Welcome to my Blog! I’m very excited to have you on board! Central Park Story is a young adult adventure series whose main character is a sixteen-year-old boy named Christopher Middleton. It’s also a treasure hunt/romance/historical adventure/fantasy/humorous tale all rolled into one! I put a lot of time researching the backdrop to the series which […]
As everyone knows, Columbus had three ships on his maiden voyage to the New World, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. Unlike the other two, more agile boats, the flagship Santa Maria was a carrack. Fat and slow, she was designed for hauling cargo (read ‘gold’), not for exploration. Slow as the Santa […]
The Four Seasons Restaurant, situated in mid-town Manhattan and designed by world-famous architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, is associated with a number of culinary milestones. It is credited with introducing the idea of seasonally-changing menus to America. It was also the first destination restaurant to print its menus in English. Finally, […]
Statistically-speaking, the answer is yes. It’s a lot safer walking in Central Park today than it was in the past. That’s not to say one should be carefree about it. There are still plenty of ways one can dramatically increase one’s chances of an encounter with a mugger. I started this post to highlight the […]
Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott, was the first historical novel of its kind and set off a train of similar type novels. By today’s standards its plot seems cookie-cutter with lots of valiant fighting and flag-waving tournaments, but one has to remember that it was the original cookie cutter back in 1820 when it was […]
I had fun choosing a location for the apartment where Christopher lives in my young adult adventure series, Central Park Story. I wanted it to be near to where I have his Aunt B run an antique doll house store, but I also wanted it within walking distance of the Bethesda Fountain where most of […]
The tribe that inhabited the island of Manhattan in the 1600s were called the Lenape, the Lenape being part of the Delaware nation who inhabited the lower Hudson Valley. Did the Dutch really purchase the island of Manhattan from the Lenape for a mere $20 in worthless beads and leave them holding an empty bag? […]
There being no photography during the Revolutionary War, I have to rely on drawings and renditions of what was there at the time. However, this drawing of McGowen’s Pass (to the right) is so realistic that it makes a good substitute for a photograph. Imagine this same location becoming an urban park surrounded by skyscrapers […]
On a cold December 20th in 1820, Daniel Webster gave an oration commemorating the bicentennial of the Pilgrim’s landing in Plymouth, Massachusetts. ‘There is a local feeling connected with this occasion too strong to be resisted,’ he said, ‘a sort of genius of the place which inspires and awes us…’ And he went on to […]
..at least toward the end when he eloquently states: With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne […]
Although there is no material connection between the two, the Central Park Cave made me think of Tom Sawyer’s cave in Twain’s famous, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The Mark Twain Cave in Hannibal, Missouri, covers some six and a half miles consisting of four entrances and 260 passages, while the Central Park Cave consists […]
