Chronogram April 2021

SPRING IS HERE… ARE YOU THINKING OF SELLING?

Halter Associates Realty makes the decision to sell so much easier. With concierge-level service from our dedicated team of top-producing agents, we’ve proven time and time again that our innovative marketing approach and cuttingedge social media campaigns will put your home in front of more buyers.

Let’s connect so you can Experience the Halter Difference!

Contemporary Saltbox $775,000

This 4 BR/2.5 BA custom-built contemporary saltbox, set on over 22 bucolic acres with a beautiful spring-fed pond in the town of Clermont, is the perfect weekend compound for family and friends. With soaring ceilings, hand-hewn beams, wood stove, open living room, dining room and gourmet kitchen with stainless steel appliances, the home is made for entertaining. The family room has access to the screened porch with wrap around deck, office, two main floor bedrooms and 1.5 baths. The second floor master suite is spacious with its own deck perfect for morning coffee. Beautiful sunsets abound.

❚ Tracy Dober 845.399.6715

Rhinebeck Mid-Century $598,000

This custom-built mid-century ranch in Rhinebeck is on the market for the first time. Designed and built by one of Rhinebeck’s prominent doctors, this family home is pristine, with original stone fireplace and hardwood floors throughout. The kitchen is also original with updated stainless steel appliances. At 2394 sf, the home is spacious and open with 5 BR/2 BA, eat-in kitchen, dining room (with a deck off the dining room), and family room. The walk-up second floor would make a perfect home office. The basement is dry and has updated mechanicals.

❚ Tracy Dober 845.399.6715

Rhinebeck 1770 Eyebrow Colonial $625,000

Antique on the outside, modern farmhouse on the inside, charming 1770s Eyebrow Colonial on 5.3 acres on beautiful quiet country road in Rhinebeck. 2 BR/2 BA. Many of early details have been preserved, like handhewn beamed ceilings, wide plank floors, and a handsome working fireplace. Stylish kitchen with a copper backsplash & stainless steel appliances. Smart spaceefficient designs like half bath behind sliding door off the kitchen & built-in washer/dryer. Bathroom upstairs is modern with vintage bathtub & sink. Home has been updated with new plumbing & heating systems. Original stone foundation & huge classic 1800s country barn plus a garage barn for two cars.

❚ Sheri Sceroler 845.546.1714

Rhinebeck Mid-Century Views $1,675,000

Perched like a treehouse with sweeping Hudson River & Catskill Mountain views, 3 BR/2.5 BA mid-20th-century home on 48 acres. Distinguished by a flat roof, and walls alternating vertical siding & glass, beautifully simple & thoughtfully designed. Glorious sunroom, corner of living room, w/ wood-burning fireplace, faces due west to enjoy year-round sunsets, southwest in the winter & northwest in the summer. Handsome kitchen, and every room on the second floor (except for the baths) have views. Well-maintained retaining many cool details, wood floors, walls of cabinets and tiled bathrooms. Home office and attached 2-car garage. The land has a pond site plus logging & carriage trails for outdoor enjoyment. Minutes from Rhinebeck Village & Amtrak. ❚ Rachel Hyman-Rouse 917.686.4906

Gardner House $399,000

Lovingly cared for for the past 40 years, Gardner House is a classic 3 BR/2 BA Center Hall Colonial, built in 1820 in the private community of Upper Red Hook. The handsome front door opens to a double parlor. This spacious home is light-filled with hardwood floors, coffered ceiling and fireplace. The bright eat-in kitchen has a wood stove, and opens to a large deck overlooking the lovely grounds with mature trees. There is a bedroom, full bath and mudroom on the main floor. Upstairs is the master bedroom with gorgeous wooden ceiling, the third bedroom, a full bath and home office.

❚ Tracy Dober 845.399.6715

Whether it’s Contemporary, Mid-Century, or 18th Century, you get a little NY history with your home search on garydimauro.com.

Tivoli NY

• Hudson NY • Catskill NY Rhinebeck NY • Kingston NY

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DEPARTMENTS

6 On the Cover: Jenny Morgan

Painter Jenny Morgan exhibits in New York for the first time in over five years with a solo show at Mother Gallery in Beacon. 8 Esteemed Reader Jason

CHRONICLES OF MARIJUANA

12 Berkshire Dispensary Tour: In the Weeds

A tour of 10 recreational dispensaries just over the border in Massachusetts.

FOOD & DRINK

14 Abloom in Hudson: Feast & Floret

Feast & Floret, a farm-to-table Italian-inspired fine-dining restaurant, takes over the former Fish & Game location in Hudson.

19 Sips & Bites

Ceremonial cacao in Kingston, high-class Tex-Mex in Bearsville, Korean fusion in Beacon, and more in this month’s tasting notes.

HOME

20 The Autobiography of Transitional Objects

Multimedia artist Paula Lalala blurs the line between public and private, art and life in her Cornwallville home, a lived-in installation of her own art and found objects.

HEALTH & WELLNESS

31 Has COVID Killed Sex?

Since COVID hit a year ago, studies have shown that lockdown and other pandemic restrictions are throwing cold water on Americans’ sexuality and relationships.

EDUCATION

36 Dharma Doesn’t Change

At Middle Way School in Saugerties, educators experiment with teaching anti-racism in a Buddhist context.

WOMEN IN BUSINESS

40 Taking the Lead

The number of women entrepreneurs keeps growing. We talked with some of the region’s women business owners on how they get it done, from the boardroom to the storefront.

THE RIVER NEWSROOM

44 Immigration Under Biden

Despite a number of actions in the initial days of the Biden White House, scores of Trump-era immigration policies remain in place and deportations continue in the Hudson Valley and elsewhere.

Blame It On Me, Tanner Ashenfelter

April 7-9, The Art Effect is hosting its annual Reel Exposure International Teen Film and Photography Festival at the Trolley Barn in Poughkeepsie. EXHIBITS, PAGE

Celebrate Local Business

In honor of Women’s History Month in March, we’ve chosen to highlight 6 women-owned businesses participating in our program. We invite you to join us in supporting them! There are 12.3 million women-owned businesses in the US and there are 114 percent more female entrepreneurs than there were 20 years ago. These national statistics are represented right here in the Hudson Valley. During these unpredictable times it’s important to celebrate and support local Hudson Valley organizations. Chronogram Media is supporting over 80 community-based organizations through our Community Grants Program, providing them with discounted and complimentary advertising.

BROOK N WOOD FAMILY CAMPGROUND Provides camping enthusiasts a beautiful, clean, quiet, relaxing retreat to enjoy friends and family, experience nature, and create wonderful memories! Brooknwood.com

RIVERSTONE YOGA Empowers their community of patrons and professionals to live a vibrant, well-balanced, and authentic life through the teachings of yoga, meditation, and holistic health practices. Riverstoneyoga.com

LOCAL ARTISAN BAKERY

Celebrates the art of baking with local Hudson Valley ingredients and aims to support local Hudson Valley artisans, farmers, and food producers in everything they do. Localartisanbakery.com

WYLD BIRTH & POSTPARTUM

Offers support and resources for all self identi ed women, trans, intersex, non-binary, and gender non-conforming folks to feel empowered, con dent, and prepared for pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum. Wyldwomynbeacon.com

ELENA HERRERA

A Latinx, woman-owned business that creates beautiful, wearable jewelry honoring craftsmanship and history through the use of repurposed antique components. Elenaherrera.com

MAGNUSS DIVORCE MEDIATION

Provides the intelligent alternative to traditional adversarial divorce. With Divorce Mediation, you and your spouse talk directly with each other to work out the terms of a divorce or settlement agreement. Magnussdivorcemediation.com

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA FOR UPDATES ABOUT OUR COMMUNITY GRANT PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS.

photo by Veronica Fassbender

COMMUNITY PAGES

48 Build Back Brighter: Newburgh

If Newburgh’s revival is still years behind other cities in the Hudson Valley, that lag time has given the city a chance to learn from other’s mistakes— namely to develop inclusively.

PORTFOLIO

58 Andrew Moore: Recent Photos

Like a private investigator chasing leads, photographer Andrew Moore searches the Hudson Valley—and its residents—with intense perseverance.

ARTS

64 Music

Album reviews of Now Then by Tani Tabbal Trio; Wandercease by Ryan Martin; and Heartbeeps by FM Blanket. Plus listening recommendations from Alana Medlock in Sound Check.

65 Books

Carolyn Quimby reviews Jo Ann Beard’s new collection Festival Days, whose nine pieces straddle the line between fiction and nonfiction. Plus short reviews of Simon Winchester’s Land, Margarita Meyendorff’s Flipping the Bird, the anthology Corona City: Voices at the Epicenter, and Amy Wu’s From Farms to Incubators

66 Poetry

Poems by George Bandy, Kemp Battle, Gary Berg, Sue Books, Leah Brickley, Maeve Cecilia, Tom Corrado, Richard Donnelly, Hillary French, Janlori Goldman, Sage Higgins, Jennifer Howse, Brian Liston, Kate Minford, Claire Nee, George Payne, and Kerri-ann Torgersen. Edited by Philip X Levine.

THE GUIDE

68 As entertainment venues get the all clear to reopen, we check in with local music spots about how they’ve survived during the pandemic and what they’re planning for reopening.

69 Woodstock Film Festival announces a filmmakers’ residency, Millerton’s Moviehouse gets new owners, and more in this month’s Mixed Media column.

70 Saug erties greenlights Arm-of-the-Sea’s Tidewater Center, a permanent performance space and cultural venue to be situated on the banks of the Esopus Creek.

71 A look at how the region’s galleries are managing the pandemic.

72 Gallery listings plus highlights from standout exhibitions around the region, including Erika DeVries’s new 12-foot neon sculpture at Basilica Hudson and Bruce Cahn at Lockwood Gallery.

HOROSCOPES

76 Choice Is Everything

Lorelai Kude looks at the stars for April and reminds us that while it may feel like destiny is in charge, choice is everything.

PARTING SHOT

80 Dr. Neal Smoller’s Vaccine Army

Franco Vogt’s photo of Woodstock Apothecary’s vaccinated volunteers feels both anachronistic and unsettling for one very simple reason—they’re all unmasked.

Artist Philippe Halaburda in his studio at Wireworks in Newburgh. COMMUNITY PAGES, PAGE 48

Jenny Morgan’s paintings are a striking combination of realism and surrealism––creating mesmerizing female faces on canvas. “I think painting is a kind of magic,” Morgan says.

In her upcoming solo exhibition, “To Bathe the World in a Strange Light” at Mother Gallery in Beacon––opening on April 17––Morgan explores the notion of a mental landscape playing with different sides of femininity like witchcraft and spirituality. “I am looking for that spirit and ghost in people, that emotion and that invisible energy,” Morgan says.

Morgan painted Entering the Field at Night during March and April of last year, just as the lockdown began. “I worked on this piece deep into the new orb of isolation,” she says. “Living in the city is isolating in itself, and I think that many people turn to painting landscapes because we crave it. There’s the idea of being in a field in this sort of dreamscape and connecting to nature in this psychic space when we’re sleeping and deeply unconscious.”

Morgan says creative inspiration struck after uprooting from her Bushwick studio after nine years to be closer to home, allowing her to relax and just create. “I feel safe to let go and paint, and that dynamic is a push-and-pull thing,” she says. “Painting is my sacred meditation.”

Paola Oxoa, owner of Mother Gallery, has witnessed Morgan’s artistic development since their time as undergrad students together. Morgan is grateful for their connection, and calls the opportunity to showcase her work at Mother Gallery a gift. “Painting has been my saving grace during the pandemic, and it has helped me process and survive what’s happening in the world,” she says.

Morgan’s upcoming show at Mother Gallery will be her first solo exhibition in New York in over five years, and in light of the pandemic, she is craving the interaction with other artists and art lovers. “As a painter, I spend my time sitting in a room alone and I crave that human connection,” she says. “There is this social aspect to art that works in this complex ecosystem. And I feel like I’m just starved for seeing others work in person. It’s so much more powerful and valuable.”

Morgan has taken all her energy and thrown it into this body of work in the midst of the pandemic. “Artists work in isolation and this time has just been a real test of that,” she says. “The art world is changing and I think that museums are important public spaces. I have a deeper appreciation for them now.”

Portfolio: Jennymorganart.com.

—Diana Testa

Jenny Morgan, Entering the Field at Night

Jenny Morgan, Sleep

EDITORIAL

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Brian K. Mahoney brian.mahoney@chronogram.com

CREATIVE DIRECTOR David C. Perry david.perry@chronogram.com

DIGITAL EDITOR Marie Doyon marie.doyon@chronogram.com

ARTS EDITOR Peter Aaron music@chronogram.com

HEALTH & WELLNESS EDITOR Wendy Kagan health@chronogram.com

HOME EDITOR Mary Angeles Armstrong home@chronogram.com

POETRY EDITOR Phillip X Levine poetry@chronogram.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Anne Pyburn Craig apcraig@chronogram.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Phillip Pantuso phillip.pantuso@chronogram.com

contributors

Winona Barton-Ballentine, Brian P. J. Cronin, Michael Eck, Morgan Y. Evans, Amadeus Finlay, Michael Frank, Lissa Harris, Lisa Iannucci, Noa Jones, Lorelai Kude, Jamie Larson, David McIntyre, Andrea Pyros, Carolyn Quimby, Seth Rogovoy, Sparrow, Franco Vogt, Lynn Woods

PUBLISHING

FOUNDERS Jason Stern & Amara Projansky

CEO Amara Projansky amara.projansky@chronogram.com

BOARD CHAIR David Dell

media specialists

Kelin Long-Gaye kelin.long-gaye@chronogram.com

Kris Schneider kris.schneider@chronogram.com

Jen Powlison jen.powlison@chronogram.com

DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Lisa Montanaro lisa.montanaro@chronogram.com

marketing

DIRECTOR OF CREATIVE PARTNERSHIPS

Samantha Liotta samantha.liotta@chronogram.com

SPONSORED CONTENT EDITOR

Ashleigh Lovelace ashleigh.lovelace@chronogram.com

interns

MARKETING & SALES Zeynep Bastas, Alexandra Francis, Madalyn Mallow, Anastazja Winnick

EDITORIAL Diana Testa

administration

FINANCE MANAGER

Nicole Clanahan accounting@chronogram.com; (845) 334-8600

production

PRODUCTION DIRECTOR

Kerry Tinger kerry.tinger@chronogram.com; (845) 334-8600x108

PRODUCTION DESIGNERS

Kate Brodowska kate.brodowska@chronogram.com

Amy Dooley amy.dooley@chronogram.com

office

45 Pine Grove Ave., Suite 303, Kingston, NY 12401 • (845) 334-8600

mission

Chronogram is a regional magazine dedicated to stimulating and supporting the creative and cultural life of the Hudson Valley. All contents © Chronogram Media 2021.

A TIMELESS ESCAPE AT THE HUDSON VALLEY’S MOST ICONIC RESORT

At Mohonk Mountain House, an unforgettable getaway to nature is our specialty. Explore 85 miles of hiking trails with unparalleled views. Enjoy live music, entertainment, and farm-to-table cuisine from award-winning chefs—all included in your overnight rate. Indulge yourself with a nature-inspired treatment in our awardwinning spa. We’re taking every precaution to keep our guests and staff safe, so you can relax and reconnect with the ones you love.

by Jason Stern

“What unity, for example, could be perceived by even the most brilliant physicist, philosopher, or theologian while he still trips absent-mindedly over a stool, becomes angry at being short-changed, fails to notice when he irritates his wife, and in general remains subject to the daily trivial blindness of the ordinary mind, working with its customary absence of awareness? Any unity he reaches in such a state can exist only in his imagination.”

—Rodney Collin, The Theory of Celestial Influence: Man, The Universe, and Cosmic Mystery, 1954

Esteemed Reader:

For me, wellness begins in a worldview that perceives the unfathomable intelligence of nature and the lawful, balanced ecosystems that form her body. In this view, human, animal, and plant life are part of one organism. I’m a cell in the organ of humanity, in the body of organic life, in the being of Great Nature.

I experience the unity of nature not as a pleasant idea, but as a fact. With this perception comes a corresponding feeling of trust in her capacity to organize herself, and respect to desist from meddling in her designs. I also perceive that there is an energetic matrix, including consciousness, underlying the physical world of objects and bodies. In other words, physical phenomena do not give rise to life and consciousness, but rather consciousness and life give rise to physical bodies.

So the fractal ecosystem of nature exists atop a substrate pattern of life completely invisible to instruments that measure phenomena in the world of objects. The only instrument that I know of that can perceive and measure the underlying energetic matrix invisible to scientific instruments is the human instrument, with the caveat that the instrument is not only thinking, feeling, and sensing but is also conscious of itself.

To be in the face of the awesome mystery of nature gives rise to a profound humility, notably absent from the prevalent mode of science. Can we evolve a science and medicine that is able to be humbled in the face of this mystery; that works in our uniquely human manner with our big head brain, in harmony with our mother, the great body of which we are a part?

I suspect humanity has had such science and medicine in antiquity but we don’t recognize it from the perspective and values of the prevailing paradigm. Its indications are present in the monuments and traditions surviving from the preindustrial past. Our current science and medicine are profoundly primitive, simply because they look at the part to the exclusion of the whole.

In contrast, holistic health modalities are so named because they address the terrain of the whole person. They take into account not only one’s physiological state but also one’s inner life and vital energy. They consider the environment in which a person lives as well, including the presence of toxins in food, water, air, and the electromagnetic spectrum; the presence of healthy, engaged, in-person relationships. They also consider the emotional atmosphere, the absence or presence of fear, anxiety, and depression. True holistic health modalities seek to find and address the causes of illness, not suppress symptoms with technology.

The holistic view sees illness as the means by which a body cleanses and rebalances within its own intrinsic, intelligent ecosystem. In this view, illness is something to allow and support with cleansing and nutrition, and with the result of increased resilience. Holistic health modalities see that suppressing symptoms, both individually and collectively, increase the force of the underlying causes of illness.

Can there be a science and medicine of wholes, that utilizes powerful methods of inquiry and discovery to work in harmony, rather than against nature; that includes the humility of the understanding that “I don’t know”; that respects the underlying fabric of life and consciousness?

I believe there can be such a science, that humanity is destined for this. The first step, I think, is acknowledging the limitation of the worldview that sees nature as an enemy to be defeated with technology and begins to inquire into more fundamentally harmonious means of actualizing our purpose.

—Jason Stern

Ihad a visitor to my office recently from out of town. As I rarely receive guests anymore, it was quite a treat, especially given that I got to show off our new digs in the Fuller Building, a renovated shirt factory here in Midtown Kingston that’s smart in that industrial chic way. As we sat in the luxurious confines of the Place Where the Magic Happens (aka my office), my visitor asked after the state of Kingston 1. (Rest assured we were masked, gloved, gowned, and double-bagged.)

While she didn’t live terribly far away— Woodstock, in fact—she had not been to Kingston for many months and was curious to see what all the fuss was about.

The fuss, as you well know, is that Kingston— like much of the Hudson Valley—has a whitehot real estate market. Home prices that had been gradually increasing since 2010 went through the roof in 2020, driven by pandemic expats fleeing “hot, smelly, tight New York City,” as Gregory Corso wrote of his beloved city. People bought homes sight unseen. Affluent New Yorkers showed that they were willing to pay a premium—sometimes 30 percent over asking price with an all-cash offer—to escape a city under lockdown. By the end of 2020 Ulster County had seen a 44-percent increase in the average home sales price, from $270,842 to $390,581.

The fuss, as my colleague Phillip Pantuso has reported at The River Newsroom in a recent interview with Deputy Ulster County Executive Evelyn Wright, is that median rent has already increased 16 percent or more prior to 2020. (Undoubtedly, it’s gone up even more in the interim.) The rise in rental and home prices is exacerbated by household incomes stagnating or declining for all but the county’s highest earners. As Phillip reports: “Approximately 13 percent of homeowners and a staggering 30 percent of renters are severely cost burdened, meaning they spend more than half of their income on housing.” In describing the bind we’re in, Wright

Community

says: “We are fighting upstream against 21stcentury American capitalism. This is happening to us because we are a low-wage place facing an influx of high-wage earners.” 2 (The county just released a 144-page report on the current housing crisis and some recommendations to boot. The report, along with the interview, can be found at Therivernewsroom.com.)

The fuss is over The Kingstonian, a proposed large-scale development of market rate housing in Uptown Kingston (with a small component of affordable units, added to the project after a firestorm of criticism), which was about to be denied tax breaks by the county Industrial Development Agency—before the agency changed its rules at the last minute and the tax breaks went through anyway.

Kingstonians are also fussin’ about Hutton Brickyards, which is about to open the luxury cabins on its property for overnight rentals ($325 to $345 a night)—as well as an on-site restaurant, and eventually, more lodging at the Cordts Mansion, a historic home on a hill overlooking the brickyard that the hospitality group just bought for $2.35 million. The fact that the near-completion of the Hutton Brickyard cabins coincided neatly with the installation of a locked gate at the entrance to the city parking lot at Kingston Point Beach caused some conspiratorially minded folks to scratch their heads. Here’s why: The entrance to the Empire State Trail—which travels through the Brickyard property by prior arrangement with all involved parties—is at one end of the city parking lot. And the gate was sometimes locked in mid-morning, even though the city said it would only be locked at night, as it does in other city parks. It made some folks wonder if the city was actively keeping visitors out of the city parking lot in order to stop them from traipsing through the brickyard on the Empire State Trail—also by some prior, if sub rosa, arrangement.3

The fuss is over Barnfox 4, a new coworking space in Kingston that was caught in the

Commodity

crosshairs of the anti-gentrification movement in the city and became the symbol of exploitative capitalism at its worst. You can find the Boycott Barnfox group on Instagram (@boycott_barnfox). In early March, I attended a Zoom meeting they held with the owners of Barnfox to go over their demands. It was part consciousness-raising event, part show trial, part farce. Early on, one pro-Barnfox partisan kept interrupting the meeting to ask the Boycott Barnfox organizers why the owners of Barnfox needed to answer to the demands of an ad hoc group of activists who seemed to be substituting one business for all the problems of gentrification. (This interrupting person was quite disruptive and rude—one might call him an asshole—and the organizers eventually kicked him out of the meeting.) But I tend to agree with the interrupting person’s point—why single out Barnfox rather than any other business, cultural organization or municipal beautification effort?—but that doesn’t make the low-wage/high-cost-of-living predicament facing young people in Kingston any less dire. As the folks at KingstonWire put it so well in a recent editorial: “Any way our housing crisis is sliced, it makes the hard lives of those most ill-equipped to deal with changes a hell of a lot harder. Or to put it another way, you don’t have to get infected to have your life upended by a virus.”

Back at my office, my visitor told me she had heard about all this roiling ferment and change in Kingston, but driving across town she didn’t see much change since the last time she was here. It looked the same as it ever did. And it’s true, it’s hard to see the changes that are taking place. But they’re large-scale and they’re definitely happening. It may take awhile to see the effects of what’s happening. Maybe one day we’ll wake up and everyone who used to live in Kingston will have finally moved away. It’s like that great Hemingway line from The Sun Also Rises that works so well in so many situations. One guy asks another how he went bankrupt. “Slowly, and then all at once,” the second replies.

1. In Sips & Bites this month (page 19), Marie Doyon has this to say about it: “If a single image could sum up Kingston’s recent transformation, it might be this: In the former Dunkin’ Donuts location on Wall Street, you can now find Cacao Lab, a ceremonial cacao boutique. This is not your mama’s chocolate shop.” Barnfox is right upstairs; more on that later.

2. It’s worth noting that the county recently had 4,200 applicants for the 100 available spots in the universal basic income pilot that it will be launching later this year.

3. My email to the city’s director of Parks and Recreation, Lynsey Timbrouck, about this issue, was answered thusly: “The parking lot is not supposed to be locked during the day, only dusk to dawn. We have gotten some other calls and will be sure to pass them on to KPD [Kingston Police Department] to issue a reminder to officers to open the gates at the correct time.” As I am not of the conspiratorial mind, I see no reason not to believe Timbrouck.

4. An article on Kingston in the November issue of Chronogram referred to Barnfox as an “exclusive” club. This was a mischaracterization, as anyone who pays the membership fee is able to join Barnfox.

Legal Weed Is Coming

On February 18, Chronogram Media teamed up with Etain to host “Legal Weed is Coming,” a virtual event with a diverse panel of policy influencers, growers, and dispensary owners. The event, held on Zoom, brought together over 150 audience members for a lively discussion on what legalization of recreational marijuana might look like in New York and the possibility of legislation becoming law this spring. Panelists included Hillary Peckham, COO of Etain; Meg Sanders, CEO of Canna Provisions; Marcus Williams, vice president of Community Growth Partners at Rebelle; Melissa Moore, New York State director of Drug Policy Alliance (pictured above); Andi Novick, president of Small Farma Ltd.; and Gail Hepworth, CEO of Hempire State Growers.

Peckham kicked off the discussion, explaining how Etain obtained one of the first licenses for medical marijuana in the state and is the only womenowned and family-owned dispensary in New York. Peckham went on to explain the process for getting a medical marijuana card (it’s not hard) and also added some suggestions for what potential legalization could look like.

