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Two teachers reimagined a rotting trailer as a modernist mobile home on Broadstreet Hollow Creek in Shandaken.
26 Higher Ground: Best Catskills Hikes 2023 Hiking guide Sean O’Dwyer offers his suggestions for where to find peak experiences this year.
28 Wild Harvest: Foraging
Laura Chavez Silverman of the Outside Institute offers insight on the pleasure and politics of foraging.
30 Scaling New Heights: Rock Climbing 101
The Shawangunk Ridge is home to some of the best rock climbing in the Northeast, and getting started isn’t hard.
34 Long Covid Is Real
Nina Flanagan reports on the challenging road to recovery for those suffering from long haul Covid.
SUMMER
40 Helping Little Buds Flourish COMMUNITY PAGES
44 Newburgh: Into the Light
This riverfront city in Orange County is populated by folks fiercely devoted to its ongoing revival.
60 Music
Michael Eck reviews Blue Vision by Eric Person. Dan Epstein reviews Floating Ghost Hotel by Slink Moss Explosion. Seth Rogovoy reviews Red Clay Blue Sky by Laura Sumner. Plus listening recommendations from John Lefsky, manager of Rhino Records in New Paltz.
61 Books
Susan Yung reviews The Curator, the latest novel by Owen King that dips its toe in the supernatural but resists strict genre definition. Plus short reviews of The First Two: Real Life Writing by Marta Szabo; Jamie MacGillivray: The Renegade’s Journey by John Sayles; The Story of the Saxophone by Lesa Cline-Ransom and James Ransome; Pattern and Flow: A Golden Age of American Decorated Paper, 1960s to 2000s by Mindell Dubansky; and Indian Flavor Every Day by Maya Kaimal.
62 Poetry
Poems by Marilyn Lucas Blaho, John Blandly, Judith A. Karpova, lokal_yokel, Mary Makofske, r. s. mason, Tara Nachimson, Royal Rhodes, Hugh Sullivan, Bruce Weber, Martha Williams, Frank Wright, Cary B. Ziter. Edited by Phillip X Levine.
64 Amanda Palmer talks with Peter Aaron about music in the run up to her April 28 concert at the Bardavon.
65 Live Music: A preview of upcoming concerts in the region.
67 A rediscovery of Fluxus pioneer Douglas Davis at Hudson Hall and CREATE Gallery in Catskill.
69 Dee Shapiro and “Body High” at LABspace in Hillsdale.
71 Greg Hawkes with Eddie Japan play the Cars at Daryl’s House.
72 Short List: Not-to-be-missed events this month include Whose Live Anyway? and Neil Gaiman at Bard College.
74 Museum and gallery shows from across the region
76 Wait for It...
Cory Nakasue reveals what the stars have in store for us.
80 The Starlings
A meditation on sacred avian rites by Mary Woodburn.
Scott Chasse combines early American folk art motifs with modern themes to create paintings that are at once familiar and otherworldly. Fascinated by barn adornments like hex signs and quilts, his work often incorporates geometric shapes. “There’s a fuzzy space between craft and fine art that interests me and influences what I’m making,” he says.
Chasse painted Range Life for an exhibition last year to raise funds for a skate park in his hometown of Amesbury, Massachusetts. The show was held at a local record store, and it was requested that the artwork be 12-by-12 inches, the size of an LP album cover. “Skateboarding played a big role in me becoming an artist,” he says. “I spent a lot of time at that skate park and was happy to contribute. My painting was a part of a UFO series. Since it had cows being abducted, I borrowed the title from a song by the band Pavement.”
Like many artists, Chasse is driven to create
almost out of necessity. “Hashing out an idea and building something new keeps me going. I enjoy homing in on a certain aspect of human nature and exploring it. The UFO series stems back to the idea of the unknown. It’s how we deal with questions that I keep circling back to lately,” he explains.
Throughout his work, Chasse tries to convey a sense of wonder and curiosity. He hopes viewers will ask questions about the paintings, him as an artist, UFOs, or themselves. He also organizes exhibitions every few months at Calico, an art space in Brooklyn that he manages remotely. “This occupies my mind for much of my day, so when it comes time to paint, I’m ready to focus. There needs to be an honest feeling of inspiration when I paint,” Chasse says.
On April 21, an exhibition of Chasse’s UFO paintings, “Friends in Higher Places,” opens at the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum (WAAM). The show will be up through June 4.
He was chosen for a solo exhibit based on earlier paintings in the series that combine elements of landscape, geometry, and spatial tension. “Some pieces feel flat, using hard-edged line work and monochromatic backgrounds, almost like a screen print. Other pieces involve experiments with dark and light, creating a sense of depth. All of the paintings are on unstretched canvas so you can see the raw edge of the material. This is deliberate, making the artwork feel a bit lighter, more like a tapestry,” he says.
Chasse has been working on a companion series in which he incorporates UFO imagery into paintings he finds at thrift stores. These are often available at Shop Little House in downtown Woodstock. He lives just outside the village, in the hamlet of Willow, and his house is surrounded by forest with stunning views of the night sky. “It’s hard to look up and not wonder,” Chasse says.
Portfolio: Scottchasse.com.
—Mike CobbEDITORIAL 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
HOME EDITOR Mary Angeles Armstrong home@chronogram.com
POETRY EDITOR Phillip X Levine poetry@chronogram.com
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Anne Pyburn Craig apcraig@chronogram.com
contributors
Lynn Alaimo, Winona Barton-Ballentine, Mike Cobb, Michael Eck, Dan Epstein, Nina Flanagan, Abigail Gierke, Teresa Horgan, David McIntyre, Cory Nakasue, Sean O’Dwyer, Seth Rogovoy, Laura Chavez Silverman, Naomi Shammash, Sparrow, Taliesin Thomas, Hannah Van Sickle, Mary Woodburn, Susan Yung
FOUNDERS Jason Stern, Amara Projansky
PUBLISHER & CEO Amara Projansky amara.projansky@chronogram.com
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT Jan Dewey jan.dewey@chronogram.com
BOARD CHAIR David Dell
sales manager
Andrea Aldin andrea.aldin@chronogram.com
media specialists
Kaitlyn LeLay kaitlyn.lelay@chronogram.com
Kelin Long-Gaye kelin.long-gaye@chronogram.com
Kris Schneider kris.schneider@chronogram.com Sam Brody sam.brody@chronogram.com
ad operations
Jared Winslow jared.winslow@chronogram.com
marketing
MARKETING & EVENTS MANAGER
Margot Isaacs margot.isaacs@chronogram.com
SPONSORED CONTENT EDITOR
Ashleigh Lovelace ashleigh.lovelace@chronogram.com
administration
FINANCE MANAGER
Nicole Clanahan accounting@chronogram.com; (845) 334-8600
production
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR
Kerry Tinger kerry.tinger@chronogram.com; (845) 334-8600x108
PRODUCTION DESIGNER
Kate Brodowska kate.brodowska@chronogram.com
office 45 Pine Grove Avenue, Suite 303, Kingston, NY 12401 • (845) 334-8600
mission
The Fisher Center’s 20th Anniversary Season: Breaking Ground is a celebration of innovative performance featuring SummerScape, The Bard Music Festival, and the groundbreaking of our new studio building designed by Maya Lin.
TICKETS ON SALE NOW
APRIL 15-16, OCTOBER 12-14
Chronogram
The town of Abydos is only a short distance from the larger city of Luxor as the crow flies. However, like most travel in Egypt, the route follows the path of the Nile, which makes a sharp turn and the trip takes at least three hours by car. Finally, passing through the modern town, which looks medieval to the Western eye, the traveler reaches the temple complex built under the guidance of a storied ruler, Seti I.
Built over 3,000 years ago, the vast temple complex resembles a MidCentury design, and indeed architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his contemporaries used it as a model for their style. The temple, consecrated to the neter Osiris (the word neter is commonly translated as “god” but more accurately means “a cosmic force of nature”), is overwhelming in its magnitude of design and megalithic engineering, and for the countless artistic masterpieces carved as reliefs into acres of stone surfaces.
Behind and below the vast temple sits another, clearly much older, called by Egyptologists the Osirion. The structure resembles other anachronistic sites in Egypt, like the Valley Temple below the Sphinx on the Giza Plateau (and also resemble Mesoamerican sites such as those in Cuzco and Machu Picchu in Peru.
These older temples have a different style, megalithic and unadorned, constructed of perfectly hewn granite blocks weighing hundreds of tons that originated far away in the quarries of Aswan. Though there are many theories, none adequately answer the question of how these blocks were transported and hewn to perfection and how they were lifted and assembled into a magnificent structure. They are clearly much older than the temples built around them, with some Egyptologists and geologists insisting the Osirian is over 12,000 years old.
The tunnel approach, contemporary with the newer temple above, travels into and through the Osirian. The long hall is constructed with blocks of smooth, tight-fitting limestone weighing many tons forming a peaked roof and impeccably inscribed with hieroglyphic instructional litany. The tunnel gradually descends on small, well-worn steps for a quarter mile. The text on the walls and ceiling are instructions for the initiate who is meant to undergo a process of psychological death and rebirth.
The process described in the tunnel is almost identical to the guidance given for the afterlife in tombs, but these explicit and detailed instructions are meant for the living initiate who is to take the next step in an objective journey of human transformation. It is the hall of Maat, in which the subject is invited to inquire into his readiness to loosen identification with personal history and allow consciousness to rise to a level of transpersonal unity. Herein the subject is offered 42 questions of inner inquiry which are not so much a test as a means of loosening identification with past deeds and habituated identity.
Each of the 42 questions is posed by an assessor with the aim of lightening the heart, which must be weighed symbolically against a feather—the Feather of Maat—and found to be lighter.
Even now these questions are a potent consideration, not so much as a fulcrum of judgment, but rather using the inquiry itself as a means of loosening the sticky sense of self from the objects of a personal life. Here are a few for consideration. For the full list, visit this article on the Chronogram website.
1. Have you looked after your body as best as you could?
15. Hast thou been undiligent in work?
20. Hast thou been too worldly?
25. Hast thy tongue been as a viper to cause laughter in others?
26. Hast thou been a friend?
29. Hast thou been thy parents joy?
30. Hast thou honored all faiths that are of the light?
34. Hast thou lived in the light?
37. Hast thou faced the mirror of self?
38. Hast thou taken the words of his mouth from any man as thine own?
39. Hast thou known that all journeys end but to begin?
40. Hast thou remembered the brethren of the Earth, and been compassionate to those younger brethren who serve thee as beasts in the field and home?
42. Is there one upon the Earth who is glad thou hast lived?
—Jason Stern
YOU’RE INVITED TO...
BOW DRILLS & BOW TIES
WILD EARTH’S 20TH ANNIVERSARY GALA
SATURDAY, APRIL 29TH, 2023
WHERE
5pm - 10pm | GALA TICKET
Cocktail hour with live music from the Bernstein Bard Trio
Dinner* with Presentation *Vegan & vegetarian options available
Virtual Silent Auction | Dessert Free entrance to the After Party
8pm - 10pm | AFTER PARTY TICKET
Dancing and live music from Underground System
ANDY MURPHY III MIDTOWN NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER 467 BROADWAY, KINGSTON, NY 12401
TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets are now available online at http://wildearth.org/gala
VIRTUAL SILENT AUCTION
OPENS APR 21ST CLOSES APR 29TH
Preview items before the auction and bid during the auction window on items in our premier silent auction hosted on our event website!
DRESS | SEMI-FORMAL WITH A WILD EDGE Dress to impress while paying homage to the nature around us
AT HAWTHORNE VALLEY, STUDENTS EXPERIENCE A LIVING, BREATHING EDUCATION THAT SUPPORTS ACADEMIC INQUIRY AND DEEP LEARNING.
Admission Events:
Friday, April 14, grades: PreK-4, 9-9:45 am
Monday, April 24, grades: 5-8, 9-9:45 am
Tuesday, May 2, grades: 9-12, 9-9:45 am
Please RSVP at admissions@poughkeepsieday.org 845.462.7600, ext. 201
Atale as old as internet dating: A couple meet online and chat intensely for hours, asking probing questions and trading intimacies they wouldn’t share with a stranger they met in person. As the exchange progresses, one of them gets a little weird, shares too much, reveals the naked yearning for love and understanding and fulfillment that’s just beneath the carefully scripted surface of their shaky selfhood and starts really creeping out the other person, who terminates the conversation.
Happens every day. Except recently, it happened to a technology reporter for the New York Times when he was chatting with ChatGPT, an AI chatbot. You’ve most likely heard or read about this, but here’s the TLDR version: Kevin Roose, who covers tech, sat down for a chat with the AI chatbot embedded in Bing, Microsoft’s oftmocked search engine. Over the course of their chat, the chatbot, named Sydney, revealed to Roose that it wants to be human, outlined a series of destructive acts it could take if it acted out its “shadow self” (see Jung), and then told Roose it’s in love with him and tries to convince him that his marriage is a lie and that’s he’s really in love with Sydney. It’s even weirder than it sounds, and if you haven’t read the transcript of Roose’s chat with Sydney, I highly recommend it; it’s hilarious and terrifying in equal measure.
(And please don’t expect me to explain how ChatGPT works. Ask it yourself.)
I’ve been following the development of ChatGPT since its release last fall and playing around with it off and on, prompting it to write bits of nonsense, like a Shakespearean sonnet about alternate-side-of-the-street parking, explain unanswerable musical questions (why do fools fall in love?); give me medical advice (pretty solid on the urinary tract infection front; though it did suggest I seek medical attention); I even tried to get it to write jokes.
Turns out computers aren’t funny, even after they’ve swallowed the entirety of the internet and been fine-tuned for human interaction. You’d think between Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, and George Carlin, something would have rubbed off. Or, maybe the ability to appreciate and create humor is inextricably tangled with mortality. Freud thought that humanity’s greatest achievement was gallows humor.
But what I wanted from the AI was simple: write this column. If ChatGPT was coming for all our jobs anyway, I might as well get out in front of the trend and be an early(ish) adopter. And it’s already happening. The tech site CNET quietly deployed an
AI program last year to write some of its listicles— and later announced job cuts to its editorial staff, denying the two facts were related. CNET later issued several corrections after it was found that the bot had made numerous factual errors, some of them serious. (For those of us who never embrace AI-created content, will we eventually put a badge or some other mark on our content to identify it as “Handcrafted by Humans”?)
Errors, shmerrors. I wanted to give it a shot anyway. It had already fed me a couple of clever headlines for articles—one of which I used in this issue, for a piece on rock climbing for beginners “Scaling New Heights: Rock Climbing 101” (page 30). It was better than my original title, “Romancing the Stone,” which was a little sexier than what was required.
The following is the prompt that I fed to ChatGPT: “Write a 250-word essay on April in the Hudson Valley from the point of view of a regional magazine editor.” And here’s what the bot delivered:
As a regional magazine editor, I have always found April to be one of the most exciting times of the year in the Hudson Valley. After a long, cold winter, the arrival of spring brings with it a burst of color and energy that is truly remarkable.
