Hudson River School Quotes

Arnold had never given much thought to whether or not he loved America—but now it seemed pretty obvious to him that he didn’t. Not in the way Nathan Hale had loved America. Or even in the way his late father, a Dutch-Jewish refugee, had loved America. In fact, he found the idea of sacrificing his life for his country somewhat abhorrent. Moreover, it wasn’t that he disliked abstract loyalties in general. He loved New York, for instance: Senegalese takeout at three a.m., and strolling through the Botanical Gardens on the first crisp day of autumn, and feeding the peacocks at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. If Manhattan were invaded—if New Jersey were to send an expeditionary force of militiamen across the Hudson River—he’d willingly take up arms to defend his city. He also loved Sandpiper Key in Florida, where they owned a time-share, and maybe Brown University, where he’d spent five years of graduate school. But the United States? No one could mistake his qualified praise for love.

It was at night,” I say. “What was?” “What happened. The car wreck. We were driving along the Storm King Highway.” “Where’s that?” “Oh, it’s one of the most scenic drives in the whole state,” I say, somewhat sarcastically. “Route 218. The road that connects West Point and Cornwall up in the Highlands on the west side of the Hudson River. It’s narrow and curvy and hangs off the cliffs on the side of Storm King Mountain. An extremely twisty two-lane road. With a lookout point and a picturesque stone wall to stop you from tumbling off into the river. Motorcycle guys love Route 218.” We stop moving forward and pause under a streetlamp. “But if you ask me, they shouldn’t let trucks use that road.” Cool Girl looks at me. “Go on, Jamie,” she says gently. And so I do. “Like I said, it was night. And it was raining. We’d gone to West Point to take the tour, have a picnic. It was a beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky until the tour was over, and then it started pouring. Guess we stayed too late. Me, my mom, my dad.” Now I bite back the tears. “My little sister. Jenny. You would’ve liked Jenny. She was always happy. Always laughing. “We were on a curve. All of a sudden, this truck comes around the side of the cliff. It’s halfway in our lane and fishtailing on account of the slick road. My dad slams on the brakes. Swerves right. We smash into a stone fence and bounce off it like we’re playing wall ball. The hood of our car slides under the truck, right in front of its rear tires—tires that are smoking and screaming and trying to stop spinning.” I see it all again. In slow motion. The detail never goes away. “They all died,” I finally say. “My mother, my father, my little sister. I was the lucky one. I was the only one who survived.

There’s a tap on my shoulder. I turn around and get lost in a sea of blue. A Jersey-accented voice says, “It’s about time, kid,” and Frank Sinatra rattles the ice in his glass of Jack Daniel’s. Looking at the swirling deep-brown liquid, he whispers, “Ain’t it beautiful?” This is my introduction to the Chairman of the Board. We spend the next half hour talking Jersey, Hoboken, swimming in the Hudson River and the Shore. We then sit down for dinner at a table with Robert De Niro, Angie Dickinson and Frank and his wife, Barbara. This is all occurring at the Hollywood “Guinea Party” Patti and I have been invited to, courtesy of Tita Cahn. Patti had met Tita a few weeks previous at the nail parlor. She’s the wife of Sammy Cahn, famous for such songs as “All The Way,” “Teach Me Tonight” and “Only the Lonely.” She called one afternoon and told us she was hosting a private event. She said it would be very quiet and couldn’t tell us who would be there, but assured us we’d be very comfortable. So off into the LA night we went. During the evening, we befriend the Sinatras and are quietly invited into the circle of the last of the old Hollywood stars. Over the next several years we attend a few very private events where Frank and the remaining clan hold forth. The only other musician in the room is often Quincy Jones, and besides Patti and I there is rarely a rocker in sight. The Sinatras are gracious hosts and our acquaintance culminates in our being invited to Frank’s eightieth birthday party dinner. It’s a sedate event at the Sinatras’ Los Angeles home. Sometime after dinner, we find ourselves around the living room piano with Steve and Eydie Gorme and Bob Dylan. Steve is playing the piano and up close he and Eydie can really sing the great standards. Patti has been thoroughly schooled in jazz by Jerry Coker, one of the great jazz educators at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. She was there at the same time as Bruce Hornsby, Jaco Pastorius and Pat Metheny, and she learned her stuff. At Frank’s, as the music drifts on, she slips gently in on “My One and Only Love.” Patti is a secret weapon. She can sing torch like a cross between Peggy Lee and Julie London (I’m not kidding). Eydie Gorme hears Patti, stops the music and says, “Frank, come over here. We’ve got a singer!” Frank moves to the piano and I then get to watch my wife beautifully serenade Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan, to be met by a torrent of applause when she’s finished. The next day we play Frank’s eightieth birthday celebration for ABC TV and I get to escort him to the stage along with Tony Bennett. It’s a beautiful evening and a fitting celebration for the greatest pop singer of all time. Two years later Frank passed away and we were generously invited to his funeral. A