One of the hot topics of conversation was the tax revenue generated from marijuana dispensaries. Sanders stated that three percent of the revenue from Canna Provisions’ Lee, Massachusetts, dispensary went directly to the town—which totaled over $1 million in 2020. She clarified this was in addition to sales tax and other revenue that is allocated to the town through the regulations in place. Sanders went on to note: “As a result, Lee didn’t have to raise property taxes this year—in a COVID year.”

Adding to this, Williams explained that Rebelle’s Great Barrington dispensary opened in September. Williams feels that municipalities were sensible with regard to tax revenues, explaining that dispensaries in Massachusetts are required to obtain a host community agreement from the town before they can open.

The conversation shifted to legislation currently on the table for New York State. Moore of the Drug Policy Alliance explained that there are two bills currently in the legislature for consideration: the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA) and Governor Cuomo’s proposal.

Moore went on to say that there are very important differences between these two pieces of legislation: Cuomo’s bill did not include a license option for delivery, permit onsite consumption; and, in many cases, it escalates criminal penalties beyond what they have been.

Elaborating on the difference between the two bills currently in the legislature, Small Farma’s Novick says, “The governor has said that this is a $3 billion industry. If we were to give that industry to farms—small farms, micro farms, people who want to grow this plant consciously outdoors, regeneratively—that $3 billion would stay in New York State. But instead that $3 billion is going to go the way of profits, often to multi-state operators from out of state”—which could result in less money for New York and a missed opportunity for small farmers.

Also discussed was the impact legal recreational marijuana has on economic development and job creation. Hepworth of Hempire State Growers voiced her support for the MRTA, adding that her business has 25 professional people on staff including an attorney, biomedical engineers, industrial engineers, and more—in addition to 100 skilled farmworkers. “When farms do well, communities thrive,” Hepworth says.

To view our full conversation on legal weed coming to New York State, check out our video on Chronogram.com/legal-weed and stay tuned for another conversation on legal weed coming soon.

—Samantha Liotta

by Lissa Harris covid

It Takes a Village…to Vaccinate

There’s nothing special about Greenburgh, a suburban town of about 88,000 in Westchester County, to suggest that it would be the incubator for one of the state’s most ambitious pandemic volunteer projects. Unless you count Paul Feiner, the town’s indefatigable supervisor. Feiner has helmed town government in Greenburgh for 30 years, re-elected again and again on the strength of an old-fashioned belief: that government ought to fix people’s problems. It’s easy to spot Feiner’s car around town: It’s the one with a taxi-style roof sign on top, printed with Feiner’s cell phone number and the slogan “Mobile Problem Solver.” “He’s like the ice cream man, but for community outreach,” says Kenny Herzog, a volunteer with Greenburgh’s COVID Angels. In January, the group was barely an idea. By March, it was a national model, a fleet-footed hybrid of volunteerism and good government with a system for putting local talent to work solving local problems.

Launched with a handful of members after Feiner put out a call on the town website, the COVID Angels are now almost 300 strong. Their purpose, which they have pursued with fervor, is to help the most vulnerable people in town get signed up for a COVID-19 vaccine.

Meet the COVID Angels

The town’s long tradition of constituent services, mostly projects of Feiner’s, meant it had a solid base to work from. Greenburgh already had a volunteer corps of “Snow Angels” who help their elderly and disabled neighbors dig out. after snow storms. Between the Snow Angels and various other town programs, the vaccine volunteers had a contact list of about 3,000 people over 65 in Greenburgh, many of them housebound or medically vulnerable. Rather than wait for people to come to them for help, they started calling.

In two months of action, the Angels have made more than 5,000 calls, and gotten vaccine appointments for more than 1,000 Greenburgh residents. In February, they ran a vaccine clinic at a local community center that got doses to another 750 people. They’re working with churches and local health centers to reach low-income and minority residents who might otherwise get left behind in vaccine rollout. They’ve also created a set of guidance documents for other communities looking to launch similar programs.

To be a good Angel, you need both people skills and systems savvy. Like a lot of vaccine volunteers, Herzog is a desk warrior: By his own admission, he was the kind of kid who would call an 800 number on a cereal box to lodge a complaint. Now he’s a business journalist. For Herzog, solving the puzzles presented by the confusing array of state, local, and private vaccine providers has been almost, well, fun. “You have to be so nimble when you’re doing this,” he says.  Problems abound, and new ones crop up all

the time. Large pharmacy chains like Walgreens require people to sign up for individual accounts on glitchy websites before making appointments, a hurdle both for the digitally challenged and the volunteers trying to sign them up. Eligibility rules and state guidance shift constantly. Sometimes state call center operators will refuse to schedule an appointment unless the person getting the vaccine is on the call, citing medical privacy issues. “They stopped us in our tracks for a few days; they were quoting HIPAA scripture at us. It really fucks things up,” Herzog says. But while vaccine signup systems have been confusing and buggy, the Angels have adapted, learning the skills to navigate different systems and sharing them with the community. Some have become experts in one type of site, or made personal connections with people at pharmacies and hospitals that help cut down on the friction.

“Some of the volunteers are really high-tech, and great organizers,” Feiner says. It’s also a social experience, a welcome virtual island of camaraderie in an ocean of social distance. “They’re connecting with each other, they’re making friends working with each other. It’s almost like a presidential campaign style of volunteerism. People are enjoying being part of it,” he says.

Anne Hoehn has been on board with the COVID Angels since there were fewer than a dozen of them. It’s her job to stay on top of which sites in the community are getting doses and when, and let the volunteers who are making appointments know where the likeliest spots are at any given time. “That consists of doing our own research, setting Google alerts, reaching out to our networks to learn where allocations currently are and where they’ll be, and also speaking with pharmacies and larger hospital networks directly to see if we can help them at all,” she says.

If that sounds like a full-time job, it is. “We all laugh about that, because we all signed up saying we could do probably one or two hours a week,” she says. “So many people are putting in so many hours. We can’t stop.” Hoehn, who has a decade of experience in sales and management, is currently home with two young children, ages two and four. Before the pandemic, she volunteered with Meals on Wheels, making house calls to homebound seniors, because it was the only volunteer gig she could find that would let her bring her infant daughter along. Now, as resource coordinator for the COVID Angels, she’s essentially running a team for a midsize business, even if it happens to be unpaid.

Herding the Herd Immunity

As of mid-March, the vaccine supply bottleneck has already begun to widen. Increasingly, people are having an easier time making appointments. Before long, Feiner says, most people who want a

vaccine won’t need much help scheduling one.

But rather than winding down their efforts, the COVID Angels are already pivoting to tackle the next problem: Getting the community to herd immunity. With help from a grant from the UJA-Federation of New York, the group is launching a program to address vaccine hesitancy in the community, employing local teenagers and partnering with local businesses on a marketing campaign. The effort already has a mascot of sorts, a character based on “Marc the Pharmacist,” proprietor of Marinelli’s Village Pharmacy in Elmsford, and one of many independent pharmacists in the state who have done a yeoman’s job of getting community members scheduled for a vaccine.

In the end, if the Angels are successful at helping to get their little corner of Westchester County to the rate of vaccination needed for herd immunity—a number that’s probably somewhere between 70 and 90 percent—New York State will take credit for their work, along with that of thousands of community volunteers, friends, and family members who make up the unofficial backbone of the state’s vaccine rollout.

That’s inevitable, and since the goal is to keep people alive and healthy, it’s probably fine. But it goes to show: Local is everything.

“The community really tended to its own house,” Herzog says. “The reason people are getting these vaccines is the result of volunteer groups, and the diligence and passion of community leaders. Especially in low-income and underserved areas.”

Lissa Harris covers the pandemic for The River Newsroom. Sign up at Therivernewsroom.com for COVID-19 news and policy across the Hudson Valley and Catskills region via TRN’s email newsletter.

Josephine Occhiogrossi being vaccinated in February at the Theodore D. Young Community Center in Greenburgh. She turned 100 on March 21.

Berkshires Dispensary Guide

IN THE WEEDS Retail Marijuana in Massachusetts

While recreational cannabis remains illegal in New York (although perhaps not for long), across the state line in Massachusetts 10 recreational dispensaries are open for business in the Berkshires and many more in the ever-expanding Pioneer Valley Weed Belt. But cannabis dispensaries are as much about the customer experience as they are about slinging product, of which there is a seemingly endless variety, meaning it can become difficult to pick just which one to go to. This snappy guide is designed to help navigate the local options, while providing some useful insights to help inform buying decisions.

—Amadeus Finlay

Bloom Brothers

2 Larch St, Pittsfield Bloombrothersma.com

The clue is in the name. Founded by three brothers from Berkshire County, Bloom Brothers is all about the flower, with over 40 strains for sale at any one time.

Product Range: An extensive menu of indica, sativa, and hybrid flowers, as well as one of the most comprehensive ranges of pre-rolls in the region. Tinctures, topicals, and edibles are also for sale. But it’s Bloom Brothers seemingly endless selection of concentrates, hashes, and shatters that really makes the trip worthwhile.

Canna Provisions

220 Housatonic Street, Lee Cannaprovisionsgroup.com

A store stocked full of cannabis goodies, Canna Provisions certainly lives up to its name. Part-owned by industry legend, Meg Sanders, this place is as much a cannabis experience as an outlet to grab a nug.

Product Range: Flower is particularly special at Canna Provisions, with some of its product coming from OG grower Greg “Chemdog” Krzanowski—credited as the inventor of Sour Diesel. Alongside the buds, the store stocks pre-rolls, vape cartridges, concentrates, edibles, tinctures, and topicals. Accessories are also for sale, just in case.

Berkshire Roots

501 A Dalton Avenue, Pittsfield Berkshireroots.com

Serving medical patients as well as adult-use customers, Berkshire Roots is the region’s everyperson’s dispensary. It specializes in edible culture, and alongside products for sale, a range of cannabis-infused meals and feasts are posted online. The group even won Best Edible in the 2020 Commonwealth Cannabis Competition for its culinary efforts.

Product Range: Seed-to-sale flower from the dispensary’s licensed grow facility means fresh, unique bud, and plenty of it. The group also creates in-house badder, chews, tinctures, and distillates, as well as sourcing complementary products, including cannabis and coffee-infused chocolate bars, from outside vendors.

Retail Experience: Pre-order online, in-store pick-up. Walk-ins also welcome.

Web Functionality: Brand new website as of this month. Slick and easy to order.

Customer Service: A classic dispensary experience. Customers wait in a large, socially distanced space while waiting to enter the showroom. Bud tenders know their stuff, so ask anything from the basics up to the most complex questions. Berkshire Roots also picks a local charity each month for customer donations through their “round-up at the register” scheme.

Retail Experience: Pre-order online, in-store pick-up.  Web Functionality: Order function is front and center, but it gets a little clunky on mobile with the logo scrolling down the page.

Customer Service: The ethos is community first, so customers can feel at ease whatever their comfort level with cannabis products.

Calyx Berkshire Dispensary

307 Main Street, Great Barrington Calyxberkshire.com

One of five female-owned dispensaries in Massachusetts, Calyx is named after the calyx part of the cannabis plant (the bit that gives birth to all the goodies). Its location in the heart of downtown Great Barrington also makes Calyx one of two dispensaries on the main drag.

Product Range: Alongside a robust flower menu, Calyx also stocks pre-rolls, vape cartridges, tinctures and topicals, as well as a comprehensive selection of edibles.

Retail Experience: Pre-order online, in-store pick-up.  Web Functionality: Slick, easy to navigate and order.

Customer Service: Opened in November, this dispensary is fresh, energetic, and eager to attract a customer base. And with only six customers permitted in the showroom at one time, Calyx dispenses knowledge with its flowers.

Retail Experience: Pre-order online, curbside pickup.  Web Functionality: Not the easiest to navigate, but the online ordering service is fully functional.

Customer Service: Wearing tie-dye shirts and loving it, the bud tenders at Canna Provisions are as likely to have a chat with you about the product as they are to sell it. Easygoing, reminiscent of a classic New England farm shop, if busy at times.

Silver Therapeutics in Williamstown

Theory Wellness in Great Barrington

Farnsworth Fine Cannabis Company

783 South Main Street, Great Barrington Farnsworthfinecannabis.com

Great Barrington’s other downtown dispensary, Farnsworth Fine Cannabis Company, opened in February, is the both the newest dispensary on the list, as well as the smallest.

Product Range: 22 different edibles, including a range of tinctures. Flower is limited to three varieties, all from Revolutionary Clinics in Somerville, but other options include a modest selection of pre-rolls and concentrates, and topicals.

Retail Experience: Pre-order online, in-store pick-up.

Web Functionality: The brand-heavy elements make navigation a little more challenging than competitors, but it is mobile responsive and the ordering service simple and intuitive.

Customer Service: Small, intimate, and back to basics, Farnsworth Fine Cannabis Company is the very definition of pick up and go.

The Pass

1375 North Main Street, Sheffield Thepass.co

The big one. Everything is contained on-site at The Pass, meaning seed-to-sale cultivation. In short, consumers can purchase unique, craft cannabis flower unavailable anywhere else.

Product Range: It’s all about that flower. Products are colorcoded and designated in one of four categories: Create, Connect, Dream, Relieve, with the menu also including standard sativias, indicas, and hybrids. For those seeking something else, the Pass also creates a range of homemade concentrates, vape carts, gummies, mints, pills, tincture, and topicals, as well as pre-rolled joints.

Retail Experience: Pre-order online, in-store pick-up.

Web Functionality: Quick, easy and to the point, while still remaining visually engaging.

Customer Service: Since everything is in-house, the Pass has an intimate knowledge of the product beyond the package. This is the place for those who want a specialist understanding of cannabis provenance.

Rebelle

783 South Main Street, Great Barrington Letsrebelle.com

Aimed at the Millennial and Generation Z audience, Rebelle is a hip dispensary on the outskirts of Great Barrington. A female and minority-led business, Rebelle donates three percent of its net profits toward expunging low-level cannabis convictions and empowering its community.

Product Range: Flowers, pre-rolls, topicals, vapes, edibles, and tinctures make up a solid but standard menu, with an extensive range of accessories and branded swag also for sale.

Retail Experience: Pre-order online, curbside pick-up.

Web Functionality: The brand-heavy elements make navigation a little more challenging than competitors, but it is mobile responsive and the ordering service simple and intuitive.

Customer Service: Situated inside a historic farmhouse, Rebelle is reminiscent of an Apple store experience. Open seven days a week, the dispensary makes an effort to stress the importance of education with cannabis, so ask anything that’s on your mind.

Silver Therapeutics

238 Main Street, Williamstown Silver-therapeutics.com

Small but mighty, Silver Therapeutics is a dispensary on a mission, and the group’s proprietary cannabis educational facility, City Farm, will soon be opening outside Boston in Roslindale.

Product Range: Flower is purchased wholesale from over 30 licensed cultivators, meaning that the range of strains is competitive and varies with the season. Pre-rolls, edibles (look out for the Liberty RSO Capsules) and cartridge vaporizers, including PAX refills, are also available. An impressive range of concentrates, salves, and tinctures adds an additional flourish to the menu.

Retail Experience: Pre-order, in-store pick-up.

Web Functionality: Responsive on both mobile and desktop. Be sure to use the intuitive pre-order function to make life even easier.

Customer Service: Intimate, slick, and with a speedy customer journey, Silver Therapeutics is where to go if you need quality, quickly. Just pull up into the seemingly endless parking lot and head in.

Temescal Wellness

10 Callahan Drive, Pittsfield Ma.temescalwellness.com

Serving full recreational and medical menus, Temescal Wellness is open to anybody over the age of 21 seeking something green.

Product Range: Another dispensary where homegrown flower is the main attraction. Alongside stinky, in-house buds, Temescal also sources content from recognized growers including Rythm and Sira Naturals. Pre-rolls, vapors, tinctures, and

edibles make up the rest of the menu.

Retail Experience: Pre-order online, in-store pick-up.

Web Functionality: Not the easiest site to navigate, but the online ordering service is fully functional once located.

Customer Service: Easy in, easy out. Temescal does away with the frills and operates a to-the-point customer pick-up service.

Theory Wellness

394 Stockbridge Road, Great Barrington Theorywellness.org

As the first fully licensed outdoor grow operation on the East Coast, Theory Wellness is the region’s OG, and the group’s renewable, green tech growing is central to their cultivation practices. Theory also welcomes medical patients as well as adult use consumers.

Product Range: Flower, pre-rolls, vape cartridges, concentrates (including in-house badder and sap), as well as accessories and branded apparel. The dispensary also stocks out-of-house brands, including the edibles from Incredibles, as well as Theory’s own cannabis-infused seltzer, Hi5.

Retail Experience: Pre-order online, in-store pick-up.

Web Functionality: Attractive, quick, and to the point. Easy to browse and order products.

Customer Service: Another location where knowledge is everything, customers are encouraged to ask questions and feel comfortable with the product.

Temescal Wellness in Pittsfield

Berkshire Roots in Pittsfield

ABLOOM IN HUDSON

Feast & Floret

By Andrea Pyros Photos by David McIntyre

On a recent chilly evening, I headed to Feast & Floret in Hudson. Not only to try something new, but to understand how the restaurant is setting itself apart at the same location where until last March, Fish & Game and its award-winning chef Zak Pelaccio reigned over the region’s dining scene.

The trio of Jason Denton and husband-andwife Patrick Milling-Smith and Lavinia MillingSmith opened Feast & Floret in October, and the menu and overall dining experience is confident and assured—less a response to Fish & Game than a new direction entirely. Feast & Floret’s Italian-inspired menu is fresh, savory, presented with warmth, yet still exciting and full of interesting touches that keep you engaged in each complex bite. You’re well-taken care of when you’re eating there, the experience comfortable and lovely, whether you’re dining inside in the gorgeously reimagined space that long ago housed a blacksmith shop or outside on the open-air patio, even in 36-degree weather.

The direction of the menu falls within Denton’s purview. The restaurateur started his career working for his uncle, San Francisco nightlife impresario Harry Denton, then he spent years building his own Italian food mini-empire in New York, helping launch well-known restaurants like ‘ino, Bar Milano, and ‘Inoteca. Denton

and his family made their move to Hudson permanent this past year. He was introduced to the Milling-Smiths, owners of the Feast & Floret building, by a mutual friend a few years ago.

A Collaborative Approach

While preparing gnocchi for a new menu item, he says that the kitchen’s goal is to let the ingredients speak for themselves by keeping dishes to a three-ingredient profile. That less-ismore approach toward meats and fish entrees, for example, means they’re typically served simply and unadorned so diners can focus on the quality of the protein. There’s no head chef at Feast & Floret, and Denton stresses what goes on in the kitchen is a collaboration.

The menu is streamlined, with a solid range of starters, from a simple green salad ($10) and shaved fennel salad ($10) to a cured meat plate ($24). There’s an enticing lineup of grains and pasta, like the rich, savory truffled egg toast ($16), which tasted like the greatest hangover cure ever devised—Fontina melted over fresh bread, with shaved truffle, egg, and asparagus. An inviting squid ink soprese ($19), with squid ink noodles and squid, spinach, spicy pork sausage, and a flavorful garlic and butter sauce, is salty and textured in all the best ways.

Meat and fish main courses include a small

plate of stacked pork ribs ($24), are dry rubbed with spices and served with a walnut amaro reduction. The restaurant also offers locally raised steelhead trout ($24), a grilled half chicken ($26), octopus ($22), and a 14-ounce ribeye ($46). Add a vegetable side, too—they’re as thoughtfully prepared as the rest of the menu, like my roasted sweet potatoes with anchovy vinaigrette and currants ($9), which felt substantial and satisfying. None of the portions are massive, so do keep that in mind when ordering.

About 60 percent of the menu will remain consistent year-round, Denton says, with some tweaks to the sauces depending on the season. The other 40 percent will change four or five times a year. The flexibility in the menu also allows the team working in the kitchen to flex their creative muscles. Denton speaks with the affection of aiming for an experience similar to what someone might have in Italy, where “you pop off the side of the road and wind up in somebody’s home, and suddenly the food arrives.”

For dessert, our good-natured, total pro of a server Antoine steered us toward the buttery and light olive oil cake ($10), served with mascarpone and satsuma, and we also tried chocolate budino, an airy pudding topped with pumpkin seeds ($10) and affogato ($8), vanilla ice cream with espresso poured on top.

Tempting Tipples

I love a good cocktail when someone else is mixing them, and besides, leaving the house these days feels like a celebratory occasion, so I ordered the Tainted Lady, made with vodka, ginger, pink peppercorns, and hibiscus ($12), which managed that tricky balance of being fruity but not sugary or cloying, while my dining companion had the From Hudson to Manhattan, a subtle take on the classic with rye, rose petal syrup, and bitters ($17).  There’s an extensive list of wine choices available by the glass, primarily Italian, but also Spanish, French, and German, starting at $10. Denton kept half of the wine list to under $60 a bottle, which fits with Feast & Floret’s overarching goal of being a restaurant you could swing by whether you’re celebrating a major milestone or just want a simple glass of rosé and a small dish of pasta, and families with their young children are welcomed with enthusiasm. For beer drinkers, there are a few draft beers available.

Above: Pork ribs with cippolini onion, walnut-amaro reduction.

Right: Roasted sweet potatoes with anchovy vinaigrette, currants, and parsley.

Opposite: The dining room at Feast & Floret has been transformed into a veritable floral showroom.

At press time, that included two: Nightlife Light Lager ($6 spina/$8 pint) and Mad Jack Mont Pleasant Porter ($9/$11). There are six additional beer and cider options by the can or bottle— starting with the budget-friendly Genesee Red ($5) and Central Waters Mudpuppy Porter ($9), moving up to Lawson’s Sip of Sunshine IPA ($12) and Metal House Arista Cider ($35).

Flower Power

Denton was eager to dive into the space on South 3rd Street, which he says he’d always loved, with its wood-burning oven and fireplaces, but the trio wanted to shake up the space and make it more approachable. “[Patrick, Lavinia and I] were talking,” says Denton. “How do we incorporate flowers into it? I wanted to take the taxidermy and dark clubby feel and make it softer and more floral, and Patrick said, ‘Why don’t we do a flower program?’ and Lavinia took the lead on that.”

“We opened in the midst of COVID, and in many ways our main goal was driven by a sense of survival and the need to hold on to some sanity,” Lavinia Milling-Smith explains. “If there

was a philosophy, it was to build something accessible, healthy, enriching, and close to nature. We wanted to build an environment that feels clean, cozy, and comfortable but also bursting with the budding natural bounty of Hudson and beyond.” Some of that bounty is straight from Milling-Smith’s farm. You can pick up a jar of their honey to go, and there are plans for more of the couple’s homegrown produce to show up on Feast & Floret’s menu come springtime.

The bones of the building have an old-world substance and elegance, Milling-Smith points out, which allowed the partners to lean into celebrating the authenticity while lightening it up with saturated pinks and greens and comfy banquets and sofas. The end result? A lighter, more open space, softened up with pastels, and trees and flowers throughout the restaurant, which not only support social distancing but add to the warmth and coziness of the interior. You may not get quite that same ambiance when you’re seated at one of the four well-spaced outside tables, but even the patio feels cozy and inviting, and entices you to linger, cold weather or no.

Both Milling-Smith and Denton are effusive

in their praise of Rebecca O’Donnell of Hudson’s The Quiet Botanist, who helped create the fresh, floral feel. When you go, be sure to look up— O’Donnell designed the dried flower chandelier above the bar. “Together, we created an environment that feels like spring and summer in the dead of winter,” Milling-Smith says. “This was a calming thought as we stumbled through the darkness of lockdown and the long, cold season.” Marilyn Cederoth of Cedar Farms, and Denise Pizzini at Damsel Garden also provide flowers for the restaurant.

At Fish & Game, Zak Pelaccio claimed he was trying to answer the culinary question: “What does this place taste like?” Feast & Floret seems to be asking, “What does this time taste like, and what do we all need from a restaurant right now?” The answer is the welcoming and unpretentious Feast & Floret.

Feast & Floret

13 South 3rd Street, Hudson (518) 822-1500; Feastandfloret.com

Feast & Floret is open for dining 12 to 11pm, Wednesday through Sunday.

Feast & Floret’s cocktail program includes takes on the classics like From Hudson to Manhattan, with rye, rose petal syrup, and bitters.

sips & bites

Cacao Lab

Kingston’s recent transformation can be illustrated in a single image: In the former Dunkin’ Donuts location on Wall Street, you can now find Cacao Lab, a ceremonial cacao boutique. This is not your mama’s chocolate shop. Here you can order a hot, frothy cup of cacao ($6.50), which you can customize with the addition of immunesupportive and brain-boosting foods like maca, rose, or cardamom, and mushrooms like reishi and lion’s mane. Unlike most hot cocoa, this cacao is made from the whole bean, rather than powder, giving it 50 percent fat for a creamy, rich texture. Included with your order comes a vegan bonbon, available in alluring flavors like lavender ganache, lemon basil, and dulce de leche. (You can also buy these treats separately for $44 to $50 a pound.) While your cacao is being prepared, browse the selection of candles, clothing, pottery, and packaged cacao. With no additives, emulsifiers, dairy, or sweeteners, Cacao Lab’s organic, heirloom-variety cacao, sourced directly from farmers in Ecuador, comes in grown-up flavors. Post-COVID, the Uptown Kingston location will be a space for community cacao ceremonies.