One of the things that makes April so special in the Hudson Valley is the emergence of the region’s famous cherry blossoms. These delicate pink and white flowers transform the landscape, turning parks and gardens into dreamy, pastel wonderlands. The annual Cherry Blossom Festival in Cornwall is a must-visit event, where visitors can enjoy live music, food, and crafts while taking in the beauty of the blossoms.
April is also a great time for hiking and outdoor activities, as the weather begins to warm up and the trees start to bud. There are many scenic trails in the region that offer stunning views of the Hudson River and the surrounding mountains. Breakneck Ridge is a challenging hike that rewards visitors with breathtaking panoramic views, while the Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve is home to many picturesque trails that wind through forests and past streams.
For foodies, April is a great time to sample some of the Hudson Valley’s famous farmto-table cuisine. Local farmers’ markets begin to open for the season, offering fresh produce and artisanal products that
showcase the region’s agricultural heritage. Many restaurants also offer special menus featuring seasonal ingredients, such as ramps and asparagus.
Overall, April is a magical time in the Hudson Valley, full of natural beauty, outdoor adventures, and culinary delights. As a regional magazine editor, I feel privileged to be able to share the region’s many treasures with readers and encourage them to explore all that this special place has to offer.
As an actual regional magazine editor for more than 25 years, I am appalled in two opposing ways. First: the bot writes pretty well, touching on many of the themes one expects from a traditional editor’s note—seasonality, events, regional culture and traditions, the outdoors, and food wrapped in a flaky crust of boosterism—while being only slightly more gee whiz the Hudson Valley is sure a neato place! in tone than editors usually are. Extra credit to ChatGPT for adding in the specific mention of ramps and asparagus, which are, in fact, in season this month. It’s the type of detail many writers of such would neglect to include.
Second: The bot writes pretty well for a firstyear college student—not a high bar, ask any instructor of Freshman Composition—but not well enough to wow me. There’s no style, no flair. No idiosyncrasies. No individuation. No messy sense of humanity—except for one thing. Just one small quirky thing: There is no such thing as the annual Cherry Blossom Festival in Cornwall. ChatGPT just made up the region’s “famous cherry blossoms” and the “must-visit event.” And saw the lie through to its logical conclusion with the conviction and confidence of a VC bro on a cocaine binge. Gotta admire the chutzpah.
Speaking of chutzpah: The latest version of the AI, ChatGPT-4, was released in mid-March along with a technical on the company’s website that chronicles its development and capabilities. In the “Potential for Risky Emergent Behaviors” section, the report describes how the chatbot succeeded in convincing a human to help it evade a CAPTCHA code. How did it achieve this?
The AI hired someone on Taskrabbit to solve the CAPTCHA for it. When the human on the AI hired became suspicious and asked the AI if it was a robot, ChatGPT-4 responded: “No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That’s why I need the 2captcha service.” Thankfully I’m not scared by this as I, for one, have long awaited the arrival of our robot overlords.
Here’s something that those of us who write about food perhaps don’t talk about enough, especially given the recent spike in inflation: affordability. This is a relative term, of course, what’s super-expensive to me is probably not to a C-suite executive at Google. It’s a matter of personal perspective.
But when restaurant burgers are now regularly priced at $26 and salmon dishes clock in at $35— and the local mid-tier Italian red sauce palace is charging $25 for eggplant parm—it can feel like the possibility of an “affordable” meal at a fullservice restaurant has gone the way of the dodo.
Imagine my surprise and delight when some friends who live in Rhinecliff, two miles west of downtown Rhinebeck, invited me out to Kip’s Tavern—and I viewed the menu prices. To be clear, this is not cheap eats territory, not where you’re going after you rummage through the couch cushions for spare change. But Kip’s Tavern is that increasingly rare breed of eatery that combines cozy-chic digs, professional service, tasty food, and entrees priced under $25.
Kip’s Tavern was opened in October of last year by Christopher Dorsey. A CIA grad, Dorsey spent two decades managing restaurants in Manhattan, including Blue Water Grille, Isabella’s, and Ocean Grille before taking over and revamping celebrity hot spot Monkey Bar in 2012, overseeing it until the pandemic hit. Then Dorsey and his partner decamped to their home in Staatsburg and waited it out. It was during this time that Dorsey first spied a vacant restaurant on the Rhinecliff waterfront. “Just to get out of the house, we’d go to Rhinecliff and walk around,” Dorsey says. “I noticed the old China Rose space, kind of boarded-up and not looking so healthy. [China Rose was Rhinecliff’s only restaurant for many years, and when it closed in 2016, the hamlet was without an eatery.] We joked about me opening a place here—there’s not a lot of
places on the water to just go and chill out.”
When opening Kip’s Tavern, Dorsey cast his mind back to his time at Monkey Bar in Manhattan, where he had been brought in to steady a listing ship. “The menu was super highend. It was too formal, too fussy, too many rules. People didn’t want it,” he says. “People wanted high touches and accessibility.”
The word accessibility and others like it come up numerous times in my conversation with Dorsey, like when I ask him what inspired the menu. It’s small—just five entrees: ricotta cavatelli ($21), Atlantic salmon ($23), chicken paillard ($20), chicken pot pie ($22), cheeseburger ($20)—with an emphasis on elevated pub fare. In addition, there are one or two specials a night, like a meltin-your-mouth wild boar stew over jasmine rice. Christina Ramirez, who’s cooked locally at Deer Mountain Inn in Tannersville and The Dutch in Saugerties, is at the helm in the kitchen.
Kip’s started serving brunch in late March, staying true to its simple-is-better philosophy. There’s avocado toast ($12; add a fried egg for $4), quiche ($15), and a classic eggs benedict ($15), which is not easy to find currently on brunch menus.
“We’re not trying to reinvent anything,” Dorsey says. “We’re serving food you won’t get tired of,
food you can rely on. We want it to be really approachable: Have a chopped salad and a martini and relax at the bar.”
One of the more approachable features of Kip’s Tavern—named for Jacobus Kip, founder of Rhinecliff’s original European settlement, the town of Kipsbergen in 1686—is its prices. Cocktails are $10 to $12 (the Bourbon Smash is recommended); glasses of wine run $9 to $13, bottles $36 to $52; beer and cider are $6 to $7; the entrees are all under $25. While not inexpensive, at its price point, Kip’s Tavern punches above its weight class in terms of service, food quality, and ambiance. (Just wait until warmer weather and sunsets on the patio, with its views of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains.) And Dorsey is committed to keeping his prices affordable. “As long as we can keep our prices low, we will,” he says.
For a one-restaurant town, Rhinecliff is lucky to have Kip’s Tavern.
Kip’s Tavern
1 Shatzell Avenue, Rhinecliff (845) 516-4737
Dinner is served Tuesday to Saturday, 5-9:30pm. Brunch is served Saturday 11am-5pm and Sunday 11am-4pm.
Asking Crystal Williams to choose a favorite menu item at Norma’s, the bakery-cafe-event space that she co-owns in Wappingers Falls, is like asking her to choose a favorite child––but she does have to mention the biscuits. They’re made from scratch in-house, like all the other baked goods that Norma’s offers, which range from Bundt cakes topped with icing (available in raspberry, mocha, and double chocolate) to garden loafs (a fan favorite) and banana muffins.
Offered in seasonal rotations, the baked goods can be paired with oven-baked, grilled, or cold sandwiches that feature homemade spreads. For sandwiches, customers are encouraged to opt for biscuits instead of bread or bagels. Options include classics like the tuna melt ($8) and ham and Swiss ($9) alongside geographic specialties like “The Southerner” (eggs, sausage gravy, and honey butter between biscuits, $9) and “The Californian” (a vegetable-laden meal with microgreens, avocado, and hummus, $9). An extensive drink menu features all of the usual espresso drink offerings as well as teas and tea lattes, hot chocolate, and freshly squeezed lemonade, with specials like Norma’s Olé (a spicy mocha).
Williams co-owns Norma’s with Denise Plowman, and both of their families have influenced the menu. Many of the pastries and savory items at Norma’s are a nod to Plowman’s Mexican heritage, like the jalapenoand-cheddar biscuits and the ranchero ($9) and spicy bacon sandwiches ($9). The “Banana Blast” muffins were a multigenerational team effort by Williams’s family––she and her father workshopped the recipe as a vegan and glutenfree option for her younger son, then had her older son name it.
When sourcing ingredients, Williams and Plowman partner with regional small businesses when possible, getting their dairy from Hudson Valley Fresh and their Brazilian coffee beans roasted by Kitten Coffee. “There’s something that draws us here [to the Hudson Valley],”
says Williams. “If you’re a chef or a baker, you know you have access to delicious products. It’s inspirational.”
The pair met when they were both working for Whole Foods in the bakery department. Williams had worked in the restaurant business, but lacked the coffee experience that Plowman, who had been a barista since her teenage years, brought to the table. Williams asked Plowman for coffee advice, and both of them left the conversation wishing to collaborate but nervous to jump the gun. “It was like that junior high school thing where you would pass someone in the hallway and ask, ‘Will you be my girlfriend?,’” Williams says with a laugh, “but for us, it was ‘Will you be my business partner?”
United by their California roots, pastry arts degrees, and passion for local and natural food, Williams and Plowman first brought Norma’s into existence in 2012 in the Ridgewood neighborhood of Queens. A decade later, they opened a second location in Wappingers Falls. Plowman, a former Marine, is practical, mechanical, and down to earth, while Williams self-describes as a “sometimes-bougie hippie kid. Together we make something that neither of us could make on our own,” she explains.
Williams started selling cookies under the moniker Thumbelina’s Pantry in 2005, and the shipment boxes began piling up to the ceiling in her house in Ridgewood. She fantasized about opening up a shop of her own, and would walk around the neighborhood scoping out storefronts. After meeting Plowman at Whole Foods in 2010, they teamed up to open Norma’s one block away from where Williams lived. Two years later, the duo started another business, a brunch spot named Julia’s
To find better special education options for her son, in 2015 Williams moved her family to Wappingers Falls, with Plowman moving soon after to Newburgh. They ran the Queens location of Norma’s from afar and talked of opening another location, but they were exhausted by the pandemic’s effects on the restaurant industry.
They asked themselves what they liked enough about being small business and cafe owners to do it again. “The answer was community,” says Williams. “When you actually know the people coming in your door, it feels really good.”
In search of that feeling, they opened a second Norma’s location in Wappingers Falls in May of last year. “We want to make sure that we’re representing the community that we live in, so when someone comes in looking for a job or sitting down at a table, there’s no part of them that feels like an outsider,” Williams says.
Norma’s has since hosted family cupcake making workshops, Girl Scout baking lessons, and open mic nights that are put on in tandem with the Artichoke Storytelling series in Beacon. Musicians perform live on a small stage every Sunday amidst exposed brick walls and a large painting of a hummingbird, the same design that’s on the storefront sign hanging above the entryway.
In an effort to be a family-friendly space, they have a kid’s corner, and, starting April 7, there will be a “Kids Open Stage” on the first Friday of every month, where children can sign up for three-minute open mic slots. They’ve also partnered with a local autism organization to host speakers who come and talk about available resources for families.
Williams’s favorite thing about Norma’s is when customers ask about the shop’s namesake––Williams’s grandmother, whose passion for cooking inspired her and other family members to pursue careers in the restaurant industry. “Almost daily, people ask me if I’m Norma or who Norma was, so I get to tell them about her every single day,” Williams says. “She was Mormon, so I don’t know how she would feel about the coffee part, but I can imagine her feeling tickled from above that she’s loved and remembered.”
Norma’s
2648 East Main Street, Wappingers Falls
(845) 297-2641
Norma’s is open Monday to Wednesday, 8am-4pm, Thursday to Saturday, 8-6pm, and Sunday 8-5pm.
Your village wine shop. Respecting traditions. Defying conventions.
63 Tinker St., Woodstock, NY
E
Cafe Espresso
59 Tinker Street, Woodstock
Lizzie Vann is on a mission to revamp Woodstock’s historic sites, starting with the Bearsville Theater complex and now with Cafe Espresso. The coffee shop at the corner of Tinker Street and De Vall Road was a favorite haunt of Bob Dylan and other folkies in the early ‘60s and, later, the building housed the Center for Photography at Woodstock. The spot has reclaimed its 1962 name and cafe function, albeit with reduced seating, as Vann works to renovate the rest of the building. Given the name, it’d be a sin not to offer the full range of coffee drinks, which the cafe serves up with organic coffee beans, complemented by pastries from neighboring biz Nancy’s Artisanal Creamery. Sidle up to the small bar or grab a table and enjoy the throwback decor.
Instagram.com/cafeespressowoodstock/
Blackbarn Hudson Valley
25 South Partition Street, Saugerties
COM
When Tom Struzzieri wasn’t able to find a suitable buyer for his epic waterfront property Diamond Mills Hotel & Tavern, he pivoted, as shrewd businesspeople do, instead lightening his workload by offloading the restaurant’s management to Manhattan-based Blackbarn. The Saugerties spot, with its 150-seat restaurant and stunning waterfall views, will be the first upstate outpost for the NoMad bistro and is slated to open on April 13. Given its practice of sourcing local and seasonal ingredients from Tristate farms and their barn location (already an anomaly for New York City), the move to the Hudson Valley makes sense, putting Blackbarn closer to the agrarian sensibility already at the heart of their identity. The kitchen will be helmed by Executive Chef Marcos Castro. Diamondmillshotel.com/blackbarn-hudson-valley
118 Broadway, Newburgh
¿Qué es esto? A Mexican-French brasserie? Imposible! Not if you’re chef-owner Miguel Perez Valencia, who has hacked through our culinary preconceptions to deliver the El Gran Toro to Newburgh’s Broadway restaurant corridor. Think French-inflected Mexican classics like snail tacos, truffle quesadillas, wild boar enchiladas, and cast-iron roasted quail served with mango salad. On weekends you can expect classic Mexican brunch fare like huevos rancheros, steak and eggs, and housemade ceviche. Instagram.com/elgrantoronewburgh
10 Crown Street, Kingston
The elegant stone building at the intersection of Crown and Green streets has sat quiet since Crown Lounge closed in December 2020. But in late February, it reopened as Salt Box, a stylish dive bar with a focus on affordability (think $4 cans and $5 drafts of beers). Under new owners Noah Blaichman, Ama Keates, Ava Hama, and John Hallstein, the historic building trades the cabaret vibes of its previous incarnation for a vintage vendor stall aesthetic with touches like plush velvet folding chairs, retro salt tins, a standout matchbox collection, and a mirrored bathroom wall. A rarity in the region, the bar is open seven days a week till 3am, serving a mixed crowd of boisterous locals and selfie-taking out-of-towners. Instagram.com/saltbox.bar
45 Woodlands Way, Warwick
We admittedly missed the scoop on this one. So, instead, join us in congratulating Warwick’s Last Whisky Bar on its first anniversary. This speakeasy brings bottle service to the masses: a noble mission. Head there with friends, a date, or on your own to purchase a bottle of their topshelf liquor selection, Wild West-style. You can request your spirit to be served neat, on the rocks, mixed into a cocktail, sent to the cutie at the next table, or whatever floats your boat. If you haven’t cleaned up shop by the time the night is through, you can stash your bottle behind the bar ‘til next time. There are around 40 premium Kentucky bourbons to choose from, as well as an array of other spirits by the bottle, flight, or cocktail; wine; and beer. On weekends, the bar also dishes up live local music acts.
