The home of the Hudson River School of art. (From The Croton Chronicle.)
My local Hudson River village newsletter sometimes goes afield, but often up or down the mighty waterway.
As some readers may know, posting in Words for the Wise has been pretty infrequent lately since I took on the job of publishing an online newsletter for the village of Croton-on-Hudson, New York, last fall. What I thought would be a weekly newsletter has turned out to be an almost daily publication. Who knew that a village of 8300 souls could produce so much news!
I assume that few here are interested in the arcane events of our little community, as compelling as they may be for all of us who live here (as many commuters to New York City do.)
But every once in a while The Croton Chronicle goes on the road, with an occasional feature called, um, “Chronicle on the Road.” And since travel pieces are part of the mix here, I thought there was no harm in sharing at least some of these stories for this much wider audience.
Recently we traveled up to the Catskills, and the town of Catskill specifically, to visit the home of Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School of American painting. Even during his lifetime, the Hudson River was under assault by the forces of industrialization, and we quoted Cole’s 19th century concerns that we were losing touch with nature:
“Nature has spread for us a rich and delightful bouquet. Shall we turn from it? We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out of the garden is our own ignorance and folly… May we at times turn from the ordinary pursuits of life to the pure enjoyment of rural nature; which is in the soul like a fountain of cool waters to the way-worn traveler…”
— Thomas Cole, “Essay on American Scenery,” 1836
Please read on if this story intrigues you. “Words for the Wise” is coming back, slowly, slowly, with great appreciation to its loyal followers for hanging in there over the past several years even when we have been missing in action.
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