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NCPR News Staff: David Sommerstein
News Reporter and Producer
Derek, 28, and Jake, 23, Conway in their freestall barn.
Gus Tabolt on his farm, with father Mike and sister Emma.
(12/28/11) Today we continue our look back at our series from last summer, Farmers Under 40, with a look at the young people getting into what many consider a dying industry. Dairy remains one of the biggest overall drivers of the North Country economy. Yet half the dairy farms of twenty years ago are gone today. The average age of a dairy farmer is almost 60 years old. And some years it costs more to milk a cow than you can sell the milk for. Still, young farmers are going into dairy. And as David Sommerstein reports, they're bringing a sharp business acumen and a passion to the barn. more
Flip Fillippi and Matt Kidwell seal a deal
The Corse family will live mostly on their canned and preserved harvest this winter.
(12/01/11) The harvest seems like a long time ago. But lots of people are still savoring the fruits of the garden with a technique as old as their great-grandparents. Canning and preserving fruits and vegetables is enjoying a revival, thanks to the burgeoning foodie and locavore movements. A group of canners got together in Canton recently to barter and diversify their winter larder. As David Sommerstein reports, they make the old-fashioned...cool. more
(10/25/11) The late Roger Huntley was a lot of things: auctioneer, farmer, pillar of the Pierrepont-Crary Mills community. He was also a knowledgeable collector of historic farm equipment, and he liked to share his enthusiasm.
A few years ago, Huntley's neighbor, David Sommerstein, got a call that Roger and his wife Ann had brought out their early-1900s mechanical corn harvester to make corn bundles for Halloween with their granddaughters. Here's David's heard Up North from October 2007.
Clarkson University's Stephen Bird
(09/27/11) This summer, the St. Lawrence County legislature considered a measure to create a climate action plan. The plan would find ways to save money while reducing the county government's carbon footprint. That could include anything from energy audits in county buildings to anti-idling policies in county parking lots. The legislature tabled the matter because it wanted a better cost-benefit analysis of the plan.
Clarkson University professor Stephen Bird hopes to provide that analysis. Bird studies energy and environmental policy. He's working with faculty and students at all four universities in Canton and Potsdam. Bird told David Sommerstein that climate change models project significant changes for the North Country in the future.
Photo: American Carp Society
Photo credit: David Sommerstein
(09/23/11) Many anglers consider carp the mucky, ugly bottom-feeders of the fish world in this country. But in Great Britain and Europe, carp are prized fighters and millions of anglers fish day and night to haul in a trophy catch. The World Carp Championship kicks off today on the St. Lawrence River near Waddington and runs through next week. Hundreds of anglers will compete from more than 20 countries. David Sommerstein spent time with a carp guide and a British angler to find out what carp fishing's all about. This story first aired in 2003.
Michelle Whalen of Morristown in her Schlitz Museum.
(09/13/11) Some people collect stamps, some people collect Star Wars action figures. One woman in St. Lawrence County collects memorabilia from the relatively old-fashioned beer, Schlitz. David Sommerstein visited the Schlitz Museum for today's Heard Up North. There are still places to buy Schlitz in the area. Michelle Whalen of Morristown knows of all of them.
Students learn the old ways of logging at the Adirondack Woodsman School.
...including log rolling, or burling.
(08/23/11) The Adirondack woodsman is a North Country archetype - brawny, independent, deeply versed in the ways of the North Woods. There are still loggers working in the forests of the Adirondacks and Tug Hill Plateau, though most are aided by chain saws and huge machinery today. At Paul Smiths College, a summer school program is keeping the skills and ethos of the Adirondack woodsman alive. David Sommerstein reports. more
Fire chief Tim Jerome stands with a piece of history
(08/16/11) We've reported for years on the thinning ranks of the North Country's volunteer fire departments. Well, another thing that's disappearing is the fireman's pole. Due to liability and safety issues, the National Fire Protection Association is recommending poles be removed from firehouses.
One of the last working fireman's poles in St. Lawrence County is at the village of Potsdam's volunteer fire department. David Sommerstein brings us this Heard Up North.
(08/12/11) New York's two U.S. Senators will make rare joint appearances in the Adirondacks today. David Sommerstein reports.
Robert Odawi Porter at his desk.
