth’s America events, visit www.hydecollection.org.

NY Parks, Historic Site Attendance Soars

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The State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Commissioner Carol Ash has announced an increase in park attendance. According to Ash, state parks attendance has increased by 1.3 million visitors, up 11 percent from last year, while July 4th holiday weekend camping reservations reflect 90 percent occupancy. Additionally, sales of the park system’s $65 annual pass, the Empire Passport, increased statewide 1.5 percent over 2009 numbers, with more than 40,000 passes sold this year.

Ash also introduced a new summer campaign to encourage New Yorkers to visit and support state parks and historic sites. The statewide Find Your Fun social network and web-based initiative will run through September and utilize the agency’s website (www.nysparks.com) as well as Facebook and Twitter.

Regular updates and highlights will be provided about summer-related Find Your Fun suggestions and activities going on at state parks and sites to engage visitors. Park staff will offer an insider’s look at popular spots, hidden gems and interesting facts, and visitors will be encouraged to share photos, recipes, and favorites, while programs, activities and trip suggestions will also be promoted.

Ash is also encouraging New Yorkers support parks and historic sites by joining Friends Groups, volunteering at parks or making financial donations to the park through the agency website.

Last year, the state park system recorded nearly 56 million visits. The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation oversees 178 state parks and 35 historic sites. For more information on any of these recreation areas, call 518-474-0456 or visit www.nysparks.com.

This Weeks New York History Web Highlights

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Intern Wins McHenry Preservation Award

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The Open Space Institute has announced that this year’s Barnabas McHenry Award for Historic Preservation has been given to Matthew Colon of Newburgh for a project that will digitize and catalogue the entire slide collection of the nation’s first publicly-owned and operated historic site, Washington’s Headquarters.

The Friends of the State Historic Site of the Hudson Highlands, an ancillary group to Washington’s Headquarters State Historic Site, nominated volunteer intern Matthew Colon in recognition of his outstanding performance this past year ensuring that the Washington’s Headquarters library and archives will be useful to the staff and the public. Matt honed his archivist skills while a student at SUNY Oswego, as well as from related professional development classes. The McHenry Award will support Matt’s next project: to properly accession important images previously available only through outdated equipment and make them accessible for a myriad of uses now and in the future.

In 2007, the Open Space Institute created the The Barnabas McHenry Hudson River Valley Awards to honor Barney McHenry’s extensive leadership, contributions, and accomplishments in the Hudson River Valley. For the past forty years, McHenry has worked to protect the Hudson River Valley’s landscapes, heritage, and culture. He demonstrates his commitment to the region as a Member and Secretary of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, Chair of the Hudson River Valley Greenway Communities Council, Co-Chair of the Hudson River Valley Natural Heritage Area, President of Boscobel, and Trustee of both Friends of the Hudson Valley and the Open Space Institute.

The McHenry Awards provide financial support to the &#8220pairing&#8221 of young leaders and exemplary projects that make significant contributions in environmental conservation, historic preservation and the arts in the Hudson River Valley.

Abenaki Focus of Vermont July 4th Event

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On the anniversary of American independence, a historical re-enactor will visit one of the historic sites from that period and detail its connections to the Native Americans who also inhabited the area.

Wes “Red Hawk” Dikeman of Ticonderoga, New York, will be coming to the Mount Independence State Historic Site on Saturday, July 3, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. to share his extensive knowledge about the Abenaki connections to the area in the American Revolution and as first inhabitants.

“Dikeman is a riveting storyteller who has been studying and interpreting this history for many years,” said Elsa Gilbertson, Regional Historic Site Administrator with the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation. “He often takes part as a re-enactor in the annual Revolutionary War living history weekends at the Hubbardton Battlefield and Mount Independence.”

She said the program will be an informal afternoon with Red Hawk, and a special discussion at 2:00 p.m.

&#8220He will show some of his artifacts, as well as Revolutionary War attire and gear,” Gilbertson said. “Native Americans have had a very long history at Mount Independence, first digging chert quarries for making stone tools, and then participating in the American Revolution.”

Mount Independence, a National Historic Landmark, was built in 1776-77 by American troops as a defense against British attack from Canada, and named after the Declaration of Independence.

On the night of July 5 and 6, 1777, the American Army under General Arthur St. Clair withdrew from Mount Independence and nearby Fort Ticonderoga after British General John Burgoyne sailed down Lake Champlain in an effort to cut New England off from the rest of the United States.

Since a British force more than twice his size had occupied higher ground from which they could bombard his positions with impunity, St. Clair abandoned the fortifications without a fight.

Two days later at the Battle of Hubbardton, soldiers from Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire fought in a decisive rear guard action to halt Burgoyne’s army.

The fact that his decisions preserved the army and ultimately led to the American victory in October at the Battle of Saratoga didn’t stop an outraged Congress from officially censuring St. Clair for the loss of the forts. He argued that his conduct had been honorable, demanded review by a court martial, and was ultimately exonerated

Admission is $5.00 for adults and free for children under 15, and includes a visit to the museum and access to all the trails.

The site is located nearly the end of Mount Independence Road, six miles west of the intersections of Vermont Routes 22A and 73 near Orwell village. Regular hours are 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily through October 12. Call 802-948-2000 for more information.

Photo: Wes Dikeman.