Thom Thacker, site director at Philipsburg Manor, is participating in Sunday's Hudson River Swim for Life, helping to raise money to fight blood cancers.

The three-mile Hudson River Swim For Life begins in Nyack and ends at Kingsland Park in Sleepy Hollow.

Besides raising awareness of the Hudson River and promoting swimming as a (literally) cool way to exercise, the Swim for Life most importantly raises dough for the ongoing work of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

The Society focuses its efforts on finding cures for leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, and Hodgkin's disease and to improve the quality of life for patients and their families.

A round of applause for Thom's efforts!

Great weather and compelling performances were on tap at Philipsburg Manor's Green Corn Festival, which took place over the holiday weekend, Saturday-Monday.

Hands-on activities and Native American storytelling, crafts, singing, and dancing made for a splendid day out and a break from the BBQ circuit.

The Journal News came by, too. Check out the coverage here.

So what was the motivation behind launching the Youth Conservation Corps? As fans of the organization know, Historic Hudson Valley has long been committed to environmental conservation.

Now,  the YCC is a way to use its historic sites as contemporary learning laboratories with an environmental focus. Goals for the project include instilling the values of hard work, responsibility, service, respect for the environment, and education.

In the program two teams of six students, each with their own supervisor - Rebecca Watkins of Nyack and Travis Mockler of Plesantville, each working with the assistance of Elizabeth Wilkins of Red Hook and all under the aegis of Thom Thacker, site director at Philipsburg Manor - are engaged in a curriculum of environmental education, career and leadership training, and recreation activities.

Over the course of seven weeks this summer, the program's students are helping to restore the walking trails at Sunnyside, originally designed and used by author and ambassador Washington Irving in the mid-19^th century. At Philipsburg Manor, they are removing brush and other debris from the bed of the Pocantico River. They are also participating in the annual rye harvest.

Fridays are reserved for field trips to locations such as the Hudson River Museum, Beczak Environmental Education Center, Breakneck Mountain, and Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, places that help reinforce the lessons learned here.

Big rounds of applause go out to the programs supporters, which are The Thomas and Agnes Carvel Foundation, Entergy's Environmental Stewardship Program, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Congresswoman Nita M. Lowey, and the New York City Environmental Fund.

Want to see the Corps in action? Drop by Sunnyside on a Monday, Wednesday, or Thursday. The program's season ends on Aug. 15.

The Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the best-known "alphabet soup" initiatives created by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression, was such a popular work relief program that it operated in every state at its prime, and was active here in Westchester during the 1930s.

While the CCC may be a thing of the past, today there are numerous youth conservation corps programs throughout the country. Like the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps from which they take their name, they primarily engage in conservation-oriented work in local, state, and national parks.

The one unifying principle that seems to define all existing youth conservation corps programs is that they use conservation and service work as a medium for youth development. The programs' goals include instilling the values of hard work, responsibility, service, respect for the environment, and education. To achieve these goals, the programs are not confined merely to physically challenging work, but also typically involve environmental education, team-building activities, career and leadership training, and recreational activity involving outdoor pursuits and visits to museums and historical sites.

Now, a new youth education and empowerment program dedicated to those principles and modeled on FDR's famed Civilian Conservation Corps is taking place right here in Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown.

Known as the Historic Hudson Valley Youth Conversation Corps, the Corps -- launched on June 30 -- is a job readiness program that seeks to instill the twin values of a strong work ethic and conservation in area youth.

The students taking part, ages 15-18 from the Boys and Girls Club of Northern Westchester and from a wide range of social, economic, and educational backgrounds, are working on various projects at Washington Irving's Sunnyside and Philipsburg Manor such as grounds and trail work, riverbed cleanup, erosion control, and more.

All of the work has an environmental component, but there's an interesting artistic element to it as well, as you can see from the images here. Besides clearing trails and helping control erosion, the group is creating life-size animals out of fallen twigs and logs, under the direction of Michael Natiello, creative guru behind HHV's Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze. Nice job guys!

More on the YCC later this week...

It's the sum, sum, summertime. And living is definitely easy in the 21^st century...certainly if you go by 18^th and 19^th century standards. Now, nine- to eleven-year-old history buffs can spend some 21^st century days unplugged and outdoors courtesy of Historic Hudson Valley's Summerweek Day Camp.

This is a terrific program for those young'ns who like the past, who like learnin' and havin' fun, or who just plain like being outside on a nice summer day.

Don't believe me, well then let me turn this blog entry over to our summer camp administrator, Danielle Fontaine. Sure, she may be a touch biased, but I can vouch that her enthusiasm is real. She loves this program! Truly, truly! Stay tuned for more from her later this week...

***As the weather warms and school days draw to an end, I'm getting psyched up for the start of Historic Hudson Valley's Summerweek and Riverweek day camps!

Have you ever been on a school field trip you wished wouldn't end? Ever fantasized about being a kid in the time before America was a country, or what a day with Washington Irving's nieces would be like, or what it's like to apprentice with a blacksmith?

How about traveling back in time this summer? Put down the Wii and jump into history - Summerweek camps are the perfect way to see what it was like to be a kid in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

Prepare to teleport to the year 1750... you arrive in a market port on the Pocantico River - the Upper Mills belonging to the Philipse family (they own almost all of Westchester County!). The Upper Mills are bustling with tenant farmers bringing their wheat to the mill to pay their rent; oxen pull carts loaded with goods that arrived from ships pulling into port; barrels are being prepared for voyage across the Atlantic, and you help make it all happen! Philipsburg Manor's camp is so good, we have to run it twice. The first week is July 7 through July 11 and the second is July 28 through August 1.

Campers become history detectives working to find out how we know so much about the past. Plus, you get to work on our farm, assist the miller with grinding corn, play games, and go fishing in the river just like kids did when George Washington was a mere stripling!

A field trip to the Old Dutch Church (the Philipse family is buried under the church... spooky!) and a tour of the burying grounds (where you'll see the names of the real people who became the characters in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow inscribed on the gravestones) make this a really cool way to spend a warm week. Want to know more about The Legend of Sleepy Hollow? Set your teleport to the year 1848...and...check back on the blog Thursday...***

Ready to sign up or at least get sign up info? Click here.

Got a question for Danielle? E-mail her.