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Where Genius Bloomed: Herman Melville’s Arrowhead Farm

Herman Melville's vast and enigmatic creative mind led to some of the best novels in American Literature, "Moby Dick" at the top of the list. They're an odd mismatched bunch of books though, which begin with several autobiographical tales of the sea in order and end with the truly peculiar "The Confidence Man." To know Melville, a reader must recognize him as a sailor, a wanderer, a quester. He married, yes, and had children, but it seems he was never genuinely happy but for a short period of time in a sprawling farmhouse called Arrowhead at 780 Holmes Road, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, ...

Editor’s Note

When I've consumed a lot of fluids my body tells me it's time to visit the lavatory.It's a simple concept, listening to what your body tells you you need to do. I don't want to mess myself, that would be embarrassing.I think this is why potty training is so difficult.We're on our fourth student, the last of his class, and he's falling behind in his studies. His predecessors, I remember a few bumps in the road, but never this bad. The one time our oldest flunked resulted in some footprints in the classroom, an experience I'll never forget thank God we were renting that facility at the ...

Standing At Ground Zero

I volunteered at Ground Zero in the days after 9/11. A friend and I drove down to New York from Massachusetts where I lived and we served meals to firemen in a food tent near the still smoking, devastated site.Restaurants in the area supplied trays of food to the tent all day long and people brought cases of water and soda. You might remember how the people of that city, the people of our country and the whole rest of the world, seemed to be doing what they could to help ease our collective pain.One day, a policeman who had come through the tent a few times asked my friend and I if we ...

Ellington Mom-And-Pop Earns Rave Reviews

Even though my husband and I seek out mom-and-pop restaurants, we've driven by Dave and Bev's Diner at the four corners in Ellington more than once without giving it much thought. That is until recently when we stopped in for their Friday fish fry, which was one of the best I've had in the area. Not only was the fish very good, the baked potato was perfect, which is not always the case with restaurant potatoes. It also came with pineapple cole slaw and a thick slice of freshly baked bread. There are many five-star reviews online indicating that we didn't just happen to stop on one of ...

How To Balance The Light In Your Camera, Prevent Silhouettes

Welcome to another edition of Let's Talk Photography! Today I'd like to tackle a subject that was suggested by my good friend Don Armstrong who is a member of the Chautauqua County Camera Club and the Audubon Nature Photography Club. Don asked me to talk a little bit about the importance of understanding how to balance the light in your camera and prevent silhouettes in your shots.As I've discussed previously, when you take a photo you are capturing the light that is bouncing off the world around you. In an ideal situation, your main light will be coming from somewhere behind you as the ...

The First Oil Boom?

The petroleum boom following the news of Col. Edwin Drake's famous Titusville well and the riches it bestowed on some, inspired many people in surrounding areas, such as Chautauqua County, with interest, obsession, or lunacy. Local interest produced nothing tangible until the Jamestown Journal asked in a front page editorial in December, 1876, "Why can't we have an oil well in Jamestown as easily as in Warren or Bradford?"Things moved rapidly from that point. Horace Gifford, Alonzo Kent, Judson Breed, Jerome Preston, Anson A. Burlin and Samuel G. Love among other prominent Jamestown men ...