295 Wall Street, Kingston | Cacaolaboratory.com

The Athens Rooster

The activation of Athens’ adorable little waterfront downtown continues with the opening of chef Melissa Chmelar’s The Athens Rooster, a breakfast and lunch spot dishing up hot coffee and from-scratch goodness. Chmelar, whose Murray Hill restaurant Spoon Table & Bar was among Manhattan’s many COVID casualties, is an expert in elevated comfort food—and in creating the type of neighborhood joint that regulars flock to. Breakfast kicks off with wholesome options like the Power Bowl, with steel-cut oatmeal, coconut flakes, flax and chia seeds, dried cranberries, and almonds ($6.50); indulgent picks like the breakfast panini with thick-cut bacon, scrambled eggs, housemade pimento cheese, and cheddar on a sesame roll ($5); or the hipster-friendly vegan avocado toast with turmeric-tahini-massaged kale, pickled red onion, and sesame seeds ($9).  Lunch is all pizzas and paninis. For a pie, try the verdant Greene County with pesto, spinach, ricotta, and parmesan ($12) or the Mediterranean-inspired Athens with fresh greens, cherry tomatoes, kalamata olives, tahini, za’atar, flax seeds, fresh mint, and basil ($12). On the sammy side of things, try a classic pulled pork Cubano ($9) or satisfy your inner child with the gourmet grilled cheese, a crispy, melty mess of cheddar, fontina, tomato, caramelized onions, and rosemary Dijonnaise ($7).

44 2nd Street, Athens | Theathensrooster.com

Black Dot

Since Carthaigh Coffee closed, Stone Ridge hasn’t had a proper coffee spot. Sure there’s Bodacious Bagels, where you can get New York deli-style drip, with cream and sugar added for you. But for the espresso-fiending, latte-loving, purist types, there was nothing. Then, on Boxing Day, Black Dot opened its doors in the former Carthaigh location, serving up single-origin coffee in a white-washed minimalist space. On the food front, Black Dot currently offers an egg-and-cheese on a croissant (avocado and bacon extra, $8-$12); a smoked salmon tartine, with pickled shallots, radish, cucumber, and goat cheese ($12) on sourdough baguette; and a slow-roasted tomato confit tartine, with goat cheese and arugula ($9). Serving Bread Alone pastries, they also make fresh coconut chocolate banana bread daily in-house ($3 a slice). While you wait for your milk to steam, browse the shelves of ceramics by local artisans. They also have sleek electric kettles from Fellow, loose leaf teas and herbal blends from Aesthete Tea, and coffee beans from their Beacon-based supplier, Big Mouth Coffee Roasters.

3669 Main Street, Stone Ridge | Blackdot.cafe

One More Bite

Pack all your favorite flavors into a single meal at One More Bite, the new Asian fusion restaurant heating up Beacon’s Main Street. The menu leans heavily on Korean flavors and dishes, with classics like beef or spicy pork bulgogi (both $15); japchae, a glass noodle stir fry with shiitake, carrots, zucchini, onions, bell peppers, and spinach ($13.75); and ssambap, lettuce wraps served with rice, crispy pork belly, and pickled radish ($13). If you’re feeling like a sandwich, try the Banh Mi French Dip, which adds pork bulgogi to the classic chicken liver pate, pickled carrot and daikon, cucumber, cilantro, lemongrass aioli, and pho au jus on a baguette ($11.25). For something totally different, try the fried chicken sandwich, with Korean fried chicken, Nashville hot sauce, napa cabbage slaw, and seasoned cukes ($10.50). Wash it all down with Yuzu lemonade, a Sapporo, or a glass from their short, but well-curated wine list.

389 Main Street, Beacon | @onemorebitebeacon

Bear Cantina

February marked the first phase of reopening for the new and improved Bearsville Theater complex, with the debut of the Tex-Mex-themed Bear Cantina. The new food concept is revitalizing the erstwhile Bear Cafe, which has been closed since 2019. The menu spans low-brow to high, from jalapeños rellenos (aka poppers, $9) to The Bear, a filet mignon drizzled with homemade tequila lime butter and served with fried onions ($32). In the middle of the road, the Taco Sabroso comes with three corn tortillas, caramelized onions, salsa verde, cilantro, queso fresco, and the meat of your choice ($16-$20). Or a Mexican spin on an American classic with the eight-ounce Hamburguesa Loca, with cheddar cheese, jalapeños, fried onion, avocado aioli, lettuce, tomato, and a side of either hand-cut fries or rice and beans ($18). Music hasn’t yet returned to the hallowed halls of the Bearsville Theater, but we’re already dreaming of the day we can pregame a show with buffalo calamari and a pitcher of margaritas.

295 Tinker Street, Woodstock | Thebearcantina.com

—Marie Doyon

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF TRANSITIONAL OBJECTS

ARTIST PAULA LALALA CREATES A HOME FROM HER ART IN CORNWALLVILLE

By Mary Angeles Armstrong Photos by Winona Barton Ballentine

Artist Paula Lalala in front of the Paula Lalala MVSEVM, an installation combining her artwork and her life. Once the Cornwallville Church Hall, the building dates from the 1870s and has been home to the installation since 2010. The MVSEVM began in Dumbo in 2001 and has evolved through five different incarnations before moving to the Catskills. “Change is constant, we’re all growing and learning and evolving,” Lalala says. “But we’re like nesting dolls. You can’t totally transform yourself as if you didn’t have that earlier lived experience— you always carry it with you.”

The home’s dining room is filled with Lalala’s art and found treasures. By combining photography, sketching, painting, sculpture, and found art, she’s created a diverse body of intricate work “comprised of spiritual, social, and psychological investigations.” Here the walls are filled with photography inspired and taken during trips home to Texas and a wall dedicated to religious art and iconography. “I’ve made or transformed most of the objects which form the museum’s collection,” she says. “Many of the raw materials—including the furniture, doors, fabric, dishes, wood, dolls, rugs and the chandelier— were given to me or discarded by others.”

In 1997, New York-based artist Paula Lalala took a trip back to her childhood home in Texas. She had left over 15 years before, and, after her parents’ divorce, her siblings and mother had moved on as well—at that point, it was only her father living alone in the home they had all once shared. While it was a simple trip from New York to Texas, it was also, in effect, a trip back in time. “Very little had changed aesthetically or materially in the house,” Lalala remembers. “My father was a very meticulous man—he was a dentist—and he kept all of the items in the exact same places they had been when I lived there as a girl. The glasses in the kitchen cabinet were arranged the same way they had always been; the books on the bookshelves were in the same order; the furniture was in the same locations. He did that for decades. It struck me that he was living in a museum.”

The interdisciplinary artist, whose work combines photography, drawing, sculpture, and performance into “multi-sensory immersive installation and performance” was already focused on home as one of the prevailing themes of her art. “Homes—my own and other peoples—have always been significant sites for my work,” she explains. “Some of my earliest art projects in the 1980s were installations in abandoned homes, barns, and

vacant lots.” By 1990, she was setting her largescale exhibitions and art events in her home and, right before that pivotal journey in 1997, she’d orchestrated “Bravado Vibrato” in her Dumbo loft—an event that included music, art, and a fivehour long performance installation in which she attempted to cut up all of her clothing. (This early theme of self-destruction also runs through much of her work. “To destroy yourself,” Lalala explains, “is a way to try to get to a deeper meaning.”)

The confluence of those two events—the trip to her perfectly preserved childhood home and her home-based art installation—sparked the beginning of the “Paula Lalala MVSEVM,” a 20-year-long art exhibit located in her residence. First opened in the autumn of 2001 in her Dumbo loft, the MVSEVM serves as both her home and also a “long-term, large-scale art project that explores the intersection of public and private life.” As with any home, Lalala’s memory and cumulative self, as well as the practicalities of daily life, are at its heart, but the accumulated transitional objects that serve that daily life and which over time acquire meaning have been cultivated into something much more than the sum of their parts. The MVSEVM also incorporates elements of a historic home museum, an interactive art exhibit, and also occasionally

serves as a gallery and community event space. “It’s like a beautiful jewel box full of treasure,” she explains. “I don’t think of art as separate from life and the Paula Lalala MVSEVM as one giant work of art.”

Hallowed Images

A native of Texas, Lalala was born and raised in a devout fundamentalist Christian family. “Art was not allowed in the physical building due to [our] church’s interpretation of the fourth commandment,” she explains. It’s the Biblical commandment against idolatry, which, when taken literally, forbids creating “graven images” or likenesses of anything “in heaven or earth or water.” It was a directive her family took seriously. “It was a very strict upbringing,” she remembers, “but also a suburban, middle-class American lifestyle that included swimming, horseback riding, and Girl Scouts.”

A series of traumatic events during her adolescence, including the deaths of close friends in quick succession and the rocky dissolution of her parents’ marriage, led Lalala to run away from home and survive on the streets, where she suffered further trauma. Eventually, Lalala moved to Staten Island to live with an aunt and

uncle, and at 17 she discovered art. It became a new form of spiritual practice for her as well as a way to both explore those early traumas and heal from them. “I am in pursuit of transformational experience and transcendence, which I see as a continuation of my early religious upbringing,” she explains of her work. “Trauma during very early childhood can affect your entire life and alters your physiological and psychological responses to stress.” In order to deal with trauma, victims often put themselves in harm’s way again to relive an event and move past it. For Paula Lalala, art became that mechanism—allowing her to relive and work through past events in a creative environment rather than a dangerous one.

Churchlands

“It was the building that brought me here,” Lalala says of her relocation to Cornwallville, a hamlet in Greene County she’s happily embraced since happening upon it in 2010. Since its inception in 2001, the Paula Lalala MVSEVM has received thousands of visitors as it evolved through multiple iterations, moving from Dumbo to Massachusetts then back to Bushwick. (Sections of the MVSEVM have also been on loan for exhibition in other venues as well.) As it grew,

Lalala realized she would need a more versatile space and spent three years searching for a suitable new home. “I had a very specific set of requirements,” she says of her quest. “It needed to be within my budget, within a three-hour radius from Brooklyn, have a minimum of 2,000 square feet, and a ceiling height of at least 11 feet.”

She found everything she was looking for, and more, in a former church hall situated in the Cornwallville Historic District, half-way down the north face of the Catskills. Dating from the 1870s, the simple 2,200-square-foot building was constructed in a regional style of woodworking partially lost to the ages, but which Lalala thinks of as “tramp art.” The building retains many of the remnants of its days at the center of the surrounding community, including a wide double-door entrance and an elevated, open patio; a galley kitchen, an open central hall with 12-foot ceilings and a stage area at the rear, which now serves as Lalala’s studio space. (The original, adjacent 18th-century Methodist church was moved to the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown in the 1960s). “Over the years I’ve met many people who have spoken to me about being in plays here, of attending socials and potlucks or even weddings,” she says. “I’ve been

Lalala’s bedroom and a sitting area are surrounded by her own art and found pieces. “I don’t think art is separate from life, it’s more of an experience and a way of viewing and perceiving,” she says. “A rope is placed around my bed and suddenly you experience the bed in a different light.” Velvet rope also circles the sitting chairs. “But I’ve had tons and tons of people come in the museum and sometimes I offer them a seat,” she says. “It blurs the line between public and private.”

Lalala has used the building’s basement for various cultural events over the years, including potlucks, drawing, portraiture and writing workshops, and teen mentorship programs. “I wanted to do community events when I first came, especially because of the building itself—it was calling out for it,” she says. Her gatherings eventually inspired the annual “Cornwallville Day” event.

What was once the church hall’s stage is now Lalala’s art studio. By combining photography, sketching, painting, sculpture, and found art, she’s created a diverse body of intricate work “comprised of spiritual, social, and psychological investigations.” “I’ve made or transformed most of the objects which form the museum’s collection,” she says. “Many of the raw materials—including the furniture, doors, fabric, dishes, wood, dolls, rugs, and the chandelier—were given to me or discarded by others.”

delighted by the community and their response to my presence here and I love the way the building is situated within the hamlet.”

Before Lalala bought it and transformed it into the fifth iteration of the MVSEVM—which she calls “Churchlands,” the building had also been a woodworking shop and a yoga studio, and had remained in good repair. “When I acquired it, it was painted three or four shades of green,” she remembers. Besides repainting all but part of the ceiling with silver trim, Lalala installed a bedroom as well as a guest exhibition space to feature other artists’ work. Near the main entrance, the one bathroom, finished in white penny tiles, included a cut-out window. “I think they must have used it to take tickets at one time,” she says. “I covered that space with a medicine cabinet.” Downstairs, the church hall basement continues to be utilized for multiple art and community gatherings, carrying on the building’s tradition.

In hindsight, Lalala recognizes her father’s impulse to perfectly preserve their family home as a coping mechanism. “He froze,” she explains, recalling the common “fight, flight, or freeze” response to traumatic events. While Lalala has also created a museum of her life, there is nothing frozen about her living art project. She doesn’t flee from her past, either. Rather, the ever-unfolding, lively work-in-progress that is her home engages with the events of her life—not to fight with them, but instead in a kind of dance. Sometimes inquisitive, sometimes whimsical, sometimes shocking, her work is overwhelmingly compassionate toward both her own family’s story as well as her own. “Communing and communicating with others in an emotional way has been an aspiration of my work from the start,” Lalala says. “The physical senses are a direct way to stir emotions in a profound way. I want to let people know they aren’t alone in their suffering. My belief is that this is the road to healing on a societal level. Everything we do is toward persevering.”

An antique metal medicine cabinet with a mirror labeled “touch me.” The framed message on the top shelf reads: “In 1989, I collected 25 objects from my own body. Some were stolen, one I gave away.” There are also vials containing water and dirt from her parents’ and siblings’ homes.

“When it comes to customer service, the sky is the limit.”

FINANCING THE HUDSON VALLEY

For Sawyer Savings Bank, Community Comes First

For many small businesses in the Hudson Valley, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) has been a lifeline during the pandemic. Few people understand how important it was for small businesses to be able to continue operating quite like Doug Sturges, CEO of Sawyer Savings Bank, a financial anchor in the area celebrating its 150-year anniversary this year.

As a local bank, Sawyer Savings Bank was nimble enough to jump right into the PPP process, helping to support hundreds of small businesses by providing over $8 million in PPP loans—all while continuing to employ its entire staff and providing essential services at all three of its branches in Saugerties, Marlboro, and Highland. “It was weeks of long hours through the weekends, but that’s just the way small banks operate,” says Sturges. “I’m proud of how our team met these challenges in the past year.”

Since its 1871 founding in Saugerties, dedication to the community has always been at the heart of Sawyer Savings Bank. Its desire to remain independent places the bank as one of less than 20 mutual savings banks remaining in New York State. As a mutual savings bank, Sawyer Savings is owned by the depositors instead of private shareholders. This enables the bank to invest its profits directly into programs that benefit the communities where the bank operates.

One such initiative is its First Time Homebuyer Program, which can provide homebuyers with up to 100 percent financing on their home mortgages. According to Sturges, the program is unmatched by any other bank, and has helped over 150 Ulster County residents purchase their first home over the last 10 years. The bank also offers a 30-year commercial loan designed to lower required payments so small business owners can put more money back into growing their business. “We enjoy working with small business owners to determine how Sawyer Savings can assist in bringing their concepts to reality,” says Sturges.

Financial situations of customers change constantly. And while defaulting on a loan is anyone’s worst-case scenario, Sawyer Savings is committed to working closely with borrowers to find creative solutions that larger banks are not willing to consider. “Everyone with a loan has the intention to pay it back,” says Sturges. “Rather than going directly to foreclosure, we will sit down with the borrower to try to get them through a difficult time in their financial situation.”

With a team that lives and works in the Hudson Valley, it only makes sense that Sawyer Savings places a high priority on giving back to the community by supporting local food pantries, educational programs, athletics, high school scholarship funds, and more. And as part of the celebration of its 150year anniversary in 2021, the bank has committed to donating $150,000 to local non-profit organizations. “We wouldn’t be able to celebrate our 150th anniversary without the continued support of the surrounding communities and we wanted to thank them through this program,” Sturges says.

The bank is also dedicated to being a responsible corporate citizen. As part of its climate change initiative, the bank is pursuing the addition of solar arrays to its buildings and electric vehicle charging stations in its parking lots, as well as actively searching for businesses to finance that have a mission to improve the environment.

As a bank that has served its community through a century-plus of ups and downs—including the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, two World Wars, the Great Recession, and now another pandemic—it’s no wonder Sawyer Savings is focused on creating a prosperous future for the Hudson Valley. “We’ve come up with the concept of a ‘Forever Bank’ where everything we do has the future financial security of the bank and our community in mind,” says Sturges. “That’s why we’ve been here for 150 years and will be here for 150 more.”

Sawyersavings.bank

a search for the MEANING of All Life on Earth

A collection of essays offering new perspectives on Gurdjieff’s concepts relative to the scientific discoveries since his death.

A continuation of Dr. Keith Buzzell’s exploration of Gurdjieff’s Whim, bountiful with full color and exquisite illustrations.

An examination of the Laws of World-creation and Worldmaintenance as put forth by G. I Gurdjieff.

Dr. Keith Buzzell is a pioneer, discovering the relationship between Eastern and Western views of human potential.

Dr. Buzzell is a living example of active mentation in his ongoing quest to “fathom the gist” of Gurdjieff’s writings and teaching.

A new conception of God in the World~ all previously held beliefs are to be destroyed, creating conditions for understanding by three-brained beings.

If humankind is balanced physically, emotionally, and psychologically, we then have the capacity to take the responsibility to do the right thing at every turn.

HAS COVID KILLEd SEX?

RELAX—IT’S JUST GONE DORMANT. AND YES, YOU CAN GET YOUR GROOVE BACK.

By WENdY KAGAN

In August 2019, Jessica Eaton’s boyfriend talked her into taking a big leap: moving in. The pair had been dating for about a year and a half, shuttling between her place in the Catskills and his in Westchester. Eaton (not her real name) is a single mom to a teenager who was going through a rough patch, and her boyfriend suggested they move in with him for a fresh start in a new school district.

“I was reluctant because I’m used to being independent,” she recalls. “But he told me that he wasn’t going to be spending much time at home as he traveled a lot for business. I was willing to give it a try, especially for my daughter.” The first few weeks of cohabiting went well and the affluent community had its perks. Still, Eaton and her teen had their ups and downs as they tried to gain a toehold on their new life.

Then COVID hit. Suddenly, her boyfriend stopped traveling and the nonstop togetherness

wreaked havoc on the couple’s romantic life. “When we were dating, it was like a vacation— light and sexy and fun,” Eaton says. “But when you’re having breakfast, lunch, and dinner together and deciding who’s going to take the dog out, it’s different.” Lockdown exposed the fault lines of their relationship, with her boyfriend’s traditional, quasi-1950s views about gender roles clashing with her need for autonomy. Little things drove her crazy. (“The way he flossed his teeth. The way he sipped his coffee. The way he ate peanuts in front of the TV,” she says.) Her teenager started to unravel. And Eaton’s once-lively libido tanked.

“I was always a very sexual person,” she muses. “I really loved and enjoyed that aspect of things, both with myself and with a partner. But [since COVID], I’ve had zero interest in sex. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt this shut down sexually before. I honestly don’t foresee another penis in my future that isn’t silicone.”

A Normal Response to Abnormal Times

It’s fair to say that our pandemic moment will not go down as the hottest era on record (global warming notwithstanding) when it comes to desire and sex. Ever since the height of lockdown a year ago, surveys and studies have probed into the way COVID-19 has impacted our relationships and sexuality, and the news has not been great. A survey last spring of over 1,500 adults by the Kinsey Institute found that nearly half of them said their sex lives had declined. By late April 2020, the rate of couples filing for divorce spiked 34 percent. And while some predicted that lockdown’s forced nesting would spark a baby boom, a year later we’re finding that a baby bust is more like it, with many states reporting significant drops in birth rates. “The majority of us have been in survival mode, and most the time, we don’t have sex when we’re trying to survive,” says couples therapist Alicia Muñoz, author of three books including The Couples Quiz Book: 350 Fun Questions to Energize Your Relationship (2020). “Stress is the ultimate libido crusher—and not just stress but also grief. There’s so much loss. When you’re grieving, the last thing you want to do is get laid.”

Whether we’re coupled or single, gay or straight, living with a partner or navigating a long-distance love affair, many of us have felt the effects of COVID on our relationships in some form or other. For singles, it’s been a year of Zoom dates and public health messages that say your safest sex partner right now is…you. For couples, months of living in our sweat pants and feeling trapped together in the same space have stolen our mojo. “A lot of people are having way less sex, or no sex,” says Sheri Winston, a Kingston-based holistic sexuality teacher and author of Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure (2010) and Succulent SexCraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play & Practice (2014). “And one of the first things to say about that is, it’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not broken. Your relationship is not broken. This is a normal, human response to the circumstances. It’s not forever—vaccines are here, and at some point the pandemic will end. So don’t kick yourself or feel bad or blame your partner.”

Not only are we not broken, but we can do something about it—if we want to. There are a jazillion ways to get our juice back, and both Muñoz and Winston have plenty of tips to share. But it’s important to keep in mind that we don’t have to buy into the unrealistic cultural messages that we should be full of desire and having incredible sex all the time. “This is a great time to be loving and gentle with ourselves and our partners, and not put a lot of pressure on ourselves,” says Winston. “Make it something that’s expanding your erotic life. Make it fun. But don’t make it another giant thing on your to-do list.”

For Couples: Fire Needs Air

For married and cohabiting couples, lockdown has taken everything we knew about mating in captivity and multiplied it to the nth degree. The sex expert and psychotherapist Esther Perel, who literally wrote the book on this (2017’s Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic), emphasizes that fire needs air. “In other words, desire needs space and distance, and eroticism

thrives on privacy, which a lot of us aren’t getting these days,” says Muñoz. “I don’t want to say that the erotic flame gets snuffed out, because I don’t believe it ever does, but it’s an ember that can’t ignite without oxygen in the air.”

Even if couples can’t get physical space apart from each other, there are ways to get psychic and emotional space so each person can recharge. “For some people, it may not even look erotic, but it’s going for a run and feeling the flow of energy in your body, or taking a bath,” says Muñoz. “Or having the house silent and being able to play your own music. Or going on day trips with other people or alone. It’s about being in touch with your own lifeforce.” Adrenaline, too, can stimulate desire. Winston often tells couples to go to an amusement park and ride the roller coaster, or (more pandemic-friendly) watch a scary movie—“anything that makes you scream with glee.” She also advises couples to be intimate without the pressure of making it sexual. “Have an intimacy date. If sex happens, fine, and if it doesn’t happen, fine. But let’s get naked and cuddle. Let’s give each other a massage or foot rub.” For those struggling to feel spontaneous desire, skin-on-skin activities can open the door to its flipside: responsive desire, which can arise if you set the stage for it. “It’s also going to produce oxytocin, which is that feel-good bonding hormone we all can use more of, and it’s great for reducing stress.”

Meanwhile, not everyone views the pandemic as a limitation—some couples are flipping the script and seeing it as an opportunity to expand and enlarge their sexual repertoire. “We get turned on by novelty, and this is a great time to try something new,” says Winston. “How can we introduce novelty into what might have become a boring, do-it-the-same-way-all-the-time event? Maybe try some roleplaying games, or explore sacred sexuality through Tantra or Taoist practices, which can enhance the ‘trance state’ of arousal.”

Adventurous couples can order boxes of sex stuff, including toys and different lubricants designed to inspire experimentation, or books and journals filled with sexual dares to try out. You can even take classes like the eight-week Erotic Blueprint Breakthrough course offered by the sexologist known as Jaiya. “It’s like doing online school but in eroticism and sexuality,” says Muñoz.

For Singles: Getting Creative

It’s not just married and cohabiting couples that are exploring novelty. In fact, the same Kinsey Institute survey that found a decline in sex during the pandemic also reported a rise in people—both singles and couples—getting more creative with their sexual behavior. Sexting, trying new positions, and sharing sexual fantasies are a few of the additions that people reported making, and those who did were three times more likely to cite improvements in their sex life. “Single people are going to be even more motivated to explore things like internet sex or whatever sex-toy technology is out there,” says Winston. One such technology is teledildonics, which bridges the gap for long-distance lovers. Think futuristic meets kinky: “One person has the toy, which could be a dildo or a vibrator, and the other has the controls. So you can be in a Zoom together and play around remotely.”

For Daniel Bridges, a retired media executive in Woodstock, getting creative during lockdown took the form of writing his own porn stories and sharing them with a female friend with whom he’d recently reconnected. “As we were getting to know each other again after 35 years, I began to write these really hot short stories that came right out of my libido, just to test out if we were compatible,” says Bridges (not his real name). “And her responses were like, ‘Oh my God, we love the same things.’ Then, when we did finally get intimate with each other, it was so natural and pleasant because it all fit.” It was the perfect beginning to a socially distant connection that blossomed into more after the pair opened their corona-bubbles to include each other. The relationship was a source of solace for them both through the first several months of lockdown,

though it took a platonic turn after some (nonCOVID) health issues in his family hijacked his attention. “We were happy with what we had,” he explains. “It meant the world to us at the time, and now we’re even happier that we are each other’s best friend.”