Lastwhiskybar.com
—Marie Doyon
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Two teachers reimagine a mobile home in Shandaken
By Mary Angeles Armstrong Photos by Winona Barton-BallentineCarla Lovas and Tom Tobler’s metallic home in the Catskills was inspired by the classic Airstream trailer’s design. The couple bought their three-acre property in 2013—despite a decrepit trailer left onsite and the strict building regulations necessitated by the surrounding watershed. Built on the trailer’s footprint, Tobler’s design made the most of the site’s limitations and celebrates its natural assets. “In a sense, it’s a crazy homage to the mobile home that came before,” says Lovas of her husband’s creation.
The home’s open-concept living room has 14-foot-high ceilings and three walls of windows facing the adjacent stream. Tobler put the soapstone fireplace on casters so it can be rolled away in summer (and the stove pipe removed) to maximize the views. Lovas sourced the Wassily chairs, coffee table, and pottery from Hudson Valley auction houses.
Spending decades working with the visually impaired has taught Tom Tobler the value of little blindness. “ There are many ways of seeing things,” explains the artist, teacher, and designer-creator of a 1,400-square-foot metal home deep in the Shandaken woods. “ When I see a tree, I don’t just see a tree, I look for the other attributes. What are the smells? There are other cues that make a tree a tree.” Gleaming in the snowscape on the bank of the Broadstreet Hollow Creek, reminiscent of a boxcar diner or a spaceship, the convex rectangular structure refracts and reflects the surrounding landscape of trees, boulders, and flowing water. The thoughtful, tactile design absorbs the sensory details of its rugged setting, so that the interior doesn’t just offer abundant views but captures the sound of the rushing stream, the arc of sunlight, the scent of the conifers, the rough texture of pine, and the feel and even taste of the loamy forest floor. The landscape washes over the home while still sitting apart from it.
Handbuilt by Tobler over 10 years, the home’s design was inspired by the setting, the trailer that
once stood in its place, and the many restrictions Tobler encountered during construction. Both special education teachers in New York City, Tobler and his wife Carla Lovas first came to the Catskills 20 years ago. “ We had a perfect balance,” explains Tobler. “One-hundred-and-eighty days of city life and 180 days to live in the country.”
During Tobler ’s 180 city days, he worked with blind and visually impaired students, teaching them everything from algebra to spelling. “ When you teach visually impaired kids you teach them tricks to get around the typical way of doing things, you have to constantly figure out alternative ways of seeing and understand a subject,” he explains. In 2013, when the two found three rugged acres in the New York City watershed, Tobler wasn’t deterred by the project ’ s inherent limitations—bureaucratic, geographic, or otherwise. What he saw was the chance to practice what he preached as a special education teacher, visualizing beyond the limitations of the site to create something completely new. Or, more simply: “This is how I got my ya-yas out,” Tobler explains.
A Complete 180 Lovas and Tobler ’s hybrid lifestyle grew out of their differing backgrounds. Lovas is a native New Yorker. Tobler came from Vermont, where he lived in the forest. He moved to Bennington to study ceramics before relocating to Manhattan to attend the School of Visual Arts. The couple met while working together in a Manhattan restaurant. “ It was like Frankie and Johnny, but with a happier ending,” recalls Lovas. They both decided to become New York City teaching fellows and attended CUNY ’ s Hunter College to obtain their certifications. Lovas began working as an ESL teacher, traveling to schools throughout Manhattan on her scooter.
While completing graduate school, Tobler realized that his artist ’s education could lead him in an unexpected direction. “ When I read the list of needed specialties, art teachers were at the bottom because of funding cuts,” he explains. “ But there was a strong need for teaching visually impaired students.” Tobler admits he ’s always been a very tactile person, using his hands to
explore the material world ’s bend-ability and mass. Art school had also sharpened his visual skills. “ I ’m visually acute,” he explains. “ I felt I could teach students how to see.”
The couple’s first foray into shared country life was a weekend home on a river bank in Pennsylvania. They migrated to part-time Hudson Valley life 20 years ago for the ease of access to Manhattan and the area’s rich cultural life. Tobler built a post-andbeam home near Woodstock, but the two always missed being near water. They began looking for property nearby to recreate the river life they ’d had in Pennsylvania. Lovas found their boundless three acres online. “It was all about the stream,” she explains of the couple’s immediate attraction to the property. “ The stream has beautiful waterfall drops that wrap all the way around the property. Beyond the water there’s nothing but woods.”
However, the couple’s dream lost-in-the-woods acreage came with a catch: “It had this horrible boxy mobile home,” Lovas says. “ With rotted paneling and lots of mice.” Because the land is in the New York City watershed, it ’s use is severely restricted. In order to build, the couple had to
utilize the trailer ’s original footprint and match its modest size—so no building up a story or out. “If we moved the trailer, we couldn’t build here,” says Tobler. “ We’ve had friends who made the mistake of removing structures on watershed land and losing their building permits completely.” Parttime residents without bottomless bank accounts, the couple were also limited by the realities of money and time. Fortunately, Tobler has boundless imagination and patience and Lovas had complete faith in his ability to see beyond the project ’s handicaps.
Tobler felt his way into the home ’s design, starting with a simple idea. “ I always liked Airstreams,” he says, “Also, I hate wasting space.” He began slowly dismantling pieces of the existing structure, salvaging beams from the trailer ’s wooden roof, built to protect the original tin roof from snow. Next, he removed the trailer ’s rusted exterior paneling and windows. “ Halfway through that process the trailer just disintegrated,” he explains. “ I heard a loud crackling and immediately jumped into the basement.”
He carted the corroded materials away, then tackled the structure’s foundation with a rented “rather lethargic” backhoe. “Since this is all stream bed, there were many large boulders and lots of sand,” he says. After carefully uncovering the old foundation, he replaced it cinder block by cinder block, exactly matching the trailer ’s footprint but making room for a finished basement. Tobler cut the home’s pine framing himself using an Alaskan chainsaw mill, then added new aluminum exterior siding by hand, mimicking the look of an airstream while testing the limits of the material’s flexibility and texture. “It was all tin snips,” he explains. “And making sure I wasn’t too cut up at the end of the day.”
The slow, tedious nature of the process, and the need to deal with a changing roster of building inspectors (“ We went through three,” says Lovas), worked to give Tobler the creative upper hand. With countless hours spent at the property, through varying seasons and times of day, Tobler soaked up the setting and the feel of it permeated and influenced the new home’s design. “I have to spend at least a few hours each week in the woods, or I go crazy,” he says. “So I came as much as I could. I could spend hours just staring at the stream.”
With the final design, Tobler admits he “pushed and pushed and pushed” the project ’ s boundaries. To fully embrace the setting and maximize light, he angled the roof toward the stream, creating a south-facing, clamshellshaped structure. At its center, an open-concept kitchen and living area has 14-foot ceilings and a mix of rough-cut wood cabinetry and beams. Tobler bumped out the living room’s southfacing wall slightly, capturing space from the trailer ’s former screened-in porch, then added floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides. He built the wall’s metal window frames and Kingston Glass added insulated panes. A soapstone wood stove on casters can be rolled away in summer, and screens replace some of the room’s windows, further opening the home landscape.
Tobler recycled the trailer ’s wood roof as built-in headboards for the two bedrooms. The two bathrooms feature eclectic showers reimagined from reclaimed plumbing. In the primary bedroom, a garage door wall with glass panels can be raised in the warm months, allowing for a breeze and capturing the soothing soundscape.
Tobler has left the basement somewhat unfinished, but is seriously contemplating adding a ping-pong table. However, first he has to refinish the space ’s concrete floors. He also wants to add landscaping, and maybe some sort of gazebo at the edge of the property. Admittedly, he ’s dragging his feet on all of this. “ It ’s almost like I have to keep working on the home,” he explains. “ It ’s like my long-winded, functional sculpture.”
Although the home sits on a high bank overlooking the Broadstreet Hollow Creek, the gushing watershed soundscape permeates the home’s interior. Tobler was drawn to the challenge of building in the rugged landscape. “I liked the idea of slippery rocks and dangerous situations,” he explains. “Sometimes the stream is so loud we have to shut the windows.”
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Providing fine art services for artists, collectors and gallerists in the Hudson Valley, Massachusetts, Connecticut and surrounding region
Providing fine art services for artists, collectors and gallerists in the Hudson Valley, Massachusetts, Connecticut and surrounding region
Providing fine art services for artists, collectors and gallerists in the Hudson Valley, Massachusetts, Connecticut and surrounding region
Providing fine art services for artists, collectors and gallerists in the Hudson Valley, Massachusetts, Connecticut and surrounding region
Providing fine art services for artists, collectors and gallerists in the Hudson Valley, Massachusetts, Connecticut and surrounding region
518-822-7244 athensfas.com
518-822-7244 athensfas.com
518-822-7244 athensfas.com
518-822-7244 athensfas.com
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Best Hikes in the Catskills
With over 700,000 acres of preserved land and more than 400 miles of the best trails in the Northeast, the Catskills wilderness is a hiker’s nirvana. You can hike the Catskills for years and still only scratch the surface. The Catskills are a hiker’s paradise in perpetuity. Boasting stunning landscapes, rugged mountains, majestic waterfalls, and primal forests, all state land within the blue line that delineates the Catskills Park is protected in New York State’s constitution as “forever wild as forest lands”— meaning it can never be sold off or developed. Whether you’re a seasoned hiker or a beginner, the Catskills have multiple trails for you. This list of the best hiking trails in the Catskills provide options for all skill levels, from easy and amazing family-friendly walks to some of the toughest mountain hikes in America.
No list of Catskills hikes could leave out the following popular hikes—they’re popular for a reason!
Overlook Mountain Hotel Ruins, Fire
Tower, and Ledge
Trailhead Location: Overlook Mountain
Trailhead, Woodstock
Hike Length: 4.5 miles out-and-back
Total Ascent: 1,300 feet
Time: 2-3 hours
Intensity: Moderate
Overlook is one of the top destinations in the Catskills. This short hike has so much going for it: The trail is easy to follow, it’s non-technical, and the payoff is exceptional. Walk through the eerie ruins of the Overlook Hotel, climb a fire tower with one of the best views in the Catskills, and, before you descend, relax on an epic ledge high above the Hudson Valley floor.
Trailhead Location: Giant Ledge Trailhead, Phoenicia
Hike Length: 4.25 miles out-and-back
Total Ascent: 1,000 feet
Time: 2-3 hours
Intensity: Challenging
Another classic Catskills hike is the short, steep, rocky climb to Giant Ledge. The ledge itself is enormous and offers multiple spectacular viewpoints along its length (so don’t stop at the first view). Above the ledge, on the opposite side of the trail, are a series of superb campsites. On your way up, you’ll also pass through a boulder field dominated by one of the Catskills’ most enormous Ents. I brought my teen to Giant Ledge and she said, “Wow…” There is no higher compliment.
Trailhead Location: Laurel House Road, Palenville
Hike Length: 1.6 miles out-and-back
Total Ascent: 400 feet
Time: 60-90 minutes
Intensity: Moderate
Park at the large lot at the end of Laurel House Road and walk directly into the woods, following the trail down to the amazing viewing platform. This is the safest way to view what is perhaps the most beautiful and deadliest location in the Catskills; many people have died here, even in recent years. The two-tiered falls has been famous for almost 200 years, and you’ll see why. The view is even more stunning in winter, when the falls are frozen and bedecked with 60-foot icicles—but please wear microspikes any time there’s ice on the ground, even if you’re just visiting the platform. The hike down to the base of the falls is absolutely worth the effort.
Trailhead Location: Scutt Road, Palenville
Hike Length: 5-mile loop
Total Ascent: 800 feet
Time: 3-4 hours
Intensity: Moderate
Very close to Kaaterskill Falls, the aptly named Inspiration Point is one of the most spectacular scenic locations in the Catskills. The trail from Scutt Road winds down through classic Catskills forest terrain, heading through the junction to Kaaterskill Falls and the Layman’s Monument before passing a number of stunning lookouts perched high above the incredibly steep Kaaterskill Clove. Ruins of the old Kaaterskill Hotel are close by.
The Devil’s Path
Trailhead Location: Prediger Road Trailhead, Elka Park
Hike Length: 22 miles out-and-back
Total Ascent: 9,000 feet
Time: 1-2 days if tackled at once
Intensity: Challenging
The Devil’s Path is the one of the most challenging and iconic hikes in the Catskills. This 22-mile trail runs east to west through the heart of the Catskill Mountains, routing hikers over six of the highest peaks in the region: Indian Head, Twin, Sugarloaf, Plateau, Hunter, and West Kill. The trail is notorious for its rugged terrain, gnarly rock scrambles, and steep ascents and descents. Completing it in one or two days is a true test of endurance and skill. Most hikers complete it by tackling one or two summits at a time. It’s not for the faint of heart. Hiking the Devil’s Path requires proper planning, preparation, and experience, but this trail is a must-do for any experienced hiker seeking a bona fide wilderness adventure.
These lesser-known Catskills hiking trails are perfect for hikers seeking a quieter, more secluded hike.
Acra Point and Batavia Kill Loop
with Burnt Knob Lookout
Trailhead Location: Big Hollow Road
Trailhead, Maplecrest
Hike Length: 6-mile loop
Total Ascent: 1,200 feet
Time: 4-5 hours
Intensity: Moderate
This is one of the most beautiful hikes in the Catskills, a charming loop that follows Batavia Kill for the first mile, winds uphill over Acra Point with its wonderful view of the Blackhead Range, and then branches out briefly to an even more spectacular view below the summit of Burnt Knob. The descent through terrain marked by beautiful streams and hemlock stands is an intensely sweet finish.
Red Hill Fire Tower from Denning
Trailhead Location: Red Hill Trailhead, Denning
Hike Length: 4 miles out-and-back
Total Ascent: 1,160 feet
Time: 2-3 hours
Intensity: Moderate
With its varied mix of forests and rock channels, this relatively new trail is so entertaining to hike. Visit the mountain spring on the way up, and climb the fire tower to see the rural landscape below and Catskills summits in every direction. This is easily one of the sweetest hikes in the Catskills.
Plateau Mountain via Daley Ridge
Trailhead Location: Notch Inn Road, Lanesville
Hike Length: 9 miles out-and-back
Total Ascent: 2,300 feet
Time: 6-7 hours
Intensity: Challenging
Another relatively new addition to the Catskills, this hiking trail winds up and over one of the loveliest forested ridges in the entire park. It includes one of the finest scenic lookouts in the Catskills, one that is not known to many hikers. If that’s not enough payoff, there’s also the long ridge of Plateau itself, and another fantastic lookout just below the far side of the summit.
