Top Stories from NCPR

Winter weather finally arrived in the North Country over the weekend, with snow across much of the region and single-digit temperatures in the Adirondacks.

If you were walking through downtown Carthage in Jefferson County 120 years ago, you would have seen dozens of wood-based factories - making everything from paper to department store boxes to shutters and blinds. Business was booming up and down the Black River, with timber arriving from logging operations in the Adirondacks. And Orman Braman, a Pennsylvania native looking to strike out on his own, wanted in.

Matt Horner is a sculptor who works in Keene, and he carves a rather unusual material. If you've ever climbed a mountain in the Adirondacks, you have probably stepped all over his favorite medium - Adirondack anorthosite. It comes in all colors, but the majority is grey or blue; it looks a bit like granite.

Making it as a musician anywhere is tough, but even harder in rural areas. That's why Sebastian 'Seba' Molnar decided at a young age that if he wanted to be a professional musician, he couldn't do it in the North Country.

It’s been a steamy summer in the Adirondacks. It’s also been a busy summer, with people packing trailheads and campgrounds, mostly in the High Peaks. To avoid the crowded trails Emily Russell headed into Hamilton County. She hiked into Tirrell Pond in the town of Blue Mountain Lake and sent this audio postcard

Long-distance trail running isn’t for everybody. But there is a cool and growing subculture in the Adirondack North Country made up of people who get together each year to test themselves against some of our most challenging terrain.

The 15.5-mile Adirondack trek offers some of the most spectacular views in the East.

Last week marked the start of spring, and it's worth celebrating the truly old-fashioned winter we just had in the North Country. Emily Russell sent a postcard from Wright Peak in the Adirondacks.

In warmer seasons, the Ausable Marsh is a paradise for paddlers, bird watchers and sun bathers. It lies on the western shore of Lake Champlain just south of Plattsburgh in the town of Peru. It turns out the marsh is also a gorgeous place to visit on a winter afternoon, full of quiet and color.

This week we’re looking at the controversial issue of corrections officer violence in New York prisons. Over the last five years, civil cases, criminal trials, and state and Federal probes have offered a new window into a problem that has plagued the state’s correctional facilities for decades. This morning, we focus on one prison in particular, Clinton Correctional in Dannemora. It’s one of the toughest maximum security lock-ups in America. For years inmates and advocacy groups have complained of excessive guard-on-inmate violence. The culture behind Dannemora’s big white wall is drawing new scrutiny in the wake of last summer’s escape and in the wake of a new video obtained by the New York Times that shows the death of a mentally ill inmate.

Luthier Dave Nichols is the owner-operator of Custom Pearl Inlay and celebrates his 50th anniversary this year as the custom pearl inlayer for Martin Guitars. He's also an authorized Martin dealer and repair man. Walk into Dave's wood shop just south of Malone and it's all about the music. He mostly builds guitars, though he also works on mandolins. He plays them, and he decorates them with custom inlay: mother-of-pearl, abalone or wood, all with his favorite music playing in the background. On a recent visit, it was Merle Haggard, for whom Dave says he's built an awful lot of guitars.

A crisis and intervention hotline serving St. Lawrence County celebrated its 40th anniversary this year. Reachout of St. Lawrence County was incorporated back in 1979, and has offered 24-hour phone crisis services, supportive listening, and a mobile crisis team that sends trained counselors to meet and assess people at risk at locations all around the county.

For over fifty years, the planetarium at SUNY Potsdam has served the North Country by offering visitors the chance to learn about astronomy. The experience helps instill a love for science in young people, and provides viewers with an unforgettable experience.

Tuesday and Wednesday are the last practice days for anglers getting ready to compete in the Bassmasters Elite tournament on northern New York's St. Lawrence River.

The 39 year-old benefit concert for agriculture returns to Upstate New York for the first time since 2013.

Trail builder and trail crew leader Rebecca Kambic originally told stories of her work at our Long Lake at Work: Live! event in August of 2018, and was one of the storytellers at North Country at Work's final event of the year, North Country at Work: Live!, held at the Adirondack State Theater in Tupper Lake on December 18, 2018.