NATURE MORTE You are given two things today, one is an angry nail in your side; Changing what you are able to sense is the second thing you are gifted. Nature is always a referred existence, writes Emerson, never a presence. Who knows where the time goes, sings Sandy Denny. Who can bear to hear it? One reaches the moment when one loses words—in the pastoral, in the cosmic? Think about the scars on the planets, & how patient those stars seem to be. I am painting the natural landscape with my eyes closed today. It is like writing A poem with all the cross-outs left in; an expression like never thought I’d see the day. Nature that begins with unknowable & ends with more monotonous hills. Today, I want to be the country-fried philosophe or a Hudson River School painting. When this life is over, describe to me how its concave & convex forms are & are not. We live amid surfaces, writes Emerson, & the true art of life is to skate well on them.

Different regions evoke different images in the minds of high school students, often depending on where they grew up. In the age of cyberspace, college is still synonymous with a quaint New England town featuring the traditional red brick, white columns, and ivy all around. That enduring mental picture combines with the seemingly inborn cultural snobbery of the East Coast to produce millions of students who think that civilization ends at the western edge of Pennsylvania—if not the Hudson River. For Midwesterners, the situation is just the opposite: a century-old cultural inferiority complex. Many applicants from those states will do anything to get the heck out, even though there are more good colleges per capita in states like Iowa, Minnesota, and Ohio than anywhere else in the nation. The West Coast fades in and out as a trendy place for college, depending on earthquakes, the regional economy, and the overcrowding and tuition increases that plague the University of California system. Among those seeking warmer weather, the South has become a popular place, especially since Southerners themselves are more likely to stay close to home. Collective perceptions of the various regions have some practical consequences. First, most of the elite schools in the Northeast are more selective than ever. In addition, a lot of mediocre schools in the Northeast, notably Boston, are being deluged with applicants simply because they are lucky enough to be in a hot location. In the Midwest, many equally good or superior schools are much less difficult to get into, especially the fine liberal arts colleges in Ohio. In the South, the booming popularity of some schools is out of proportion to their quality. The weather may be nice and the football top-notch, but students who come from far away should be prepared for culture shock.

Off to the right, the flat lake and majestic foothills of the Catskill Mountains glowed in the soft morning light like a priceless Hudson River School landscape come to life. Mary Catherine stood for a moment, mesmerized by the exhilarating vista, the distant golden hills, the mile-long expanse of silvery blue water, smooth and