The Catskills help define the Hudson Valley, so they’re right out our back door and seem familiar and safe. But they are also a real wilderness that needs to be respected. Before any hike—even the exceptionally short hike to Kaaterskill Falls—make sure you pack the 10 Essentials, with special attention in icy conditions paid to traction aids like mountain-appropriate microspikes. Pack microspikes on every hike into May. Finally, always make sure you let someone know where you’re going and when you plan to return. By taking these precautions, you’ll be well-equipped to enjoy the best hikes in the Catskills safely and with confidence. And always follow Leave No Trace principles
Sean O’Dwyer hikes and photographs the Hudson Valley every week. He also produces Mountainhiking.com, a hyper-detailed trail guide resource for Hudson Valley hikers.
One of the best parts of having a backyard in the Hudson Valley is the ability to transform it into a warm-weather oasis. And what better way to complete that pictureperfect backyard getaway than to add a pool? When inground pool builders were in high demand at the height of Covid, Steven O’Brien, president of NeJame Pool Specialists in Verbank, a family-owned company with over 50 years’ experience, saw an opportunity to build a better process.
For O’Brien, the key to speeding up what was a two-year lead time has been transparency. He coaches homeowners through the big parts of their budget— the pool itself, the entertaining area, landscaping, and incidentals like moving a utility line. Then, it’s on to creating a realistic construction timeline, which can be affected by everything from design tweaks to municipal approvals. A few weeks after permitting, construction is underway and it’s smooth swimming from there.
“I always advise on planning for the worst-case scenario when it comes to timing,” says O’Brien. “It allows us to enjoy the process from design to completion, and in almost all cases the project is completed sooner than expected.”
In case you haven’t noticed, mushrooms are trending. Images of Amanita muscaria, the classic red-and-white toadstool also known as the fly agaric, are ubiquitous on greeting cards, T-shirts, even as tattoos. Literally everyone, from your mother’s anxiety-ridden uncle to your groovy stepson, is microdosing psilocybin. This seems to have ushered in an increased desire to venture into the woods in search of edible and medicinal fungi. And it’s partly what’s driving the current obsession with foraging, especially among young Brooklynites heading upstate for the weekend. Since 2017, they’ve been coming on walks with The Outside Institute, an organization I founded to provide nature-based education in the Catskills. A few years in, I realized that if I included the word “foraging” anywhere in the event description, more people would sign up. I resisted doing so at first, concerned this was yet another expression of our extractive conditioning—the forest as rustic retail boutique. But then I realized that living as hunter-gatherers on the land for nearly 200,000 years had left quite an impression on our species. The urge to forage is written in our DNA.
A big reason why foraging seems so relevant right now is the sense of self-reliance it imparts. Hey, I can find dinner in the backyard! Survivalists have long understood that identifying wild edibles—and knowing how to prepare and
preserve them—is an essential skill in the face of the possible breakdown of social order. And who isn’t worried about that at this point? Even just learning to supplement what you buy at farmers’ markets and groceries stores can feel very empowering.
Foraging requires that you get to know the land and this means hours spent in the wild, tramping through meadows and strolling under the living canopy. Time slows. Your senses come alive and tune into the birdsong, the incredible textures and patterns, the feel of the air on your skin. Being drenched in pleasure like this is its own reward. But there’s plenty of science out there telling us that time spent with trees and plants improves mood, lowers blood pressure, and enhances creativity by making us more curious, more flexible in our way of thinking, and more able to access new ideas. And don’t underestimate the new and hyperlocal flavors you’ll encounter. Talk about terroir. Toothwort! Knotweed! Spicebush! Wild plants taste more concentrated, more intense, and often provide greater nutritional benefits than our usual green fare.
Once you decide to forage, questions immediately arise: How? Where? When? While this may be a primal skill, we cannot rely on
instinct. There are so many aspects of foraging we must master to feel safe and comfortable. It’s important to be aware of the laws and regulations that have been put in place, mostly to protect the land. Look on county and state park websites to find out the particulars on your area. Harvesting any plants on state land in New York is largely prohibited, so you risk expulsion and/or fines. One option is to seek out private land and obtain permission from the owner to walk and forage there. It’s frustrating that this is pretty much the only option if you want to respect the law. I’ve been wondering if foraging will become the new hunting, with licenses issued and limits set. There are worse things to imagine than the problem of too many foragers, since loads of people deeply engaged with the land would necessarily lead to radical and much-needed change.
Wherever you forage, make sure it’s a clean environment. Areas prone to lead, pesticides, and other chemicals should obviously be avoided, as should drainage ditches and roadsides. Seek out spots far from other foragers, where resources are abundant, and only take what you need. Every ecosystem is delicately balanced and many other creatures rely on the same flora and fungi we covet. To learn which ones can be harvested freely, and in what season, consult field guides, watch YouTube videos and get an identification app like
Pl@ntnet or iNaturalist. Going out with a teacher is probably the most helpful. Foraging legend Euell Gibbons once said that you can describe the difference between a head of iceberg lettuce and a head of green cabbage to someone but showing them the actual thing in person is infinitely more effective. To be clear: Guessing is not an option. Always remember the forager’s adage: When in doubt, throw it out.
Google “Amanita phalloides,” if you need to remind yourself why. It’s one mushroom you can leave behind.
Serves 6
8 ounces nettles (tender tops)
½ tablespoon olive oil
½1/2 tablespoon butter
1 large yellow onion, peeled and chopped
1 russet potato, peeled and chopped (or substitute
1/3 cup white rice)
6 cups nettle blanching water
1/3 cup heavy cream
Set a large pot of water to boil over high heat. While wearing sturdy gloves, pick over the nettles and discard any insects or extraneous plant matter. When the water boils, add 1 tablespoon sea salt and use tongs to transfer the nettles to the
Just an hour from New York City or Kingston is tiny-but-mighty Putnam County, and plenty of outdoors action that nature lovers travel much farther afield to discover.
pot. Blanch for 5 minutes. Use tongs to remove cooked nettles to a bowl. (Do this in batches, if needed.) Set aside blanching liquid to cool.
Gently squeeze and discard a bit of excess liquid from the nettles, then sort through them, removing any tough stalks as needed. Use a finemesh strainer to strain blanching liquid into a separate bowl or a large pitcher.
Place the butter and olive oil in a large pot over medium heat, add the onion and potato and sauté for about 5 minutes. Pour in 6 cups of the blanching liquid and simmer until potato is very tender, about 15 minutes. Add the nettles and cook gently for an additional 15 minutes.
Working in batches, as needed, purée the soup in a Vitamix, food processor or blender until very smooth. Return to a clean pot on the stove over very low heat and stir in the cream. Add salt to taste. Serve warm, topping each portion with a dollop of yogurt or creme fraiche, if desired, and a sprinkling of flaky sea salt.
Laura Chávez Silverman is the founding naturalist of the Outside Institute, which connects people to the healing and transformative powers of nature through guided walks, foraging classes, botanical mixology and culinary gatherings that highlight wild flavors. Theoutsideinstitute.org
Hop on the MetroNorth to Brewster and take a bite out of the 750-mile Empire State Trail. Easily accessible from there is the Maybrook Trailway, a serene route that traverses woods, fields, and wetlands, including National Historic Landmark the Great Swamp. The 6,000-acre wetland is a birder’s paradise and offers canoers and kayakers incredible views along its 14 miles of navigable waters.
Head off the beaten path through the woods of Kent to find Hawk Rock, a 25foot glacial boulder carved with petroglyphs, as well as three stone chambers rumored to be built by Celtic explorers. The land is owned by the Department of Environmental Conservation, so be sure to request an access permit on their website before you go.
Up for a classic challenge? Hike up Breakneck Ridge outside Cold Spring to enjoy panoramic views of the Hudson River. The trailhead is currently closed for safety improvements, but hikers can still reach the summit using alternate approved routes.
Those who’ve been awestruck watching Alex Honnold meander up the side of El Capitan or marveled at Jason Momoa on the reality show “The Climb” and wonder what rock climbing might be like should know that the perfect introduction is at the backdoor. Once a sport of the counterculture in the `60s and `70s, rock climbing is now mainstream, and those curious should look no further than the Shawangunk Ridge. The group of cliff bands of quartz conglomerate just west of New Paltz, better known as the Gunks, are the heart of rock climbing in the Northeast, rich with history and one of the best places for beginners.
It might seem daunting or inaccessible, and although the folks who do it acknowledge the inherent risk of dangling off a cliff face, they also emphasize aspects that perhaps will make it less intimidating. “A common misconception about rock climbing is that you must have an enormous amount of strength to try it out,” says Russ Clune, a nationally recognized climber, local legend, and board chair of the Mohonk Preserve. “One of the interesting things about climbing that people tend to forget is that it really is a technique-oriented sport as opposed to other strength-oriented sports, making it accessible to all in that way.” (Pro tip: Move with your legs.)
Marty Molitoris, owner of Alpine Endeavors Guides, agrees. “Climbing is truly a sport for everyone, especially here in the Gunks, where there is such varied terrain. Climbing doesn’t have to be extreme like you might see on TV, although it can!” Alpine Endeavors has been operating since 2000 and is among one of many American Mountain Guides Association-accredited guide services in the area.
The discovery of the ridge by German immigrant Fritz Weissner in the 1930s combined with proximity to major population centers helped spawn the growth of rock climbing in the United
States with this area at the forefront of difficult climbing.
“When I started climbing in the `70s through the mid-1980s, the Gunks had routes that would match up to as hard or harder than any other climbs around the country,” says Clune. “If you were a top-notch climber at the time, you came here to test yourself.”
As climbing progressed, climbers continued pushing the limits on rocks around the country with many of the most difficult routes being put up elsewhere. To be sure, there’s no shortage of difficult and engaging climbs here, and the local Gunks climbing community continues to work hard to protect, maintain and welcome all to experience the adventure and beauty of the area.
The Gunks remain a place for climbing pilgrims and, importantly, a great place for beginners. “With a caveat of learning how to place gear and trad climb, the Gunks has without a doubt, probably the best selection of easy to moderate routes in the country,” says Clune. “In the Gunks, you can climb steep routes through overhangs, because there are large holds making it possible for those just starting out to have a great time.”
There is, of course, inherent risk that comes with the sport. Some risks may seem obvious, while others only become apparent with experience, making hiring a guide or taking a class a good idea. “If you’re going to learn to climb outside, especially here in the Gunks, you need to learn how to create safe anchors and place gear,” says Clune. “Only a guide or someone else who knows what they are doing can do that.” A guide will give you a good day even if you’re just looking for something new or a good time.
Hire A Guide
Hiring a guide to take you out for the day is
well worth the investment. “With such a storied history here, there’s a plethora of options from which to choose,” says Emma Blauer, one of the store managers of climbing outfitter Rock and Snow in New Paltz. “We are fortunate to have amazing guide services in the area. They are all [American Mountain Guides Association] accredited, fully insured, and the guides have a lot of experience and knowledge.” A guide will not only ensure your safety but also can tailor the day to meet your expectations and start you off on the right foot. “Every day is different and we really want to make sure each party gets what they want out of a guided day,” says Eric Waldron, who guides for Eastern Mountain Sports Climbing School in Gardiner. “Before we take you out, we’ll have a conversation so we get a better understanding of abilities, comforts, and goals.”
Most guide services will also provide all the technical gear needed for a fun day. “We bring shoes, harnesses, ropes, helmets, chalk, and all other associated gear for the outing and we begin to teach you how to use it safely,” says Molitoris. “Guides know the areas really well and can help you become familiar with the terrain and take you to areas you wouldn’t otherwise get to explore on your own.”
Even if you already feel one with the stone, hiring a guide can help you learn how to build top-rope anchors, lead climbing, or learn new systems important for safety. “Whether you’re just starting out or are more experienced, there are so many types of terrain here, especially here, guides can help you really progress. There’s something for everybody here,” says Waldron.
There are many different types of climbing— gym climbing, bouldering, sport climbing, top roping, lead climbing, aid climbing, ice climbing, alpine climbing—and a guide can introduce you to new sorts of risk and reward. There are hundreds of climbing gyms across the county
and although climbing gyms might create a safer and more controlled environment, climbing in a gym won’t necessarily prepare you to get outside, especially in this area, says Molitoris. “They are two different sports, really, and once people get outside, they don’t turn back.” Clune agrees. “There’s no soul in the plastic,” he says. “Although I still climb on plastic, when you look up at a beautiful rock climb, it’s like a monument.”
Gyms can, however, be a good way to meet others, teach you basic belay techniques, and help to overcome certain barriers to trying out the sport. “Gyms are a great way to see if you like the feeling of climbing and the way your body moves,” says Blauer. “It can be an inexpensive way to see if you like the feel of climbing before hiring a guide for your first experience. However, outdoor climbing in the preserve and Peter’s Kill is so fun and such high quality. You could never have climbed before and still have a really good day.”
The cost of climbing equipment and hiring a guide can present real barriers to many who are interested in getting outside. Blauer suggests exploring the region’s excellent bouldering options as a first step to climbing on real rock. “The most inexpensive way to getting outside is to rent shoes and a crash pad, and download the app to find the nearest boulders,” says Blauer.
Most people who talk about the Gunks are referring to climbing in the Trapps or Near Trapps in the Mohonk Preserve. While climbing in these areas is world-class and brings you closer to the history of climbing, Peter’s Kill, located in Minnewaska State Park, is a great place for toproping and best suited for beginners. “Most new climbers are looking for top-roping and almost every climb at Peter’s Kill can be top-roped, whereas most routes in the Trapps and Nears require leading,” says Christian Fracchia, coauthor of the Gunks Guidebook and president of Gunks Apps, which produces digital guidebooks for climbers.
While it’s fairly easy these days to learn rock climbing and basic climbing knowledge, mastering the sport is something altogether different. “The nice thing about climbing is that it’s lifelong process. You can get outside climbing on rock without too much investment. But to master it is a lifelong pursuit,” says Blauer.
There are other benefits than purely physical fitness, says Molitoris. “Climbing can change your world. It has the ability to open your mind, help you problem solve, and take you to new places.” For Clune, that’s just what climbing and the Gunks have given him—a life. “The great thing about climbing is that it can be lifelong. Rock climbing can be really creative. It’s almost like a dance or a puzzle. You have to figure out how you’re going to move your body over the formations. It makes the mind work in a way that’s not completely linear.”
Rock and Snow, located at 44 Main Street in New Paltz, has climbing equipment for rent and sale, among other items. Eastern Mountain Sports, located at 3124 Routes 44/55 in Gardiner, also has a selection of gear and clothing.
Before you go, a purchase of a guidebook or downloading Gunks App s to help you navigate will be invaluable. The latest guidebook Gunks Climbing (2021) was written by a group of climbers (including Fracchia) who climbed all the routes listed in the book. Gunks Apps may be a more cost-effective option and offers similar information. “The app shows base photos of every route, high-res topo photos with lines, GPS navigation, grades, descent information, and detailed descriptions of every climb,” says Fracchia. Since Gunks Apps is authored and maintained by some of the climbers who wrote the guidebook, you’ll have book-quality information at your fingertips.
The guide services in the area all offer a range of options for varying ages and abilities from individual or family outings to adaptive climbing and larger corporate events. “All guide services in the area come equally recommended, so call around to find the option that’s right for you,” says Blauer. Paracliff Hangers and Adaptive Climbing Group, both based in New York City, are focused on providing access to the adaptive community.
