suns along the Mohawk

 The past two weeks of exceptionally warm weather have brought the tulips out prematurely in Albany’s Washington Park, and a variety of blossoms out on Washington Avenue in the Schenectady Stockade more than a month earlier than last year.   We focused on the arrival of our 2011 cherry blossoms on April 26 last year, and on blooming magnolia and forsythia on April 28th.   This slideshow has pictures taken today, March 22, 2012, along and behind Washington Avenue. [find more from March 26 here]

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. early blooms on Washington Ave. – March 22, 2012 .

I’m curious to see what the early blooming will mean for the fullness and duration of our blossom season here in the Stockade.  [update: see the Daily Gazette, “Warm weather messing with Mother Nature” (March 23, 2012, A1, by John Enger, online by subscription).]

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– 2011, a “normal” Spring arrival: magnolia and forsythia blossoms along Washington Ave. – late April 2011; more here–

Last night’s preview of Our Town Schenectady at Proctor’s GE Theater made it clear that WMHT has created an interesting, enjoyable, and informative look at the City through the words, eyes and lenses of its residents.  Even natives and longtime residents of Old Dorp will surely discover new reasons to appreciate their City.  As Stockade resident Linda Muralidharan, who is the storyteller for the segment on the Stockade and its Walkabout event, put is: “We’re ornery but we’re fascinating.”

 Our Town Schenectady has its broadcast premier tomorrow, Thursday January 19, at 7:30 PM, on our PBS Channel 17, and in about three months you will be able to view it online. ; or purchase the DVD.  At the bottom of this posting, you’ll find a list of the 19 segments that make up Our Town Schenectady, which is narrated by Ernie Tetrault. See The Saratogian for more coverage; TU Arts Talk blog, too.

    The Stockade segment of Our Town Schenectady gives some background history and then uses the annual Walkabout event to tell more of the story and show what makes our first-in-the-state historic district unique and inviting. The one-person staff and editorial board of suns along the Mohawk was proud to be asked to contribute to the Stockade segment, and most pleased to discover last night that WMHT’s production staff selected two dozen of our images for inclusion in the show.  Below is a Slideshow of the pictures from suns along the Mohawk that help tell our Stockade story in Our Town Schenectady.  In choosing the photos, I’m glad Joanne Durfee and her staff at WMHT decided to focus on the people who make the beautiful historic Stockade a living neighborhood — especially the residents who participate in events like the Walkabout, and the non-residents who come to share in the fun and inspiration as re-enactors and visitors.

The photos in the Slideshow were taken from our 2010 Walkabout or 2011 Walkabout postings, each of which has a Gallery that includes the photos used in Our Town Schenectady and dozens of additional images.  You can click on a Gallery image for a larger version and permalink, and scroll over the photo for a description of the picture.

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– share this posting with the short weblink: http://tinyurl.com/OTS-Stockade

Here is a list of the segments and storytellers in Our Town Schenectady, in the order of their appearance:

Mabee Farm – Kim Mabee
Stockade Walkabout – Linda Muralidharan
Engineering Solving Problem (Schenectady Museum) – Chris Hunter
Empire State Aerosciences Museum – Kevin Millington
Vale Cemetery – Bernie McEvoy and John Sowa
Little Italy – Maria Papa
Hibernians – Michael Glenn
SCCC – Patricia Frazier and Martha Asselin
Vibrant Arts Community (SCP, SLOC, SSO, Proctor’s) – Mardy Moore
Schenectady High Chamber Choir – Ben Butryn and Raya Malcolm
Hamilton Hill Arts Center – Iris Williams and Penny Holmes
Youth Media Arts – Mike Feurstein and Shawn Minarik
Roots and Wisdom – Debbie Forster (Cornell Coop Extension)
Schenectady Green Market – Betsy Henry and Dick Shave
Jackson’s Garden, Union College – Andrew McLain
Central Park Rose Garden – David Gade
Central Park Disk Golf – Justin Hoffman and Andrew Butryn
Ultimate Frisbee and Moon & River Open Mike – Dan Goodspeed
Holiday Parade – Gail Kehn

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– “Hazel” & “Augustus” from “The Fault in Our Stars“, the upcoming novel by John Green, on the Riverside Park swing-set –

– update: click to see the resulting book trailer from Penguin Young Readers –

– follow-up (Feb. 5, 2014) the blockbuster book is being made into a 20th Century Fox movie (Official website) to be released June 6, 2014. Click for the Movie Trailer.

A photoshoot for best-selling author John Green‘s upcoming teen-romance novel The Fault in Our Stars  (Dutton Juvenile, January 10, 2012) took place as promised this afternoon at the swing-set in the Stockade’s Riverside Park.  I’m pretty sure that producer Stacie and her crew, including the models representing the novel’s two young lovers, felt the swings, the Park, the Mohawk, and the CSX train trestle made their drive from New York City well worthwhile.  The return of cold, blustery weather made their hours in the Park a little frosty.

The scene from the book that will be represented by the photo images to be used in the resulting PR material is a March day in the Mid-West.  I think our snowless December scene will be a good substitute.

The crew, which had taken rooms at the Stockade Inn for staging their shoot, were eager to finish by the time I arrived around 4 PM.  My hands and brain soon became too cold to remember to get more names or information, but I’ll supplement this posting when I get more. If you click on the author’s name above, you can found out more about his prior books and awards and prior books (such as Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns). You can read about the plot and pre-order the book at Amazon.com by clicking here.

. . see my photo tribute to “our special swing-set” . .

Here are images from my shooting of the photoshoot for “The Fault in Our Stars.”  Below the Slideshow there’s a Gallery of the same pictures.  I’m glad Monica Hoenig found our swing-set through this weblog and pointed her comrades in this direction.

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follow-up (Jan. 4, 2012): Some interesting facts about The Fault In Our Stars (see Wikipedia) : Last June, on the day John Green announced the name of the upcoming novel (and before he had finished writing it), a combination of social media reactions by his fans resulted in an eruption of pre-release sales that put the novel in the #1 sales spot at both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.  See “Tweeting from a La-Z-Boy, an Unfinished Book Hits No. 1” (The Wall Street Journal Online, by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, July 1, 2011).  The WSJ article lists the many social media connections Green has in his “digital toolbox”.  Among others, they include 1.1 million Twitter followers, and more than half a million more at the video weblog Green shares with his brother, vlogbrothers.“

TFIOS has, as of today, been on the Amazon.com Top 100 Best Sellers list for 130 days.  Also, B&N mistakenly mailed out copies of the book prematurely a few days before Christmas, and Green has asked that recipients not leak the content before the January 10 release date, so that his fans can all read the book together.  It looks like they have complied with the request.

update (January 10, 2011): Click for Green’s vlogbrothers video  The Fault in Our Stars Is Here Edition.

– Click on a photo in the following Gallery for a larger version; scroll over it for a description –

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