For Students, Unconventional Ways to Earn Course Credit - NYTimes.com

For Students, Unconventional Ways to Earn Course Credit - NYTimes.com: "Anthony Velez, 16, steered the tiller. Until this year, his main experience with the river was through the 21st story windows of his apartment in a Chelsea housing project. Cole Tallerman, 15, handled the main sail with an easy confidence honed on family trips to the British Virgin Islands. And Leo Martinez, 15, a newcomer to sailing from Brooklyn, controlled the jib.

The hull cut so steeply through the water that sitting became more like standing against a boat-shaped wall. Off the coast of New Jersey, the turn, or tack, was rough. When the boom swung, it glanced Leo in the head. He grinned and shook off the pain.

In short, it was not a typical day in math class, though Leo and Anthony were earning math credit at their school, the Manhattan Business Academy on 18th Street, for being there. “At first I only came for that,” Leo said as the boat steadied, “but now I would do this even if I wasn’t getting credit.”"

Security Checks on Hudson River Anger Boaters - NYTimes.com

Two years ago a police boat approached us to order me off the bow. I was wearing a life jacket, sitting on the deck of a southbound sailboat moving at 7 knots on a lovely day in June. I feel about security checks the same way Chris Christie feels about teachers' salaries: cut them drastically. I've got company.

Security Checks on Hudson River Anger Boaters - NYTimes.com: "Ten years after the terrorist attacks downriver made security checks commonplace, a tea party of sorts is brewing on the Hudson, as boaters and marine businesses complain bitterly about being stopped too often and questioned too closely by officers wearing flak jackets and holstered pistols — many of them on the lookout for terrorists.

And as boating season begins, that vigilance has become one of those vexing flashpoints, like baggage searches and airport body scans, in the shifting definition of what is normal — post-9/11 overreaction to some, and a response to real risks to others.

A petition drive among boaters has generated hundreds of signatures and scores of angry comments.

Boat clubs are mulling strategies, and the largest boating-industry group along the river, the Hudson Valley Marine Trades Association, recently wrote the Coast Guard commander in New York to protest “an incredible increase of recreational vessel boarding.”"

The Hudson - America's River - by Frances Dunwell

Author and conservationist Frances Dunwell 's dramatic tales will bring to life the stories of visionary people who changed the direction of our national history, inspired by their deep relationship with the river. Using images of Hudson River School paintings, maps and period engravings, she captures the spirit of the river through the eyes of its many admirers.  She recounts how the Hudson River powered the growth of the country's greatest industrial and financial empire and also produced leading American artists, writers, engineers, and environmentalists. She makes the case for conserving the Hudson as a source of creative inspiration and demonstrates that the river continues to be a creative force today.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has praised Dunwell's "wonderful stories about America's river," and her "beautifully written book." 

All royalties from sale of the book are being donated to the Natural Heritage Trust for conservation of the river.

The book is available directly from the publisher, Columbia University Press

Bowsprite - the Sturgeon of Liberty State Park

Thanks to Tugster and Bowsprite for exploring a surviving bit of the salt marsh behind the Statue of Liberty. They find clams, oysters, sturgeons and other harbor edibles. A video of the biggest find - the carcass of a 6 foot sturgeon - shows that the fish that once dominated the river survives.

The marsh and the fish are transformed by Bowsprite's watercolors, which beautifully abstract the shock of the found carcass of a six foot sturgeon. The fish lies half-buried in a salt marsh of the kind that once dominated the harbor shoreline, in a lost, beautiful world. The river and the harbor fed New York City and its surrounds. Sturgeon (Albany beef), shad, stripers and blues, along with the oysters that carpeted the bottom of the New York Bay, were the staple source of protein in New York's first three centuries.

My daughter Taisy's fifth grade teacher - Mr. Lofton - at P.S. 84 on Columbus Avenue - took the kids to Jamaica Bay to cast nets and catch shiners (spearing)! Mr. Lofton was an award-winning teacher. The City should be pleading with Bowsprite and Tugster - to teach teachers how to teach children (and grownups) about the Harbor.

Breaking ice up river

Meanwhile, back on the Hudson river, up north there's plenty of ice.

Here are 12 Bridge's shots, taken from the tug Cornell on icebreaking and other duties.