For Parents: Seizing Opportunity

Parents of small children have a whole different set of challenges in the bedroom, and the pandemic has amplified them a thousandfold. Without consistent in-person school or daycare, alone time has been almost nonexistent. That’s the case for Svetlana Agapov, who met the man who is now her fiancé through the dating app eHarmony. A full-time parent and working mom to kids ages 3 and 10, Agapov (not her real

“StreSs Is the ultimate libido crusher— and not juSt StreSs but alSo grIef. there’S So much loSs. When you’re grIeving, the laSt thIng you Want to do Is get laId.”

—alIcIa muñoz, coupleS therapIst

name) combined households last fall with her husband-to-be, who has part-time custody of his own kids, 9 and 12. For Agapov and her fiancé, lack of desire is not the problem—but lovemaking is pushed to nighttimeonly when their houseful of kids is asleep. Still, they see working at home together as an opportunity to build anticipation and heat all day long. “You have all this time to connect, hold hands, or give each other kisses and check-ins throughout the day,” she says. “So your entire day is this long, extended date, and that leads to the evening. We both have really enjoyed this time.”

For parents struggling to feel sexy (let’s face it, that’s a lot of us), Winston has ideas. “Make it a priority to go to bed when your kids go to bed,” she says. That means instead of crashing at 11 when you’re both exhausted, get under the covers together at 9. She also recommends instituting “sacred Sunday mornings” where the kids can entertain themselves or watch TV while Mom and Dad “sleep in.” And having a lock on your bedroom door is a must.

Wherever you’re at, if sex in COVID times is a no-go, don’t beat yourself up about it. For Eaton—the single mother of a teenager whose libido flatlined during lockdown with her boyfriend—solo sex is the only sex she can imagine right now. And that’s fine. “There are appliances for these sorts of things,” she says. For now, she’s moved back to her own place with her daughter, and she’s channeling her lifeforce energy into other things, like work and creativity. The erotic ember will be there to reignite, whenever she’s ready.

RESOURCES

Alicia Muñoz Aliciamunoz.com

Sheri Winston Intimateartscenter.com

“a lot of people are having Way leSs Sex, or no Sex. and one of the first thIngs to Say about that Is, It’S okay. there’S nothIng Wrong With you. you’re not broken. your relationShIp Is not broken. thIs Is a normal, human reSponSe to the circumStanceS. It’S not forever—vaccInes are here, and at Some poInt the pandemIc Will end. So don’t kick yourSelf or feel bad or blame your partner.”

—SherI Winston, holiStIc SexualIty teacher

THE CHANGING FACE OF TELEHEALTH

How the Virtual Medicine Boom Has Improved Access to Care at Columbia Memorial Health

If you’ve scheduled a doctor’s appointment in the last year, chances are you’ve had a virtual appointment. With hospitals and medical practices on high alert for the spread of Covid, minor ailments and health concerns that didn’t require an in-person visit shifted largely onto computers and smartphones, where a provider could talk you through your symptoms and even provide a diagnosis from the comfort of your own home.

It’s hard to believe, then, that prior to the pandemic, many healthcare providers simply didn’t offer virtual appointments. “We didn’t do telehealth because New York State didn’t cover it at the time,” says Dr. Ronald Pope, Vice President of Medical Services, Care Centers for Columbia Memorial Health (CMH). “There were many states that had been working with telehealth previously, but every state was different, and New York had to ramp up pretty quickly when Covid hit.”

According to Dr. Pope, the reason can largely be attributed to differences in insurance carriers’ coverage of virtual services. At the start of the pandemic, that all changed. To encourage people to stay home as much as possible, carriers began lifting restrictions on virtual appoint-

ments and in some instances, waiving copays for them entirely.

With regulations temporarily relaxed, CMH was able to establish a robust, flexible telehealth program “practically overnight” says Dr. Pope.

“It was the fastest implementation I’ve ever seen by a truly outstanding group of people from IT to the clinical departments,” he says.

While telehealth has presented a steep learning curve for the less technologically savvy, it has allowed CMH to better cater to their primary care and specialty patients’ needs.

“When you make a telehealth appointment, a receptionist will walk you through the options to find the best platform or method for you,” says Dr. Pope.

Those options include dedicated telehealth platforms like MEND, which you can access through a link sent by email, or even the FaceTime app on your iPhone. “FaceTime is pretty easy for anyone who has an iPhone and some of our older patients are used to FaceTiming with their grandkids, so that has allowed us to open up the opportunity to more people,” says Dr. Pope.

For patients with more immediate health concerns who prefer not to travel to an urgent

care center, requesting a telehealth appointment through CMH’s Rapid Care website is also easy. To cut down on wait time, CMH’s Rapid Care providers in Copake and Valatie have partnered with urgent care providers at CMH’s affiliate, Albany Med, to see patients within 30 minutes after they request an appointment online.

While CMH’s offices reopened to regular appointments last summer after safety precautions were put in place, they have continued to offer telehealth appointments due to rising demand.

According to Dr. Pope, the virtual visits have provided greater flexibility to patients without access to regular transportation, who have schedule conflicts, or who are at high-risk and would simply prefer to stay at home.

While it may take some time for state and federal regulations to be rewritten to address the pace of technological change, it’s clear that the boom in telehealth is already shaping the future of healthcare. “Until we know what the regulations will look like after the pandemic is over, it’s hard to say what the landscape will look like,” says Dr. Pope. “But I think telehealth is definitely here to stay.”

Columbiamemorialhealth.org

Dharma Doesn’t Change

TEACHING ANTI-RACISM IN A BUDDHIST CONTEXT

By Noa Jones

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu. At one point in June of 2020, not long after George Floyd’s murder, a parent suggested that we change the language of a Buddhist prayer that has been recited around the globe for millennia. It means may all beings be happy and free. Every morning at the Middle Way School, our students are invited to open their hearts, summon up their best wishes, and send good vibes out to the world while reciting it in Sanskrit. It’s a universal sentiment. You may have chanted it in yoga class.

This concerned parent was triggered by the wording. It sounded too similar to “All Lives Matter,” the response some ill-informed people were using in response to “Black Lives Matter.” The parent’s request presented me with an interesting puzzle. I founded the school with a clear mission to establish a model Buddhist school for children and to explore the potential impact of ancient wisdom on modern education. Where does the BLM movement fit into that mission?

Luckily there are many wise people with huge hearts surrounding the school, including Shugen Roshi, abbot of the Zen Mountain Monastery; Amy Brown-White, a local anti-racist facilitator; the teachers, children, and parents at the school; and Bhutanese lama Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, who is the school’s sponsor. It was the latter who said to me, “Dharma doesn’t change, culture changes. Dharma is like water in a vessel and culture is the vessel.”

This simple statement helped guide the steps we took as a school community in the months that followed.

Before Floyd’s death, our top leadership (all white, it should be said) had already started looking at our own identities. We attended White Awake, an excellent course aiming to combat white supremacy by engaging those who’ve been socially categorized as white in an exploration of whiteness with an aim of creating a more just society. Their lectures and readings caused me to look deeply at my personal history with a Mayflower mother and an Iraqi immigrant

father, as well as the history of our country. It changed the way I look at race in America and I realized that stocking our teacher library with books like White Fragility and The New Jim Crow was not going to be enough.

“It is so important to talk about these uncomfortable truths and communicate so the work stays authentic,” said Grace Louis, our head of school. By August, Grace had engaged Amy Brown-White for ongoing training and professional development with our staff. We know that white people shouldn’t ask black people to help resolve their part in racism, but Amy was open and let us know that she “recognized that the need for a guide is not the same as placing the burden on a community of BIPOC. I saw and felt the intention of the administration at Middle Way and decided to take this journey with them.”

We are so lucky that she has. She thinks deeply, carefully, and creatively about our specific community. She took time to read our materials, looking for connections, even going so far as to

Third and fourth grade students at Middle Way School. Photo by Brandon Schulman

identify Kunsang Kelden, a Tibetan Culture Advocate and practicing Buddhist, who then spoke to our teachers about how Buddhism and Anti-Racism intersect. Amy quickly understood that the Buddhist aspect of our school was actually a natural fit for anti-racist work and not just because Buddhism promotes kindness and compassion. The Buddhist concepts of non-duality, impermanence, non-judgment, karma, refuge, and waking up from delusion align with anti-racism in some gorgeous ways that she was able to excavate. Seeing the non-dual nature of reality, we understand that grasping or rejecting “otherness” only creates suffering. We study the concept of refuge and explore the ways we can seek and also provide refuge to others with non-judgement.

Amy then did something brilliant. She assigned the teachers to each create a lesson plan that was one part anti-racist and one part impermanence. Impermanence is one of the eight thematic units teachers at Middle Way use as a framework for inquiry.

The teachers ran with it. Most of our teachers do not identify as Buddhist and are learning about the view alongside the students. We focus on aspects of the dharma that are not “religious” or path-oriented, and are more familiar, naturally arising truths like impermanence and harmony.

“The fact of impermanence is what makes everything possible,” Shugen Roshi explained when he met with the teachers. “We couldn’t evolve or free ourselves without impermanence. Buddhism teaches us that because of impermanence, liberation is possible. We can undo racism, we can undo systems of thought and view and behavior and speech that have been inculcated over hundreds of years that seem fixed but aren’t.”

Inspired by this challenge, each teacher came up with a series of integrated anti-racist lesson plans. Kindergarteners made collages inspired by the murals of Harlem by Romare Bearden, and fourth graders wrote bios on Marley Dias, who started the #1000BlackGirlBooks initiative. Our movement teacher wrote a lesson plan around Alvin Ailey’s Revelations. During social-emotional sessions, teachers invite children to talk about their feelings about race, discrimination, and fairness in age-appropriate ways. Through these activities and the many books we have that feature people of color, the children are guided to view race through a lens of joy and community and to feel comfortable discussing skin color respectfully, in a safe and nonjudgmental environment.

Parallel to our work as administrators and teachers, an impassioned, parent-led anti-racist coalition emerged to foster accountability and transformation. They meet weekly for book club, workships, and somatic and mediation practice, and proposed several actions for our administration to take, including setting up an equity fund to offer tuition assistance for BIPOC families, which we have done. Their mission statement reads, in part: “As parents we support one another in practicing anti-racist parenting and developing home cultures that actively discuss and dismantle racist beliefs and practices. Our commitment is ongoing and reflects our desire to see Middle Way School flourish as a learning community dedicated to collective liberation and justice.”

Group work around a sensitive issue is always challenging, there are sure to be blindspots and bruises to navigate. “I feel that we are prepared to struggle through certain parts of anti-racism work and to mess up sometimes,” said one parent. “We feel prepared to create a plan for repair when that happens. We want to be accountable to each other.”

Our aspiration is to cultivate an inclusive environment where staff and students feel welcome, where they see themselves reflected in the faces of those around them, and enjoy the richness of diversity. All the while relying on Buddhist wisdom as our foundation. After examining our own blind spots, listening deeply, and wishing to be accountable, in the end...we didn’t change the words of the Lokah prayer. We continue to invite everyone to pray for all beings to be happy and free, and if there is someone—or a whole lot of someones—whose suffering is calling out to you, then channel that prayer in their direction wholeheartedly.

Noa Jones is the founder of Middle Way School, an independent progressive school in Saugerties.

MARIA MONTESSORI

Summer Camps & Programs

The Hudson Valley is a great place to be a kid, even during a pandemic! The diversity of camp offerings, from academics to sports and beyond, is enormous, and bound to enrich a child’s life in ways most schools just aren’t designed to do. The summer camp environment allows children to take healthy risks in a safe and nurturing environment. But most of all, summer camp is about having fun! Here are some summer camps in the region offering the quintessential summertime experience for kids.

Horses for a Change

Celebrating the magic that happens when humans and horses connect in a supportive, non-competitive atmosphere. This nonprofit offers summer riding weeks for kids, with riding for all ages and levels and lots of barn fun and horse care. “We emphasize empathy and understanding of our non-verbal but very communicative companions,” says owner Nancy Rosen. (845) 384-6424 • Horsesforachange.org

Wild Earth

This summer marks 18 years that Wild Earth will get kids outdoors in the Hudson Valley.

At Wild Earth, all of the senses are engaged as campers meet local plants and animals, learn wilderness skills, create natural crafts, and build deep connections with friends and inspiring adult and teen mentors.

Guided by patterns we’ve observed in nature, we begin each day by gathering in the woods through songs, expressing gratitude, and finding new ways to play. We form smaller groups and set up camp in the forest by building fire pits and shelters. Our instructors tailor activities to the interests of the campers, fostering curiosity and guiding learning through skillful questions, opportunities for appropriate risk-taking and empowering challenges.

(845) 256-9830 • Wildearth.org

Mountain Laurel Waldorf School

Summer camp registration open now! Age groups: 3-6 years and 7-10 years. An atmosphere of lively, relaxed summer fun awaits your child. Woodworking, puppet making and performing, handcrafts, music, games, and more, all in a nature-oriented environment. Register online.

New Paltz, NY • MountainLaurel.org • (845) 255-0033

Seed Song Farm

Children Ages 4-15 build relationships with the land, develop confidence and curiosity, learn to work and play with others respectfully. Fun learning projects, emerging from campers’ enthusiasm, engage all learning styles: Care for farm animals and plants; explore nature; Fun and interactive games; traditional skills, crafts, music, arts; farm-fresh snacks. Weekly themes and registration. Covid-aware. Financial assistance. Kingston, NY • (845) 383-1528 • Seedsongfarm.org/camp

The Art Effect

Offering a variety of programs this summer that allows children to imagine, discover, create, and have fun! All in-person programs will adhere to State and County protocols to ensure a safe and fun experience for all. Join us for Dutchess Arts Camp, Summer Art Institute, and more!

45 Pershing Ave., Poughkeepsie • (845) 471-7477

Feelthearteffect.org

Photo: Randy Harris

TAKING THE LEAD

FEMALE ENTREPRENEURS OF THE HUDSON VALLEY

By Lisa Iannucci

There are 12.3 million women-owned businesses in the US and there are 114 percent more female entrepreneurs than there were 20 years ago. Women have been starting their own companies in ever greater numbers, and 40 percent of US businesses are women-owned. These national statistics are reflected in the Hudson Valley business scene, which is driven by innovative female entrepreneurship across all sectors of the economy. We talked with some of the region’s business leaders on how they get it done, from the boardroom to the storefront.

Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start, he writes, ‘Don’t make a plan, just get started,’ so I stopped reading and started my own business,” Chernis says.

As she was marketing the first version of her business, which was related to music, a client complimented her marketing and paid her enough to break away from music for good. In 2014, an investor handed her $50,000 and she became the founder/CEO of Lately, now a social media management platform company. “Suddenly I was advising Walmart and I got them a 130 percent ROI, year-over-year, for three years,” she explains. “Since then, I realized that broadcasting to 20 million listeners was scary, but this wasn’t.”

In the last year, Chernis’s business has grown by 250 percent. “I’ve busted my ass and cried a lot, but this is a big deal,” she says. “I’m in the position to say, ‘I don’t need your money and I did all the things you told me not to do, because I knew they were the right things to do.’”

She credits her success to trusting her gut. “As women, we have a gut, a womb that magically breathes life, but we ignore it constantly,” she says. “But after my body debilitated me, I listen to it now, because I don’t want to go there again.”

Health Scare as Catalyst for Change

When she was 28, Lauree Ostrofsky was unhappy in her career. “I was not being paid to do what I was the best at,” says the Kingston resident. “I also wasn’t being valued at the company for being a good listener and knowing what our clients really wanted.”

It was time for a change, but the day she would give notice she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. “I did not leave that day because I had great health insurance, but it was through that realization of my unhappiness at work and my fear of leaving that my business was born,” Ostrofsky says.

“Then I freed up the time and energy to get more clients.”

After moving to the Hudson Valley in 2003, Ostrofsky wanted to be around other entrepreneurs, so every month since December 2014 she hosted a group of regional women business owners. That group grew into the Hudson Valley Women in Business group, which now has 1,600 members, a private Facebook group, weekly and monthly events, and more.

“Some of the best businesses are created out of our own needs and when we realize that other people need to add value, that’s when the business starts to take off,” she says. “Now it’s about how I am communicating into the world and supporting women business owners.”

Ostrofsky advises future women entrepreneurs to be really clear about what they are good at. “If you’re feeling stuck in your career, stop trying to figure out the term that describes what you want to do and look instead at the things you’re drawn to do,” she says. “Make a list of the things that people thank you for and that you feel really good about. That will indicate the direction that you need to be going in.”

Have a Plan

On her first day back at work after maternity leave from her previous job, Anita Pierce was told her position had been eliminated. “I applied for other jobs after taking some time off in the summer, but I kept getting rejected,” she says. “Based upon the work that I was doing before, which is pretty much engaging companies, doing project management, and hosting corporate events, I realized it wasn’t as much fun as I thought it was, so I rebranded.”

Listening to Your Gut

For 20 years, Kate Bradley Chernis worked as a radio DJ and had more than 20 million daily listeners. Then a dream career turned into a nightmare. Fed up with the “boys club,” hostile work environment, sexual harassment and gaslighting, she knew it was time to leave when the job affected her health. “I had a rash on my torso that no one could explain, and I developed epicondylitis and tendonitis throughout both arms and hands and I couldn’t type anymore, but nobody at my job thought anything was wrong with me,” says Chernis. “I also wasn’t getting credit for my ideas.”

Eventually, Chernis made a lateral move to another music-related company, but the toxicity continued while her health worsened. She needed a change. “In the beginning of Guy

That business is Simply Leap, which is exactly what she did when she healed. “I realized that real life is way scarier than quitting your job,” says the business coach.

As a first-time entrepreneur, Ostrofsky learned a few things right away. “As women are taking more and more leadership positions, we’re having an opportunity to reinvent the workplace,” she says. “We know how to sit in a cubicle, but when you work for yourself you need to figure out what works for you.”

Financially, Ostrofsky says that entrepreneurs cannot depend on money at first, so you either need a loan or a day job until you have the ability to go full-time. Ostrofsky worked her day job and side hustle before she quit. “I knew when I had absolutely no extra time because the business was doing well that it was time to change,” she says.

She started management consulting firm Eleven3Seven5 in 2017 and says that working for herself has given her a lot of flexibility. “Being a mom it’s harder, but it still allows for time flexibility,” she says.

Pierce has faced dual challenges as a woman of color. “We have issues with raising capital and things like how our products translate into all types of diverse areas,” says Pierce, who used her own money to fund her business but believes that easier access to capital would have made her progress easier and quicker.

“As a whole, collectively, we don’t need to compete against each other, because I’m a person that believes in sharing information,” she says. “I’m a person that believes that we all have a space and opportunity to win. I’m also very intentional about building relationships, so I’m always seeking out ways to be able to diversify my personal business portfolio and build relationships that are diverse. You have to set out a plan to be intentional about getting out there.”

Kate Bradley Chernis, CEO of Lately

Make Sure Your Heart Is in It

When her husband came up with a tasty barbecue sauce recipe, Tamera Knapp jumped on board to help the business get off the ground. They launched Butchy’s BBQ, based out of Hyde Park, in 2015. “We wanted it to be a whole lot bigger than just friends and family enjoying the sauce,” said Knapp, who was a stay-at-home mom when the business launched. She worked diligently to obtain all of the paperwork needed to become a full-fledged business, but after a year and a half, still has not received her Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise Certification, which will open even more doors for the business to grow.

“It allows you to be accepted into the big box stores and you can be in the front running with other businesses running against you,” Knapp says. Unsure of the holdup, Knapp admits that the pandemic has also affected their business, but she hopes the turnaround will come soon. In hindsight, she wishes she had a better guide to starting her business. “You need to call someone to do every part of your business, and there isn’t one manual that tells you everything you need to know.”

Her advice to all women entrepreneurs?

“When you decide to open a new business, do it all the way,” she said. “Make sure your heart’s in it. You’re going to hit obstacles but don't stop, because when you feel those obstacles it means a window is about to open.”

Building Business out of Need

When Hillary Peckham’s grandmother was diagnosed with ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, her mother researched the benefits of medical marijuana. In July 2014, the Compassionate Care Act was passed. It provided a medical marijuana program for New Yorkers.

“It also allowed for businesses to apply for a license to operate, grow, and sell medical cannabis,” says Peckham. Hillary, who was a music therapy major, and her sister Keeley were graduating from college that year, so they ventured into the cannabis business together with their mom, Amy.

The business was a natural transition for Peckham, who’d had hip surgery in college that failed. “I lost the use of my right leg for two years and had to relearn how to walk, so we saw how end-of-life care can be mistreated and I saw firsthand how pain can be mismanaged with opioid use,” she says. “It was inspiring to me to hear everyone’s stories about the quality of life that these products were giving them.”

The path to entrepreneurship wasn’t without disparaging comments about being young women. “There were comments like, ‘Why don’t you just come on as my secretary and I’ll teach you what real business is?’” says Peckham. “It was a competitive application process, and people discredited us. We were the only women-owned company to apply and then get one of five New York licenses.”

Peckham says the challenges of small business are similar to others. “We all compete with large public companies,” she says. “But I wasn’t expecting to face a lot of pushback or skepticism about this work and the legitimacy of it. The

education that we do within local communities and particularly medical communities has been really important to us.”

Advice for other aspiring entrepreneurs?

“Whoever you’re going into business with should align with your long-term vision and be very clear and transparent with where you want to go with it,” she says. “If the relationship doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.”

Finding the Formula for Success

Barbara Fisher was teaching math at SUNY Orange and had become a second-time mom when something didn’t add up. “I didn’t want to teach anymore,” says the Beacon resident. “I wanted to do something different.”

Formerly a vegan, Fisher returned to meat out of a medical necessity when she was advised she needed to eat more protein. While researching the process of purchasing fresh meat, she thought about becoming a butcher. Learning everything she needed to know about cutting meat while working with a local CSA, Fisher took out a business loan to purchase the building and equipment she would need to launch a typically male-dominated business. “I don’t think about the fact that I’m a woman doing anything,” says Fisher. “But this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

She opened Barb’s Butchery in Beacon in November, 2014. Today she has seven employees, five are women. In October she opened Barb’s Fryworks, located at the Hudson Valley Food Hall in Beacon. Being a woman entrepreneur isn’t without challenges. “I have had my fair share of run-ins with people where they definitely attack me in ways that I’m sure they wouldn’t if my name was Bob,” she says.

For other women who wish to open their own business, Fisher says, “Have a solid focus and know who you can count on to help you get you there. I had the right help when I needed it.”

Building Furniture and Business Success

Casey Dzierlenga has always worked with her hands, first on set design for films when she lived in Los Angeles and then as a sculptor. But she’s always been drawn to wood. “I like honest materials, and it’s not perfect, but it won’t be

ruined by a dent,” she explains.

She checked Craigslist to see if there were woodworkers in the Los Angeles area. What she found changed the trajectory of her career and her personal life. “I found an ad where they wanted to train someone in woodworking and they would pay minimum wage,” she says.

Dzierlenga jumped at the chance to learn. It was there that she met her now husband, Sam Moyer, for whom she worked for a few years. With both of their families on the East Coast, they relocated a decade ago. “We fell in love with the Hudson Valley,” she says. She opened Dzierlenga F+U in Staatsburg when she moved back, designing heirloom furniture made from sustainable, hand-milled, locally sourced woods.

Dzierlenga says she feels pretty lucky to be a woman business owner. “Initially, there was a lack of confidence, but then I appreciated the shock factor of what I do,” she says, but notes that working in a male-dominated trade is not without its challenges. “A big company wanted to produce one of my pieces, but offered me less money for some reason. I’m not sure if it was because I was a woman, but I have a very supportive community and have enjoyed making a safe space for other women who want to learn the craft and are a little nervous about the bravado that sometimes comes along with it.”

Working with children is another challenge. “One of us spends the first three hours of the day trying to get everybody where they need to go and the other one handles all the pickups,” she says. “My advice to parents who are thinking of starting a business would be to set boundaries, and to prioritize taking care of yourself. It’s hard to appreciate a full and happy heart when you’re exhausted.”

Her best advice for other women entrepreneurs? Keep it lean, especially at first. “Low overhead costs make the tumultuous early days easier to manage, and when you do start thinking about growth, consider how that will change your role within the business,” she says. “For a long time, I was convinced I wanted to scale up at some point. But as I’ve grown enough to support my family, I now realize the balance I’ve attained is more important to me than taking over a factory somewhere.”

Barb Fisher, owner of Barb's Butchery and Barb's Fryworks

Women in Business Spotlight

EvolveD Interiors & Design Showroom

Evolved Interiors & Design features the “Design-Build” approach to home remodeling.

With designers on staff, we will redesign your space, order all materials needed, and project manage your job by working directly with your or our construction companies. This process assures that your job is done correctly and efficiently, with our own high standards as parameters. Our designers are trained in CAD software and will closely work with you to ensure that your design and selections are what you want.

Our design showroom features a fine array of artful remodeling elements from cabinetry, sinks, and faucets to flooring, lighting, and carpets, making your experience of one-stop shop easy. Call to schedule your appointment today!

86-88 Mill Hill Road, Woodstock, NY • (845) 679-9979 evolvedinteriors.com

Hudson Clothier

Welcome to Hudson Clothier...haberdasher, jeweler, milliner, and purveyor of fashionable goods, all ethically made-in-the-USA. Home to more than 70 American designers, this unique boutique features a full menu of stylish clothing for women, men, and everyone else.