The Old Red House bridge [photo provided by Seneca Nation]
(08/08/11) This week, we're going to take a look around Indian Country in New York. Taxing native smoke shops have grabbed headlines lately. But we're going to look deeper at some of the political, economic, and social trends shaping New York's native tribes and nations. Today, the Seneca Nation, south of Buffalo. Casinos and tobacco sales have turned it from an empoverished territory to one of the top ten employer in western New York. The Nation's new president, Robert Odawi Porter, has taken a lead role in negotiating native issues with the Cuomo Administration. Porter wants the Senecas to go beyond smoke shops and slot machines. He's a Harvard-educated lawyer and academic. And he wants to recast one of the darkest moments of the Seneca people into an economic boon. David Sommerstein has this profile. more
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David Sommerstein, NCPR's roving St. Lawrence Valley/Fort
Drum/Tug Hill reporter, began his career in radio, strangely
enough, as a high school Spanish teacher in Buffalo. While drilling
verb conjugations and teaching a love for Latino culture during
the day, he sat in as a late night jazz and Latin DJ at Buffalo's
NPR affiliate, WBFO. The radio bug bit, and David found his
way to southern Colorado/northern New Mexico (the Taos/Santa
Fe area) where he was Program Director, Music Director, Volunteer
Coordinator, and "Just About Anything Else You Can Think
Of" Director at NPR affiliate KRZA. Since joining NCPR's news department, David
has reported from the chilly deck of a St. Lawrence icebreaker,
the power-chord filled stage of the High School Rock Band
Festival, and the tense Albanian street market of post-war
Kosovo with soldiers from Fort Drum. David also gets to fulfill
his passion for music of all kinds when he spins world dance and groove music
on editions of The Beat Authority. E-mailRecent David Sommerstein stories carried by NPR:
August 18, 2011 | NPR · Casino and tobacco sales have turned the Seneca nation into an economic powerhouse. But the nation's new president, Robert Odawi Porter, aims to steer the Senecas beyond smoke shops and slot machines.
February 13, 2011 | NPR · The winter of 2011 is already becoming one of the snowiest on record. While most places gripe about the hassle of snow, some celebrate it. It's a winter carnival season across the Great White North. North Country Public Radio's David Sommerstein sends an audio postcard from Ottawa's legendary Winterlude.
January 21, 2011 | NPR · Home canning is enjoying new popularity these days — and that even extends into the dark days of winter. At a canning swap in upstate New York, canners gather to trade jam and pickles and maple syrup, sharing their summer bounty with their neighbors.
January 1, 2011 | NCPR · A $400,000 earmark funds an organization that helps connect soldiers and their families at Fort Drum with private-practice doctors. The service was necessary because Fort Drum lacks its own hospital, but it has also helped bolster the region's health care assets as a whole.
December 20, 2010 | NPR · President Obama is expected to sign the repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy into law on Wednesday. At military bases around the country from Fort Drum in New York to Fort Campbell in Kentucky, soldiers express both nonchalance and worry that openly gay troops will be a distraction.
September 15, 2010 | NCPR · While national debate is focused on Arizona's immigration law, a quieter change in the enforcement of citizenship and visas is happening along parts of the northern border. In upstate New York, federal agents are boarding trains and buses up to 100 miles from the border, asking passengers for documents. The checks are sweeping up some foreign college students and researchers who are in the country legally, and it's causing friction with area universities.
August 3, 2010 | NPR · At the State University of New York's meat lab, students learn how to kill, cut and grind up beef, pork and lamb. After a month, they get a meat-processing and food-safety certificate and the basic know-how to work in the industry. The program aims to help fill the shortage of butchers and small slaughterhouses -- and keep meat local.
February 15, 2010 | NPR · Unless something changes, prisoners will again be counted in this year's census as residents of the places where they're locked up, not their hometowns. That means more political power for mostly rural and white prison host communities, and less for mostly urban and minority neighborhoods.
December 31, 2009 | NCPR · The recession may be officially over, but that's little consolation to people who lost their jobs when it first began. A laid off worker from a Corning plant in Canton, N.Y., has been collecting unemployment and living a thrifty life. She's taken a medical terminology class to become a receptionist in a doctor's office, and now is dipping her toe into the anemic job market.
December 2, 2009 | NCPR · Soldiers at Fort Drum in Watertown, N.Y., say they are not surprised by the news that more of them will be deploying to Afghanistan. Most of them seem resigned to spending more time in combat, but they say it will be hard on their families.
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![The Old Red House bridge [photo provided by Seneca Nation]](http://www.northcountrypublicradio.com/news/images/Redhouse-Bridgeweb.jpg)
