Of Local Interest

I had some free time this afternoon, so I headed across town to the Hudson River Museum in Northwest Yonkers for a second look at the Dutch New York exhibit. Last year marked the four-hundredth anniversary of the voyage of the Half Moon, so the entire New York Metro/Hudson Valley region was awash in "New Netherlands" retrospectives.

I was no stranger to Dutch fever (hell, I've been celebrating Koninginnedag for years) last year, having read Russel Shorto's Island at the Center of the World in July. In Shorto's book, the "founder" of Yonkers, the jonkheer himself- Adriaen Vanderdonck, emerges as a central figure. Vanderdonck was a lawman, a proto-anthropologist, a gadfly, an advocate for representative government, an enthusiastic booster of emigration to the New World, and a figure largely forgotten until recently.

I will be posting more about items of local interest. Since Adriaen Vanderdonck was a tireless promoter of his chosen home, I will honor his memory by occasionally posting about the city named for him.