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At Botanical Garden: What Darwin Saw Out Back – New York Times – Annotated
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Damon Winter/The New York Times
MultimediaInside Darwin’s Garden
Cambridge University Library
Darwin studied more than flowers. He was intrigued by what Dr. Kohn calls the “behavior” of plants — how they move, respond to light, consume insects and otherwise act in the world.
“Darwin’s Garden: An Evolutionary
Adventure” opens Friday and runs through June 15 at the New York
Botanical Garden, Southern Boulevard and 200th Street, Bedford Park, the Bronx; (718) 817-8700, nybg.org.
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Longest Walkway Bridge: Spectacular Hudson Views
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Schumer proclaims his support for walkway project | PoughkeepsieJournal.com | Poughkeepsie Journal – Annotated
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By Jenny Lee • Poughkeepsie Journal • April 19, 2008
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HIGHLAND – Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., saw the breathtaking view from the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge Friday and announced he’s pushing for $1.5 million in federal money to help transform the bridge into Walkway Over the Hudson and pay for Quadricentennial activities.
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Walkway Over the Hudson will be 1.25 miles long, becoming the longest walkway bridge in the world. It is scheduled to open in time for the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s voyage up the river in 2009.
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Walkway Over the Hudson Board of Directors Chairman Fred Schaeffer was grateful for the senator’s efforts.
“We’ve had tremendous support from the community,” Schaeffer said. “It’s icing on the cake.”
The construction of the bridge would cost about $25 million, plus an additional $5 million to pay for an elevator from the waterfront and an endowment for the maintenance of the bridge, Schaeffer said.
Hinchey, who was at the bridge Friday, said he hopes to get about $2 million for the project in the transportation funding bill. When the project first began, he secured about $875,000.
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Mass’s Mount May Not Amass Many Milliions
Leader Quits at the Mount, Former Home of Edith Wharton – New York Times Annotated
Following months of increasing financial troubles for the Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox, Mass., the president of the organization that owns and maintains the property has resigned rather than accept a new position in a restructured management, trustees said.
A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities enabled the Mount to secure a one-month extension from the bank, until April 24, and the five-member board is meanwhile trying to raise $3 million, which an anonymous donor has promised to match.
Ms. Burns said in a phone interview Wednesday that the trustees had determined that the future of the Mount depended on a new management structure, and that the board intended to recruit both a director of finance and a development officer.
The responsibility of a board is to be the development committee,” she said. “They sign off on a vision, and then they commit to the funding of it.” She added: “You can only succeed as well as your board succeeds, and that to me was always an enormous frustration. I failed to rally our board to become fund-raisers.”
Crisis Fundraising for The Mount
The Mount | Edith Wharton’s Estate and Gardens Annotated
The Mount is faced with imminent foreclosure, which could result in this National Historic Landmark being closed to the public forever.
Please make a contribution now! To prevent foreclosure, The Mount estimates that it needs to raise up to $3 million through the Save The Mount campaign before April 24, 2008.
We Must Reach Our Goal by April 24 – Contribute Now!
Pledge Online: Click here!
$568,363
has been raised so far
for the Save The Mount fund!
NY Public Gardens Die in Spring: First Gifford Garden, Now The Mount: What’s Next?
Rural Intelligence | The Online News Source for Dutchess County & Columbia County, New York – Litchfield County, Connecticut – Berkshire County, Massachusetts | Reality Check: Commonweal Annotated
Info on Gifford Garden in Millbrook, NY here
Re The Mount:
more than 100 people attended a public forum on the future of The Mount, the Edith Wharton Estate and Gardens. It’s become clear that the current financial crisis (owing millions to Berkshire Bank) has a complex, tragic and compelling backstory
Gordon Travers, the only member of The Mount’s board of trustees to live in the Berkshires (he has a weekend house in Sheffield), wanted to focus on the future. “It’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback,” he said. “In hindsight the wrong decisions were made.” One of those decisions was the 2005 purchase of Edith Wharton’s library for $2.6 from an English book collector without having the money in the bank to pay for it. “It was something of a Hail Mary,” said Travers.
Travers explained that the Berkshire Bank was doing its best to be patient with The Mount, but that the bank has a fiduciary responsibility to its stockholders and employees. He said the threat of foreclosure is very real and that the bank would probably have no trouble finding someone with deep pockets who would like to buy the property and turn it into a private residence. Having raised $580,000 in the past five weeks, the board hopes that it can convince the bank to hold on until the summer when The Mount will be able to use admission receipts to pay for operating expenses while continuing its quest to raise $3 million to satisfy the bank and win a $3 million matching grant (payable over five years) from an anonymous donor.
“We’re in a triage situation,” said Travers, who noted that the five member board needs to be three or four times larger. “It is of critical importance to us that a number of these new positions be filled by local Berkshire people with the time, commitment, vision and fund-raising capability to achieve success,” he said.
An excerpt of a Posting by Dan Shaw on 04/02/08