Attend a university if you possibly can. There is no content of knowledge that is not pertinent to the work you will want to do. But before you attend a university work at something for a while. Do anything. Get a job in a potato field; or work as a grease-monkey in an auto repair shop. But if you do work in a field do not fail to observe the look and the feel of earth and of all things that you handle — yes, even potatoes! Or, in the auto shop, the smell of oil and grease and burning rubber. Paint of course, but if you have to lay aside painting for a time, continue to draw. Listen well to all conversations and be instructed by them and take all seriousness seriously. Never look down upon anything or anyone as not worthy of notice. In college or out of college, read. And form opinions! Read Sophocles and Euripides and Dante and Proust. Read everything that you can find about art except the reviews. Read the Bible; read Hume; read Pogo. Read all kinds of poetry and know many poets and many artists. Go to and art school, or two, or three, or take art courses at night if necessary. And paint and paint and draw and draw. Know all that you can, both curricular and noncurricular — mathematics and physics and economics, logic and particularly history. Know at least two languages besides your own, but anyway, know French. Look at pictures and more pictures. Look at every kind of visual symbol, every kind of emblem; do not spurn signboards of furniture drawings of this style of art or that style of art. Do not be afraid to like paintings honestly or to dislike them honestly, but if you do dislike them retain an open mind. Do not dismiss any school of art, not the Pre-Raphaelites nor the Hudson River School nor the German Genre painters. Talk and talk and sit at cafés, and listen to everything, to Brahms, to Brubeck, to the Italian hour on the radio. Listen to preachers in small town churches and in big city churches. Listen to politicians in New England town meetings and to rabble-rousers in Alabama. Even draw them. And remember that you are trying to learn to think what you want to think, that you are trying to co-ordinate mind and hand and eye. Go to all sorts of museums and galleries and to the studios of artists. Go to Paris and Madrid and Rome and Ravenna and Padua. Stand alone in Sainte Chapelle, in the Sistine Chapel, in the Church of the Carmine in Florence. Draw and draw and paint and learn to work in many media; try lithography and aquatint and silk-screen. Know all that you can about art, and by all means have opinions. Never be afraid to become embroiled in art of life or politics; never be afraid to learn to draw or paint better than you already do; and never be afraid to undertake any kind of art at all, however exalted or however common, but do it with distinction.

DONALD ARRIVED AT NEW York Military Academy in September of 1959, a stocky teenager bewildered by his new surroundings. An hour north of Manhattan, the school was located in tiny Cornwall-on-Hudson, on a campus with a culture so strict and unforgiving that one desperate cadet was rumored to have jumped into the Hudson River to swim to freedom.

When I told my parents that I was going to sea, they didn’t ask any questions and seemed to take it all for granted. It was hard for me to believe that I had graduated from High School the week before and was now a crewmember on a Dutch ship. Everything had happened extremely fast. On the very same day that I was hired, without even having a passport, I was on this foreign flagship bound for Le Havre and Rotterdam. This was my first job aboard ship and now I found myself heading down the Hudson River, past the Statue of Liberty. There wasn’t much time for sightseeing since the dinner chimes had been rung and the few passengers we had were coming into the dining room. No one had explained my duties but I watched the other stewards and followed suit. I must have been a fast learner since amazingly enough all went well, and before I knew it the dining room was empty and it was cleanup time. I’m certain that having worked in my uncle’s restaurants helped but I’m glad I survived without any major mishaps. I knew that tomorrow would go even smoother, now that I understood the routine. For me, it was my first seagoing adventure! Being the youngest and newest crewmember on the ship earned me a bunk four tiers up against the bulkhead, next to the chain locker. You couldn’t get any farther forward, which made me feel that I would be the first to get to where the ship was going. I didn’t take into account that it would also be the first part of the ship that would slam into the sea or anything else that got in the way, but such was the life of a novice seaman.

