Welcome to my website! For those who aren't familiar with my background and interests, please click on the "About" tab to read a quick autobiography (if you have nothing more important to do :-). If you are more interested in my recent activities and projects, read on below and in my LEAG and blog sections!
On Monday March 11 from 7:00 to 8:00 PM I gave an interactive webinar presentation, sponsored and produced by the ADKX Adirondack Museum and North Country Public Radio which is now available to watch on YouTube at this web address:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV1oBCgRxJs
I talked about how and when I became aware of the famous and legendary Seneca Ray Stoddard, and why I felt compelled to write a book about him. I was interviewed by Mitch Teich, the station manager for NCPR, and Elizabeth Belyea, of the Adirondack Museum (ADKX) I invite you to check out the presentation- whether you are a fellow Stoddard nerd, or just curious about one of the most important and influential people in the history of the Adirondacks! (Spoiler alert- I had to speak fairly quickly to include all the information that I wanted to share, and my mouse pointer wasn't working to my chagrin, but I did get a lot of positive feedback despite the limitations of the methodology of the presentation.)
In 2023, after five years of research, writing, editing, and networking I finally put the finishing touches on my fourth book! Anyone who knows me knows that for decades I have been a fanatic fan of the illustrious Adirondack photographer, author, environmentalist, cartographer, artist, publisher and my great-great uncle Seneca Ray Stoddard. I have been collecting his photographs and books for thirty years and, with the help of Don Rittner at the Warren County Historical Society my new book, entitled Seneca Ray Stoddard- An Intimate Portrait of an Adirondack Legend is now in print. It is now in some stores and is already for sale from me on Amazon and Ebay for $32.99 plus tax. If you would like to order a signed copy with me, you can buy it on Ebay or contact me at danway1973@gmail.com.
Next, check out my Photo Gallery tab and open the 2022 LEAG album, which illustrates the latest expedition of the League of Extraordinary Adirondack Gentlemen to the legendary Norridgewock Lodge in the unique settlement of Beaver River on the Stillwater Reservoir, then visit the LEAG page, which will soon include a brief summary of our outing from September 15-17 of 2022.
I have also completed production of a third Collectors' album available on DVD or thumb drive of Seneca Ray Stoddard's work. This one features his unpublished and never-completed travel manuscript which he titled simply, "A Trip to Europe 1900". The manuscript, of which there was only one handwritten copy, had been in my posession for about thirty years but I never had time to transcribe the almost illegible handwriting until the pandemic struck. After scanning, photoshopping and transcribing the text and 130 photographs, it is now available for the first time in readable form! I have included an introduction describing the project in detail, them the fully transcribed text with restored photograph illustrations, a folder that contains scans of every page of the manuscript, and another folder with every photo in the mansucript after I restored them and cropped them from the yellowed pages. Here is what it looks like:
The text describes his tour of England, Ireland, Scotland, Holland Germany and France, where he attended the 1900 Exposition in Paris. It was frustrating at times deciphering his handwriting and restoring the badly faded and yellowed photographs, but it has been worth it to resurrect his last book manuscript from the dustbin of history and offer it to those who are students and collectors of his amazing body of work! LIke the other three collectors albums that I have produced (see them below), this one is also available on Ebay on DVD or thumb drive at this link:
S R Stoddard's Unpublished Travel Manuscript on DVD or flash "A Trip to Europe 1900" New! | eBay
Since the pandemic started, I have been focusing my attention on a project I have been thinking about for about 30 years- writing a book about Seneca Ray Stoddard. I have been collecting his photographs, books, papers and memorabilia for almost 40 years, and have investigated the relationship between his family and that of my great-grandfather James S Garrett, both natives and contemporaries from Saratoga County in New York State. As described below, I have produced two collectors' albums of his books and photographs which I sell on Ebay at:
Seneca Ray Stoddard Collectors Album- Over 700 images on DVD and flash drive! | eBay.
Unique S R Stoddard CD collectors’ album- Complete scans of two travel books! | eBay
If you want to purchase them from me directly, just send me an email at danway1973@gmail.com.
Meanwhile, the Hornbeck boat that the League of Extraordinary Adirondack Gentlemen built on August 30, 2020 was finally raffled off in Saranac Lake in October 2021 by the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation, bringing in over $40,000! It was a wonderful tribute to the late Peter Hornbeck, who passed away suddenly on 12/26/2020. It had been Pete's idea to build a boat in lieu of a camping trip, due to the then-raging COVID pandemic. In mid-September of 2021, the LEAG resumed our annual outings to legendary Adirondack waters, spending two days paddling eight different ponds in the Fish Creek area, under a perfect autumn sky. Check out the 65 different photos of the outing in my photo gallery! on May 19th, 2021 thirteen of my favorite landscape photographs of were hung in an exhibit at the Tannery Pond Community Center in North Creek. The show, entitled Adirondack Waters, featured 42 works of art including breathtaking watercolors by Peter Hornbeck, and haunting photographs by Tom Bessette, alongside my photographs. There was a wonderful reception on Friday evening May 28th where Tom Bessette, Ann Hornbeck and I answered questions and talked about our art and our friendship with Peter and each other. It was wonderful to just enjoy the chance to visit with so many great people, including many of my former patients! The exhibit was featured by Mountain PBS in Plattsburgh here: Water reflections honor boat builder – Mountain Lake PBS, and NCPR out of Saint Lawrence University. The exhibit ended on June 28th, 2021.