Lots of people around the North Country watch fireworks for the Fourth of July holiday. It's a perfect night to set up a picnic blanket and watch those huge, dazzling colors explode overhead. I did something different.

Crafts with power tools, horse riding, archery, slingshot, riflery - these are all fun camp activities boys could choose from at Northern Frontier Camp in the Adirondacks, but try to imagine that same list from the perspective of the camp nurse, who was responsible for the well-being and safety of 250 staff and campers at any one time. June McKenney worked 16 years as camp nurse for Northern Frontier Camp, a Christian boys' camp located between Indian Lake and North Creek, at the end of a 3.5 mile dirt road. She says "it was the best part of my nursing career."

One of the biggest geographic features of our region is the St. Lawrence River. It's a natural border, a vacation hot-spot, and a major trade route. It's also a big obstacle between us and Canada - even more so before the Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge was built in the 1950s, and completed in 1960. One way to get across was the Morristown to Brockville ferry, which has history going back to the 1870s.

Pat Dominie was born in Russell to a dairy farming family in 1935. She can remember her grandparents working exclusively with horses to plow and hay. Over the course of her lifetime, Pat was an eyewitness to huge changes in the dairy industry here in the St. Lawrence Valley, from five-cow farms to 2,000-cow operations, early tractors to thousand-gallon milk tanks.

At a recent North Country at Work photo scanning in Saranac Lake, longtime resident Ron Keough brought in a photo of his grandmother, Alice Keough, also known as Grandma Alice and Great Alice to her family. He also brought photos of the Keough Motel in Saranac Lake, which she opened, expanded, and managed for decades.

The St. Lawrence River has changed a lot in the last century, from the construction of the Seaway in the 1950s to record high water levels in recent years. One local celebrity in the Thousand Islands, who turned 95 on Wednesday, looks back on his life on the river.

Sometimes achieving a dream can take a long time. That was true for David Lee Belding.

Next week marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The concentration camp is where more than a million people, mostly Jews, were murdered during World War II. A group of Holocaust survivors are going back to Auschwitz for the anniversary, including Vladimir Munk, from Plattsburgh.

In the fall of 1968 Leroy Peets returned home from the army. He spent some time as a forklift operator for Adirondack Plywood but he wasn’t happy with the job. The following spring Leroy was tipped off about open interviews at the Newton Falls Paper Mill.

Many people are familiar with what a midwife is. But there are other kinds of workers involved in the birthing process, including doulas. While midwifes have medical training and are licensed to assist a woman in childbirth, at home or in the hospital, a doula does not. They are not doing anything medical, but rather offering support.

Regina "Gina" Willette drives hours to see her clients, often works in the middle of the night, and has caught a lot of babies. She's a midwife. And for a long time, she's been the only licensed home birth midwife in the region.

Later this month in Washington D.C., a master basketmaker from Akwesasne will be honored with the nation's highest tribute in the folk arts. Henry Jake Arquette will receive a National Heritage Fellow award on September 19, the first such award for a Mohawk traditional basket weaver. At 83, the retired iron worker is one of the few individuals who still knows how to make the elegant, sturdy baskets. Today Arquette is a revered community elder and his baskets are in collections around the world. Todd Moe recently visited his basement workshop in Hogansburg, where he can still be found making a basket or two, and passing the traditional craft along to the next generation.

The Adirondack Guideboat is a very particular craft. They're made of wood and thousands of screws and tacks. They're wider than a canoe, and rowed instead of paddled. They're only used in the Adirondacks, and they were the boat of choice for professional guides in the 19th and 20th centuries. Very few people still build and repair them, but Chris Woodward is one of those people. He owns The Woodward Boat Shop in Saranac Lake, and his love of guideboats goes back pretty far. He grew up in Paul Smiths (and attended the college, too) and even as a kid, he was obsessed with guideboats. But he knew they were expensive, so:

A Thousand Islands artist who created legendary metal creations that dot the North Country and who also had a reputation for his warmth and conversation died a week ago in Hospice care. Will Salisbury was 72. Salisbury spoke to NCPR in 2020 for his exhibit at the Thousand Islands Arts Center in Clayton.