Home Economics & Civics What ever happened to the two courses that were cornerstone programs of public education? For one, convenience foods made learning how to cook seem irrelevant. Home Economics was also gender driven and seemed to stratify women, even though most well paid chefs are men. Also, being considered a dead-end high school program, in a world that promotes continuing education, it has waned in popularity. With both partners in a marriage working, out of necessity or choice, career-minded couples would rather go to a restaurant or simply micro-burn a frozen pre-prepared food packet. Almost anybody that enjoys the preparation of food can make a career of it by going to a specialty school such as the Culinary Institute of America along the Hudson River in Hyde Park, New York. Also, many colleges now have programs that are directed to those that are interested in cooking as a career. However, what about those that are looking to other career paths but still have a need to effectively run a household? Who among us is still concerned with this mundane but necessary avocation that so many of us are involved with? Public Schools should be aware that the basic requirements to being successful in life include how to balance and budget a checking and a savings account. We should all be able to prepare a wholesome, nutritious and delicious meal, make a bed and clean up behind one’s self, not to mention taking care of children that may become a part of the family structure. Now, note that this has absolutely nothing to do with politics and is something that members of all parties can use. Civics is different and is deeply involved in politics and how our government works. However, it doesn’t pick sides…. What it does do is teach young people the basics of our democracy. Teaching how our Country developed out of the fires of a revolution, fought out of necessity because of the imposing tyranny of the British Crown is central. How our “Founding Fathers” formed this union with checks and balances, allowing us to live free, is imperative. Unfortunately not enough young people are sufficiently aware of the sacrifices made, so that we can all live free. During the 1930’s, most people understood and believed it was important that we live in and preserve our democracy. People then understood what Patrick Henry meant when in 1776 he proclaimed “Give me liberty or give me death.” During the 1940’s, we fought a great war against Fascist dictatorships. A total of sixty million people were killed during that war, which amounted to 3% of everyone on the planet. If someone tells us that there is not enough money in the budget, or that Civic courses are not necessary or important, they are effectively undermining our Democracy. Having been born during the great Depression of the 1930’s, and having lived and lost family during World War II, I understand the importance of having Civics taught in our schools. Our country and our way of life are all too valuable to be squandered because of ignorance. Over 90 million eligible voters didn’t vote in the 2016 presidential election. This means that 40% of our fellow citizens failed to exercise their right to vote! Perhaps they didn’t understand their duty or how vital their vote is. Perhaps it’s time to reinvigorate what it means to be a patriotic citizen. It’s definitely time to reinstitute some of the basic courses that teach our children how our American way of life works. Or do we have to relive history again?

I had graduated from high school the week before and was now a crewmember on a Dutch ship. This was my first job aboard ship and now I found myself heading down the Hudson River, past the Statue of Liberty. There wasn’t much time for sightseeing since the dinner chimes had been rung and the few passengers we had, were coming into the dining room. No one had explained my duties but I watched the other stewards and followed suit. I must have been a fast learner since amazingly enough all went well, and before I knew it the dining room was empty and it was cleanup time. I’m certain that having worked in my uncle’s restaurants helped but I’m glad I survived without any mishaps. I knew that tomorrow would go even smoother now that I understood the routine. When I told my parents that I was going to sea, they didn’t ask any questions and seemed to take it all for granted. Everything happened extremely fast. On the very same day that I was hired, I was on this foreign flagship bound for Le Havre and Rotterdam, without having as much as a passport. Most of the crewmembers that went on strike were left behind for U.S. Immigration to sort out, provided that they could even be rounded up. For me, it was my first seagoing adventure! Being the youngest and newest crewmember on the ship earned me a bunk four tiers up and against the bulkhead, next to the chain locker. You couldn’t get any farther forward, which made me feel that I would be the first to get to where the ship was going. I didn’t take into account that it would also be the first part of the ship that would slam into the sea or anything else that got in the way, but such was the life of a seaman.

It was hard for me to believe that I had graduated from High School the week before and was now a crewmember on a Dutch ship. This was my first job aboard ship and now I found myself heading down the Hudson River, past the Statue of Liberty. There wasn’t much time for sightseeing since the dinner chimes had been rung and the few passengers we had, were coming into the dining room. No one had explained my duties but I watched the other stewards and followed suit. I must have been a fast learner since amazingly enough all went well, and before I knew it the dining room was empty and it was cleanup time. I’m certain that having worked in my uncle’s restaurants helped but I’m glad I survived without any mishaps. I knew that tomorrow would go even smoother now that I understood the routine. I really don’t know if getting a job aboard a foreign ship was easier in the “50’s” or was it that the ship needed another steward and I was willing to be a strike breaker? No one on the ship mentioned the strike and everyone treated me as just another member of the crew. Mostly everyone aboard spoke Dutch and amazingly enough I understood them. Dutch being a Germanic language was very similar to the German spoken in the lowlands, which included Hamburg. It didn’t take long before I was answering and then conversing with the crew…. Although I was on the bottom rung of the ladder I felt right at home. My bunk was at the top of a three bunk stack in the crew’s quarters, high up against the chain locker. The bathroom, called the “head” in English, didn’t have toilets or urinals. Instead I had to perfect my aim as I balanced myself over a hole in the deck. Fortunately there were places for my feet and handholds to help me stabilize myself in this balancing act. With no partitions for modesty I soon lost my inhibitions and became deft at this. At least they furnished the paper and considering it all, life was good!