July 4, 2007

If you’re looking for a good summer read, try “Adirondack Stories, Historical Sketches” by Marty Podskoch and Sam Glanzman. Marty wrote the sketches and his partner Sam did the art work.

I just finished the book - for the second time. The book is 168 pages worth of Adirondack history, trivia and art, stuff I’m interested in.

If the book’s title sounds familiar it’s because we publish one of the Adirondack stories and sketches each week in the Herald. In fact, this week’s installment is on page 7.

The book sells for $18.95. I would have bought it if Marty hadn’t been nice
enough to sign one and send it to me.

Marty is a retired reading teacher. His second career is writing Adirondack books. He wrote the definitive book on Adirondack fire towers, appropriately named “Adirondack Fire Towers”. Actually, he did two of those books, one about towers in the northern part of the Adirondacks and one about the southern towers.

“Adirondack Stories, Historical Sketches” has stories and illustrations about many of the Adirondack people I’m interested in: Grace Brown and Chester Gillette, John Brown, Nat Foster, “French Louie” Seymour, Noah John Rondeau, Ann LaBastille, and Moses Cohen of Old Forge Hardware fame, to name a few.

And the book contains Adirondack events, places and things I’m interested in: Fort Ticonderoga, mail boats, the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid in 1932 and also in 1980, the Snow Train, the Northville-Placid Trail, the Adirondack lean-to, Santa’s Workshop, the Great Camps, Dr. Durant and the Adirondack Railroad, Ticonderoga Pencils and Adirondack bats, the kind you use to hit a baseball, again to name a few.

Anyway, before the book was published, Marty asked me to write a blurb for its back cover. A blurb is supposed to be a sentence or two written by someone with a familiar name and written in a way to entice people to buy the book.

This is the blurb I wrote: “If you like the Adirondacks and if you are interested in local history, you’ll love Adirondack Stories by Marty Podskoch, who knows the Adirondacks and who knows its history. His book is a must read.”

True enough. But after reading the book for the second time I wish I had written a better blurb.

Tim Fonda, managing editor of the Leader-Herald in Gloversville, wrote this blurb: “Marty Podskoch’s Adirondack stories are interesting, informative and
easy to read. Often they shed light on little-known facts about Adirondack history.”

I like that better than mine.

And Don Williams, who has written five Adirondack books of his own, wrote this blurb: “Marty Podskoch and his illustrator, Sam Glanzman, have captured those single bits of Adirondack history and lore and presented them in a format that has stood the test of time.”

I like that better than mine, too.

If Marty does another Adirondack book, and I’ll bet he does, and if he asks me to write another blurb, and I’m not sure he will, I’ll try to write a better blurb.

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Joe Kelly is the editor and publisher of The Boonville Herald & Adirondack Tourist and THE GRIFF.