Helen Henderson, whose maiden name is Coons, has been living in the Livingston-Germantown area for more than a century. The first time she saw an airplane, leaving a jet stream behind it, she and everyone else who were at a garage at the time, stopped and looked up at the sky in awe. She remembers when “boatmen” would go door to door offering Shad and Herring from the Hudson River. She vaguely remembers the celebrative churchbells that chimed at the end of World War I. She can speak to the struggle of fruit farmers during the Depression and the taste of applejack from local speakeasies during Prohibition.

What follows is a transcribed version of a talk we had Monday at her home in Livingston.

This is an updated version of a story that appeared first in 2015 and which has continued on its own to draw hundreds of readers a month.

At the bottom of a graveled path off Ingalls Avenue in Troy, New York, two kids, an older and younger brother probably, sat on large rocks next to their bicycles.

The water poured over the Federal Dam at Troy and the older one asked about the length of the trip and whether we were packing food.

A friend and I carried our kayaks down to the water, leaving the vessels ten feet or more from small waves that crashed onto the gravelly shore.

There was a tinge of mischief apparent in the older of the two kids, but most kids carry that, and it seemed his curiosity was genuine.

The following is a transcribed interview with Andy Smith. Part of the interview was over dinner and Smith’s wife, Nanci, was present during much of the talk.

WS: Where did you grow up?

AS: On a dairy farm in Ancramdale, New York.

While I was on Long Island Thursday for a friend’s wake, I took a ride a bit farther out on the island to Sag Harbor, where John Steinbeck owned a house from 1955 until his death in 1968.

Steinbeck split his final 13 years living in New York City and living in the Sag Harbor cottage, which overlooks a cove in the Long Island Sound.

Dom Flemons, who has had a good bit of acclaim over the past five years for his role in the roots band the Carolina Chocolate Drops, is playing in Chatham Saturday.

Hiking up to the Stissing Mountain firetower in Pine Plains is an adventure that can be completed in full in about two hours.

My brother and I recently took the hike for a brief getaway and found the hike...

Tom Casey, a friend and former colleague, and a well-respected former Register-Star reporter, died early Friday morning in a car accident in Lee, Massachusetts.

Each year I try to challenge myself to an immersive Hudson River adventure. Last year I spent five days paddling from Troy to Manhattan, circling Manhattan on the sixth day and paddling north to Westchester County on day seven.

This year my trip was much more abbreviated, spending one very full day kayaking from Tivoli to Denning’s Point in Beacon—an expedition of more than forty miles.

Louise Bliss, head of the Hudson River Historic Boat Restoration and Sailing Society, has in recent years focused her energy on a wooden sloop sailboat, in need of much nurturing before it will be put back on its native Hudson River waters. The Eleanor is on the national and state historic registries. Bliss spent countless hours on the motorless boat, once owned by her father, voyaging many times all the way to New York Harbor. The following is a transcription of our talk Friday at the Hudson waterfront.