My next exhibition took place in August 2022 at the Abanakee Studios gallery in Indian Lake, which again celebrated and honored Peter Hornbeck. I exhibited several framed photographs along with several other artists:Tom Bessette, Terry DeArmas, Kathleen Larkin, Joann Quinlivan, Sarah Yeoman, and Jane Zilka. Check out their website at this link: Abanakee Studios - Home.
My dear friend Peter Hornbeck's passing in December 2020 really put a fine point on the year's end, which was an almost unrelenting series of national and international disasters, thanks to COVID, Trump and social unrest. Anyone who has met Peter Hornbeck will want to look at my December 27 2020 blog on my Blog page, as well as the photo album dedicated to him on my Photo Gallery page.
Also check out the photo album "Building a Hornbeck Boat", and my article in the Adirondack Almanac at Group makes a Hornbeck canoe, donates it to Loon Center raffle - The Adirondack Almanack for details about how that unique, one-of-a-kind Hornbeck Classic canoe is now being raffled off later this year by the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation. Check the ADKLoon website at Adirondack Loon Center — Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation (adkloon.org)for more information details of the raffle. I have summarized the details in my March 6th blog entry. You could win the boat our League of Extraordiary Adirondack Gentlemen built last August while helping to save loons!
On Tuesday night July 14, 2020 I presented my first on-line PowerPoint talk on ZOOM which was hosted by the Chapman Historical Museum in Glens Falls. It was entitled "How the B-29 Ended World War II- and saved a Million Lives". It was richly illustrated with photos, maps and other memorabilia that my father brought back from the war. My dad was a member of the 949th Aviation Engineering Company of the US Army, which was attached to the 20th Air Force under General Curtis Lemay. Now the presentation, which was recorded, is available on YouTube at this URL if you want to watch it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1mwwcIMkys
In celebration of its 75th anniversary, in 2019 I made available the entire 1944 Hometown USA Photoessay from the seven LOOK Magazine issues available on this website, and on CD-ROM. I have the album for sale on EBay in both CD and flash drive formats, and you can also email me through this website at danway1973@gmail.com if you want to order a copy or multiple copies.
If you want to see the project in high-resolution, you can either visit my permanent display in the hallway outside the Glens Falls Hospital Snuggery on 2-West wing, or you can order a CD-ROM or flash drive from me that contains all 43 images in a jewel case as shown above.
Another product I have created is a digital collection available on a DVD and flash drive of the two legendary travelogue books written by Seneca Ray Stoddard in the late 1890s. In 1895 he emulated Mark Twain's classic The Innocents Abroad in his book The Cruise of the Friesland 1895, which, like Twain's voyage, visited many destinations in the Mediterranean and European region, including Gibraltar, Algiers, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, France and England. I have scanned all 344 pages of the book, with its hundreds of illustrations, poems and humerous anecdotes, and sorted them into chapters. I did the same thing with his second travelogue, The Midnight Sun, Being the Story of the Cruise of the Ohio, when he visited Iceland, the Scandinavian countries, the Orkney and Shetland Islands, Denmark and Russia in 1897. This collectors’ album will provide over 600 meticulously reproduced pages of history, humor, drama, and education written by a man remembered mostly for his photography. These books reveal that the quality of his writing, his sense of humor, and his knowledge of history are the equal of that talent. If you were lucky enough to find these two books in their original form, you would probably have to pay two or three hundred dollars or more for them. Every scanned page is sharp enough to be easily read, and the illustrations are sharp and complete.
Since retiring in May 2017, I have been able to update my website pages and photo albums, including many images from my 2018 trips to Iceland, New Orleans and our most recent trip before the %$%^* pandemic to the Canadian Rockies in June of 2019. Be sure to check them out in the Photo gallery page. Hopefully, once the COVID threat is gone, there will be more trips in the future!
If you are interested in my writing, then you will enjoy reading my first three books about my patients and some of the interesting characters I met during my 38-year career as a Family Physician practicing in the central Adirondacks. The books are described further below and in my "about" page.
I also enjoy camping out with some interesting Adirondack characters every year with the League of Extraordinary Adirondack Gentlemen (LEAG). For more information on the LEAG, please click that tab above.
