In Good Company:

200 years now since the new United States snapped up these northern hunting grounds of the Mohawks and opened them to European settlement. A gaggle of land speculators, farmers, woodsmen, veterans of the Revolution, Christian Utopian socialists, potash burners, millers, trappers, blacksmiths and merchants poured in and built in less than a century all these towns, roads, churches, schools, hospitals, farms and factories. In their spare time they made baskets and boats and quilts and songs and rugs and stories and paintings. Pitched half-naked out the windows of the Old World straight into the snowbanks of the New. Gives one a different take on the notion, hard work. Seeing the sagging barns and bricked-up mills of today, and given our isolation from the main currents of "culture," it's good to remember those roots, and to honor the people who still keep wisdom in their fingers and history in their tongues. Traditional Arts in Upst ate New York honors a few such each year with their North Country Heritage Awards. This year's honorees are: Parishville rug braider Helen Condon, Saranac Lake Adirondack guideboat builder Ralph Morrow, and the New Bremen Fire Fighters. And NCPR is honored to be included, receiving TAUNY's Evergreen Award for our own contribution to keeping alive the traditions and culture of the region.