Established in 2014 in Hudson, NY, Hudson Clothier offers an impressive selection of small batch jeans, overalls, hand-made handbags, and men’s and women’s goods from underwear to outerwear. The store is the brainchild of fashion entrepreneur, Mary Vaughn Williams. Wearing many hats —proprietor, skilled buyer, smiling host—she welcomes visitors and locals alike to her collection of classic heritage brands and innovative young designers. Thanks to revitalized garment industries in Atlanta, LA, and Brooklyn, among other cities, Hudson Clothier is proud to showcase quality apparel and accessories made across America.

Williams settled in Bali in the 1980s, where she and her former partner worked closely with the Indonesian community to design and import Batik clothing and textiles. Their business was wildly successful, selling to hundreds of stores from Tokyo to Alaska. Eventually moving to Hudson in 2003 they co-founded White Rice, a retail store named in honor of their clothing label.

Over time Mary Vaughn wanted to strike out on her own and develop a new brand. With twenty five years experience, a fashion business that would support American manufacturing was born into a storefront in historic Hudson. In 2019 she doubled that space and expanded her offerings for men and women. Hudson Clothier’s unique American collection continues to grow and plans are in the works for new stores.

443 Warren Street, Hudson, NY • (518) 828-3000

HudsonClothier.com

Estate Clean-Out & Staging, Inc.

We provide skilled assessments of belongings and offer profitable avenues of liquidation through our established relationships with buyers for all categories of items. We expedite the overwhelming process of divesting, and simplify a property’s appearance in support of listing it for sale, or just for better living.

Hudson Valley, Brooklyn, Westchester • (347) 768-3954 estatecleanoutandstaging.com

Simply Leap, LLC

Is this your year to leap? Lauree Ostrofsky helps professionals, introverts and A students from way back clarify what they want and feel more confident putting themselves out there. She’s the author of the career change how-to, Simply Leap, and the memoir, I’m scared & doing it anyway, about her own leaps after a brain tumor diagnosis at 28. simplyleap.com

Hudson Valley Women in Business

The largest community of women business owners north of New York City. With 3,000 members and growing, we offer vibrant online connection, monthly speakers, quarterly retreats, and weekly informal coffees, so growth-oriented owners can lean on and learn from one another. Check out our business directory at HVWiB.com/directory.

Hudson Valley • hvwib.com

Andrade Architecture pllc

Creative, timeless design for modern living. It all begins with you, our client! Specializing in country and city residential architecture. With studios in the beautiful Hudson Valley –Kingston, NY and Manhattan, Andrade Architecture thrives on rich collaborations and a continuous state of reinvention. “We love to see where a client’s vision can take a project.”

Robin Andrade

(917) 682-4845 • AndradeArchitecture.com

Maya Kaimal Foods, LLC

At Maya Kaimal Foods, we believe delicious food has the power to transform – sparking curiosity and satisfying the soul. I founded this company to help more people fall in love with Indian food. It begins with thoughtfully sourcing the best ingredients, carefully crafting recipes to satisfy today’s curious palates, and then lovingly preparing them with techniques honed over generations. My hope is to inspire you to experience the beautiful complexity of Indian food and share it with the people you love. — Regards, Maya Kaimal mayakaimal.com

HPM Craftsmen

In operation since 2008, HPM Craftsmen is one of the few woman-owned construction businesses in the Hudson Valley. The large and experienced team can handle small, medium, and large renovations and additions on residential properties.

“We’re a custom renovation and remodeling company that provides world-class artisanship, premier service to our customers, and a commitment to quality that is unmatched in our industry.” says owner Nicky Ricciardi, “We go the extra mile for all our clients, and one of the things that they love most about us is our special attention to detail.”

If you have any renovation questions or would like some advice or an estimate, reach out to Nicky via email: nicky@hpmcraftsmen.com.

5 Milltown Road, Holmes, NY • (845) 656-3313 hpmcraftsmen.com

IMMIGRATION UNDER BIDEN

THE DEPORTATION OF PAUL PIERRILUS

By Michael Frank

In late January, the Department of Homeland Security issued a moratorium on deportations for 100 days at the request of the new president, Joe Biden. But a federal judge blocked it after Ken Paxton, the embattled attorney general of Texas, sued. For immigrants and immigration advocates, it was a painful reminder of the limits of the new administration to alter immigration policy with the stroke of a pen.

It was also a bitter irony. Paxton’s actions will undermine his own state’s prosecution of an alleged mass-murderer who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso in 2019. A witness to that slaughter is a 27-year-old woman known as Rosa. Against her better judgment, according to reporting by the Washington Post, Rosa came forward to give key details to Texas state and federal authorities about the events of that day. But she also had a standing warrant for deportation, and a recent police stop for a broken taillight led to her being deported to Mexico, where she hasn’t lived since she was a child. Rosa was in the process of obtaining a U-Visa, which prevents crime victims from being extradited while they can offer critical testimony.

Why care about a case in Texas? Because Rosa isn’t alone. Paxton’s actions are having ripple effects far nearer to home, in Rockland County.

While Rosa was being detained, so was 40-year-old Paul Pierrilus, a financial consultant who has lived in the US since he was five. On February 2, he was deported to Haiti. Pierrilus isn’t from Haiti—his parents were born there,

but he was born on the Island of St. Martin, and was never given citizenship there, either. He’s technically stateless, and, according to Newsweek, had been allowed to stay in the US under an order of supervision, which required he regularly check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But that changed on January 11. Instead of releasing Pierrilus from his check-in, ICE detained him, flew him to a prison in Louisiana, and began proceedings to deport him.

Freshman Congressperson Mondaire Jones, whose district includes Rockland County and parts of Westchester County, managed to prevent the initial attempt to send Pierrilus to Haiti on January 19, just 24 hours before Biden took office and the DHS issued the 100-day halt on deportations. But because that memo was blocked, ICE continued deporting people— including Pierrilus.

New Yorkers Pay for ICE

The Trump Administration passed over 1,000 rules and regulations concerning immigration, and despite a litany of actions in the initial days of the Biden White House, some of those ordinances are still in place. Perhaps most pernicious is a decision last March that allows border agents, under Title 42 in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention code, to expel anyone entering the country without due process under the guise of preventing the spread of COVID-19. A January 28 letter to the CDC

signed by dozens of health experts excoriated the policy and called for its immediate removal.

The Biden administration has lately been applying Title 42 to most, but not all asylum seekers, allowing in more unaccompanied minors. However, recent reporting by Buzzfeed suggests that to stem that new surge, they might begin expelling 16 and 17 year olds under the edict. According to Customs and Border Protection data, there have been more than 515,000 “expulsions” (meaning without due process or any right to claim asylum) since the pandemic began; the advocacy organization Witness at the Border says there have been 110 ICE deportation flights since Biden took office and mid-March.

In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Representative Jones called for deportations to stop. He wrote that the Pierrilus case highlights ICE’s punitive and capricious nature, noting in part that “Pierrilus is not a citizen of Haiti…had never even been to Haiti, [which] is roughly 1,500 miles from the Rockland County, New York, community that has long welcomed Mr. Pierrilus as a beloved neighbor. In spite of these facts, ICE deported Mr. Pierrilus anyway.”

In a statement to The River Newsroom, Jones not only reiterated the danger ICE poses, but added that its relationship with prisons is corrupting. While Pierrilus was first sent to a facility in Louisiana, most ICE detainees in the region are held prior to trial at the Orange County Correctional Facility, in Goshen, which

A collaboration with

Recently constructed panels at the border wall near McAllen, Texas on October 30, 2020.

Photo CBP/Jerry Glaser

receives $133.90 a day per inmate. The Goshen prison was paid $8 million from ICE service agreements in 2017 and 2016, according to reporting by the nonprofit immigration news site Documented. Jones argues that “detention should not be the default position for migration processing.” He seeks an end to the for-profit prison system in both state and local jails, “like the ones in which Pierrilus was imprisoned in Louisiana.”

There’s another reason to sever the relationship of New York’s counties and towns to ICE: money.

Jane Shim is a senior policy attorney with the Immigrant Defense Project in New York, which seeks broad changes in how the state and federal government directs its energies against immigrants. She points out that when local prisons work with ICE, they open themselves up to lawsuits when they allegedly restrict people’s rights on behalf of ICE. There have been many across the country, both against prisons and local police, such as a $14 million payment LA County had to make late last year. Currently there’s a class action lawsuit against the Orange County Correctional Facility and the Orange County Sheriff for unlawfully detaining people who, the suit argues, pose almost no danger if they were released back into their communities and asked to appear for hearings.

Based on a comprehensive 2019 study of ICE arrests undertaken by Syracuse University, the number of detainees who were apprehended for anything like a violent crime dating over the past six years is vanishingly small. Out of 500,000, a mere 68 people (0.0123 percent) were convicted of terroristic behavior. And as for Trump’s constant claim of gang activity, ICE managed to convict only 0.0149 percent, or 82 people. “Going back before Trump,” Shim says of ICE, “their agenda is to see community members as threats. To treat people as disposable.”

New York vs. ICE

While lawsuits against state and local prisons can feel like an abstract cost, taxpayers face a more subtle expense when local police work with immigration enforcement: detainer agreements between ICE and local precincts help train police, but ICE isn’t paying the salaries or pensions of those officers. Cops are now out working cases that, Shim makes clear, mostly have nothing to do with the safety of the public they were hired to defend and protect.

One state legislative solution, backed by the Immigrant Defense Project and local advocates like Nobody Leaves Mid-Hudson, is the New York for All Act, which would make it unlawful for police, court officers, parole officers, or school officers to work with ICE or CBP; would bar them from enforcing immigration law; and would prohibit passing information to federal agents without a judicial warrant. “Right now, somehow ICE gets wind of someone showing up for their court-mandated hearing,” Shim says. “Upstate, near the border, CBP gets alerted when someone gets pulled over for a traffic stop. This would put a legal stop to this collusion and collaboration.”

Shim says New York for All is necessary regardless of the fact that Biden issued a directive to DHS to limit its efforts to tracking down those guilty of “aggravated felonies.”

Unfortunately, she notes that this falls to the discretion of both ICE and local law enforcement. “Too often what they arrest people for are neither aggravated crimes nor felonies.”

State Senator Julia Salazar, the bill’s lead sponsor, linked it to COVID-19 spread, arguing that blocking officials from passing data to immigration enforcement is key to giving immigrants more confidence in seeking health care. In a February 11 media briefing, Salazar described “Immigrant New Yorkers living in fear of going to a COVID testing site, or to get vaccinated out of fear of immigration enforcement.” Salazar also mentioned the rampant spread of COVID-19 in the Batavia facility that houses some ICE detainees (currently there are 54 cases) as one of the worst recent outbreaks of the disease in the state. During the same briefing, lead Assembly sponsor Karines Reyes made that connection clear, too, arguing that ICE’s tactics “burden state resources while undermining the state’s public health efforts.” Reyes noted the irony of government officials praising frontline workers, a disproportionate number of whom are immigrants, without actually doing anything to protect them.

The Bigger Picture on Immigrant Protection

Reyes’s words ring especially true to Emma Kreyche, an attorney in Kingston with the Worker Justice Center of New York, which focuses on worker rights, particularly in lowwage jobs where advocacy is critical. The organization is especially focused on two other state legislative actions.

One would establish occupational standards for exposure to airborne infectious diseases. “As an organization that focuses more on rural

According to advocacy organization

Witness at the Border, there have been 110 ICE deportation flights since Biden took office and mid-March.

Paul Pierrilus of Spring Valley was deported to Haiti in February, even though he is not a Haitian citizen and had never visited the country. Courtesy of Neomie Pierrilus

communities and on workers in industries like food processing and agriculture, we saw very early on in the pandemic that these were industries that were extremely hard hit by COVID,” Kreyche says. She cites an outbreak that hit 186 farmers in Oneida last spring because their living conditions didn’t allow for social distancing, but she says you don’t have to think about farming to understand why air quality standards are critical across the state. “Look at the back of the house of any restaurant or the hospitality industry and you see, whether you’re an immigrant or not, those frontline workers are endangered.”

“We do know, right, that Biden’s different from Trump,” says Diana Lopez, Ulster County community organizer for Nobody Leaves MidHudson. But she seconds Kreyche on how what is actually grinding on immigrants is the entire force of the pandemic—plus fear of arrest. “It’s not just ICE. It’s feeding your kid. It’s getting them the medical attention they need.” To that end, Nobody Leaves Mid-Hudson, in addition to Worker Justice, is meeting with Hudson Valley legislators to push for the Excluded Worker Fund Act, which would help workers who don’t otherwise qualify for unemployment. Lopez notes that would cover the undocumented, and also gig workers who live more on tips or seasonal workers who depend more on cash. “It’s house cleaners, people like that. I hear all the time from people who need help paying the rent, need to go to find a food pantry,” Lopez says. “People are really struggling and it’s heartbreaking.”

Some Sunlight

The federal government has distanced itself from some of Trump’s policies. Advocates for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals cheered executive orders that extended DACA benefits to two years and directed the United States Attorney General to defend the program. (The latter move is necessary because nine states, led by Texas, have

argued that DACA is illegal; a US district court judge in Houston may rule as soon as this month. The Trump justice department didn’t defend the case in court.)

Biden’s longer-term legislative goal is to create a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million noncitizens in the country, including DACA recipients. But he has already signed a number of executive orders in his first weeks in office that directly bear on immigrants in the US. The most symbolic of these is a halt of construction on the border wall. Biden also established a task force to try to reunite families separated by Trump’s Zero Tolerance policy; a Justice Department Inspector General’s Report out just a week before Trump left the White House found that policy leaders ignored advice that Zero Tolerance would lead to prolonged family separations and when that began to happen, ignored the devastating effect it had on families.

And Biden has already ordered a study and likely revocation of Trump mandates that prevented a legal path to citizenship if a person used any social service aids (the so-called “public-charge” rule), and the Supreme Court has since agreed not to hear a case that would have possibly upheld that Trump executive order. Biden also rescinded part of a Trump 2019 order that threatened US-citizen sponsors with legal action if they shared their own benefits with noncitizens. These included the most basic, subsistence aid, such as food and medical care for immigrant children. Biden also retracted Trump’s attempt to exempt noncitizens from the census, as well as Trump’s wielding of ICE within US borders (and Trump’s order to apprehend anyone with or without a criminal record).

It’s also likely Biden will end the so-called Safe Third-Country Agreement, which forced anyone claiming asylum in the US from having the right to stay if they’d passed through another nation on their journey to America, almost no matter what terror they had fled.

If that sounds abstract, it’s not. It’s life and death.

The “New Yorker Radio Hour” recently played audio from a court proceeding where a judge tells a woman that she has to take her daughter, who was raped in front of a police officer in Honduras, back to that country because of this Trump directive. The judge’s pained reading of the law is that the woman should have sought asylum in one of the countries she traveled through on her way here with her daughter; therefore, the US cannot protect her.

The case makes abundantly clear that the Safe Third-Country Agreement has been in complete contravention of the reason the US established asylum laws in the first place: that America would never send a person or family facing sure terrorism, death squads, or rapists, back to that place simply because they’d crossed a line on a map.

The Bottom Line

According to the Center for American Progress, DACA recipients in New York pay $315 million in federal taxes and $210 million in state and local taxes each year. They also pay a combined $128 million in rent and mortgage every year. (If you have DACA, you frequently live in a household of mixed immigration statuses, meaning these figures often reflect undocumented and documented immigrants footing these bills as a unit.) As Lopez of Nobody Leaves Mid-Hudson puts it, it’s time to honor those payments with aid. “Nobody can do it all by themselves. We all need community support.” Lopez says state lawmakers can make that happen, though she’s concerned that midHudson Valley representatives fear a backlash about helping immigrants.

But Lopez is also hopeful that empathy will win out. “Step up and help people who are hungry and hurting,” she says. “Do whatever it takes.”

As for Pierrilus, he arrives in a country beset by political protests that have been met by increasingly violent crackdowns by authorities. “Right now he’s not doing well, him being in Haiti for the first time,” says Guerline Jozef, cofounder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, a nonprofit organization serving Haitian and other Black immigrants in the US, and which is working to bring Pierrilus home to his family. “He is holding on, and we are fighting on his behalf.”

That fight isn’t slowing anytime soon.

According to the Haitian Bridge Alliance, over 1,000 people were sent to Haiti in in February, including pregnant women and children. Hours before Jozef spoke to The River Newsroom, she had been fighting to stop a flight bound for Haiti that had children as young as 1 on board. While members of congress and advocates have managed to slow some of these deportations (most of which have been expulsions under Title 42), they’ve never entirely ceased.

“It is unconscionable for the US to continue deportations during the pandemic,” Jozef says. “We are calling on the administration to stop.”

Additional reporting by Phillip Pantuso.

US Customs and Border Protection operations after the implementation of Title 42 at the border. Photo CBP/Jerry Glaser

BUILD BACK BRIGHTER

The revitalization of Newburgh is finally happening. But for whose benefit?

By Brian P. J. Cronin Photos by David McIntyre

This mural on the side of a building between Liberty and Johnes Streets commemorates Frederick Douglass’s visit to Newburgh in 1870.

Twelve years ago I was participating in a community clean-up of a vacant lot in downtown Newburgh when someone found a deer leg. The rest of the deer was nowhere to be found.

The cleanup ended for the day shortly after that, on account of temporary demoralization.

That lot has since been transformed into a lush and sustainable urban park, complete with sculptures that double as public cell phone charging stations and massive, stately photographic portraits of Newburgh residents peering down from the wall of the onceand-future Ritz Theater. If you’re looking for one thing to symbolize the positive changes happening in Newburgh today, stand on the corner of Broadway (the widest main street in America) and Liberty Street (one of the hottest blocks in the Hudson Valley right now).

When Bryan Quinn, the owner of the environmental design firm One Nature and chief designer of the park, was working on the project, locals would often stop and ask him and his crew what was going on. He would reply that they were building a park. The response was almost always the same.

“For who?”

It’s an appropriate question. For decades, the message that the rest of the state had for

the citizens of Newburgh, as its downtown crumbled, its infrastructure collapsed, and the city was hailed as “the Murder Capital of New York,” was: You’re on your own. Now new projects and new developments are making their way across the city.

To be clear, Newburgh still does have very real and very pressing issues. The city may have beautiful housing stock, but many of the elegant old houses, the ones that haven’t been outright condemned, are in disrepair and kept that way by landlords taking advantage of people in dire economic straits. And while the city’s notorious (though falling) crime rate is mostly a result of inter-gang violence confined to a few hot spots, that’s cold comfort to the countless mothers and fathers whose children have had their lives cut short on the city’s bluestone sidewalks, Newburgh’s future generations lost to the streets.

In a city in which tomorrow has seemed bleak for so long, the overdue influx of money and attention is welcome. But for many long-term residents, the question remains: Is Newburgh finally being lifted up? Or taken for a ride?

The Original Bright Spot

The fall of Newburgh is a well-known cautionary tale, familiar to anyone who’s studied urban planning. A dynamic, thriving city, the first city

with an electric grid in America, Newburgh was knocked down by the one-two punch of an interstate highway (I-84, which bypassed the city) and urban renewal, which gutted much of downtown. But when Newburgh realized that outside help wasn’t coming, it rolled up its sleeves and got to work.

Houses of worship, parents, community activists, and social service nonprofits worked together to keep those hotspots of crime from spreading to the rest of Newburgh. The city’s waterfront was developed into a miniature village of eateries and spas, but with a towering hill separating the waterfront from the rest of the city, the economic effects of the development stayed on the waterfront. It’s a lovely place to spend an evening, but both geographically and culturally, it’s never felt like Newburgh.

The city’s fits and starts of renewal struggled to take hold until about 10 years ago, when a few things happened in close conjunction to one another. The Newburgh Community Land Bank formed and started getting abandoned properties fixed up and back on the tax rolls. The Newburgh chapter of Habitat For Humanity, which was formed by three long-time Newburgh residents sitting around a kitchen table in 1999, evolved into a robust nonprofit that’s since completed over 100 projects in the city. Safe

Mural in progress just off Broadway on Clark Street.

Harbors of the Hudson took over a dilapidated single-room-occupancy hotel and turned it into safe and affordable housing for those who would otherwise be preyed on by Newburgh’s more unscrupulous landlords, and opened up a gallery and performance space as well. Around the corner on Liberty Street, the Wherehouse bar and restaurant opened, booking bands in the back. One block south, Newburgh Art Supply opened to cater to the artists who had begun arriving, attracted by cheap rents and ample space. The Newburgh Brewing Company started churning out award-winning beers in a former paper box factory, acting both geographically and culturally as a bridge between the waterfront scene and the city itself. Suddenly, people who didn’t live in Newburgh were coming downtown for a night out. Suddenly, Liberty Street was the place to be.

With the benefit of hindsight, Liberty Street was always the ideal place for Newburgh’s renaissance to begin. It’s a narrow, charming street dotted with small storefronts for blocks, many of which were empty. They didn’t stay empty for long.

Opportunity Knocks

“I have no interest in running a restaurant in Newburgh,” says Leon Johnson. It’s a pretty surprising thing to hear from someone who appears to be running a restaurant in Newburgh. But Lodger, located on the first floor of 188

Liberty Street in a former undertaker’s office, is, upon further inspection, operating in a strange, liminal space between a restaurant and something with a proximity to food that seeks to address a variety of social problems. The name itself, Lodger, also cheekily refers to a state of in-betweenness: Johnson moved here a few years ago and isn’t ruling out moving on in the near future. Even the space, an 1830s building that was raised in the 1880s when the streets were redone to fix drainage issues, has a transitory nature to it, as the filled-in fireplaces and closets hover just above one’s head. Johnson refers to the night-time atmosphere of the space as having a “Harry Potter Platform 9¾” vibe to it.

Lodger does, in fact, serve food, although until outdoor dining returns and the pandemic ends, that means limited takeout on Fridays and a $45 prix fixe on Saturdays. But if you do grab a table on Saturdays, you’re doing it in view of the food pantry next to the front door Johnson fills six times a day. When COVID struck, Johnson started cooking hundreds of school lunches every week until the school district could get back up to speed. He and his students (he takes on three at a time from the Newburgh Free Academy) also cook for the residents at the Exodus House behind their building, a nonprofit that houses people recently released from prison after longterm incarceration and who are slowly making their way back into society. “We give away more food than we sell,” says Johnson.

“I have no interest in running a restaurant in Newburgh,” says Leon Johnson of Lodger, who gives away more food than he sells at his non-restaurant.

“The reason Newburgh appealed to me is the same reason that some people don’t like it. It’s a real city with city issues. It’s not a quaint little upstate town. It’s a beautiful place with a nice mix of old buildings and great architecture, but it’s also a real place where people are trying to make a go at it.”

—Sisha Ortuzar Wireworks

We’re interrupted by hammering next door, where the former headquarters of the local NAACP chapter has been recently bought by an investment company and is being renovated. We talk about the rumors of investment companies from New York City who are planning on buying hundreds of Newburgh properties over the next 12 months. (I reach out to one such company, who touts Newburgh on their website as being “an ideal location for new investments,” the next day for confirmation, and am ignored.) Johnson notes that in the past few months, more than half of the diners at Lodger are people who had just moved to Newburgh from New York City. “I came here from Detroit,” says Johnson. “I know what this means. The same dialogues are happening.”

If Newburgh’s revival is still years behind the booms that other cities in the Hudson Valley have gone through, that lag time has given the city a chance to learn from other’s mistakes.

Namely, the point at which improvement goes through the looking glass and comes out the other side as gentrification, displacing the longterm residents who made the revival possible in the first place. Some of those mistakes have benefitted the city directly, as the owners of many of Liberty Street’s eateries are in Newburgh because Beacon, just across the river, has become unaffordable. But as Newburgh welcomes developers who are finally showing interest in the city, it’s also making sure not to be too welcoming.

“We have a lot of interest from developers to do something here, and we need to make sure that it can happen in a way that’s not to the exclusion of people who currently live in the city,” said Austin DuBois, who is the head of the city’s Industrial Development Agency and also serves on Newburgh’s new Strategic Economic Development Advisory Committee. “A lot of places can pave over a farm or sell out

to a developer. And while we want to welcome and accommodate development, we want to be responsible and make sure it helps the people who already live here.”

Back at Lodger, I ask Johnson what newcomers to the city can do to make sure they’re on the side of positive, as opposed to negative, change. “I’m not convinced that’s a binary question,” he says. “I don’t think I’m on the right side, and I don’t think I’m on whatever the wrong side is. But I would situate my answer around: What is the nature of your contribution? What are you contributing to besides the tax base?”

Real City, Real City Issues

Like a lot of people who move to the Hudson Valley, Sisha Ortuzar was looking to get out of New York City. But unlike a lot of those people, the former chef who cofounded the ’Witchcraft series of restaurants with Tom Colicchio wasn’t looking for something cute. “The reason Newburgh appealed to me is the same reason that some people don’t like it,” says Ortuzar, who moved here five years ago. “It’s a real city with city issues. It’s not a quaint little upstate town. It’s a beautiful place with a nice mix of old buildings and great architecture, but it’s also a real place where people are trying to make a go at it.”