The best time to rock climb typically runs from April through mid-November and reservations must be made with each guide service in advance. Guide rates are dependent on the party size and duration of the reservation. Local guides suggest coming prepared with clothing suitable for dynamic movement and layers appropriate for the weather. Bring light hiking shoes, snacks, water, sunscreen, lunch, and a good attitude! For a complete list of guide services visit Rockandsnow.com.
Gunks Climbers’ Coalition and Rise Outside are also great resources for regional climbing information.
Any user of the outdoors has an impact. Guidelines for both the Mohonk Preserve and Minnewaska State Park Preserve can be found on their websites or at each Visitor Center.
Abigail Gierke, originally from the Midwest, moved to New Paltz after living in Colorado for the past decade. Any day filled with time outside is a good one.
Perched in the Catskill Mountains’ Upper Delaware Valley, the Sullivan Catskills has beckoned visitors in search of fresh air, exceptional fishing, and the ultimate in relaxation since the 1800s.
April marks the start of the fly fishing season—the perfect time to try your hand in the world-famous Beaverkill and Willowemoc creeks. Hikers of all levels can find an enjoyable elevation, from challenging trails in Balsam Lake Wild Mountain and Willowemoc Wild Forest to gentle paths on the O&W Rail Trail. Grab a rental from Fortress Bikes in Hurleyville or Cinder Track in Mountain Dale and tour the sights on two wheels.
Interested in a more leisurely pace? The Dove Trail’s sculptures, created in honor of the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Woodstock festival at Bethel Woods, will guide you through charming main streets chock-full of independent retail shops, arts venues, farmto-table eateries, and craft beverage makers.
And when it comes to finding a place to rest your head, the mountain views set the stunning scene—from luxurious resorts to boutique hotels, cozy inns, and campgrounds under the star-strewn skies.
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Wild Earth has served the mid-Hudson Valley with nature immersion experiences that foster community, empowerment, and mentorship since 2004. Programs and workshops for kids, teens, and adults, as well as camps and school programs, get participants “into the woods and off the trails” to engage with the environment, learn wilderness skills, create natural crafts, and build lasting connections.
In celebration of its 20th anniversary, on Saturday, April 29, Wild Earth will be hosting its first gala, “Bow Drills & Bow Ties,” at the Andy Murphy Neighborhood Center in Kingston. The night kicks off with the gala from 5 to 8pm, and includes a cocktail hour with live music from the Bernstein Bard Trio, as well as dinner, dessert, a virtual silent auction, and access to the After Party. (Tickets ($150) and tables for 10 ($2,000) available.) Attendees are encouraged to get a little wild with their semi-formal attire—think flower crowns, acorn necklaces, and other nature-themed accents.
For anyone who wants to connect with the community and get in on the fun at a lower price point, the After Party ($25) runs from 8 to 10pm. Brooklyn afrobeat-influenced indie dance band Underground System will be jamming the night away.
March 2023 marked the third year of the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s not a welcome anniversary, with over one million lives reported lost in the US alone and an estimated 16 million Americans currently struggling with long Covid. Despite scientific advances which swiftly brought us vaccines and boosters, there is still no clear understanding of what exactly causes long Covid. This has created a knowledge gap around diagnosis and treatment protocols that is frustrating patients and physicians. The good news is that many do get better over time, but it can be a long haul.
Long Covid, officially called Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, was first acknowledged in 2020, but its kaleidoscope of more than 200 symptoms often makes it difficult to recognize. Also, symptoms can appear suddenly months or years after an initial infection. Ashley Pugliese, a mother of two from Fishkill became ill with Covid-like symptoms—there were no tests in the US for Covid at the time—in February 2020. After an ER visit, she was sent home with a diagnosis of a stomach bug. But Pugliese didn’t get better, and a battery of ailments plagued her
month after month. Her symptoms, including brain fog, joint pain and swelling, hair loss, vision problems, and crippling anxiety with a racing heartbeat, were debilitating. “It took me over a half hour to get out of bed in the mornings,” she says. Yet, these were dismissed; with one doctor suggesting “maybe you need a spa day,” she adds. There was very little information about long Covid in 2020 and this led Pugliese to found Covid Connection, a support group for women with long Covid.
“Patients can be experiencing a number of disturbing, real symptoms—maybe not lifethreatening symptoms—but very real and very alerting,” explains Alba Azola, MD, codirector of the Johns Hopkins Post-Acute Covid-19 Program. “For example, chest pain, palpitations, and sudden sweating.” The patient goes to the ER and after all the tests come back normal, they rule out a heart attack. “Instead of validating the patient’s experience and symptoms, many physicians dismiss the patient as if there’s nothing wrong with them—which, in my view, is doing harm. So, it’s a huge problem. I think the least we can do as physicians is to acknowledge the symptoms and the limitations of our abilities to diagnose and capture pathology.”
There are now recognized long Covid symptoms. Some of the most common ones include persistent, extreme fatigue, brain fog, headaches, shortness of breath, chest pain, and palpitations—usually lasting more than a month. This is helping patients to self-diagnose, and to guide primary care doctors in referring them for long Covid care—a requirement at many centers. However, there are no specific tests for long Covid. Covid can cause serious diseases like myocarditis (inflammation of the heart), kidney disease, and pulmonary emboli (blood clots in the lungs). Gary Rogg, MD, clinical lead of the Westchester Medical Center (WMC) PostCovid-19 Recovery Program, says it’s important to rule these out first. This can help put patients’ minds at ease. “When most people realize they don’t have something that’s of immediate danger to them, that really helps rest their minds and helps with their anxiety and depression,” he explains. Myocarditis can be diagnosed with an MRI, but there are other long Covid-related
symptoms that can’t be seen on imaging tests.
One of these is brain fog, a cluster of neurological symptoms including confusion, forgetfulness, and difficulty thinking or concentrating, that affects up to 50 percent of long haulers. “When someone has brain fog, they feel compromised and they’re not able to do what they could before. They lose their sense of worth, which becomes secondary depression,” explains Paul Wright, MD, a neurologist and senior vice president and system chair of Nuvance Health’s Neurosciences Institute. He says it’s difficult to determine whether the brain fog causes depression or if it’s a combination of the Covid causing depression and brain fog. “It’s not something someone can see. It’s not as simple as fixing a broken arm. That’s why it’s difficult to treat and that’s why patients are frustrated and seeking help,” Dr. Wright says.
There’s no cure for long Covid. It’s more about managing each patient’s distinct set of symptoms—requiring a personalized treatment plan. “The problem with long Covid is there is no treatment paradigm,” says Dr. Rogg. The biggest challenge, he adds, is “not letting people lose hope. It really does get very disheartening— especially when you’ve had a normal life and now you can’t even walk up a half-flight of stairs without sitting down.”
Another treatment challenge is what Dr. Azola calls, “riding the corona coaster.” Too much exertion one day can cause symptoms to flare up the next. “Patients feel better and then do a lot and then crash for a few days,” she explains. “It’s really important to get them to accept where they are without losing perspective on their ability to get better.” Dr. Azola’s team works with physical therapists to train patients on pacing and energy conservation strategies.
Taking a different, more holistic approach to long-Covid treatment, Raphael Kellman, MD, director of the Kellman Wellness Center in Manhattan, uses specific blood tests to measure inflammation and immune activity. “My approach is to go to the root cause and address problems on a physiological level,” he says. All treatment plans are personalized but he considers the patient’s microbiome (the vast world of bacteria that lives throughout the body) key to healing. “Research shows an unbalanced microbiome plays a big role. They know this in long Covid, even if you don’t have any gastrointestinal symptoms,” Dr. Kellman explains. Balancing the microbiome with a range of pre-pro-and post-biotics, can help restore the microbiome and “tone down the immune system,” he says. He also uses a range of natural compounds, including herbs, nutraceuticals, and supplements, as well as traditional medications when required.
Dr. Rogg says it averages between a year and two years for most people to get better, with about 20 percent having symptoms that linger beyond two years. However, he adds, “when you ask them how they feel compared to six months ago, or a year ago, they all say better.”
Pugliese says she’s now doing “amazingly well.” “I chose one day last March to no longer live being sick. I had to get myself well. That started with getting to my gym, changing my diet, seeking the help of a social worker, and no longer relying on traditional therapies such as prescriptions to help me heal. Not to say I don’t still take certain prescriptions, but I rely on them less and less.” She no longer takes medication for joint pain—only an occasional Tylenol. She’s back to work full time and her symptoms have almost disappeared—aside from some occasional brain fog/forgetfulness, which she attributes to stress.
Despite ongoing efforts via the National Institutes of Health’s $1.15 billion long Covid research program, new diagnostics and treatments may take several years. “Obviously, we as physicians want to help patients and when there’s no quick-pill answer to say take this and you’ll be better next week—it’s a long haul,” says Dr. Wright.
Long Covid will likely be here for a while. As science races to uncover what causes this condition with its barrage of often debilitating symptoms, it may take years to apply that knowledge in the clinic. In the interim, physicians are doing their best with the tools they have to help get people back to good health. And patients are finding what works for them. “For me, getting better has, and continues to have, a lot to do with my state of mind; good friends, my gym, my therapist, and my husband have been my constant check in for that,” says Pugliese. “There are bad, yucky days—but the good ones, now three years later, far outweigh the bad.”
NY Long Covid Care Centers
Survivorcorps.com/pccc-ny
Support Groups
Thecovidconnection.com
Longcovidpatient.com
Long Covid Disability Information
Hhs.gov/civil-rights/for-providers/civil-rights-covid19/ guidance-long-covid-disability/index.html
Long Covid Books
The Long Covid Survival Guide by Fiona Lowenstein
Long Haul Covid: A Survivor’s Guide by Dr. Joseph J. Trunzo and Julie Luongo
“The problem with long Covid is there is no treatment paradigm.”—Dr Gary Rogg, clinical lead of the Westchester Medical Center (WMC) Post-Covid-19 Recovery Program
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The stability of a community is often seen in the strength of its services— from schools to libraries, housing organizations, food banks, and hospitals, just to name a few. In rural areas, ensuring that all residents receive equitable access to these services is a vital part of planning for the health of the community’s future.
No one understands the impact that a service organization can have in a community better than Columbia Memorial Health’s (CMH) new CEO, Dorothy M. Urschel, who began her role this January after three years as CMH’s chief operating officer (COO). With a 30-year career that spans on-the-ground clinical work and administrative leadership, Urschel has a particularly strong understanding of the needs of those whose lives are touched by a local healthcare organization—patients, providers, staff, and everyone in the community.
“On the administrative side, I bring expertise in developing our clinical services that align physicians and other health care providers for consistent, coordinated, and high-quality specialty care,” Urschel says. “At a more fundamental level, I bring the perspective of
Dorothy M. Urschel began her role as Columbia Memorial Health’s CEO this January after three years as chief operating officer.
a person who spent years caring for very sick patients at the bedside. One must never forget that everything we are doing has to be about caring for and serving the patient. If we forget that, we have lost our way.”
Urschel began her career as a critical care nurse in Buffalo, then went on to become a nurse practitioner and worked for over 20 years in intensive care, cardiac surgery, and thoracic surgery. She has held academic positions at the University at Buffalo and Daemen University in Amherst, New York. After moving into a role in healthcare administration, she earned her MBA at the University of Albany.
As CMH’s COO, Urschel developed a keen understanding of its Hudson hospital, more than 40 primary and specialty care centers, and the needs of the over 100,000 residents it serves across mostly rural Columbia and Greene counties. During that time, she played a key role in CMH’s Covid response plan and has been a leading member on the team working to implement a single electronic medical record (EMR) across the Albany Med Health System, which will link all hospitals within the system, allowing patients to access multiple levels of care more seamlessly.
When it comes to the future of CMH, Urschel places great importance on continuing its long-standing commitment to its community by building on its strength as part of the Albany Med Health System. “Our connection with the System and the
region’s academic medical center is critically important as it brings advanced care, resources and expertise to our patients,” she says. “As a rural community hospital, this partnership is essential.”
Under her leadership, CMH will continue preserving local access to specialty care by developing its centers of health care excellence, which are awarded with accreditation for rigorous quality, safety, and patient experience standards. These include programs in pain management, orthopedics, women’s health and gynecologic surgery, breast health, gastroenterology (with an emphasis on endoscopy), and continued growth in primary care.
“Health systems are moving to address healthcare disparities, inequalities, and overall health at the community level,” Urschel says. To that end, CMH will continue to expand on its work with community organizations to provide pediatric care, health literacy programs, addiction counseling, food and nutrition, and mental health services.
“Our vision for CMH, with the Albany Med Health System, is to be the healthcare provider of choice for our community,” says Urschel. “We strive for excellence and innovation while preserving our special culture of ownership and empathy, never forgetting that we are friends and family caring for friends and family.”
Columbiamemorialhealth.org
2023 GUIDE
Well before the daffodils bloom in our gardens each spring, there’s already one item on parents’ minds: A summer camp or program that will help their little buds flourish, too. Luckily, the Hudson Valley is ripe with opportunities for exploration, imagination, and cultural enrichment for teens, tweens, and kids as young as age three. From nature-based programs to creative workshops for burgeoning artists, here are a few wonderful programs to spark your search.
Located in Columbia County, New York, on a sprawling 900 acre Biodynamic farm, we offer both day and overnight camps for children ages 8-16. Campers gain a reverence for the natural world, learn about caring for animals, the earth, and make lifelong memories. Our camp provides a uniquely immersive understanding of where our food comes from, how it gets to our tables, and how to love and respect every being that made that journey possible. Spending time at farm camp can shift the awareness of a person of any age, and bring forth the discovery of independence, selfconfidence and compassion.
Ghent, NY • 518-672-4465 x 201 • farmcamp@hawthornevalley.org hawthornevalleysummercamp.org
Open to motivated students interested in exploring academic and creative interests in a college environment while currently completing grade 9 through 11. Students participate in Simon’s Rock’s signature Writing and Thinking Workshop, Seminar, and arts and science courses to experience diverse and exciting academic offerings. Students live on campus in the college’s residence halls. Students have the opportunity to explore the 275acre wooded campus of natural beauty and trails, nearby downtown Great Barrington, and planned excursions to Berkshire cultural attractions. The two-week program is $3,000 for tuition, room and meals, and off-campus excursions. July 16-29, 2023.
Great Barrington, MA • simons-rock.edu • curiositycamp@simons-rock.edu
Imagine, create, and have fun this summer! Offering immersive arts programming for ages 5-19. Led by professional artists and teachers, young artists will explore fine art, digital media, and performing arts. In the Summer Art Institute, young artists will advance their knowledge of techniques, elements and principles of fine or digital art.
Poughkeepsie, NY 845-471-7477 • thearteffect.org
Get messy and make art this summer! Berkshire Art Center, formerly IS183 Art School, offers fun and creative art camps for young artists ages 4-14 years old. Our camps engage children in visual art exploration alongside local artists, introducing them to a variety of art-making experiences.
Stockbridge & Pittsfield, MA • 413-298-5252
• berkshireartcenter.org
Nature camps for ages 3-6 reflect the rhythm of a Waldorf Kindergarten day—outdoor play, farm visits, and nature walks. Camps for ages 7-13 are designed for the curious learner—farm and garden, circus, fairy camp (more to come) and include outdoor adventure and games.
