Every so often, reorganization must occur. The local yearbook collection in the Folklife Center has been arranged by title for many years, but it becomes difficult to browse if one doesn't know that Queensbury's yearbook is called "Orbit". We have been discussing rearranging the yearbooks by city for a few months now, & I decided to take a crack at it today! In the process of reorganizing the yearbooks, I discovered a few with interesting cover art. Plus, a number of the year

After my post about Windfield Designs, Inc we heard from a number of you sharing stories about your own collections. Some folks have one or two, others, like Ginny Combs, have whole villages. Ginny shared on Facebook, "I have a village on top of my china closet with the Finch Pruyn Office (a Christmas gift from the company when my husband worked there) the Delong and Sisson houses and some generic Winfield houses. Also have the high school on Glen St on a table in the livingr

In amongst the institutional & organizational archives, maps, genealogy, and local history books one expects to find in a library research center, The Folklife Center holds some surprising collections. One such collection is the John C. Mannix Magicians Library. This extensive collection currently contains 357 books and 117 videos & DVDs about magicians, card tricks, illusions, and one-liners dating from 1934-2006. It takes up nearly eight entire shelves in the climate contro

Today we had a gentleman from Colorado visiting the area. He is originally from the Glens Falls/Hudson Falls area and came in with his father and sister to look at our collection of banks and flats by Windfield Designs. We pulled the four boxes of artifacts he was most interested in, so that he could have a look as these artifacts are not currently on display. Windfield Designs, Inc. of Glens Falls, NY, made wooden, silk-screened reproductions of 18th and 19th century buildin

UNNAMED from Some Words: Poems by William Bronk (1992) In the narrowest and most immediate view, we are named and identifiable as persons, noted and notarized as such, often with forbears and offspring also known. All this is documented and kept with care that protects the claim. This is a way we live. Viewed from a long way back and away, as we view distant people--distant as we for them-- we are nameless and nothing as their dust and their bones are, like cells shed from th

Nothing Is Great from Book of Nothing by Richard Carella (2013) Nothing is great- nothing is so great it can not be contained; there is nothing outside of nothing; nothing is outside of nothing; compared to nothing the universe is as nothing; there is nothing greater than nothing; nothing is greater than nothing. Poet Richard Carella was born 9 January 1951 in Hudson Falls, NY to John J. Carella and Joyce M. Blake. Carella has wanted to express himself in poetry since middle

I am dedicating my blog posts this month to local poets & poetry because April is National Poetry Month! The first featured Jonathan E. Hoag. I discovered the poetry of Jeanne Robert Foster (born Julia Elizabeth Oliver, 1879-1970) when I was SpO Clerk & Local Interest buyer at Borders Books & Music #389 in Saratoga Springs, NY. Richard and Janis Londraville's biography of her, Dear Yeats, Dear Pound, Dear Ford: Jeanne Robert Foster and Her Circle of Friends, had recently com

Study Clubs were all the rage amongst middle & upper class women in the late 19th & early 20th centuries. Glens Falls boasted at least nine different study clubs, with other women's organizations hosting similar activities. The Monday Reading Club formed in 1905, and was like many such clubs around the country. They met bi-weekly at the home of a hostess, and another member served as the presenter of the designated topic. They rotated both positions throughout the club year w

In researching the suffrage movement using local newspapers to uncover the names of women involved in the cause, I came across a small group of women on the other side. Yes, Glens Falls had a contingent of "Antis", or anti-suffragists who I am just beginning to identify. The letter to the editor transcribed below was probably written, at least in part, by Jeannette Roosa Davis (Mrs. Loyal L.), who was president of the Glens Falls branch of the New York State Association Oppos