Chef Curtiss Hemm thinks of cauliflower as the "chicken breast" of the vegetable world, a sort of blank canvas upon which to add rich flavors. Since it takes aggressive heat well, he finds it's a good candidate for summer grilling.

Being young often means trying out lots of different jobs, bouncing around until you figure out what you like. One Akwesasne Mohawk woman has worked various jobs in the service industry, and took away valuable experiences from each one.

Ravens were once a rarity in the North Country, but now they are becoming a common sight. They have a similar appearance to crows, but if you see the two birds together the difference is fairly obvious. Curt Stager and Martha Foley discuss ravens and crows on Natural Selections.

The pressure to keep billions of humans fed can have a transformative impact on amimal populations. Overharvesting that targets the largest animals can result in reduction of the average size of species, as seen in Caribbean conch snails. And sport-fishing pressure on large mouth bass can winnow out the most agressive in the gene pool, resulting in a "lazier," more passive remnant population. Martha Foley and Curt Stager talk about the human factor in animal evolution.

Keratin, the substance wool, hair, and feathers are made from, makes a pretty thin diet, but the clothes moth has been dogging humanity's closets and drawers for hundreds of years, unravelling the work of generations of knitters and weavers to feed its larvae.

Of all the places a cat can hang out, why do do many of them want to hang out in boxes? According to researchers, cats that spend time in close confines are measurably less stressed than those remaining in the open. As Curt Stager tells Martha Foley, it's not just house cats who feel this way.

Martha Foley has never succeeded in keeping a nature journal long-term, but Curt Stager finds them invaluable in his work. He records his observations on paper, but also finds great data through researching the journals of past observers, from Samuel de Champlain to Thomas Jefferson, to ordinary little-known North Country folk. His hint - always put it on paper. Whatever became of all that stuff on your floppy diskettes?

Sometimes it's not the subject, but the moment that captures an artist's attention. And St. Lawrence County artist Bill Parmer loves to spend time in his pickup in a favorite habitat: along a back road looking for just the right rural landscape in just the right light. You'll find many of Bill Parmer's original oil "plein air" paintings on the walls at Canton Potsdam Hospital, TAUNY in Canton and other regional galleries. This Saturday afternoon at 1pm, you’re invited to the opening of “Small World”, a new exhibit of his art at Lake Saint Lawrence Arts on Main Street in Waddington.

Humans, birds, and whales are not the only creatures who can sing. Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager discuss recent research that uncovered bats also use learned songs to communicate.

We tend to think that dogs do this, and that cats do that. We think animal species have a recognizable set of behaviors that define the nature of their kind. But what about individual animals? Does each have something we could understand as a unique personality?

The complex web of species interaction is full of odd associations. Stocking a lake with fish cuts down on dragonflies, which helps pollinators, which helps the flowers bloom. Or it can cut down on amphibians such as newts, which is bad for garter snakes. Invasive flowering purple loosestrife is good for insects and birds that feed on them, but hard on plankton, which is at the bottom of the food chain for everything. Martha Foley and Curt Stager look an unintended consequences of human actions in nature.

Martha Foley? - not a fan of bugs. And Curt Stager took a course on them to steady his own reactions. The Natural Selections team looks at the outliers on the spectrum, the largest and smallest of critters with too many legs. New Zealand's weta makes a real handful. The fairy fly is nearly invisible. Some prehistoric dragonflies were big enough to make off with the cat.

All creatures breathe in some fashion, but how the job gets done has changed from fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal. Curt Stager and Martha Foley chart the evolution of animal respiration.

Ironworking may sound like a terrifying job. Workers maneuver around thousands of feet off the ground, and the metal parts they work with weigh literal tons. But to Walter Benedict, ironworking was just a job like any other.

The ubiquitous bird of cities and towns was designed for a different environment. The pigeon's distinctive style of flight is adapted for maneuverability in tight places - near vertical takeoffs and quick changes of direction. This adaptation to cliff and mountainside environments serves them well among our urban cliff dwellings. Curt Stager and Martha Foley discuss.