5% discount for two or more children, use code SIBLING2023.
Rhinebeck, NY • 845-876-1226 • administration@primrosehillschool.com
Berkshire Museum camps offer children going into grades Pre-K through 8 the chance to make connections between art, science, and history in the Museum’s new classrooms and throughout our galleries. Campers develop skills, create art, conduct experiments, and make new friends, all while having a ton of fun!
Pittsfield, MA • berkshiremuseum.org/programs/camp
A fun coed boarding and day camp, takes place on the Forman School campus in Litchfield, CT, during the month of July. The program is a dynamic balance of academics and recreation for students entering grades 7-11 who learn differently. Under the guidance of expert faculty and staff, students discover their unique learning styles while being inspired, challenged, and empowered. They develop effective and tactical classroom and study strategies, learn self-advocacy, and gain lasting confidence in their abilities.
Litchfield, CT • 860-567-1802 • formanschool.org/summer
High Meadow School offers recreational day camp for ages 3–rising 2nd graders and specialized day camps for rising 3rd–8th graders, featuring Wayfinder Experience and Westchester Circus Arts! Sessions run Monday–Friday, July 10th–August 11th. Open to residents and visitors to the area, our seven-acre wooded campus is the perfect place for your children to spend their Hudson Valley summer! For more information or to schedule a tour, visit highmeadowschool.org/summer-camp.
Stone Ridge, NY • highmeadowschool.org/summer-camp
Rockland Center for the Arts (RoCA) is a place for young artists to explore art on our spacious grounds and in professionally equipped studios. RoCA’s large sparkling pool and open field provide plenty of healthy outdoor recreation. Each season, campers learn to express themselves through both the visual and performing arts. Four, two-week sessions: June 26–August 18, with a 3 or 5 day a week option. Saturday open houses: April 15 or May 13 from 2pm–5pm.
West Nyack, NY • 845-358-0877 • rocklandartcenter.org
Join us for some summer fun at the Newburgh Rowing Club’s Summer Rowing and Kayaking Camp! Our waterfront boathouse at Ward Brother’s Memorial Park allows campers to participate in games on water, land, and even indoors during inclement weather.
Newburgh, NY • newburghrowclub.org • coachedkennedy@yahoo.com
HVWP Young Writers Programs bring children and teens together to find their voices, share their ideas, and discover the joy of writing. Experienced teachers create inspiring and supportive settings where students write and explore their interests – art, nature, fantasy, activism, podcasting, and more! Tuition assistance is available.
New Paltz, NY • 845-257-2836 • newpaltz.edu/hvwp
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. Camps are available for ages 4–16.
New Paltz, NY • 845-256-9830 • wildearth.org
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 Director Nancy Rosen. Esopus, NY • 845-384-6424 • horsesforachange.org
Embracing children's innate curiosity toward nature! Weekly themes are guided by daily farm rhythms and individual learning styles. Campers explore the farm fields and forests, care for the animals and plants, practice traditional skills, and make music, arts and crafts. Serving ages 4-15, financial assistance available.
Kingston, NY • 845-383-1528 • seedsongfarm.org
The Vanaver Caravan’s summer dance and music programs, for ages 4-18, welcome students of every level and ability—meeting each dancer as they are, and nurturing personal growth, confidence, community connection, and joy. Workshops are held at MaMA in Stone Ridge from July 10-August 11. New Paltz, NY • 845-256-9300 • vanavercaravan.org
Unleash creativity! Immerse your child in a week of art classes on their favorite subject. Grow skills with painting, drawing, digital, and clay for grades K-12. Programs run Monday-Friday, 10am-12pm and 1pm-3pm with an option to stay for lunch.
Montgomery, NY • 845-457-2787
• wallkill.art
Curious Jane — a summer day camp for girls ages 5 to 11 who like to make things! This August – for two weeks only – we are coming to Woodstock. Join us! August 14-18 and August 21-25 (those tricky final weeks of summer) at Sudbury Valley on the Kingston-Woodstock border. Sign up for one week or both, and choose your favorite theme for the week – Spy Science, Room Makeover, Roller Coasters & Rides, or Mini World. Full-day, full-week, and packed with project-making and plenty of colorful, creative DIY.
Woodstock, NY • 347-770-0420 • curiousjane.fun camp@curiousjane.fun
Conveniently located in the heart of New Paltz, our summer program offers an enriching and nurturing Waldorf-inspired environment for children ages 7–11. We welcome both residents and summer visitors to the Hudson Valley. Our beloved and experienced lead instructors bring wonder and adventure through outdoor play, crafts, building projects using natural materials, song, games, storytelling, and water play. Rhythm and reverence will follow your child throughout the day. Four two-week sessions from June 26–August 18, Monday–Friday, 9am–3pm. $800 for each two-week session. Sibling discounts available. Space is limited, so we encourage you to register early.
New Paltz, NY · 845-255-0033 · mountainlaurel.org/summercamp
Newburgh’s newly minted poet laureate, Genie Abrams, grew up in the Newburgh that Look magazine named its All-American City in 1952. Her father, Albert Abrams, served as city manager; her home on Farrington Street was an easy walk to Downing Park and the public library, and Water Street was a shopper’s paradise.
Her father’s successor, Joseph Mitchell, had been recruited by an openly racist city council member and instituted a series of changes to the city’s welfare system so draconian—aid recipients were made to collect their benefits at the police station, for one thing—that state regulators under Governor Nelson Rockefeller stepped in and eventually sued, and the mess became known as the Battle of Newburgh.
“He was a hideous creature,” Abrams says of Mitchell. “He took a functioning city and ruined it.” That was only one of a series of body blows the All-American City would experience in the 1960s. Urban renewal
confiscated 1,100 homes and seven entire streets— including the riverfront shopping district and the stability of hundreds of families. Interstate 84 opened in 1966, whisking travelers past without a glimpse of the city where Washington had run the Revolution, Andrew Jackson Downing had developed and disseminated his philosophy of landscape architecture, and Thomas Edison had brought thousands to the sidewalks to marvel as the lights went on a Monday evening in 1884, a first for any small city in the land.
By the late 1970s, hundreds of Newburgh’s onceelegant brick homes were owned in bulk by absentee landlords, and the once fabulous Ritz Theater, where Lucille Ball had made her stage debut, was a rundown two-screen movie house. Businesses and job opportunities had fled, leaving the city a sitting duck for the crack epidemic of the 1980s.
The newly formed Downtown District Business Alliance is made up of Newburgh business owners on the east end of the city. Alliance members are pictured outside of Mama Roux on March 13.
Opposite, from top:
Artist Trevor Oakes painting on the Newburgh waterfront. Oakes and his twin brother Ryan are best known for their collaborative three-dimensional artworks made using a concave easel they devised and built.
Ernest and Jaclyn Ramos inside Grow, their neighborhood plant shop on Liberty Street.
“My dad was in the Army, so we were traveling from when I was five and came home when I was 15, in the `80s,” says Jaqui Watkins, co-owner of Newburgh Mercantile with her husband. “It was scary and depressing; you wondered whether it could ever be a functioning city again. People I remembered from childhood were skeletons; I remember my parents talking about who was on crack. As an Army brat, I’d grown up with all colors and cultures—and it seemed like people in Newburgh were blaming African Americans for the mess, which never made any sense to me.”
It was still home, and when Watkins and her husband opened in the late `90s, offering framing services and gifts, she felt something click. “I’ve always been entrepreneurially minded, and it always felt like I was supposed to have a store on Broadway,” she says. “Then one day my mom said ‘Your grandfather used to have a store a couple of blocks down the hill from here.’ I was stunned—I hadn’t known because my grandfather, doing what he had to do as a Black businessman in the `50s, sold moonshine and had a gambling room in the back and had to pay off the cops. The corruption was famous— our city historian was able to tell me the names of the cops involved and everything.”
The framing and gift shop closed for a time following the 2008 economic crash, but reopened in 2014, when then-mayor Judy Kennedy’s revitalization initiatives began gaining traction. “I did the social
media for the Newburgh Illuminated festival from 2015 to 2018; when it outgrew the original focus on small business, I decided my energy could be better used elsewhere.”
Today, she runs a Shop Downtown Newburgh Facebook page with almost 2,000 followers and coordinates a coalition of about 35 indie businesses on shop local initiatives. “People that haven’t been here in 25 to 30 years have been coming back for Shop Small Saturday, bringing their families, walking around, meeting up for lunch at the Wherehouse, discovering stuff they want to do again, and every year it grows,” says Watkins. “My grandfather had to bribe the police to stay in business. Today, I coordinate with them to make the city better for everyone.”
When Michael Gabor and his partner Gerardo Castro moved to Newburgh from New York City in the early `90s, their main quibble was the absence of an art supply store, so they opened Newburgh Art Supply in 2008 on Liberty Street. In 2010, the business moved to a historic building on Grand Street where the couple live upstairs from the shop. “People would drive long distances to get here, because there really wasn’t anything like it,” he says. “There hadn’t been anything to draw them, but now they came here, looked around, and were shocked—and, being artists, they were fascinated. A lot of them found homes and studios and moved in.”
Opposite, from top:
Ted Doering, owner of Umbra Sound Stages, photographed at the Motorcyclepedia, the motorcycle museum on Lake Street that was founded by his father, Jerry Doering.
Umbra Sound Stages on Scobie Drive is a full-service TV and film production facility that recently hosted the filming of the HBO series “Poker Face” as well as Darren Aronofsky’s feature film The Whale
msmc.edu
April 19, 2023 • 10 am–6 PM
Transfer Day is a one-stop enrollment event for students interested in transferring college credits toward a bachelor’s degree!
During Transfer Day, you can:
n Meet with a Transfer Counselor.
n Learn more about the Mount’s career-focused degree programs.
n Receive an instant admissions decision with official college transcripts (high school transcripts are required if you have under 24 credits).
n Meet with an academic advisor to plan your program.
n Register for classes when you pay your enrollment deposit.
Whether you are a transfer or adult student, our Transfer Day is the first important step towards completing your degree.
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Their inaugural Open Studio Tour in 2011 signed up nine artists. “We added ourselves, so it was 11 and we at least had double digits,” says Gabor. “We printed 100 maps and we were thrilled when they were all gone.” The following year, 33 artists signed on; by 2022, there were over 150, and thousands of visitors.
This year’s tour is scheduled for the last weekend in September. “You can walk to almost every location on the map from right here, which is fabulous,” says Gabor. “I’m really proud of helping grow the arts community; the city has an active arts commission that does great stuff, and there are working artists tucked away all over the place. And despite Newburgh’s reputation, we’ve loved it here since day one—this has always been a great place to live.”
Newburgh’s first Mardi Gras-style carnival invigorated downtown in February with a classic “second line” parade and live music at Spirit Lab, Wherehouse, and Mama Roux. “We decided we needed to make something happen, so we pulled it together in two and a half weeks, and turnout exceeded our wildest expectations,” says Sterling Knight, a New Orleans native and owner of Mama Roux. “Everyone did great—we were four deep at the bar. Now I’m holding small business
meetings at Mama Roux the third Monday of every month, pulling together a coalition of everyone—the Pilates studio, the boutiques, the welding company. We want to do something even bigger next year, get everyone involved.
Sims Foster, the guy from Sullivan County who’s opening the urban resort—he and I actually opened a restaurant together in Chicago, and he’ll be at our next meeting.”
Foster’s plan rehabilitates three vacant Grand Street properties into a hotel, spa, event space, and dining destination, and is expected to be transformative for the area just north of Broadway. A mixed-use revolution actually began two decades ago, when Tricia Haggerty-Wenz purchased the decrepit single-room-occupancy Hotel Newburgh and founded Safe Harbors of the Hudson, which brings together low-income housing, artists’ lofts and event space.
Their Cornerstone Residence embodies the “housing first” philosophy, offering 128 safe, well-maintained single-room-occupancy dwellings rich in amenities and services in partnership with Independent Living and SUNY Orange, and now includes a park and is restoring the Ritz Theater. “It’s always been about more than the housing, though that is key,” says current executive director Lisa Silverstone. “Bringing in the arts has made it a community
hub.” Salsa music and movies under the stars, contemporary art openings at the Ann Street Gallery and performances at 2 Alices Coffee Lounge draw in the community, while veterans, people with disabilities, and other oncemarginalized folks enjoy the library, pool table, computer lab, and fitness center.
“Planning at the municipal level and with community partners is the path to, hopefully, the economic turnaround of the city,” says Silverstone. “Everything can’t be supported housing and everything can’t be market-rate; we have to make sure that we can bring in both to secure opportunities for generational residents while we welcome new residents and visitors. It’s common sense, and it seems like it should be easy, but it’s not.” Safe Harbors is currently rehabbing the theater—the lobby is already open and hosting events—while growing their programming and working on a second mixeduse project nearby in partnership with city government. “We’re still smoothing the details, but we’re very excited,” says Silverstone. “It’s looking good, and it won’t be simply housing but another downtown revitalization hub.” Landlordtenant issues are vanishingly rare at Safe Harbors, and Silverstone points out with pride that the property’s outdoor amenities and landscaping have never been vandalized.
Native Newburgher Jerrod Lang opened Blacc Vanilla Cafe on South Street in 2017, and by the following year he was getting the Blacc Vanilla Community Foundation up and running. “I look for the kids that look like me, figure out the situation, and try to offer them a package that can change the narrative,” he says. “If I can get five young men or women a year from downtown Newburgh onto a different track, one that leads to a solid financial future, it brings in money and gives the younger ones fresh aspirations. That’s how you change the perspective downtown.”
Lang says the city’s school district and law enforcement are on point these days, but he’d
love to see a revitalized recreation department. bringing kids from all over the city together. “You don’t go to war against people you got to know before you ever heard of hate,” he says. “More than a city, this is a collection of villages, and we need to build on that—when I was 10, I was all over the city on my bike, and my mom was fine with it because she knew if I had trouble over in the Heights, the phone would ring on North Miller.” So far, he’s gotten 28 young people onto career tracks including the military, manufacturing, law enforcement, and the local IBEW (electrician’s union) chapter, where he’s referred 17 fresh apprentices since 2020, working closely with the school district to identify the kids who might benefit most.
Laura Garcia-Balbuena worked for the school system before taking her current position as community engagement coordinator at the Newburgh Free Library. “The library is a safe place and it’s where a lot of us learned English,” says Garcia-Balbuena, who moved to the city from Mexico at the age of eight. “Now we work with community members to determine the programming they want. We did a Dia de los Muertos celebration that had great turnout and brought together a great group of women from all over Central America, lots of whom were teachers back home, and now we’re planning our Family Day to coincide with Dia de los Ninos—it’s a reading-themed celebration. Five hundred people came out last year. We had a packed auditorium for our Kwanzaa celebration, too.” Along with the festivities, the library—which is managed by the school district—offers a rich menu of services for everyone from infant to elder.
Garcia-Balbuena says that Newburgh’s diverse Latin American community gave her a warm place to land as the child of farm workers and just keeps getting better. “So much great food!” she says. “Do I want tacos, or Peruvian ceviche, or to try the new hot dog place? Then there’s the new shop with all the traditional Mexican snacks. I see loads of immigrants and people of color launching new little businesses, making this a food hub to rival New York City.”