We’re sitting in a common room of the latest outpost of the local coworking minichain Beahive in the Wireworks building, a refurbished and redeveloped spring factory that Ortuzar, along with Poughkeepsie developers AE Baxter and the design studio Mapos, have spent the past few years working on. The building, which also features apartments, artists’ studios, and an eventual retail space, opened just a few weeks ago. COVID may have slowed the project down, but many Newburgh development projects were able to get back up and running—with the proper precautions— rather quickly, since projects that had affordable housing components were allowed to get back to work sooner.

The Wireworks project keeps coming up when I ask people in Newburgh about what they consider an example of “good development.” Certainly the architectural details, the refinished wood tables made out of the tops of sewing machine tables that were found on site, the brick walls, the soaring ceilings, and the way the lateafternoon light makes the building seem to glow from the inside, has something to do with it. But Ortuzar takes his role as a citizen of Newburgh seriously. “I’m glad that I live here,” he says. “This is my community, so I’m not going to just develop for others. It’s for us who live here.”

For the city’s revival to stick, it needs more larger-scale projects like Wireworks, ones that will provide jobs and/or more affordable housing. That’s finally happening, says Joe Czajka, vice president of Pattern for Progress, a public policy think tank based in Newburgh. The Newburgh Food and Farm initiative received a $100,000 grant to build and maintain community gardens. Atlas Industries completed an eight-year project to transform a 55,000-square-foot warehouse located just across the street from Wireworks into Atlas Studios, and were hosting markets

Sisha Ortuzar, developer of Wireworks, a recently opened mixed-use space at 109 South William Street.

and readings before COVID struck. Thornwillow Press is building a makers’ village. Graft Cider is opening up a new cider tasting room, and Spirits Lab is operating a distillery on Ann Street in the ADS Warehouse space.

“I’m not into the idea of a place where you have to drive around just to live on a daily basis, so for me, Newburgh has everything,” says Gita Nandan, an architect who opened the ADS space with her husband, the sculptor Jens Veneman. They came to Newburgh from Brooklyn two years ago to find studio space for Veneman and promptly fell in love with the city. They also fell in love with the grey, T-shaped warehouse space on Ann Street, but knew that if they bought such a centrally located space, they’d have to use it as a means to contribute to the community.

Nandan shows me the parts of the building that are still in development: where the artists’ studios will be, the garden, the outside wall that will be turned into a movie screen. The courtyard already became an outdoor community hub last summer with such events as an art show honoring the 150th anniversary of Frederick Douglass coming to Newburgh to give a speech celebrating the 15th Amendment, and the couple is hoping to add pop-up retail and other outdoor, COVID-safe events this summer as well. “I like the way that people are being active and involved,” she says. “There are great people here.”

The New Narrative Czajka and Dubois both say that the city is in a good position to come out of the pandemic stronger than ever, especially considering the increasing exodus of people leaving New York City after COVID, the city’s continued focus on making sure that new development has an affordable housing component, and the relief money coming to municipalities as part of the just passed $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. “It’s what our elected officials are supposed to do: represent the communities that are in distress, and get federal aid back to those communities,” says Czajka. “I think that’s very positive momentum.”

Dubois points to the just-completed $1.25 million deal to convert three historic side-byside buildings—a YMCA, a Masonic Lodge, and an American Legion hall—into a hotel, spa, and restaurant by the Sullivan County based Foster Supply Hospitality. It’s not just the size of the development that excites Dubois. “It’s from a Hudson Valley native,who really cares about being a good neighbor, working with the city, employing its residents and providing opportunities,” says Dubois. “It’s a unicorn of a development.”

The project, says Foster Supply Hospitality founder Sims Foster, whose family has lived in Sullivan County for over 100 years, won’t alter the historic architecture of the buildings. What it will change is the city’s story. “When

“We have a lot of interest from developers to do something here, and we need to make sure that it can happen in a way that’s not to the exclusion of people who currently live in the city.”

—Austin DuBois Newburgh Industrial Development Agency

Liz Nielsen and Carolina Wheat run the art space Elijah Wheat Showroom in a former tanning facility on the Newburgh waterfront. The couple are pictured in front of sculptures by Ani Liu.

WHO WILL BE #1?

VOTE NOW!

we’re open, we will bring over 25,000 people a year to the city of Newburgh,” Foster tells me. “We will give them a positive experience about Newburgh. And then those 25,000 people will go back to their proverbial water coolers and say ‘Hey I had a great weekend in Newburgh.’ There’s been a negative narrative about Newburgh for a long time. When you change that negative narrative into a positive narrative, like a hotel can do if they do it right, it can really help expedite a lot of good things for the people that live in that city.”

One doesn’t need to wait for these new projects to open to come and see the real Newburgh, and there’s plenty of reasons to visit even if you’re already familiar with Liberty Street. Newburgh’s ample bounty of taco stands is well known, but there’s also the clumps of Caribbean, Central American, and South American eateries that continue to pop up throughout the city like wildflowers. There’s its wild and wide-open views of the river and the Hudson Highlands, offering the ability to be in an urban environment that never lets one forget that you’re also in a changing natural landscape, with fog rolling in and clouds ascending the

summits. And of course, there are the people of Newburgh itself, who have held the city together for decades. None of what is happening today would have been possible without them.

“The people here are struggling, but there are people who live here with really good ideas and a strong entrepreneurial spirit who want to improve their community,” says Czajka. “There needs to be programs, incentives, and technical assistance on how to create pathways to economic opportunity to eliminate generational poverty. And it can be done.”

This is Newburgh today, not in need of a single savior, but of anyone willing to dream big and fight hard. It’s worth remembering that the seeds of Newburgh’s regrowth were planted on Liberty Street over 200 years ago, at George Washington’s headquarters, now standing as a park that overlooks the valley. This is where Washington received what is now known as the Newburgh Letter, asking him to rule the new country as a king, and Washington said that America would have no king. Newburgh, and America, would be governed by the strength and the will and the vision of its people alone. It would rise and fall as one.

Lynn Hanson is one of the owners of Spirits Lab, a majority woman-owned distillery and tasting room in the ADS Warehouse at 105 Ann Street.

“When [our hotel is] open, we will bring over 25,000 people a year to the city of Newburgh. We will give them a positive experience about Newburgh. And then those 25,000 people will go back to their proverbial water coolers and say ‘Hey I had a great weekend in Newburgh.’

—Sims Foster Foster Supply Hospitality

Singular Discoveries

Recent Photographs by Andrew Moore

Essay by Sparrow

Agambler rolls the dice. A photographer picks up a camera and walks out into the street. Both of them confront the agonies of chance, of luck, of fate. Both can win big or go down in flames. The danger of being an artist or a gambler is that you can utterly lose faith in yourself.

Andrew Moore has succeeded in the uncertain world of photography. His work is included in dozens of museums, including the Smithsonian and the Whitney. His photos have appeared in the New Yorker, National Geographic, the New York Times Magazine, the Paris Review, and many other journals. He’s published eight books of photos.

Erik at Rock Ledge Erik Mermogen, an artist and motorcycle enthusiast, is the caretaker of Rock Ledge, a turn of the century Italianate manor house in Rhinebeck, where he stores his bikes. He’s sitting on one of his favorites, a 1979-82 Honda CB750F which he built from parts.

Hank at Dougrey’s Hall Hank Murta, a well-known glass artist, purchased Dougrey’s Hall in Lansingburgh as a home and studio in 1988. The hall was originally founded as an Irish social club by the Dougrey family who owned one of many local breweries, of which in Troy at the time there were 17, a number said to equal the number of operating foundries.

The building was completed in 1900, built in the New England grange style, with stables on the ground floor, a hay loft and grooms quarters on the second, and a clear span dance and lecture hall on the third floor.

Yet at first one might mistake his pictures for snapshots. Hank at Dougrey’s Hall shows a man and his dog on scaffolding next to a building in Troy with a huge “Biden” banner. The handmade sign is reminiscent of a castaway on a desert island writing “HELP!” in giant letters, for a stray airplane to see. Many of us felt this sort of desperation during the last election. The rickety wooden platform emphasizes the precariousness of Hank’s plight. (In fact, this platform is a homemade balcony. Hank is an artist who has lived in this house— which was once an Irish social club—for 25 years.)

Moore moved to the Hudson Valley two years ago, and is enthusiastic about exploring the area, the same way he has investigated Russia and Abu Dhabi in photographic essays. The images in this spread were all taken in the last six months. “My assistant and I, we’re kind of like private investigators,” Moore explains. “We go out, knock on doors; there’s a lot of dead ends. You gotta check out all the leads.”

When you first see Erik at Rock Ledge, you think, “What’s a motorcycle doing in a living room—next to a grand piano?” The juxtaposition seems impossible, like a ship in a bottle. But when you look closely, you see that the doorway is quite large, and in fact two other motorbikes are protruding from rooms down the hall.

Another question: Did Moore set up the shot? I am in the enviable position, as an art critic, of being able to ask the artist the backstory, but a visitor to an art gallery seeing these pictures can’t know. Yet there’s a certain sincerity in Moore’s photographs. They don’t seem to be constructed, like ads for Smirnoff vodka.

Above Dr. Nohoo in the Rain

This former Troy paint factory, which will soon get a new roof, is being re-purposed into artists’ studios by Dr. Brian McCandless, who along with his partners, hope to replace the kind of live-work spaces that have been lost in recent years to tax-incentivized housing construction. Having kept a sculpture studio in this neighborhood for decades, McCandless is the leading advocate for local artists in this part of Troy that he calls Nohoo, (North of Hoosick Street), an area that for years was filled with zombie buildings and absentee landlords. McCandless sees himself a part of a social experiment in which investors put their resources (both financial and personal) into the places where they reside and work.

Opposite Forest East Room

The John Paine Mansion, otherwise known as The Castle, housed the brothers of the Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity, Alpha Tau Chapter at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for 50 years. The mansion also served as a location for Martin Scorsese’s 1993 film, The Age of Innocence.

In fact, Rock Ledge is a mansion that became a rehab center for Daytop Village, and is presently unused. Erik is the caretaker, and stores his motorcycles there. He’s also responsible for the sign “Challenge Your Fears” above the doorway. On a wall at the rear of the hallway are some Daytop Village slogans. (Moore’s photographs are intended to be printed in large format, where telling details become easily visible.)

Moore was very forthcoming in his conversation with me, but there was one secret he wouldn’t reveal: the story behind Forest East Room, an image of a whitecurtained window behind a velvet rope. (The artist privately calls it “The Museum of Nothing.”)

Moore takes a great deal of care with his titles, incidentally. He doesn’t want to reveal too much, and transform the photos into journalism. He always includes the location and year, however, to give some historical context.

One of Moore’s subgenres is portraits without people. Jane’s Suitcase depicts a bed with a traveling case and a book

resting on it. Of the three pillows, only one shows the impression of a head. We sense Jane’s presence—even her regrets— without seeing her. Sicilian Defense at Tivoli Mike’s is a close-up of an outdoor chessboard, set up for a game, with leaves strewn across it. Two moves have been made, one on each side. (The “Sicilian Defense” is a famous chess opening.) Who were these players who abandoned their game after a single move, allowing autumn leaves to decorate the board? Did they suddenly decide to make love? Was there a family emergency? Did they collectively realize they hate chess?

When I was a kid, there was a cartoon character named Mr. Mum who appeared daily in the New York Post. He was a bald, bespectacled, middle-aged gentleman who walked through life silently observing. Mr. Mum would encounter outlandish scenes: two armed robbers robbing each other, a man at a lost and found retrieving his own head. He never spoke, but he looked bewildered. Moore’s photographs remind me of the singular discoveries of Mr. Mum.

Tani Tabbal Trio Now Then

(Tao Forms Records)

Taoforms.bandcamp.com/

Tani Tabbal’s resume reads like a Who’s Who of free jazz, like something painted from a dream, a smooth stone found at the edge of a river—Griot Galaxy, Roscoe Mitchell, Sun Ra, David Murray, Geri Allen…To say that Tabbal, born in Chicago and nurtured in Detroit, plays drums is like saying Tyhimba Jess writes. Is it true? Certainly. Does it miss the mark? Entirely. I’ve seen both, on stage, in the moment. Structures are created only to be imploded. Forms are developed for the sake of destruction, birthing beauty in the blast. Words from Jess; sounds from Tabbal. Same destination; different roads. When I think of Tabbal, I think of freedom, of joy, the sheer will of creativity.

Time is a given for the Woodstock-based composer/ percussionist. He screams time, even when drumming up clatter and chaos. On Now Then, the latest from his trio, he joins forces once more with bassist Michael Bisio and alto saxman Adam Siegel. Wow! Listening is an adventure. Drink deep. The storm of the title track gives way, during “Midway Open,” to an arco/ alto conversation between Bisio and Siegel, all breath and bow, nodding heads and furtive glances. Magic. Bisio’s “Sun History Ra Mystery” shimmers over an ostinato thrum, Siegel floating in like a haint, lingering in shadows. The piece “r. henri,” also from Bisio’s strong pen, hums with the art spirit, urging contemplation. Be the adventure. This music, recorded on a single day in December 2019, is alive to all possibilities. Now then!

—Michael Eck

sound check

Alana Medlock

Each month here we visit with a member of the community to find out what albums they’ve been digging.

There’s a CD of Yo La Tengo’s There’s a Riot Going On in my car, so that’s getting a lot of play. Also enjoying Liam Singer’s new release, The Ocean; Mordechai by Khruangbin; Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer; Andrew Bird’s Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs; and the Prince 1999 box set (very special gift), with vault tracks and live recordings. Older jazz recordings have also been getting me through the winter, like Sonny Rollins’s Way Out West

—Alana Medlock (host of “There, There” on WGXC the fourth Friday of each month from 7 to 8pm)

Ryan Martin Wandercease

(High Moon Records)

Highmoonrecords.com

Hailing originally from such storied California towns as Los Gatos and Chico, singer-songwriter Ryan Martin has finally found himself settled in the Hudson Valley after his obligatory stint in the Big Apple. You can hear the end result of Martin’s travels in the rootsy, soulful sound on Wandercease, where the peaceful, easy, countrified sounds of the Eagles blend with the mid-1970s Los Angeles lush, harmonic pop of Fleetwood Mac. While he doesn’t particularly sound like him, Martin’s overall musical gestalt reminds me of Beck on the latter’s more introspective albums, in the manner that he allows songs to build slowly and go off in whatever direction they decide to take. In other words, the album’s eclecticism never seems forced but always organic. The places where it ends up occasionally even bring to mind Pet Sounds. There can be no greater praise.

—Seth

Rogovoy

FM Blanket Heartbeeps

(Dehydrated Mirage Records) Soundcloud.com/fmblanket

Jazz-infused art rock with humanist aspirations? High-concept indie that somehow manages to connect rather than feel pretentious? You just might be listening to the Heartbeeps EP from the Hudson Valley’s own FM Blanket. This trio melds a lot of ’80s-’00s influences seamlessly. The title track is an unforgettable earworm that references Philip K. Dick over a looped hook that will stay in your head for days. Think a catchy dystopian cityscape that is more lo-fi rock than the Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” while still capturing lonely cocktail-bar moods better than Taylor Swift’s much more forced “False God.” The whimsical and borderline-morose no wave-boldjazz influences evoke mood swings passing through the mind like storm clouds. “Tangled Like Strays” evokes slow, rambling early Beck complete with twang. “Voodoo and Charms” closes things out with sad-but-catchy, drifting, Elliot Smith-esque, moroseand-maudlin musing.

—Morgan Y. Evans

Land: How the Hunger for Ownership

Shaped

the Modern World

Simon Winchester

HARPERCOLLINS, $29.99, 2021

Winchester, author of highly regarded nonfiction explainers like Krakatoa and The Professor and the Madman, begins Land with his purchase of l23 acres in Dutchess County to frame a dialogue about the history of land ownership and what our proprietary relationship to it means for the future. His book illuminates the disparity of property ownership around the world––and calls attention to the need for land ownership reform. “Since 2007 the amount of American land owned by these wealthy [top] 100 [landowners] has increased by 50 percent,” writes Winchester, “and is showing no signs of slowing down.” His narrative explores how we acquire and manage land, come to share it, and why we fight over it.

Flipping the Bird

Margarita Meyendorff

SELF-PUBLISHED, $12.95, 2021

Rosendale resident Margarita “Mourka” Meyendorff picks up where her memoir, DP: Displaced Person left off in her new book, Flipping the Bird. In this anthology of 30 short stories, essays, and plays, she tells the story of her birth to a Russian baron, and her family’s displacement in a refugee camp in Germany and then to a Russian community in Nyack. Meyendorff takes the reader on a wild, sometimes hilarious, and inspiring journey as she fearlessly navigates her life as a refugee and the mischievous child of aristocrats. Bluestone Press says, “A one-time displaced person proves that a rebel’s place is wherever she chooses to go.”

Corona City: Voices from an Epicenter

Edited by Lorraine Ash MAGIC DOG PRESS, LLC, $35.99,

2020

In this anthology of photographs and stories from COVID-19 survivors, frontline workers, business owners, journalists, mask-makers, and quarantined people––the realities of life in New York and New Jersey during the pandemic are exposed. Three local contributors–Elizabeth Berin, Abigail Thomas, and Ellen O’Neill–tell their experiences during the pandemic. Ash takes the reader to the epicenter of the pandemic during the early nightmarish months of March through June 2020 with photographs of barren city landscapes once bustling with people, and the fears, losses, achievements, and struggles of real people during this time. All of the book’s proceeds go toward the charity Feeding America.

From Farms to Incubators: Spotlighting Women Innovators Working to Solve Farming Challenges

Amy Wu CRAVEN STREET BOOKS, $21.95, 2021

Women entrepreneurs are revolutionizing the food industry through agricultural technology in order to combat the growing number of issues farmers face today––climate change, water and soil insecurity, and a rapidly growing population, to name a few. Agtech, the intersection of agriculture and technology, works with drones, artificial intelligence, sophisticated soil sensors, data analytics, blockchain technology, and robotics to sustainably secure the food supply in the future. It has become essential to farm profitability and sustainability as more agribusinesses seek out technological solutions to increase productivity. Amy Wu––founder and chief content director of From Farms to Incubators and the communications manager at Hudson Valley Farm Hub––tells the stories of diverse women innovators in this field, and the power they hold in the growing agricultural business.

Backroads Buildings, In Search of The Vernacular

Steve Gross, Susan Daley  SCHIFFER, $39.99, 2021

Steve Gross and Susan Daley––a New York City and Catskills-based photographic team––capture America’s forgotten architecture along old auto routes through more than 100 full-color and black-and-white photographs. Photography historian Brian Wallis writes, “Even with bold signage, these rustic, unpeopled structures often blend into their environments, sometimes literally becoming engulfed by the surrounding vegetation as the years pass.” The book captures churches, grange halls, schools, grocery stores, gas stations, fast-food restaurants, agricultural storage bins and outbuildings, and more obscure places like a coffin warehouse. These structures are rooted in the culture of the working class during the years between the Civil War and the Great Depression.

—Diana Testa

FESTIVAL DAYS

Jo Ann Beard

LITTLE, BROWN, 2021, $27

Jo Ann Beard’s name has become nearly synonymous with creative nonfiction, the nebulous genre straddling fiction and nonfiction. Beard, a Guggenheim Fellow and Sarah Lawrence professor, often treats genre as a suggestion rather than in a rule in her work. In the author’s note of her new collection, Festival Days, she writes: “This very book has a couple of stories in it...or anyway they were first published as stories. They are also essays, in their own secret ways, and the essays are also stories.” The collection gathers nine pieces, both new and previously published, that fall somewhere between fiction, nonfiction, and a blurry combination of the two. Festival Days, her first book in nearly a decade, proves that Beard is as daring, sharp, and vibrant as ever.

Genre isn’t the only convention Beard is experimenting with in Festival Days. In many of these pieces, time is malleable; it slows, stops, starts, flattens, bumps up against itself. In “The Tomb of Wrestling,” a woman fends off a stranger during a home invasion. During the attack, she thinks: “Something weird was happening to time—it was swirling instead of linear, like pouring strands of purple and green paint into a bucket of white and giving it one stir. Now was also then was also another then.” At first, “What You Seek is Seeking You” seems like a straightforward story about a loveless doctoral student—until the narrative shifts to an entirely new character. In its final pages, the story boomerangs back, landing the reader (and characters) into the most unexpectedly heartwarming place imaginable. The way Beard wields time mirrors the way we experience life—the past forever echoing in the present. Most pieces in the collection deal with death in one way or another. “Last Night,” a short but moving essay, is about Beard putting her beloved dog to sleep. The titular novella-length essay recounts (and weaves together) the dissolution of Beard’s marriage and the untimely passing of a friend. Rooted in reporting, “Werner” and “Cheri” both deal with the specter of death: the former about a man who wakes to find his apartment engulfed in flames; the latter about a woman with terminal cancer. “Cheri,” one of the collection’s strongest stories, captures the largely incongruous mix of emotions felt in the face of death. As the end nears, Cheri panics in the face of her own mortality: “Alone in her room, she whimpers with the terrible grief of it, of being forced to abandon herself like a smoldering ship. It’s impossible to imagine not existing, she discovers, because in order to imagine, you must exist.” This encapsulation of facing oblivion is devastating and pitch perfect.

One of the most wonderful and enduring aspects of Beard’s writing is the way she captures the ordinariness of turmoil. Life is cancer, adultery, and dead ducks—and also Pringles, food poisoning, and writer’s block. The mundane and the monumental are elevated to equal importance by her piercing observations and remarkable prose. In “Close”—an essay about writing, and not writing, and all of the things writing is like and not like—Beard writes, “It’s a lofty goal, to imagine translating one’s own personal experiences in a way that instructs and illuminates, moves and inspires, another human being.” And, yet, Festival Days does exactly that.

—Carolyn Quimby

he waited by the window and waits.

Backyard in the Snow

The pines at the meadow’s edge, Weighted and weary with the season’s snow, Surrender at last to the cold.

The rhododendrons shunt their leaves

As they huddle and hoard whatever

They count for comfort.

Even the chickadees

Seem less brave, Preferring the security of seed

To their audacious swoop and scatter. Funnels of snow

Rise out of nowhere and Race off without direction or purpose. Windows rattle.

Chill slips effortlessly into every room.

My youngest daughter

Stands at the kitchen door, Holding her mittens, Shivering in her snow pants, Looking into our backyard. She frowns

Not sure of anything, As a sliver of sunlight

Slices across the snowfield.

I push past her

And bound down the steps, Towards what she seems

Determined to avoid.

I hear her whimper

And turn to offer her comfort, Receiving instead

A wordless signal of worry:

Where are you going?

What will happen out there?

What will happen to me if I follow you?

And though I love my meadow

And fear nothing in its empty iciness, I understand her reluctance

To meet this moment here, now. Looking back at her looking at me, I feel alone on this brittle shelf

With the wind stinging my face.

We each hesitate.

Do we see the world the same way

Despite our differing claims

On ground each of us has momentarily chosen?

This is what I know:

Our tenuous invocations

Seem offered to no-one in particular.

We straddle reluctance and wonder.

Though I cannot know what she thinks of it,

The uncertainty that urges us

To rush forward as fully

As it cautions us to stand fast, Seems a brave and wondrous thing.

—Kemp Battle

Prayer for Sadness

In these times I yearn for the silver-gray of sadness undiluted by rationalization, comparison to other sufferings, or strangling anger. I want to cry unrestrained by feelings of unworthiness or uncertainty, and to grieve all that has been lost or never found: enough love, courage, joy, conviction.

I have more faith in this than in anything else: the purity of grief and its power to upend the depleted, matted stasis that chokes and stifles. Let sadness run free as it cleanses and renews.

—Sue Books

Corvette Stingray, 1968

Summer Sundays he is all mine. I get in first, curl into my compartment in back of the front seats.

Dad eases behind the wheel, smug in his blue blaze—we pass farmstands with chubby pods stacked in wooden crates— put the top down Daddy!

I slip peas into my mouth, toss the shells to shuddering air. On the lower east side, the bagel man sweats in his kitchen, handrolls bagels to drop the Os in a boiling vat, his worn stick flips the rounds as ferriswheeled shelves rise and fall in the oven.

On the ride home, a bagged baker’s dozen singes my thighs as I chew through those heavens— sesame, poppyseed, pumpernickel.

Near home, a truck slams through a redlight, pleats Stingray right up to our toes.

Seeds rattle in the empty bag as dad weeps over his broken toy.

—Janlori Goldman

The Dogs in the Trees

The dogs are in the trees again and they’re barking waving to their friends refusing to come down scratching shedding ordering Chinese hounding me to do this and that.

—Tom

Corrado

a study for simplicity with as few words as images allow a line drawn straight from here to there with breath held lest a squeak ignite with sudden illumination delight

—George

I love Jesus like a poker player down to his last hand

—George Payne

Bandy

Kintsugi Valentine

Old love becomes a newfound thing, If it asks you not to pay for sin, But rather that you find repair, Reply with joinery of gold.

Affix bowl’s crack with jagged seam, Admire the beauty of the break, Love thus reclaimed is yours to make.

—Jennifer Howse

December

Do you remember when Our brothers weren’t dead And the snow was freshly fallen?

How we would dance and sing

And laugh joyfully

An igloo of a world to crawl in.

How shiny, how white, the fresh fallen snow

The way it felt to know life without woe And freeze but a moment alone in the stillness.

My face mirrors the sky As the water of melted flakes Drizzle down my lips.