Pigeons and doves, both domestic and feral, are the same species. Today's urban environment mimics their original favored habitat, seaside cliffs in Europe and Asia. Martha Foley and Curt Stager discuss this commonest bird companion in densely settled areas.

Local advocates say many North Country providers and centers will receive the grants, but that the money won't address the deeper financial trouble than many are in.

After months of waiting and wondering, the state did NOT release any official guidance to schools on how to reopen this fall, leaving districts less than a month to come up with their own guidelines.

The Northern Flicker is one of the most recognizable birds. This distinctly-marked member of the woodpecker family, instead of browsing wood for their food like their relatives, digs for food in the ground. Martha Foley and Curt Stager explore its habits.

Animals that resemble each other may not be closely related. Sometimes the setting shapes their bodies more than their ancestry. Manatees may look like whales or walruses, but that is only because they adapted to the marine environment in a similar way. Martha Foley and Curt stager talk about convergent evolution.

The big marine herbivore, the manatee, is thought by some to be the origin of mermaid legends, but it's not closely related to humankind or even to whales and other marine mammals.

Caretaking for seasonal homes has long been a common job in the Thousands Islands region. In the early 1950s, caretaker Gerald Heath got an exceptional gig: looking after Dark Island, home to the red-roofed granite towers of Singer Castle. For Health’s son, Doug, the island was like home.

Lake trout require a lot of cold, oxygenated water to survive. Lakes in the Adirondacks of upstate New York are at the southern edge of their natural range. Although about 100 Adirondack lakes and ponds are still home to lake trout, even a small increase in temperature could sharply cut that number.

Two North Country school districts in Hamilton County aren’t getting ANY federal stimulus money, because they don’t fit into a particular federal formula.

Stimulus money recently made its way to New York and North Country school districts. Watertown received 22 million dollars. Now schools have big decisions to make on how to spend the money.

Researchers have found that variations in the wingspan of cliff swallows has a measurable impact on their survival in a human-dominated environment.

In the North Country, it can be hard to find work. But if you can fix a dryer, Chris Beldock says you’ll have more work than you can stand.

A coral reef is kind of like Manhattan, a huge number of mouths to feed in a packed parcel of real estate. A reef doesn't have upstate farms to keep them all fed. So how do they get by?

In early March, the snow crunched underneath Erica Burns’s boots as she walked from the horse barn to the pasture. A white horse had dug through the snow to find some grass and was grazing. “This is Lola. She’s our oldest horse,” Burns said. “That one’s Clover. Hey, Clove!”

Syracuse University epidemiologist David Larsen answers questions and shares background on the COVID-19 vaccine.

Few creatures move with more grace than deer. Martha Foley compares them to ballerinas. Curt Stager says there's a reason for that. As ballerinas often do, deer walk on their tip-toes.

Summer's the perfect time to get your friends together for a low impact lawn game: bocci, croquet, horseshoes. Turns out there's another game to add to your list: Irish road bowling.

Most summer camps were unable to open last summer because of the pandemic. But this spring, summer camps got the green light and ones in the North Country are filling up.

While students in rural America, like the North Country, graduate high school at relatively high rates, they’re less likely to pursue higher education, and more likely to drop out once they’re there. It’s called the ‘rural opportunity gap’.

$2.3 billion federal dollars have been set aside in New York’s 2022 budget for child care, which passed in early April. It's a historic amount of money, which supports and changes the way child care works in NYS.

Curt Stager has his students start the semester by picking out a "pet rock." At the end of term, they have to tell the story of that rock - what it is, what it's made of, and what happened to shape it it over the ages.

Typically, tourism organizations are all about the traveler, and trying to get them to visit. But during the coronavirus pandemic, Chambers of Commerce across the region flipped that script.

Efforts to control the coronavirus pandemic have meant clearing the performance schedules of countless musicians. One cellist in Ottawa has embraced this chance to dig a little deeper, redefining himself during isolation, and he suggests we all do the same.