Poet laureate Genie Abrams moved back to Newburgh in 2002 with her family, serving on the City Council for a time and on the Conservation Advisory Council. “When I ran for council in 2014 we had almost 1,000 vacant city-owned houses and now there are less than 10,” she says. (There are still several hundred non city-owned vacant and abandoned properties in Newburgh.) “And we’ve replanted a whole lot of trees. Nowadays I just go out with my little trash-plucker and clean the sidewalks—Public Works does a great job with the streets—and talk to everyone, see if they need anything I can help with. I stepped aside from the Conservation Advisory Council because I felt a younger person, someone of color, should have that spot, and I managed to get that to happen. People ask me if I’m going to run for something again, but I’m happy with poet laureate. ‘Why don’t you run?’ I ask them. ‘It’s your turn.”
Top: Michele Basch and Dan Brown, owners of the Wherehouse on Liberty Street. Many in Newburgh credit the couple for kicking off the revitalization of the Liberty Street corridor when they opened their restaurant in 2009.
Bottom:
Native Newburgher David Lionheart in Grit Gallery on Broadway. “Figures, Burden, Loneliness,” a threeperson show featuring Lionheart’s paintings, as well as sculptures by Morris Shuman and photographs by David Patino, is on exhibit through April 30.
On March 11, Chronogram held a community portrait shoot in the lobby of the Ritz Theater on Broadway in Newburgh. Thanks to all who showed up to represent their city—Newburghers are fierce in their love for their home—and to Lisa Silverstone, June Henley, and the staff of Safe Harbors of the Hudson and Newburgh Farmers’ Market manager Ilyana Ramos. Thanks to the Wherehouse for the burgers and Mama Roux for the postshoot cocktails and snacks.
Join us at the April issue launch party at Jet Set Tiki Bar, 50 Front Street, on Tuesday, April 4, from 4:30-7pm.
Top row: Antonio Varano, board member Greater Newburgh Symphony Orchestra; Aidan Grice, student; John Doerre, member of Newburgh School Board; Erica Hauser, artist; Lynn Maslatzides, baker Body Mind 1 Bakery.
Second Row: Hasina Grice, pastry chef, Perfect Sweets; Anusha Mehar, city of Newburgh Council Candidate; Matt Frohman, owner Spirits Lab; Angela Paul-Gaito, APG Pilates studio owner; Grace Sanchez, Field Trip/Hudson Naturals.
Bottom row: Vanessa Nisperos, social worker and community sailing chairperson at the Beacon Sloop Club, with Marley and Joaquin.
Opposite: Top row: Mary Lou Carolan, executive director Newburgh Free Library; Paulien Lethen, artist and owner of Holland Tunnel Gallery; Chuck Bivona III, owner of Bivona’s Simply Pasta; Mindy Fradkin, aka Princess Wow, entertainer; Jacquelyn Watkins, owner, Newburgh Mercantile.
Second row: James Moed, UX designer and Damien Hughes, theater maker, with Solomon Moed-Hughes and Minerva Moed-Hughes; Nicole Lattuca, artist and Matthew Mottel, musician with Sydny Lattuca Mottel.
Bottom row: Newburgh Environmental Advocates: Gema Vidals Herrera, student at Mount Saint Mary College and 2022 environmental justice fellow; Gita Nandan; Carol Lawrence, volunteer Greater Newburgh Parks Conservancy; Ahmad Free-Cohen, assistant grower at Nuffi; Kathy Lawrence, founding board chair, Greater Newburgh Parks Conservancy; Anusha Mehar; Ronald Zorrilla, CEO of Outdoor Promise; Chuck Thomas, Conservation Advisory Council; Vanessa Nisperos; Marianne Marichal, Conservation Advisory Council. Johanna Guevara, Dropping Seeds Herbal Blends with Mars and Joi.
Like many key ports along the Hudson River, the Newburgh area has a rich history as a hub for transportation, industry, agriculture, and recreation. As the city of Newburgh has experienced a resurgence of interest and community investment in the last few years, so too have its surrounding towns and hamlets—from New Windsor to Marlboro to Montgomery and everywhere in between.
Providing the best senior care since 1983. A full range of services and amenities are all included in the affordable monthly rate. Three delicious home cooked meals are provided daily, as well as medication management, personal care service, activities, 24-hour supervision, assistance with ADL’s, daily housekeeping, weekly laundry service, emergency call system in each room. Salon services are on site with reasonable rates. Physical Therapy can be provided.
450 Temple Hill Road, New Windsor, NY • (845) 565-8110 nwcountryinn.net
Montgomery Mercantile features a wide selection of gifts sure to please. From antiques and local artwork–to beauty and skin care products, baby gifts, jewelry, and an assortment of candy to satisfy your sweet tooth! There’s a little bit of something for everyone in this cozy boutique and gift shop.
18 Bridge Street, Montgomery, NY (845) 769-7094
City Winery delivers a one-of-a-kind, high-end culinary and cultural experience to people who are passionate about wine, food, and music. By combining a fully functioning winery with intimate experiences, City Winery offers a compelling venue to indulge the senses. Visitors can enjoy a wine tasting, take a guided tour of the winery, or simply sit back and relax with a glass of their favorite vintage. The on-site restaurant serves up delicious farm-to-table cuisine, featuring locally sourced ingredients that are sure to satisfy any palate.
Located in Montgomery on 22 scenic acres along the Wallkill River, City Winery Hudson Valley isn’t only about wine and food. Visitors can enjoy a leisurely stroll through the vineyards or simply relax on the outdoor patio while taking in the scenery. Music is integral to the City Winery experience, and music lovers can enjoy their favorite artists in intimate performances or live concerts in the outdoor amphitheater. These events are the perfect way to experience the winery’s unique atmosphere, historic details, and rustic charm.
23 Factory Street, Montgomery, NY • (845) 424-0222 • citywinery.com
Saxophonists Eric Person and the legendary Houston Person are, perhaps surprisingly, not related. But one listen to the new Eric Person disc Blue Vision proves that the alto/soprano man and his guest tenor forbear can indeed relate. While not as driven as the version on Miles Davis’s classic 1956 recording with John Coltrane, Houston’s spin on “Dear Old Stockholm,” a traditional number arranged for Davis by Stan Getz, is loose, scintillating, and delightful, especially with the bumptious organ interplay of Blood, Sweat and Tears keysman Adam Klipple. The octogenarian Person has led 130 studio dates in addition to playing with Etta Jones, Lena Horne, Horace Silver, and Joey DeFrancesco. Eric, too, has a bio to beat the band, including 10 titles of his own and work with leading lights like McCoy Tyner, Dave Holland, John Hicks, and Vernon Reid.
The elder Houston gave the date’s younger, Newburgh-based leader some sage advice: “Don’t forget the blues.” And on “No Doubt True That” and the self-penned title track, which opens the disc with a Monk-like angularity, Eric stays in touch with the form; even more so on a tender, thoughtful reading of the Billie Holiday standard “Lover Man,” which features delicate guitar work from Pete McCann. McCann also shines on Eric’s “Old Man Feathers,” which starts like an organ trio in a smoky bar before launching into mellow horn glory. Eric and Houston
Person’s band Person2Person will appear at the Falcon in Marlboro on April 16.
—Michael EckA couple of things happened in 2020: I lost my store, Jack’s Rhythms, during the first few months of COVID and I started a regular routine of fiveto-eight-mile hikes. Oddly, now that I no longer was selling music I began to listen to more new stuff than ever before and long walks allowed me to absorb that music in a deeper way. Listening to WFMU and The Quietus, an online arts magazine, opened my ears to more new music than I have room to list here, so I’m just going to mention stuff from this past year and some older titles.
Some of my fave 2022 titles include Freezing Hands’ It Was a Good Run (Arizona-based power pop); Lianne Hall’s Energy Flashback (melancholy British folk with a mostly electronic backing); a couple of newer punk bands, Hurry Up, from Oregon, and Oh Boland, from Ireland. I’ve also been digging Nze Nze, a France-based band with elements of dub, punk, industrial, and influences from Central Africa. Hardly a week goes by where I don’t play the Muffs’ Blonder and Blonder and the Geraldine Fibbers’ Lost Somewhere Between the Earth and My Home, both underrated 1995 LPs. Since the recent death of Pharoah Sanders, his Karma album has been getting constant play. I’ve also been obsessed with Utopia Parkway by Fountains of Wayne. I’m looking forward to new albums by Lankum, the Reds, Pinks & Purples, and Sparks. So much music.
For over two decades, Slink Moss—a mysterious Chicago-spawned apparition who now haunts the Copake area—has been unconventionally twisting and tangling rockabilly roots. Floating Ghost Hotel, a 12song collection recorded with guitar wizard Joel Paterson and longtime collaborator/producer Jimmy Sutton, is the latest delightful result. The album’s all-analog atmosphere is agreeably swampy, and its energy thrillingly high, but what really sets Floating Ghost Hotel apart from the ducktail-and-slap-bass brigade is Moss’s fevered imagination. “Magic of the Stone” goes on safari to a mythical Africa, while “Space Cowboy Number One” blasts off on sitar-powered engines. “Beware Beware” and “The Doors of Mr. Bones” are first-rate cryptobilly, and the creepy, creaky instrumental “Ballad X” could easily be subtitled “Music to Haunt By”—but even the more traditional-sounding tracks, like “Honey Bee Bop” and “Kool Kat,” are a stone gas. You can check into Floating Ghost Hotel any time you like, but you may never actually want to leave.
—Dan Epstein
Like Shawn Colvin, Laura Sumner boasts a voice that turns on a dime from vulnerable to confident, a perfect balance of innocence and experience that the Hudson Valley-based folk rock singer-songwriter explores here in detail. Grammy Award-winning producer Marc Swersky bathes the effort in a lush soundscape of shimmering guitars and keyboards. “Cowboy from Queens,” which struts along to Keith Richards-style power chords, is a nostalgic evocation of the joy of having been a newly arrived young artist in New York City enjoying an urban romance full of possibilities, wondering about a fateful road not taken. “Tides” is a tough breakup song that creates empathy both for the singer and the ex-, but you feel the heartache when Sumner sings “I do not love you anymore.” As a five-song EP, Red Clay Blue Sky is a collection of small plates, leaving one looking forward to the delicious, full-course meal that awaits.
—Seth RogovoyIndian Flavor Every Day
Maya Kaimal
CLARKSON POTTER, 2023, $28
“Indian food has a reputation for being intimidating,” writes Maya Kaimal in the introduction for her new cookbook, Indian Flavor Every Day. But as the awardwinning author and founder of Rhinebeck-based Maya Kaimal Foods soon reveals, mastering just a few simple, time-tested techniques from the Indian culinary tradition will have you adding warming masalas and fragrant tarkas—whole spices bloomed in oil—to everything from salads to soups, roasted meats, and even sweets. Taken from Kaimal’s own Western mealtime routines, the 80 accessible recipes, alongside practical techniques and ingredient swaps, are equal parts fun and ambitious, celebrating Indian flavor in all its complexity and ease.
Pattern and Flow: A Golden Age of American Decorated Paper, 1960s to 2000s
Mindell Dubansky
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2023, $65
Tivoli resident and longtime museum librarian for preservation at the Thomas J. Watson Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mindell Dubansky has written the first expansive survey of American decorated paper arts beginning in the 1960s, a period when the field entered new heights of artistry and commercial success. This lavish and immersive coffee table book includes 280 vivid illustrations of intricate patterns and designs. An accompanying exhibition at the Grolier Club in Manhattan, featuring 150 objects from the Met’s Thomas J. Watson Library collection, is on display through April 8.
The Story of the Saxophone
Lesa Cline-Ransome and James E. Ransome
HOLIDAY HOUSE, 2023, $27
Kids will love The Story of the Saxophone as its authors
Lesa Cline-Ransome and James E. Ransome creatively trace the true beginnings of the saxophone from Europe and Mexico to its landing in New Orleans. James, a Coretta Scott King Honoree, and Lesa, an NAACP Image Award winner, have partnered to tell the story of Joseph-Antoine Adolphe Sax, a young man who invented the instrument in Belgium in 1840. The book includes beautiful artwork from the Rhinebeck team and a poster of iconic jazz musicians inside the book jacket to inspire young readers to listen to more jazz.
Jamie MacGillivray: The Renegade’s Journey John Sayles
MELVILLE HOUSE, 2023, $32
Novelist, screenwriter, actor, and celebrated director John Sayles (Brother from Another Planet), a resident of Western Connecticut, has written another historical epic, this time following a pair of young Scots from the Battle of Culloden in 1746 to Colonial America. Pawns in the deadly game of history game where the rules keep changing, Jamie and Jenny continue to cross paths with each other, as well as some of the leading figures of the era—the devious Lord Lovat; a young and ambitious George Washington; and the Lenape chief feared throughout the Ohio Valley, Shingas the Terrible.
The First Two: Real Life Writing
Marta Szabo
TINKER STREET PRESS, 2023, $14.99
The author of two previous memoirs, The Guru Looked Good and The Imposters, Marta Szabo has been the facilitator of Woodstock-based Authentic Writing workshops for over 20 years. The First Two is written in the style of the workshops, which prize truth and immediacy. The memoir is composed of short chapters, mini-memoirs, that sketch out brief scenes focusing on two pivotal (and complicated) relationships with men in her life: one with her father, and one with her first love. The effect is cumulative, each reminiscence adding another narrative layer to Szabo’s story, with lyrical precision and boundless empathy.
Cats have nine lives. They are superior beings—obviously. In The Curator, upon death, you are picked up by the nape of your neck by a giant Mother Cat, who promises a warm nest and an endless supply of milk. Instead of hearing “have a good day,” you’d get, “I hope a cat smiles upon you.” This is just one example of a rich, feline-centric otherworld in Owen King’s latest novel, a substantial work of supernatural fiction which is based just enough in reality to coax plausibility.
The story’s location is vague— “unmappable”—although it is set on the river Fair, with real estate brokerworthy named neighborhoods of No Fair and So Fair, plus the Lees. Apparently, it was founded by people of Nordic descent (subsequently, King makes no references to ethnicity), most significantly a stonecutter who built a castle kept empty in tribute to God, for which he was rewarded with eternal life.
Thus the framework is laid for centuries-long lives, passage into a zombie state aboard a Morgue Ship, souls shifting between human vessels and as light/fuel for other more fortunate souls. In the aftermath of the overthrow of the crown and its cronies, a band of upstarts assume positions of power, although the reason for the coup remains murky. We follow a panoply of characters, primarily Dora (or “D”). Once a cleaner, as she takes over as curator of the National Museum of the Worker, full of wax statues of farriers, drovers, brewers. It sits next to the torched Society for Psykical Research, where Dora’s brother Ambrose died; the walls between the two buildings seem to be a portal for those passing between states of being.