I say, I do. I remember when Our brothers weren’t dead And the snow had not yet fallen.

—Clare Nee

Democracy

Democracy spoke Her pristine and purest truth Amongst the darkness.

—Sage

Higgins

February 7th, 2021

She’s been gone for two years now— my daughter.

Listening to Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert and it hits me— what living with this grief is like: I have to play a broken piano that also needs a tune.

I could walk away or stay and use the keys I have left to make something Beautiful.

—Leah Brickley

Full submission guidelines: Chronogram.com/submissions

The Game Plays

The game plays different for us all As twists; turns make paths uncertain How we answer the inner call

The game plays different for us all Fogs, anxiety make decisions worsen For society, cities and even a dear person The game plays different for us all As twists, turns make paths uncertain.

—Brian Liston

Frozen Day

we’re roped like mountaineers I know equipment you’re an expert at knots it’s terrible to talk this way so let’s not or knot it’s snowing again here get me some wine the fireplace beats back against the night the pale stars the moonlight we’re safe for the time being February March it’s the thaw that kills

—Richard

Donnelly

Feather

During the night A down feather Worked It’s way up Through the satin liner and Two pillow cases. A single feather Leaving All the others behind. Pressing through All To touch Your face.

—Kate Minford Marriage

I fell asleep. I always do You relieved me of that, Thank heavens. Dry and motionless Raw and awake. The baby is crying Was there ever a time I felt rested? I’m glad for your trip away this week, Enjoy the scotch.

—Hillary

French

A Workaholic

She sits in her cubicle while everyone else is living. Are they? What is living?

It’s simplistically natural. It’s a human in their natural habitat; it’s eating dinner, it’s watching TV, it’s taking a shower. It’s not always enjoyable, but it’s there. She does it.

When the weekdays wave their goodbye, temporarily Capitalism creates a map of her mind.

Eight at night on a Sunday, he knocks on her door three times, in his pinstriped suit, and matching black fedora. Why take a break?

Mr. Man taunts.

Do you like what you do?

I work hard, I’m resilient, I make ends meet. Do you like what you do? I’m selfless, I said, do you like what you do?

—Maeve

Cecilia

Dandelions spread— a conspiracy, no doubt! Other plots afoot.

—Gary

Berg

He Tramples the Daisies

What a terrible house guest! His heavy cloak drags keepsakes off the mantel as he coasts by.

He leaves a trail of broken picture frames, never offering to piece them back together. And his hourglass marks a ring upon my table.

I show him the door and request he leave.

“You’re not welcome. Please go. She is not ready. It’s cold there down below!” I shove him out and slam the door.

But he creeps, waits by the oak in the flowerbed under her open window. He tramples the daisies, and marigolds bloom at his feet. He climbs our tree, one-by-one he snaps the limbs, breaks them free.

He draws closer, brushing aside the curtain to watch my mother rest.

I yell from the door as he climbs in to plant a kiss upon her lips. Before I make it to her side, he shrinks her down, tiny-sized, and slides her deep into his pocket.

—Kerri-ann Torgersen

Get Back to Where You Once Belonged

HUDSON VALLEY MUSIC VENUES READY TO REOPEN

Last month marked a full year since the lockdown went into effect in New York State, putting a freeze on musical performances as part of the overall effort to help slow the spread of COVID-19. But on March 3, the governor’s office announced that arts, entertainment, and events venues statewide could reopen on April 2. The resumption carries with it some strict regulations: Until further notice, venues can only operate at 33 percent of their usual indoor capacity, with a limit of 100 people indoors or 200 people outdoors, and all attendees must wear masks and maintain social distancing. (Admission limits would be increased to 150 indoors or 500 outdoors if all audience members have tested negative before entering.) We checked in with several Hudson Valley venues to see how they’ve been holding up and how they plan to negotiate the restriction easements.

Towne Crier

“We’ve never stopped having live music here; we just haven’t been able to legally advertise it,” says Greg Graham, general manager of the Towne Crier in Beacon. Like the Falcon, the Towne Crier is a full-service restaurant that has been able to feature “incidental” live local musicians to provide atmosphere for its reducedcapacity culinary customers. “The main room, where our performance stage is, normally holds about 300 people,” says Graham. “But with six feet between tables, and fewer tables, we can only have about 50 people. Those are all seats by reservation, and they’ve been selling out quickly.” At the time of this writing, the club had not yet begun announcing upcoming post-reopening dates, but Graham is nonetheless upbeat about its looming return to full-throated promotions. Unlike many of the other large nightclubs in the Hudson Valley that feature food service, the Crier lacks sufficient outdoor space for holding openair performances. “We wish we could, but we’d be dealing with noise ordinances—we’re right on Main Street, in the middle of town,” Graham explains. “But right now the weather’s getting nicer, and we just started doing sidewalk seating again for dinner and brunch.”

Townecrier.com

Colony

“We’re reopening the beer garden in April, so this works out great,” says Colony owner Neil Howard. When the live-music lockdown began last year, the Woodstock venue was able to take advantage of the vast grounds behind the 1929 restaurant/nightclub, setting up adequately spaced tables and erecting a stage to present performances by regional acts. The onset of winter meant a freeze on outdoor dining and events, so Colony went into renovations mode, expanding their back-of-house kitchen, bakery, and prep areas to better serve open-air patrons. “We’re staffing up, getting ready for things to start again,” Howard says. “For late summer, we’re hoping to do some prix fixe, supper clubtype events where the band does two sets per night for two seatings.” Despite the vagaries now plaguing the touring circuit that provides many of Colony’s headliners, Howard is optimistic about the coming year. “Our booker has gone from getting just a couple of emails a week from bands interested in playing to about 20 a week,” he says. “Touring bands are now starting to look at going back out on the road again in early fall.” Colonywoodstock.com

The Bardavon/UPAC

Poughkeepsie’s Bardavon 1869 Opera House and Kingston’s Ulster Performing Arts Center (UPAC), which are both managed by Bardavon Presents, are taking a wait-and-see approach during the reopening leadup. “I felt like I was being super-optimistic when the closures were going into effect a year ago and I predicted that it would be fall or winter 2021 when we were able to start having shows again,” says Chris Silva, executive director of Bardavon Presents. “And it’s looking like that will probably be the case. We’re following Broadway’s lead, since those theaters are comparable in size to ours [the Bardavon seats 944; UPAC seats 1,500]. People can spread out in the main rooms, but there’s not enough space in the lobbies for them to be safe until more people are vaccinated and we have herd immunity. We’re also considering mandating vaccinations for all of our workers.” Bardavon Presents has maintained its presence during the closures via online events, like its popular Albums Revisited concert series; a virtual David Bowie tribute show is set for early May. Bardavon.org

Bearsville Theater

A year ago, new owner Lizzie Vann and her crew were finishing up major renovations to the long-neglected Bearsville Theater, rushing to get it ready for its planned Easter 2020 resurrection. But, as we now know, the rush was unnecessary. Some experimental, masked-and-distanced events were attempted before the concept was abandoned with the tightening of state guidelines. There was still restoration work for contractors to focus on during the shutdown, but, like other venues, the theater would eventually have to lay off much of its staff as it went back into hibernation. For several ensuing months, the Bearsville beamed out closed-to-the-public performances and other livestream programs, but those operations ultimately quieted down as well. “The whole livestream trend came and went, peaking in the summer,” Vann says. “But once we reopen, we’ll still have livestreaming as part of what we do.” At the time of this writing, she’s holding off on booking touring acts while looking toward late May to resume events in the garden/firepit area. With the adjacent Bear Cantina (formerly the Bear Cafe) reopened and the Utopia Tavern set to open in the former Peterson House, the Bearsville compound’s delayed rebirth takes on added poignance after last month’s passing of ex-owner Sally Grossman, the widow of its creator, Albert Grossman.

Bearsvilletheater.com

Avalon Lounge

Joining the list of venues that innovatively used their outdoor spaces during the closure is the Avalon Lounge—although it’s not a patio or beer garden that the Catskill nightclub utilized. “We actually had bands play on our roof over the summer,” says Avalon owner Liam Singer, a composer and musician himself. “We also allowed some artists to use our live room to do their own streaming shows, but we decided not to continue booking livestream events on our own.”

Instead, Singer closed the club for the colder months while keeping its food operation open for pickup and delivery. “That’s been the silver lining: More people discovering that we have a Korean kitchen that does really good takeout food,” he explains. “We’ve also been focusing on running [Singer’s neighboring companion business] the HiLo Cafe. The Village of Catskill has

Bearsville Theater

been really good about working with us to help find ways for us to operate as best we can throughout all of this.” While Singer is heartened by Governor Cuomo’s pronouncement of the partial return of live music, he’s unsure how helpful the initial advisory will be for the Avalon. “Our performance room holds about 100 people, standing, but with the current rule we could only have about 20 people in there,” says Singer. “But, for now, we’re hoping to start doing outside stuff again as soon as the weather’s nice enough.”

Theavalonlounge.com

Daryl’s House

Takeout food and livestreaming have helped keep Daryl’s House afloat during these uncertain times. With its restaurant and performance space temporarily darkened, the establishment—which is owned by singer Daryl Hall—pivoted toward pickup food service and livestream concerts. Broadcast online from the Pawling venue or relayed from elsewhere through its website, the shows have been accessible via sliding-scale donations for the bands and operational costs. Last month, the restaurant reopened for indoor dining at reduced capacity, with reserved seating for livestream screenings of outside events. April 2 sees the reemergence of live shows, with limited-ticket seating, at Daryl’s House. Its popular free (with advance reservations) Sunday brunch shows are back, and upcoming in-person nights include Poppa Chubby (May 1), Connecticut Transit Authority (May 2), The The Band Band (May 29), the Push Stars (June 10), and Steve Forbert (June 25).

Darylshouseclub.com

The Falcon

Another mid-sized club/bar/restaurant that made use of its outdoor space as late in the season as possible during the live-entertainment halt is the Falcon in Marlboro. The Falcon’s waterfalls-side patio is a great spot to eat while enjoying an “accompanying” musical performance, and masked-and-distanced guests took advantage of that in the warmer part of 2020. It’s not workable for every venue, but the Falcon’s “incidental music” advertising angle—not outwardly promoting events with the aim of drawing sell-out crowds, but instead casually mentioning via email that an act will be present to provide “music while you dine” during dinner hours—is a loophole that has allowed the safetycompliant nightery to continue offering talent to limited patrons. Winter saw the supplementary sets move into the club’s high-ceilinged main dining/stage space, although its smaller basement area stayed shuttered. “Nobody’s gotten sick here, and the musicians and the people who’ve come out have been loving [the dinner performances],” says owner Tony Falco, who plans to restart outdoor engagements in May. “But it’ll be nice to be able to start openly advertising again [when the ban lifts]. We have great food and people love it, but I got into this business for the music.”

Liveatthefalcon.com

City Winery Hudson Valley

The upstate region’s newest addition to the live-music landscape, City Winery Hudson Valley, was just getting up to speed when the pandemic put the cork in its planned Concerts in the Garden series; after a nail-biting bit of back-and-forth with the state, its 2020 summer shows at the Montgomery venue by Chris Thile, Martin Sexton, Amy Helm, Southside Johnny, Joan Osbourne, and other hot names had to be shelved. The bistro has since hosted some limited-entry, safety-compliant wine and culinary events in its indoor restaurant and remote livestreams via its website during the live-music embargo, and is presently gearing up for the reappearance of live dates at its specially constructed amphitheater. “Reading the tea leaves, we expect the capacity mandate to increase by June,” says Michael Dorf, whose City Winery franchise also has locations in New York, Nashville, Boston, Atlanta, and Washington, DC. “I think that April 2 is still a little cold for outdoor shows. We’re looking to announce our summer 2021 schedule around late April or early May, with sizeable national acts every Saturday and others during the week.”

—Peter Aaron

COVID vaccinations are finally on the rise, and with them? Why, spring! April’s Mixed Media arts-related news roundup is heavy on happy Hudson Valley happenings involving independent movie theaters and arts venues, as well as increased funding for area creative organizations. As area residents line up to get their shot in the arm, it’s great to see these vital arts outlets getting their own as well.

Moviehouse to Relaunch Under New Owners

We’re delighted to say that despite doomy forecasts the curtain hasn’t yet closed on brick-and-mortar cinemas, at least not in our region. With Hollywood’s recent move toward releasing films direct to TV, it was highly surprising that that there were a whopping 11 bids on the property when long-running Millerton indie/repertory cinema the Moviehouse recently went up for sale. The new owners are David Maltby and Chelsea Altman, an energized young New York couple with ties to the Millerton area. The pair are renovating the space, which currently has a cafe and four screening rooms, putting in an elevator and turning one of the screening rooms into a lounge area that will serve beer and wine and perhaps liquors and cocktails. Altman, who owns several Brooklyn bars, and Maltby hope to open the revamped theater by Memorial Day weekend. Presently, the Moviehouse is offering virtual screenings of several films. Themoviehouse.net

Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice Gets New Home

Thanks to a generous grant from New York State facilitated by Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, the phenomenal Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice, which in 2021 marks its 12th year of celebrating the human voice via myriad music, now has a permanent space in its namesake Ulster County hometown. The festival organization has acquired the historic former Phoenicia Wesleyan Church and parsonage on Main Street, which it plans to renovate into a year-round multiuse site that will host live, festival-affiliated concerts and perhaps serve as a studio for livestream performances. “We hope to see, as soon as possible, multiple events in the church, and we hope to transform the parsonage into our offices,” says Maria Todaro, the fest’s founder and director. “The basement of the church is bright and huge and has bathrooms and a kitchen. It would be ideal for an art gallery, a professional office, [or] a ‘speakeasy.’” The festival group made Hudson Valley headlines in 2020 with its response to COVID-19: a

drive-in performance of Puccini’s “Tosca” at the Tech City complex in Kingston. Todaro adds that the 2021 Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice, which has taken place at multiple spots in the Phoenicia area since 2009, is currently in the planning stages and looking to return this August.

Phoeniciavoicefest.org

Woodstock Film Festival Announces Filmmakers Residency

The Woodstock Film Festival, in collaboration with White Feather Farm Foundation, brings news of the implementation of the festival’s inaugural filmmakers residency and incubator program. The residency will be held throughout May at White Feather Farm’s new residential property in Woodstock, minutes away from the farm’s organic agricultural operation. The mentored program will host four filmmakers from diverse, underrepresented backgrounds who are each working on full-length documentaries that focus on social-justice themes (e.g., racism, climate change, food insecurity, and immigration). “This initiative has been a long time coming given the Woodstock Film Festival’s history of championing visionary storytellers who strive to make our world a better place,” says the Woodstock Film Festival’s cofounder and executive director, Meira Blaustein. “We are thankful for the opportunity to bring the fellows, mentors, staff and community at large together, and look forward to seeing these promising filmmakers hone their creative voices.” The 22nd Woodstock Film Festival itself will take place from September 29 through October 3. Woodstockfilmfestival.org

Rhinebeck Writers Retreat Gets Sizeable NEA Grant

Concurrent with its 10th anniversary, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat recently received quite a nice birthday present. The center’s executive director, Kathy Evans, recently announced that the retreat has been approved for a $10,000 Grants for Arts

Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts, to support its musical theater writer summer residencies and Triple R reading and residency program. Founded in 2011, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat offers a sanctuary in the heart of the Hudson Valley for musical theater writers to develop their new works. “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support this project from Rhinebeck Writers Retreat,” says Arts Endowment Acting Chairman Ann Eilers. “Rhinebeck Writers Retreat is among the arts organizations across the country that have demonstrated creativity, excellence and resilience during this very challenging year.”

Rhinebeckwriters.org

The Moviehouse in Millerton

Puppets-on-Hudson

ARM-OF-THE-SEA CREATES A NEW PERFORMANCE CENTER

Since 2001, Arm-of-the-Sea’s Esopus Creek Puppet Suite, performed in Tina Chorvas Park for a weekend every August (2015 and 2020 excluded), has been an annual cultural ritual. Summer in the Mid-Hudson Valley just wouldn’t be the same without that magical evening— sitting on a blanket on a sloping lawn after a picnic repast watching a performance recounting the building of the Ashokan reservoir, or a migrant’s thwarted efforts to cross the border, or the chemistry of dirt through the pageantry of giant puppets. The show has the power of ancient spectacle, full of resonating symbolism and a ritualistic pacing that allows for contemplation. The moving parts of the handmade set crafted from swirling fabrics, painted cardboard, and other basic materials cleverly transform into a cityscape, PCB toxins, strands of DNA or the fish-filled depths of the sea, while performers in black manipulate the puppets as they dance to the percussive beats and haunting notes of a live band. The glowing stage floats dream-like in the black night as crickets trill and stars twinkle overhead.

The Esopus Creek Puppet Suite was originally crafted as an outreach to the local audience: though based in Saugerties, the company, for much of its 38-year-history, has mostly been on the road, performing for school kids and the general public at festivals, performing arts centers, and community venues in the New York metropolitan area and as far afield as Wisconsin. But now Arm-of-the-Sea plans to spend more time at home. Last spring, its master plan for the Tidewater Center, a permanent performance space and cultural venue to be situated on the banks of the Esopus Creek, was approved by the Village of Saugerties Planning Board. Though the project is in the infant stages, Arm-of-the-Sea will host its first performances at the site this summer. It’ll be just a lawn initially, but when fully built out will consist of a 99seat theater and outdoor awning-covered performance space; a building for operations support; a studio for resident artists; a waterworks play area; a kayak launch; and an environmental science lab, which can be used by students and for citizen science projects.

“We’re trying to work closer to home,” says Patrick Wadden, who founded the company with Marlena Marallo in 1982. While Arm-of-the-Sea post-COVID still plans to tour regionally, it is also forming a Saugerties-

based company, which would perform at the Tidewater Center in the warm-weather months, along with other local theater, dance, and music groups. The center and local company represent “an effort to have a longer or more in-depth participation by local people that could hopefully feed into training people for the touring company,” Wadden says. The center would “tell the multi-layered story of this place,” says Wadden. “If you go deeply into one place, you’ll find the whole world connected to it. That’s one of the guiding principles of programming and developing this project. We’re on a body of water that connects us to the Seven Seas.”

Funding from the New York Rising/Storm Recovery Program paid for a new access road to the site, fencing of the brick ruins and stabilization of 125 feet of shoreline, which has since become a popular fishing spot. Arm-of-the-Sea is currently raising the funds to pay for the next phase of improvements. The price tag for covering the contaminated site with clean fill, planting of grass and other landscaping and creating a parking area is $100,000. Half has been raised so far, and Wadden says another $15,000 to $20,000 minimally is needed in order for the group to perform there this summer. “We’re guardedly optimistic we can do it,” he says. “We’re making a push to secure some additional private funding.”

Financial Challenges

The push to raise more funds comes on top of Arm-ofthe-Sea’s most difficult year yet. Like its counterparts in the theater world, the troupe had almost no income thanks to the pandemic and its inability to tour, which has been its bread and butter. “We’ve been humbled by the support of individuals who helped get us through this past year,” Wadden says. Arm-of-the-Sea’s sole gig was in November at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center, where the company set up and rehearsed and performed in an empty theater in front of three video cameras, which was live streamed to 4,500 students and teachers.

Same Digs, New Dream

Formerly the site of the Sheffield Diamond Paper Mill, which dates from 1827 and operated into the 1950s, the 1.5-acre property, which is located between Tina Chorvas Park and Arm-of-the-Sea’s studios at the Cantine’s Island Cohousing complex, was formerly owned by Clearwater. The sloop had been based at nearby Lynch’s Marina for many years and the nonprofit organization planned to construct a home port on the land before it instead relocated to the Hudson River Maritime Museum, in Kingston. Arm-of-the-Sea leased the property from Clearwater before taking title to it this year. (Marallo and Wadden designed and created their first puppet pageant for Clearwater’s 1982 Pumpkin Tour, enlisting the entire crew to perform it at each of the sloop’s 15 stops from Albany to Manhattan.)

Socioeconomic shifts have more broadly impacted the theater company’s touring schedule in the last couple of decades, he notes. “Schools no longer bring in that many cultural programs and the ones they do are specifically tied to curriculum standards.” In addition, cultural venues around the country have gone out of business or greatly reduced their programming, and the existing programming tends to be tied to a best-selling book or popular figure, Wadden says. These trends, along with a desire to reduce the company’s carbon footprint, have been an impetus toward creating a home-based performance center, which would partner with other local organizations for a multidisciplinary schedule of events tied closely to community participation and education, including high school theater internships, an arts and science camp, and theater training.

An architectural rendering of Arm-of-the-Sea's proposed Tidewater Center in Saugerties.

“If you go deeply into one place, you’ll find the whole world connected to it.”

—Patrick Wadden

A Never-ending Story

Having created shows that span many chapters of local history not to mention science, from polluting PCBs to food chains to dirt microbes to DNA, and eco-catastrophes including deforestation, loss of genetic diversity and global warming, could Wadden possibly have any more ideas brewing in his noggin?

“I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface,” he replies. “There’s so many stories. One of the things that occurs to us now is, how do we know what we think we know? What is the shared reality? That’s one thread to the social construct of reality. I would say we may or may not have the tools to do this story in a non-technological way,” be it a tale of social media malfeasance or the dangers of data mining through computer algorithms beyond the capacity of any human. Wadden’s thought-provoking scripts, modulated by the dancer-performers, Marallo’s painted masks and puppet characters, myth-like in their looming scale and metamorphic abilities but poignantly human in their vulnerabilities, paired with musician Eli Winograd’s catchy roots-inspired scores, might be an effective vehicle by which we gain perspective on this otherwise omniscient technology that holds us in its grasp.

Beyond Arm-of-the-Sea’s ever-growing repertory, Wadden hopes to create a lasting legacy with the Tidewater Center. “I felt a real opportunity to engage in the kind of long-term process that would make a difference to the community,” he says. “It will exist beyond our lives.” Indeed, Suzanne Bennett, cofounder and executive director of ShoutOut Saugerties, predicts “this will become as significant as Opus 40. In time [the Tidewater Center] will become a landmark place. Other companies will want to perform there. It’s going to bring in a lot more access to the performing arts than we’ve had.”

Arm-of-the-Sea is currently fundraising for its Tidewater Center on Indiegogo. Search for Armof-the-Sea Tidewater Center Capital Campaign on Indiegogo.com.

—Lynn Woods

Art Stays Steady How Galleries Are Managing the Pandemic

The last reception that Anne Sanger held at her Uptown Kingston art gallery, Pinkwater, was on March 7, 2020. “The opening was packed,” Sanger says. “There were tons of people drinking their faces off as if it was the end of the world.” In a way, it was the end of the world, at least a particular version of the world as we knew it. The pandemic has changed just about everything, including how we consume culture. The Hudson Valley’s arts community has had to change the ways it reaches its audience, either shifting focus or reinventing itself entirely, but for art galleries, 2020 was not such a bad year.

“Galleries were kind of fortunate,” says Katie Schmidt-Feder, executive director of Garrison Art Center. “We were able to let people come in. In the gallery, you’re not touching anything, you’re not in there very long, and you’re not interacting with other people very much.” The center did close for a few months, but by summer, in-person exhibitions—adhering to strict COVID protocols—were back, just without the opening receptions, which draw large crowds. SchmidtFeder is pleased to note that this month’s exhibition, featuring the work of Eric Erickson and Caroline Burton, is a restoration of sorts, as their dual show was cancelled as lockdown began.

On the business side of things, the gallerists I spoke to were pleasantly surprised with how the past year turned out, given the circumstances. “We did not sell one piece of art the first six weeks of the pandemic, but 2020 turned out to be my best year ever,” says Susan Eley of Susan Eley Fine Art. Eley runs a gallery on the Upper West Side as well as one that she opened on Warren Street in Hudson this past summer. “Opening the gallery in Hudson was key. Everyone visits Hudson from all over, and people can walk in off the street and buy art.”

Linden Scheff, gallery director at Carrie Haddad Gallery, just up the street from Susan Eley in Hudson, also had a rocky start to the year but saw sales increase as we moved out of the early phase of the pandemic. “We were able to get some momentum again in the summer,” says Scheff. “We have also benefitted from people being stuck at home and staring at their own white walls and having to think about what they want to hang here.”

Both Scheff and Eley noted that the influx of new arrivals to the region has boosted sales. “We’re hearing more and more from people who come into the gallery that they’ve just bought a house around here,” says Scheff. Sanger at Pinkwater has seen a similar shift in clientele in Kingston and has pivoted her gallery to showcase works in a domestic context, called Pinkwater for the Home. The art is geared toward the home—“Nothing avant-garde is going on here,” Sanger says—and once it’s bought it goes home with the buyer and another piece goes up. For Robert Langdon, of Emerge Gallery in Saugerties, online sales have kept his sales buoyant this year, and introduced him to new clients. (This was mentioned by a number of the other gallerists as well.) “People are really buying art online,” says Langdon. “I prefer to see it in person, but not everyone needs to.” Langdon began putting up his shows on Artsy.net, a digital art marketplace for galleries, a couple years ago. Since the pandemic began, that link to art consumers has been crucial. “Artsy has a built-in collector base and a reach that I could never build on my own,” says Langdon. “It also allows me to make connections to consultants and interior designers that probably wouldn’t have happened in the gallery.”

Arm-of-the-Sea performance at the 2015 Clearwater Festival.