Child Care advocates say it needs to be treated as a public good. COVID-19 stimulus programs are treating it that way.

You can get the sugar out of a lot of trees, but there's something special about the sugar maple. Its trunk is highly efficient at storing and moving sap. That's in part because the sap is stored throughout the trunk, rather then down in the roots, as with most trees in winter. Martha Foley and Curt Stager look at that other "sweet science," the one behind our favorite breakfast condiment.

Imagine going out to your mailbox each month, and picking up a $300 check for each of your children. That’s what the new child tax credit will look like. And it's a big deal for middle and low income families.

Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager discuss cosmic rays. While many people may think cosmic rays only affect astronauts or satellites - objects in space - computers and other electronic equipment on Earth can be affected, too.

In general, plants make food from sunlight, and animals fuel themselves by "burning" oxygen. But some animals think outside the box. Curt Stager and Martha Foley look at a photosynthetic slug that hijacks the genetic machinery of the algae in its diet, and at a jellyfish that needs no oxygen, burning the alternative fuels of hydrogen and sulfur.

On February 21, 1912, disaster struck in the form of a train collision on the New York Central Railroad line between Utica and Ogdensburg. The story goes like this: the winter of 1912 - especially February - was a pretty rough month weather-wise for the Northeast. Record-setting low temperatures and frequent snowstorms were disrupting the railroad, and supplies were running low in small communities that relied on it.

The COVID-19 vaccine continues to be distributed to the 7 million New Yorkers in groups 1A and 1B. They include healthcare workers, teachers, and people over the age of 65. Getting the vaccine is a fairly simple procedure; signing up for it is proving to be a lot harder, especially for those uncomfortable with modern technology, like computers and smartphones. That’s where New York State’s Offices for the Aging are stepping in.

It's the reason opposites attract and doorknobs shock, why lightning strikes, and the way bumblebees find the sweet spot in flowers. Whenever an object has more or fewer electrons than its neighbor, there is the potential for static discharge. Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager talk about the mysterious and hair-raising ways of static electricity.

The way we socialize and see friends during the COVID-19 pandemic has changed drastically. To prevent the spread of the coronavirus, keeping our social distance, wearing masks, and hanging out outdoors have become norms. Of course, balmy summer temperatures are a lot easier than January snowstorms.

What is a flame? Why is it shaped like that? How does it keep going? Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager answer some burning questions about rapid oxidation.

Dr. Curt Stager tries once again to answer the classic child's question. It is a poser that was worthy of Einstein's time, who eventually came up with the best answer. But it's complicated. And when the sky isn't blue, why not? What's up with that? Martha Foley wants to know.

The spike in COVID-19 cases here in the North Country continues, with daily new cases of COVID-19 dwarfing peak days in the spring. David Clauss, Chief Medical Officer of the Elizabethtown Community Hospital, spoke during a video briefing on Friday, Jan. 8, which included county health directors and medical staff from regional hospitals. Clauss said we can’t treat our way out of the pandemic, and “we also are not going to be able to vaccinate our way out of this quickly enough to avoid significant tragedy. We have to prevent our way out of this pandemic with simple measures that we know.”

The differing qualities of snow can determine the safety of structures, the back strain of shovelers and the danger of avalanche. Scientists look at how fast it falls, how it forms in the air, and whether or not it clumps into fat flakes to determine what impact it will have on those of us below. Every snowflake is unique, and so is every snowfall.

Since our bodies replace most cells over a period of a few years, it raises the question "Is any part of us original equipment?" According to Curt Stager and Martha Foley, the answer is "Yes." Parts of the eyes and teeth, as well as many nerve and (bad news for dieters) fat cells last a lifetime.

Rarely seen during the day, flying squirrels don't actually fly, but use flaps of skin that connect their fore and hind legs that enable them to glide up to a hundred feet, between trees and from tree to ground.

Every family with kids has had to deal with the education question this fall - would they send their kid back to school? Keep them remote learning? And a third option: would they do it themselves? Fueled by COVID-19, homeschooling is on the rise in the North Country and across the nation.