Lake Placid, NY, Nov 22, 2012 — Dozens of volunteers gathered in Lake Placid earlier this week to help pack, deliver and dispense Thanksgiving meals at the Ecumenical Food Pantry.

The food pantry, which operates out of the basement of the St. Agnes Catholic Church, provided roughly 300 boxes that included a turkey and other traditional fixings to families in need this year.  Go to full article

Canton, NY, Nov 22, 2012 — Former North Country Congressman David O'Brien Martin died Tuesday night at age 68. The O'Leary Funeral Home in Canton says Martin was at his home in West Virginia under the care of hospice. The cause of his death was not released.

Jan Plumadore of Saranac Lake is a retired state Supreme Court justice. Martin was still in high school in Canton when Plumadore, who went to St. Lawrence University, was introduced to his family.  Go to full article

Nov 22, 2012 — At its best, Thanksgiving is about food, family, and community--and Sharon Bastille, better known around her West Potsdam stomping ground as "Mom", has built her business around all those things.

Bastille and her husband, who's a carpenter, own Mom's Schoolhouse Diner, located in a former one-room schoolhouse. Mom's is a '50s diner, where the staff wears red and white checked circle skirts under their aprons.

Bastille has had Mom's for about a decade, after a couple decades spent at home with her kids. She tries to make the diner as much like home as possible by knowing customers' names, likes and dislikes, for example. Though Mom's is a business, Bastille doesn't think of herself as a businesswoman. She told Nora Flaherty she doesn't make a living from the diner. But as long as it breaks even, her priority is creating a nice place for people in the community to come together.  Go to full article

Sackets Harbor, NY, Nov 22, 2012 — Falconry, the sport of hunting with birds of prey, is ancient: its history goes back thousands of years. It was once used as a way to catch small prey, like rabbits and...  Go to full article

Paul Smiths, NY, Nov 22, 2012 — Burl wood, the knobs of complex grain that some trees form, is prized by woodworkers for its beauty and utility. What causes wood grain to deviate from the straight and...  Go to full article

Albany, NY, Nov 21, 2012 — New York State will miss the November 29th regulatory deadline to complete a review of the health impacts of high volume hydraulic fracturing, Governor Cuomo confirmed...  Go to full article

Saranac Lake, NY, Nov 21, 2012 — A film crew was in Saranac Lake last week to shoot scenes for a National Park Service film it's producing about George Washington Carver. Carver was a prominent...  Go to full article