Photo by Stephen Ruttan

—Brian K. Mahoney

Elise P. Church at her opening at Garrison Art Center in January.

exhibits

“WE ARE THE FOREST” AT QUEEN CITY 15 GALLERY

Lisa Winika, a self-taught outsider artist, teams up with the sculptor Suprina for a co-created exhibit at Queen City 15 in Poughkeepsie. Winika and Suprina create a world that is at once magical, romantic, and catastrophic, investigating the idea of global portraiture—the psychological and physical state of humanity on the planet using collaborative installation. As Suprina notes of her work: “We are beautiful, horrid, tragic, and profoundly funny.” April 2-24. Opening reception Saturday, April 3, 4-6pm. Queencity15.com

THE ALDRICH CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM

258 MAIN STREET, RIDGEFIELD, CT

“After the Mobile: Tim Prentice.” The exhibition will feature 20 indoor works, five outdoor works, and a video portrait of the artist, presented both in the Museum’s galleries and Sculpture Garden, with the indoor exhibition on view through October 4, 2021, and the outdoor installation on view from September 19, 2021 to April 24, 2022.

ART OMI

1405 COUNTY ROUTE 22, GHENT

“Kianja Strobert: When Is Brunch?” An exhibition of sculptures, paintings, and objects in-between by Kianja Strobert at Art Omi’s Newmark Gallery. Through May 16.

BARRETT ART CENTER

55 NOXON STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE

“Represent: New Portraiture.” Juror Hannah Turpin, Curatorial Assistant for Modern and Contemporary Art and Photography, Carnegie Museum of Art selected 42 works from over 1,200 submissions by artists worldwide. Through April 17.

THE MUSEUM AT BETHEL WOODS CENTER

200 HURD ROAD, BETHEL

“Lights, Color, Fashion: Psychedelic Posters and Patterns of 1960s San Francisco.” Through March 7.

BOARDMAN ROAD BRANCH LIBRARY

141 BOARDMAN ROAD, POUGHKEEPSIE

“Crows Along the Hudson.” Photographs by Claudia Gorman. Through May 4.

BUSTER LEVI GALLERY

121 MAIN STREET, COLD SPRING

“Through the Window.” Paintings by Grace Kennedy, Martee Levi, and. Barbara Smith Gioia. Through April 30.

CARRIE HADDAD GALLERY

622 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“Invitational Exhibit.” Julia Whitney Barnes, Samantha French, Ruth Geneslaw, Hue Thi Hoffmaster, Nancy Egol Nikkal, Annika Tucksmith, K. Velis Turan, and Judith Wyer. Through April 11.

CLARK ART INSTITUTE

225 SOUTH STREET, WILLIAMSTOWN, MA

“A Change in the Light: The Cliché-Verre in Nineteenth-Century France.” Through May 16.

“Erin Shirreff: Remainders.” Photographs, prints, and video that examine Shirreff’s fascination with the mythmaking behind art history through a practice that spans analog and digital media, two and three dimensions, and still and moving images. Through January 2, 2022.

CRAGSMOOR FREE LIBRARY

355 CRAGSMOOR ROAD, CRAGSMOOR

“Cragsmoor Women of the Past.” Group show of female artists curated by Beat Keerl. Through April 30.

CREATE CATSKILL GALLERY

398 MAIN STREET, CATSKILL

“Woman, I Am.” Group show with Haile Binns, Barbara Bonanno, Claire C. Cousins, Pauline DeCarmo, Kyra Husbands, Paula Lalala, Niki Lemelin, Idea Viola Reid, Emily Ritz, Cassidy Savarino, and Tharini Shankar. Through April 30.

D'ARCY SIMPSON ART WORKS

409 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“UNGUNS: Will Squibb.” Sculptures of transformed weapons. Through December 31.

DIA:BEACON

3 BEEKMAN STREET, BEACON

Works by Lee Ufan, Sam Gilliam, Mel Bochner, Barry Le Va, Richard Serra, Mario Merz, and others on long-term view.

EMERGE GALLERY

228 MAIN STREET, SAUGERTIES

“Something Blue.” Group show. Through April 25.

FERROVIA STUDIOS

17 RAILROAD AVENUE, KINGSTON

“David Schoichet: Recent Work.” Schoichet’s black and white photographs are exclusively of people of color; his subjects range from brief interactions with strangers at public events such as protests, rallies, and marches, to intimate portraits of family and friends. Ongoing.

FRANCES LEHMAN LOEB ART CENTER AT VASSAR COLLEGE

124 RAYMOND AVENUE, POUGHKEEPSIE

“Women Picturing Women: From Personal Spaces to Public Ventures.” Curated by Patricia Phagan, this exhibition studies the key themes that emerge when selecting only images of women by women artists. Through June 13.

Lisa Winika and Suprina, The Kontomble

WILL SQUIBB AT D'ARCY SIMPSON ART WORKS

Catskill-based artist Will Squibb’s recent body of work at D'Arcy Simpson Art Works in Hudson, "UNGUN," sparks conversation about the American cultural fascination with guns, and their proliferation in action movies. His sculptures of deformed guns range from malformed, realistic Glock replicas, to contorted AR-15 guns, to almost unrecognizable organically molten Colt Revolvers. “The particular gun models are plucked from specific action movies from the '80s and '90s, as a way to consider the plausibility of characters owning the particular firearms, given the reductive geopolitics of the films.” The sculptures are named after action movies from that era––which Squibb grew up watching as a young boy––with titles like Shoot to Kill, A Better Tomorrow, and Invasion USA. Through December 31. Darcysimpsonartworks.com

“BRUCE CAHN: DISCOVERED” AT LOCKWOOD GALLERY

This survey of Cahn (1942-2020) will bring together over 50 multidisciplinary works—including marble sculptures, watercolors, oil paintings, photographs, and ceramics—that showcase the vast depths of the artist’s complex and mysterious oeuvre. A protege of Harvey Fite (Opus 40), Cahn was a prolific and reclusive creator of a diverse range of distinctive images and sculptural objects. His practice was both obsessive and spiritual, working tirelessly, day-after-day, in private, to perfect each handmade visual art discipline—a goal he believed would prepare him for his next life. Once he’d become an expert in one medium, he would turn to another–always learning, always growing. Through April 11. Thelockwoodgallery.com

GARRISON ART CENTER

23 GARRISON’S LANDING, GARRISON

“Incarnations.” A series of process-intensive mixed media paintings by Caroline Burton that present themselves simultaneously as prints, paintings and objects. Through May 2.

“Eric Erickson: Paintings.” A collection of works that depict uncertain terrain where spatial relationships are constantly shifting and objects are in a state of suspended animation. Through May 2.

GREEN KILL

229 GREEN KILL AVENUE, KINGSTON

“Three.” An exhibition curated by Joel Silverstein, featuring Tine Kindermann, Joel Silverstein, and Miguel Trelles. April 3-24.

HENRY

348 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

"Personality in the Trees: Katie DeGroot."

Portraits of sticks. Through April 11.

HESSEL MUSEUM OF ART/CCS BARD

33 GARDEN ROAD, ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON

“2021 Graduate Student Exhibitions and Projects.” April 3-May 30.

HOLLAND TUNNEL ART

46 CHAMBERS STREET, NEWBURGH

‘Subjective Logic: Sarah Walker, Mark Gibian, Joel Carreiro.” April 17-May 23.

HUDSON RIVER MUSEUM

511 WARBURTON AVENUE, YONKERS

“Librado Romero: From the River to the Desert.” Through June 27.

JDJ | THE ICE HOUSE

17 MANDALAY DRIVE, GARRISON

“Susan Weil.” Weil’s oeuvre oscillates between the abstract and the concrete, and this exhibition brings together four bodies of work that reference the female body. Through April 17.

KATONAH MUSEUM OF ART

134 JAY STREET, KATONAH

“Beatrice Scaccia: My Hope Chest.” Used by unmarried women to collect items in anticipation of married life, Scaccia uses the hope chest to explore the social expectations placed upon women. Through June 27.

LABSPACE

2642 ROUTE 23, HILLSDALE

“The Magic Garden.” Works by Alexander Ross, Amy Lincoln, Amy Talluto, Ann Wolf, Audrey Francis, Betsy Friedman, Brantner DeAtley, Eric Wolf, Jennifer Coates, Joel Longenecker, Katharine Umsted, Kathy Ruttenberg, Leslie Carmin, Mary Carlson, Philip Knoll, Undine Brod. Through April 11.

LIGHTFORMS

743 COLUMBIA STREET, HUDSON

“Moving Forms/Dynamic Balance.” Group sculpture show: Richard Erdman, Michael Howard, Henry Klimowicz, Jason Middlebrook, Martina Angela Muller, George Quasha, Patrick Stolfo, and Thorn Zay. April 9-July 3.

LOCKWOOD ART GALLERY

747 ROUTE 28, KINGSTON

“Bruce Cahn: Discovered.” Solo exhibition of prolific disciple of Harvey Fite, Bruce Cahn (1942-2020). Through April 11.

MADELYN JORDON FINE ART

37 POPHAM ROAD, SCARSDALE

‘Susan Wides: And Something Happens to the Light.” Abstract photographs. Through May 1.

MAGAZZINO ITALIAN ART

2700 ROUTE 9, COLD SPRING

“Bochner Boetti Fontana.” Examines the formal, conceptual, and procedural affinites in the work of Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, and Lucio Fontana. Curated by Mel Bochner. Through April 5.

MARK GRUBER GALLERY

NEW PALTZ PLAZA, NEW PALTZ

“Looking Back, Looking Ahead.” Group show of Hudson Valley landscapes. April 3-May 15.

MOTHER GALLERY

1154 NORTH AVE, BEACON

“Alone Together.” Benjamin Degen and Hope Gangloff. Through April 11.

OLIVE FREE LIBRARY

4033 ROUTE 28A, WEST SHOKAN

“Across the River: Artists from Hudson Valley East.” Curated by Marie Cole, work by Juliet Harrison, Donald Crews, Roxie Johnson, Lousie Kalin, Gilbert Rios. Through May 8.

Will Squibb, AR-15

Bruce Cahn, Untitled (Portrait I Red)

SEVEN SISTERS AT BASILICA HUDSON

Erika DeVries's12-foot-tall neon sculpture, which calls for collective healing, will be on display on Basilica Hudson's west entrance through the end of the month. DeVries' works, rendered in neon, are handwritten transcriptions that crystallize the moments when language and meaning coalesce. She is cofounder of Lite Brite Neon studio in Kingston. Visitors are encouraged to view the work in the evening and to bring a set of headphones to listen to a guided meditation on site or after viewing the piece. Through April 30.

Basilicahudson.org

PAMELA SALISBURY GALLERY

362 1/2 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“Elliot Green: AutoRevisionism. Sixteen abstract, multilayered drawings of oil and pencil on paper and one large-scale painting on canvas. Through April 4.

“Gregory Amenoff: Solid State.” Monoprints and woodblock prints. Through April 4.

PARTS & LABOR BEACON

1154 NORTH AVENUE, BEACON

“Marcia Hafif and John McAllister.” An exhibition of paintings from Hafif’s “Shade Painting” series (2013) and “Glaze Painting” series (1995-1997) and new paintings by McAllister. Through April 25.

THE POUGHKEEPSIE TROLLEY BARN

489 MAIN STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE.

“Reel Exposure Teen Film and Photography Festival.” Photography and short films created by young artists from across the world. Films are screened in a showcase from April 7-9. Photography exhibition April 7-May 13.

QUEEN CITY 15

317 MAIN STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE

“We Are the Forest: Lisa Winika and Suprina.” April 2-24.

SAMUEL DORSKY MUSEUM OF ART

1 HAWK DRIVE, NEW PALTZ

“Lewis Hine, Child Labor Investigator. Through July 11.

“Kathy Godell: Infra-Loop, Selection 1994-2020.”

“Dirt: Inside Landscapes. Through July 11

“Collective Consciousness: New Work by SUNY New Paltz Faculty. Through July 11

SEPTEMBER

449 WARREN STREET #3, HUDSON

“Shake Up The Room.” Group exhibition featuring works by Reginald Madison, Sahana Ramakrishnan, Mosie Romney, Razan Al Sarraf, Brittany Tucker. April 10-May 23.

SUSAN ELEY FINE ART

433 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“David Collins and James Isherwood.” Paintings. Through April 18.

THOMAS COLE HOUSE

128 SPRING STREET, CATSKILL

“Spring Lights.” An outdoor nighttime walk-through inspired by the artist Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and his love of nature that will take place in the gardens and grounds after nightfall. The ticketed experience will be offered every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night starting on Friday, April 16.

WINDOW ON HUDSON

43 SOUTH 3RD STREET, HUDSON

“Jeannie LoVullo: Celestial Existence.” At the center of the installation are several intricately painted three-foot mandalas, each bursting with patterns, color and texture. Through May 3.

WIRED GALLERY

11 MOHONK ROAD, HIGH FALLS

“Mary Anne Erickson: Paintings.” Through April 11. “Travis Fox: Photographs.” April 17-May 2.

WOODSTOCK ARTISTS ASSOCIATION AND MUSEUM

28 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK

“Re-Reading Disaster: Artist’s Books by Maureen Cummins.” For the past two decades, Maureen Cummins has been making artist’s books, prints, and installations that investigate the nature and experience of disasters. April 9-May 23.

“The Vision of Care.” Posed as a visual complement to psychologist Carol Gilligan’s notion of “the voice of care,” this exhibition touches on themes of care and related topics; juried by Robert Shane. April 9-May 23.

WOODSTOCK BYRDCLIFFE GUILD

34 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK

“Hermerica.” Curated by Carrie Feder, includes work by Yura Adams, Rose Deler, Jenny Feder, Jeanette Fintz, Kate Hamilton, Valerie Hammond, Daesha Devón Harris, Lola Jiblazee, Cynthia Karasek, Beth Katleman, Melora Kuhn, Katrina Majkut, Tanya Marcuse, Susan Mastrangelo, Claudia McNulty, Portia Munson, Ruby Palmer, Rachel Perry, Debra Priestly, Christy Rupp, Kathy Ruttenberg, Kiki Smith, Corinne Spencer, Laurie Steelink, Liza Todd Tivey, Katherine Umsted, Susan Wides, and Tricia Wright. Through April 25.

Erika DeVries, Seven Sisters

BEATLES ROLLING STONES BOB DYLAN

JIMI HENDRIX BOB MARLEY NEIL YOUNG

FLEETWOOD MAC SPRINGSTEEN BLONDIE

BOWIE GRATEFUL DEAD LED ZEPPELIN

SANTANA PATTI SMITH STEVIE WONDER

STEELY DAN THE BAND RAMONES

VAN MORR

TALKING HEADS N

Horoscopes

By Lorelai Kude

CHOICE IS EVERYTHING

Regardless of the weather, emotional springtime is here. The Sun in exuberant Aries through April 18 makes you want to run maskless through the streets crying “Free at last! Free at last!” Fighting impatience while gauging the risk/reward ratio takes a lot of energy. With Mercury in assertive Aries April 3–18, patience is in short supply. Last Quarter Moon in Capricorn April 4 soberly reminds us: We’ve come this far—why blow it when the end is in sight?

2021’s theme of radicalized traditionalism is on display with the Sun, Mercury, Venus, and Uranus in Taurus, squared by Saturn and Jupiter in Aquarius, from April 20 through May 3. Grid-optional lifestyles become respectable choices. After Mars enters Cancer on April 23, Herculean efforts are expended to secure the homestead, be that the old family farmhouse or the new RV.

The Mars-Neptune square on April 9 demonstrates the relativism of perception. Saturn’s trine to the North Node all month feels like destiny is in charge rather than free will, but choice is still everything, as Mercury proves by his trifecta of transits on April 17: sextiling Jupiter and Mars, and square to Pluto. This on the day of the Mars-Jupiter trine is the hand free will is dealt—and if you are holding the cards, this is the day to play them. A complete reversal of fortune depends on your choices, and how they align with your truest self.

Venus/Mercury square Saturn April 25 sparks creative collaborations, challenging not only authority but the premise on which that authority is based. The Full Scorpio “Supermoon” on April 26, just hours before Pluto’s retrograde on April 27, begins acceleration toward the very tense opposition of Mars in Cancer to Pluto in Capricorn on May 5. Choice is everything. Defining security and stability for yourself now circumvents desperate choices later.

DAVE MA

AMY WINE OR CUTIE

MICHAEL FRANTI NATALIE MERCHANT

MODEST MOUSE MY MORNING JACKET

TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND BLACK KEYS

AVETT BROTHERS LANA DEL RAY JADE BIRD

THE NATIONAL ALABAMA SHAKES

NORAH JONES THE FELICE BROTHERS

VAMPIRE WEEKEND NATHANIEL RATELIFF

ARIES (March 20–April 19)

With Sun in Aries through April 18 and planetary ruler Mars makes bold moves this month, Aries folks who are just sick and tired of constantly calculating the risk/ reward ratio feel energized and affirmed. Doubt around trusting your own perceptions at the square of Mars to Neptune April 9 sparks fiery indignation and suspicions of gaslighting. New Moon in Aries April 11 renews selfconfidence; Mars trines Jupiter April 17, super-sizing your vitality. Mercury sextiles Mars April 17 empowering passionate communications. Mars enters Cancer April 23, slowing your pace a bit but not your ambitions. Take stock of your resources.

TAURUS (April 19–May 20)

Superficially, things “feel good” with planetary ruler Venus in Taurus from April 14, as well as the Sun and Mercury in Taurus from April 19. Your usual consistency and serenity experience earthquakes just beneath the placid surface: Venus conjunct Uranus on April 11 signal unforeseen relationship shakeups, Mercury conjunct Uranus on April 24 elicits unexpected true confessions, and the Sun’s conjunction to Uranus on April 30 reveals a truth which has the potential to change your life goals. Full Scorpio “Supermoon” Scorpio on April 26 reveals your shadow self: Dance with your shadow instead of disowning it to experience a healing soul integration.

A practicing, professional astrologer for over 30 years, Lorelai Kude can be reached for questions and personal consultations via email (lorelaikude@yahoo.com) and her Kabbalah-flavored website is Astrolojew.com.

Horoscopes

GEMINI (May 20–June 21)

Mars in Gemini through April 22, and Mercury in Pisces, Aries (April 3–18) and Taurus (from April 19), feels constantly busy. Mercury sextiles Pluto April 2, tempting you to blow up your career with devastating critique and radical truth-telling. Courageous shared vulnerability comes April 9–10 with Mercury conjunct Chiron and sextile Saturn. Mercury sextiles Jupiter and Mars, and squares Pluto April 17, sparking larger-than-life power struggles; conflicts peak April 24–25 at the Mercury/Uranus/Venus conjunction, square to Saturn. Is this really the hill you want to die on? Think twice before launching your thermonuclear warfare with a possibly imaginary opponent.

CANCER (June 21–July 22)

Last Quarter Moon in Capricorn on April 4 summons thoughts of the road not taken and regrets around missed opportunities. New Moon in Aries energizes your professional life; First Quarter Moon in Leo reconsiders financial agreements from the end of December, as values and priorities have shifted since then. The Full “Supermoon” in Scorpio on April 26 resurrects the Ghost of True Love Past. If you allow that door to open, you’ll be watching reruns of your own previously cancelled episodes of the Love Boat during Pluto’s retrograde from April 27 through early October. Might the ending change this time around?

LEO (July 22–August 23)

Sun in Aries through April 18 is your annual period of spiritual renewal. The Sun sextile Mars, and Jupiter April 13–15 supports powerfully enhanced understandings of your own transcendent energy; but does this idealistic vision of yourself hold up under ego stressors when the Sun squares Pluto on April 16? Sun conjunct Mercury on April 18 creates combustible communications. Sun enters Venus-ruled Taurus April 19, followed by First Quarter Moon in Leo April 20. This turns up the heat in anticipation of the Sun/Uranus conjunction April 30, sparking originality. Genius loves company so prepare to win a plethora of popularity contests.

VIRGO (August 23–September 23)

It’s hard to get any rest this month because Mercury’s on the move, sextiling Pluto April 2 before entering Aries April 3. Empowered and emboldened, vulnerabilities are bravely exposed April 9 at the Mercury/Chiron conjunction, supported and contained by matured wisdom at Mercury’s sextile to Saturn April 10. Mercury sextiles Jupiter/Mars, and squares Pluto April 17. The struggle between the freedom of pure inspiration and the restrictions of structured expression is real. Mercury enters Taurus April 19, squaring Saturn and conjuncting Uranus and Venus April 24-25. Pure creative genius, lightening in a bottle: Open with caution, contents under pressure!

LIBRA (September 23–October 23)

The line between friends and lovers may blur when Venus sextiles Mars April 6. The sextile of Venus to Jupiter April 10 enhances creative energy; Venus square Pluto April 11 turns power games into the pursuit of passion. Venus enters Taurus April 14, creating optimal conditions for your own romantic aspirations. The conjunction of Venus to Uranus April 22 unlocks the cage where your Inner Child hides. This sparks unusual, disruptive, original, and unique relationship energy, which you must defend against staid, unimaginative muggles April 25 at the square of Venus to Saturn. Stand your ground against societal censure!

1204 Route 213, High Falls, NY 845-687-4810

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Horoscopes

SCORPIO (October 23–November 21)

Planetary rulers Mars and Pluto get stress tested this month in anticipation of the Full Scorpio “Supermoon” April 26. This is to strengthen your emotional immune system against the virus of self-deception. Mars square Neptune April 9 is your first inoculation: discern paralyzingly extreme idealism from executable, highminded goals. You’ll never get anything done while waiting for conditions to be “perfect”. The second dose comes at the Sun’s square to Pluto April 16, asking you to forgo individual glory for the sake of a team victory, Subsuming ego gratification for the greater good builds up antibodies of true humility.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22–December 22)

Sun in Aries through April 18 illuminates the dusky gloom of wherever you’ve been imprisoning your romantic self all this time. The sextile of Venus to Jupiter on April 10 declares you need creative play time and passionate love now, and if you can bundle them in a two for one, all the better. The Sun sextiles Jupiter on April 15 supporting beneficent blessings in this area, Mars trine and Mercury sextile Jupiter on April 17, daring you to put your money where your mouth is. Put up or shut up, but if you fold before even sampling the possibilities, you’ll kick yourself later.

CAPRICORN (December 22–January 20)

Operational loose ends and financial details around the status elevation you experienced in January are tied up at the Last Quarter Moon in Capricorn April 4. More fully on firmer ground, you can initiate articulation of important, sensitive topics when Mercury sextiles Saturn on April 10. Push past paralyzing inertia born of doubt to reveal your completely unique creative expression at Venus and Mercury’s square to Saturn with Uranus in Taurus on April 25. Share this deeply original part of yourself with trusted friends. Allow your community to embrace you and show you support at the Full Scorpio “Supermoon” on April 26.

AQUARIUS (January 20–February 19)

Excellent conditions for relationship upgrade April 5–7 as your ability to articulate your most profound feelings gets a boost during the sextile of Venus and Mars on April 6. It’s true that you overthink just about everything, but let your instincts be your guide and trust your gut more than your ability to reason on April 22 at the Venus/Uranus conjunction. If it feels right, do it despite how weird it may look to others. Mercury conjunct Uranus on April 24 provokes powerful truthtelling words from the deepest depths, which go a long way towards healing your repressed inner child’s primal woundedness.

PISCES (February 20-March 19)

You’ve rightly received an uptick in attention over the last few months, benefitting you on the material level. You’ve earned the trust of those whose opinion counts in your profession and it shows: Open doors are literally appearing everywhere you turn—almost too many choices! Mars square Neptune on April 9 fills you with vitality, Mercury’s sextile to Neptune on April 29 inspires new heights of creativity. If it feels like you’ve gone from famine to feast, don’t fret about needing a doggie bag in case supplies run dry later. You’ve stepped into a river of good fortune, enjoy the flow.

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What was your first reaction upon seeing this photo? Perhaps it was like mine: queasiness bordering on nausea. What in blazes are all these unmasked people doing standing cheek by jowl?!? “That was the type of reaction we’re going for,” says Dr. Neal Smoller of Woodstock Apothecary. “It looks strange. But we want to get to a point where this doesn’t look strange to people anymore.” All the people in the photo are vaccinated against COVID. They are members of Smoller’s 150-person strong volunteer army, helping the pharmacist stage mass vaccination events in and around Woodstock. Over three days in early March, 3,500 people were vaccinated in the Saugerties Junior High gymnasium in a clinic set up by Smoller.

As of mid-March, Smoller had vaccinated 6,000 people in all, and he claims he now has the infrastructure in place to administer 10,000 doses of vaccine per week, though Smoller expects he won’t get more than 1,000 doses a week. That said, the ability of the community to pitch in as a volunteer vaccination unit has had a direct effect on the speed at which it achieves herd immunity. “For people in our neck of the woods—Woodstock, Saugerties, Kingston—life is going to return to normal faster than in other parts of the state and the country,” says Smoller. “The only way I can do this at the speed I can do it is because of the volunteer army. Helping people is addictive and infectious.”

—Brian K. Mahoney

Pharmacist Dr. Neal Smoller of Woodstock Apothecary and members of his volunteer vaccination army at the Comeau Property in Woodstock on March 13.

Photograph by Franco Vogt.