The Livingstons were an extremely prominent family in early American history, but lots of people today have never heard of them.  Here are seven facts you can whip out at a party to show that you know your American history:

1.  Robert R. Livingston did not sign the Declaration of Independence (but he did help to write it)

Edward George Shannon, a loving husband, father and grandfather, died Friday at his home in Germantown, after battling advanced prostate cancer. He was 58.

He was born December 21, 1956 in New Rochelle, N.Y., to Julia Godfrey Shannon and William George Shannon.

Paddling north out of the Henry Hudson Riverfront Park in Hudson, I went against the wind along the northern docks of the Hudson Powerboat Association, toward the North Bay, in my kayak. To the west, I saw a bald eagle fly and come to rest on a tree on Middle Ground Flats.

I made my way, paddling along shore, to the small train trestle that feeds water into what was once a bay of the Hudson River and is now more of a wetland receiving tidal injections every six hours through the trestle. (Hudson’s two bays—North and South—were cut off from the main Hudson River by the causeway built for rail in the 1800s.)

Scenic Hudson announced Wednesday that it has permanently protected 590 acres of land along the Hudson River in the town of Stockport.

Tidal wetlands, forested bluffs and grasslands are among the undeveloped 2.4 miles of shoreline now protected by the organization.

In a hundred years, humans may know all the whys and hows. But right now, we have to work with what information we have in front of us.

The whole point of the annual autism walk and exposition at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds in Rhinebeck Sunday was to get those of us whose lives are busy to think and talk about this mysterious disorder and to feel a bit of the pain of the millions of people affected by it.

Wearing his signature sleeveless vest and neck kerchief, Jeff Beck took the stage at a sold-out Ulster Performing Arts Center this past Tuesday. From 8:50 p.m. until nearly 10:30, the crowd listened and watched in awe, mesmerized by every note. 

After his band warmed the crowd up for a minute, Beck strutted onto the stage and picked up a gleaming white guitar. Without hesitation, he jumped headlong into an intense night of jamming. A thick diamond wristband glistened with each turn of his wrist. Beck’s thumb flicked like a hummingbird’s wing across the strings, rapidly and instinctually. He paid particular attention to the lower end of the guitar’s neck, yielding high, emotional notes that each tap of the whammy bar contorted with surgeon-like precision.

It was a haunting scene outside the Basilica Hudson Saturday evening as crowds gathered, awaiting the re-creation of Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train stop in Hudson exactly 150 years earlier.

A slow drumbeat hushed the large crowd and a group of women in white dresses began singing a solemn hymn. Another set of re-creators lit torches and the entire crowd followed the women in white, across the train tracks toward the old Dunn Warehouse building in Hudson’s riverfront park. The women in white, during the walk over, sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

It seems truer every year that you can never say for sure what you’re going to see in the Hudson River.

According to The Albany Times-Union, a herd of about 15 buffalo were spotted on Schodack Island in the river Thursday evening.

A year and a half before he died, Levon Helm and his band were about to take the stage at John Gill’s Farm outside Kingston to play a free Sunday concert—an annual tradition during Helm’s comeback years. A Pumpkin cannon launched in the distance and a hayride wagon carrying families meandered in a field beyond the stage.

My father and I stood along Route 209, since the grassy area in front of the stage was packed with people. Barbara O’Brien, Helm’s manager, announced before the show, as she sometimes did, that Levon’s voice wasn’t cooperating that day. Helm, famous for his work with The Band, had recovered from throat cancer and had managed to regain his well-known voice, though it was often touch-and-go.