For readers who enjoyed my first two books, my third book, We Were There, was published in May 2016. This book is the crown jewel in my trilogy of collections about the people of the Adirondacks, and We Were There has special significance. Every story features men and women who were combatants or civilians directly involved in World War II. These stories describe what it was like to grow up in a New York City tenement or a humble shack in the Adirondacks during the Great Depression, witness the emergence of Adolf Hitler's Nazi menace, and join the United States armed forces to escape crushing poverty in exchange for protecting America while getting three meals a day. Members of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Corps and civilians are all represented. It includes first-hand accounts of being on the receiving end of allied Bombs in Germany and German bombs in England. The reader will learn what it felt like to bail out of an American night fighter, launch torpedoes at a Japanese aircraft carrier, shoot down German V-1 cruise missiles, dodge Japanese Zeros during the Pearl Harbor attack, and watch helplessly as a Japanese kamikaze dropped a deadly bomb on an American aircraft carrier during the greatest naval battle in history. With over 70,000 words of text and more than 220 illustrations, We Were There creates such vivid stories that the reader will truly feel like he or she was there. I published it myself with my own publishing company, Indian Lake Press. I am selling it on Amazon.com and at the local venues listed below and in the "My Store" tab above. Pete DeMola of The Sun Newspaper published a fantastic review of the book on The Sun Website.
Anyone looking for a copy of We Were There, Never a Dull Moment, All In a Day's Work or Seneca Ray Stoddard should be able to find them at the following retail outlets:
Open Door Bookstore, Schenectady
Battenkill Bookstore, Cambridge
Northshire Bookstore, Saratoga Springs
The Chapman Museum, Glens Falls
ACE Hardware, Queensbury
The Silo in Queensbury
Trees Gifts and Books, Bolton Landing
Hudson River Trading Company, North Creek
The Adirondack Experience/Museum, Blue Mountain Lake
Pine's Hardware, Indian Lake
Abanakee Studios, Indian Lake
Hoss's Country Corner, Long Lake
The Towne Store, Schroon Lake
The Crossroads Country Store, Chestertown
The Old Forge Hardware, Old Forge
McDonough's Valley Hardware, Keene Valley
Dartbrook Rustic Goods, Keene Valley
The Mountaineer store, Keene Valley
The Bookstore Plus, Lake Placid
The Community Store, Saranac Lake
The Book Nook, Saranac Lake
The Tupper Arts Center, Tupper Lake
Traditional Arts in Upstate New York, Canton
The soft-cover version of We Were There can be found at the the New York State Military Museum in Saratoga Springs, the Empire State Aeronautics Museum store in Glenville, and the Fort Ticonderoga gift shop. The hard cover version of We Were There is available from the National World War II Museum store and its on-line store in New Orleans Louisiana.
You can also order my books on Amazon.com, on E-Bay, or from me by contacting me directly. Just click on the "contact" tab above and send me an email with your questions and order information. On Amazon and Ebay , please make sure that you select me as the vendor of All in a Day's Work, Never a Dull Moment, We Were There, and Seneca Ray Stoddard; an Intimate Portrait of an Adirondack Legend so when you buy the books there you are still buying them from me. Some other vendors charge ridiculous prices and the books may be used and are not signed. You can request an inscription if you want when you order through this website or Amazon.com. All my books for sale in the above venues are signed by me.
In October 2013, after nine years of work, my second book, Never a Dull Moment, was published. Within its 160 pages are 32 different vignettes and over 120 photographs describing the people and landscape of the southern Adirondacks. Patients, physicans, friends, Adirondack characters and legends are all to be found in stories that will entertain, amuse or amaze the reader.
The book has sold over 2200 copies so far. In collaboration with the Family Medicine Education Consortium (FMEC), I am able to offer paper and hardcover copies of my first book All In a Day's Work: Scenes and Stories from an Adirondack Medical Practice at both wholesale and retail prices. Check my "store" page for details.
Those who are interested in my photography can now see a sample of my portfolio on my Photo Gallery page. On the My Store page I have included ways to order custom-made prints which can be matted and framed. Your feedback is welcome- send me an email if you have questions!
Finally, I am the proud grandpa of the most beautiful kids in the world, Cara, Jay, and Tessa Kapoor, plus Mateo and Marlena Way! They are so adorable they make my head swim!
Cara, Jay and little Tessa Kapoor
Mateo and Marlena
Last but not least, I am also now the Vice-President of the Indian Lake Association, a grass-roots group of over 100 homeowners along Indian Lake who are actively monitoring, protecting and promoting the environment and culture of the lake and the town. Among other things we are working for is to convince New York State to install a hydroelectric generator just below the Indian Lake and Lake Abanakee dams. This would provide a local source of clean electricity that could not only help fight the existential threat of Climate Change, but also provide a new source of reveune to the town. The completed project would provide enough electricity to power most if not all the town of Indian Lake and surrounding communities. Chek out our website at www.ILAADK.org.
