The following is a fully transcribed interview with Leo Bower, a Greenport resident who grew up on North Front Street in Hudson and has a deep personal history with the group of structures referred to in recent years as the Furgary Boat Club. Others call it the North Dock Tin Boat Association. Leo Bower calls it what he says people called it when he was a kid: Shantytown. He mentions several names, at least a few of which I'm sure I've butchered. Please correct any misspelled names with an email to hrzeitgeist@gmail.com or in a comment below.

OVERVIEW

This was not a hum-drum week. We received reports of black bears, rattlesnakes, a huge snapping turtle, and aggressive Canada geese. The forests were fully leafed out, making birding a bit more challenging, Hudson Valley bald eagle nestlings were more than midway to their fledge dates, and the feel of summer was beginning to permeate our days.

In a canoe and kayak race sponsored by the Roe Jan Creek Boat Club Sunday, more than 50 people raced down a seven-mile stretch of the Roeliff Jansen Kill. The race, a fundraiser to benefit the American Cancer Society, raised $2,574.

51 people—plus a few rogue untimed competitors—started off just below Bingham’s Mills on the stream Sunday morning. Some paddlers capsized during the first two sets of rapids around the bend from the start and many overturned in the water downstream.

Like life and so many aspects of it, the Roeliff Jansen Kill can change pretty quickly. Due to several new downed-tree blockages in the upper section of the stream, the canoe and kayak race scheduled for this Sunday will now begin at Bingham Mills in Livingston.

It will now be an approximately 7-mile adventure for the racers, filled with patches of whitewater, peaceful sections and a few shallow stretches. Competitors may start any time between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. from downhill of 206 Mill Road (make sure to enter Bingham Mills Road from the Route 9 side). Competitors should arrange a drop-off there.

Editor’s Note: This is the first letter to the editor received by Hudson River Zeitgeist. Letters may be sent to hrzeitgeist@gmail.com. Any time a letter or multiple letters are received, they will be published collectively the following Saturday.

It is incorrect to characterize opposition to the Dollar General Store as an old timer/newcomer dispute. Over 180 long time and second homeowner Germantown residents signed a petition asking the Town Board to establish a committee to review and update the Comprehensive Plan and the Zoning Law and impose a moratorium (say 6 months) on commercial development along Route 9G while the committee is doing its work. Every day, more townspeople send us signed petitions supporting the request and opposing the building of a Dollar General store. Former supervisor George Sharpe, in his own letter to the newspapers and the town board, for just one example, unequivocally stated his opposition to the Dollar General on Route 9G. So it is probably more accurate to characterize opposition to the update and the moratorium as political posturing, but it should not be viewed as support for a Dollar General store in Germantown by long term residents.  

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.