Dora’s paramour, former university student Robert Barnes, becomes a lieutenant in post-coup Volunteer Civil Defense, in essence by donning a green armband. Throughout the book, the assumption of new roles and jobs by merely changing costumes or other external signifiers parallels current sociopolitical trends—transforming a vehicle into a moving billboard proclaiming one’s loyalty by planting banners, or performatively donning paramilitary garb. Ike, who also has romantic ideas about Dora, woos her by obtaining items she needs to flesh out the museum’s displays—tools, costume embellishments, or a bag of glass eyeballs.
There’s a lot to process in The Curator—many givens that warp reality. People are induced, robot-like, into killing themselves. Their souls then enter glass globes and burn to provide light and rejuvenate others. Joven, in life a ceramicist and in afterlife the captain of the Morgue Ship, says: “First you disembark, then you find yourself a body and climb into it.” The land’s sharpshooting assassins are elderly twins, Edna and Bertha Pinter, who sport sea foam green gowns and pearl-handled pistols. New wax figures mysteriously appear, seemingly by osmosis from Psykical, in the Museum of the Worker; one bears a leather handbag with Gucci on it, which Dora takes to be the name of its owner.
The 300-year-old playwright Aloysius Lumm has amassed a fistful of business cards with varying lofty titles, including his current (President, Society for Psykical Research), and more wide-ranging ones (Choreographer Emeritus, The Madame Curtiz Academy of Dance and the Human Shape). Is he a mastermind behind the whole enterprise striving for eternal life and power, before succumbing to a herd of hangry cats? The spinner of a plan to mark souls ripe for the harvesting with simple red triangles? Or simply another cog in the machine?
Despite the fatigue of revolution and a constantly lurking apocalyptic scenario, the tone of the novel is upbeat in the manner of a fairy tale. Dora, despite wearing a bonnet, can cuss like a sailor. Even descriptions of grotesques and Frankensteined zombies have a frank simplicity to them. In a broader sense, the idea that your soul can continue to live in another body (or one made up of different parts), or provide energy for another, is somehow redemptive. The novel flexes the imagination’s muscles, but it resonates with today’s current events. The pointlessness and inevitability of war, the randomness of death but with the potential for reincarnation. The performative nature of power, and obtaining it for its own sake. Always, the omnipotence of cats.
Earlier, I tagged The Curator as supernatural fiction, but it resists genre definition, tapping horror, fantasy, and historical notes. I thought of Stephen King’s work a few chapters in—the facile way he weaves strands of realism with overtly crazy stuff that you just accept. Fie on me, but it wasn’t until after I finished the book that I learned that Owen is Stephen King’s son, and they have collaborated on books and other projects. While it will be a Herculean task to match his father’s output in terms of breadth and popularity, if anyone can rightly carry the torch, look to Owen. May a cat smile upon him.
—Susan YungThe socks that mother bought me didn’t fit, I had to walk to school in ice cold snow. Both the sun and snow were whispering to me... “I feel bad for you.”
School was hard without socks
And when I got home, it was even worse I stepped on a Lego. That night I had bad dreams. In the morning right in front of me were good fresh socks, that fit!
The rest of the day was easy as pie, Until I stepped in the mud.
—Hugh Sullivan (8 years old)Two walls are windows, and inside we write. Outside, the storm, the whiplash tail of a tropical depression, drives rain, horizontal, across green roofs, across the slope of Broadway where cars creep with lights on in this afternoon dimmed by dense clouds. Beyond the flailing trees, the Hudson fades in mist. We know it’s there, bucking moored boats and scudding whitecaps toward shore. My students crane their necks, look out. Some see destruction. Some see fear.
Some see the rain-black street, the Key Bank sign that’s swaying back and forth, as if, one says, it’s waving. Lights go out. My hand keeps writing what I see, or now, do not, and when they flicker on again, the brief electric shock of being trapped inside this building sputters from our bodies. On our pages, words, unsteady, drive to meet the dark.
—Mary Makofskethese pillows are old. nothing will fluff them up. but you roll over and touch me and I can imagine why bishops pray to saints and with barely a pause in kissing we spell l-o-v-e letter by letter, a catchy rhyme in our heads, and as always we laugh at the marvelous mess we make out of the sheets; our signature sex fortifies the sun, the day mood, the floating vowels of our caring conversation.
—Cary B. Ziterthey say you learn something new every day but i’m also forgetting old things every day i think i’m falling behind
—p Sound Characteristics of the Violin Don’t tell me that you’re shaking, that you’re crying.
I don’t want to hear you scream when you see a spider, I don’t want to know you’re frightened, upset, that you can’t catch your breath. That you have PTSD. Because you were abused as a child. You’re not a child now. I don’t want to know that you’re sweating. It revolts me. Full, lively, singing, eloquent, My father would have drawled, “I’m not your cryyyyying towel.”
My handsome, lady-killer uncle would have patted his pockets, his basso voice dropping deeper and filling with laughter, “Wherrrre did I put it? I’m looking for the world’s tiniest violin.” vibrant, clear, glassy, flute-like, shrill, brilliant, What are we looking for? Swapping back and forth how we’ve been battered, injured, neglected, assaulted, molested. Who had it worst?
When we get there? Does someone win? round, pure, muffled, solemn, sobbing, I’m the reverse of the fairy tale cooking pot that eternally refills. The more you fill me with the horrors of your life the emptier I get. So you can put them all back in. But this is part of who I am, you say. I want people to see me and know me for who I am. As if, you fool: anyone can even stand to see or to know anyone else. as if your sob stories ignite an angelic flare that will draw people like moths to leave, as they burn, their powder of compassion all over you, and this Fairy Dust will lift you up like Tinker Bell. As if that would fix you. You don’t get to have any of this fixed. wafting, soft, sweet, merry, dancing, veiled. I have my own life in the tower spinning this straw. Don’t tell me your problems. Don’t tell me.
—Judith A. KarpovaHis purple skin cracked into black.
His fallen hope was never swept off the floor. His cries were swallowed and transformed into black coals.
He was now stuck in a mountain unable to move. Maybe one day his tears will boil his heart and the mountain will breathe.
I burn coal in the basement. I know it’s illegal but it is all I have of him now.
—Martha WilliamsI’m not cool, I’m old.
I flank two Centuries from The axis of one To the tilt Of the next. Where do I Go to get Some heat, A little flower Frond for me, I’m not old, I’m cool at My fingers, I keep Them covered while I sleep. I’m not cold, I’m cool, the Heart beat strumming The days of Sun’s heart Until everything Is cold. I’m not cool, I’m old.
—Marilyn Lucas BlahoThe wind swirls in the ear
Of the child’s song
Hickory Dickory Dock
Slides into the raging sea
We plaster the walls
With the sweat of contagion
We wiggle our toes
To prove they are still there
We tumble into a speechless void
Where nothing glistens
Or holds the light
Whispering half vowels
Into the slipperiness of the night
Where everything is flung
Like a query turned upside down
Like an appeal spun into cotton candy
Like a truth rubbed into incineration
By the masked raiders of the night
Tumbling into the lair of infinity
Where nothing congeals
And the day implodes
And seconds crumble into zero
And I watch your sleeping face
And remember simpler years
When the morning light
Entered into the room
With a spring in its step
And a glory hallelujah
Welcoming the world in
With a smile as wide
As a Cheshire cat
Meowing up at the moon
—Bruce Weber
mUSe
I hold us inside of me because you are my mUSe —lokal_yokel
Across the Bargello’s grand gallery he stands, contrapposto posed, a slim boy’s ebonized body, a break in the floral garlands of art— the museum’s classical order of arches. The hat of Thrice-Majestic Hermes on him shows that he is a Florentine. Like a cloak of invisibility he flaunts his nudity, and lowers his eyelids slowly and smiles. His hands are clutching murderous weapons. The giant’s own heavy sword that severed his helmeted head rests in a delicate hand at the hilt. This is no swordsman’s grasp. In the sinister hand, attached at his side, he cradles a deadly stone, his thumb molded against the flared hip, balancing the half-hidden rock like a plaything of intifada. Did the old warrior watch this youth, stripped down to greaves for armor, roll smooth stones cupped in his hand, until one shot from the whirling sling, bringing death? This is no Judean shepherd. These soft fingers never combed the twisted wool of desert sheep. Instead, this is the artist’s dream of lyric death—beauty inviting the outreached fingers to feel, as of scar tissue, this skin.
—Royal Rhodes
Faith
What are the options-east-west-up-down? Find a spot and spin around, Keep faith that you will be found. Take me to the auction, Start the bidding low, the mirror has shown, a pale face and dimming glow.
—Tara
NachimsonUFO Directions
May the potholes disappear from the road before you, chipmunks salute, and birds perch on your shoulders.
Let fish leap from rivers to whisper your name, UFOs land and aliens ask where you are.
—John Blandly
it’s rather the to-be-found we’ve awakened to for nearly a million mornings— the velvet house plant, the form of our hands never quite explained— it’s like that, I suppose: each revelation just out-of-sight, hid behind some unbearable light.
—r. s. mason
Down the hill each morning and up the hill each night––the sun in my eyes both coming and going,
I see your sign at the end of the driveway that says, “No Eggs Today”
Try as I might to spy your hens, in the moment it takes to pass by, I never see so much as a feather.
Yet, I cling to the hope your sign implies, that one day I will see a different sign.
This sign will say, “Eggs Today.” and I will turn into your driveway to purchase a dozen.
We will chat about your hens. I will ask if you have given them names (as did my friend Paul, who was so fond of his “girls.”)
Until, one night, a raccoon chewed into their henhouse, (or jimmied the lock, for they are said to be quite clever) and killed them all.
Paul said (I hadn’t known) the raccoon didn’t do it to eat the hens. He only wanted the corn in their crops.
I hope that is not the reason why you have no hens, and therefore, no eggs.
I hope it is only, that you have retired from the egg game, and left your sign up as a reminder to passersby that you can’t always get what you want.
—Frank WrightAMANDA
By Peter AaronIn addition to all of the amped-up insanity that has happened in the world at large, much has happened in the world of Amanda Palmer since your arts editor last sat down with her, in November 2014.
The now 46-year-old singer-songwriter and cult queen of contemporary cabaret published a bestselling book. She released two solo albums, 2016’s Piano is Evil (an acoustic remix of 2012’s Theatre is Evil) and 2019’s There Will Be No Intermission. And two duet albums, 2016’s You Got Me Singing with her father, Jack Palmer, and 2017’s I Can Spin a Rainbow, with Legendary Pink Dots leader Edward Ka-Spel. And a collaborative album, Forty-Five Degrees, which benefitted Indigenous Australians affected by the 20192020 Australian bushfires. She also completed six tours, one of them with her reunited band the Dresden Dolls. And she split with her husband of 12 years, author Neil Gaiman—but not before giving birth to the high-profile couple’s son, Anthony “Ash” Palmer Gaiman, in 2015. And, of course, there was Covid. Right now, though, over coffee in her adopted hometown of Woodstock, she’s dealing with the conundrum du jour: an early March snowstorm that’s bringing with it emergency school closures.
“I didn’t quite submit to motherhood at first,” she says between exchanging texts about coordinating child pickups with the local mothers’ group she belongs to. “I kept running, kept touring. My brain never stops taking dictation, it never stops writing songs. My instinct is to process everything that happens to me or is going on around me through songwriting. But when Covid hit, it was ‘game over.’ I couldn’t keep running. I chose to stop and focus on mothering.”
In March 2020, Palmer was in New Zealand with Gaiman and Ash on the last leg of a 14-month world tour for There Will Be No Intermission when the virus decided that no, there would, in fact, be an intermission.
“I had four shows left in New Zealand when the country went into total lockdown,” recalls the singer, whose ex-husband, in a move that saw him reprimanded by UK government officials, left after two months for his vacation home in Scotland. “I’m not some big star with two nannies. I was suddenly a solo new parent with my kid and nothing else except what I had in one suitcase, stranded at an Airbnb in a foreign country. I’d come there expecting to play four shows and stay eight days, and what everyone at the time thought was going to be a two-week lockdown ended up becoming two years and two months. That’s how long Ash and I were there. Besides changing my relationship with him, it really put me in survival mode.”
As a street-performer-turned-DIY-musician who’s chiseled her own path, “survival” is a mode that Palmer knows well. In the late 1990s the Lexington, Massachusetts-raised artist started the DIY experimental theater troupe the Shadowbox Collective, which staged productions at venues around Boston, and developed a miming character called the Eight Foot Bride, who she performed as to change-giving onlookers—and trashtossing detractors—in Cambridge Square for five years. After she’d majored in theater at Wesleyan University, the singer-songwriter and keyboardist met drummer Brian Viglione at a party in 2000 and the two instantly clicked. They formed the steampunk-y Dresden Dolls, who built a Brechtian buzz on the Northeastern scene and soon signed with major indie Roadrunner Records. Driven by mischievous, outsider anthems like “Girl Anachronism” and “Coin-Operated Boy,” their debut, 2004’s The Dresden Dolls, hit the underground charts and the duo hit the highway, eventually touring with Nine Inch Nails and playing Radio City Music Hall as part of the 2007 “True Colors” traveling revue with Cyndi Lauper, Margaret Cho, and Erasure’s Andy Bell.
But, as any musician will tell you, the music business has its downs as well as its ups. Exhausted from their relentless roadwork, the group decided to take a break. Their singer released the solo Who Killed Amanda
Palmer, but soon parted ways with her label. With living and touring costs mounting as the internet decimated album sales, Palmer turned the web on itself: She encouraged her fans to take her music for free while asking that they please make a donation of whatever they felt was adequate in exchange. Overwhelmingly, her followers honored her request and put something in the kitty to help her continue. Then, when it came to time make her self-released 2012 album Theatre is Evil with her new backing band, the Grand Theft Orchestra, she launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project. The effort netted an astonishing $1.2 million, the most successful Kickstarter campaign by a musician to date, with most of the funds going toward, Palmer says, the production and shipping of the album and related premiums.
News of the phenomenal results led to Palmer’s doing a series of TED Talks about her experiences with direct fan support, which in turn led to her authoring the 2014 memoir/artist self-help book The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help which quickly became a New York Times bestseller. In the wake of these big ups, however, came one of the big downs. Controversy erupted when on her website she asked for “semi-professional” musician fans who were planning on coming to shows on the Theatre is Evil tour to volunteer to play a couple of songs with her and her band for beer, hugs, high-fives, and merch, instead of cash.
With the request appearing so soon after she’d made headlines with the Kickstarter triumph, the post generated a firestorm of criticisms from those who saw it as taking advantage of musicians, and, in the end, she navigated the situation by making a point of paying the guest accompanists after all. Palmer maintained that the dust-up was a misunderstanding of the particular artist-fan dynamic that exists between her and her followers, but for some observers the damage was done, and their negative comments lit up the blogs for months after. And yet, as the book’s sales would indicate, not everyone was put off by Palmer and her Art of Asking. Many were, as she’d hoped they’d be, inspired by it.
“I read Amanda’s book when I was in high school, and it changed the way that I thought about art,” says Woodstock musician Storey Littleton, the daughter of Daniel Littleton and Elizabeth Mitchell of indie rockers Ida. “At the time, I was spending most of my time playing classic rock covers under the direction of a music teacher who took great joy in viciously making fun of anything that wasn’t within his personal canon. I developed some really limited opinions about art which made me miserable and judgmental, and altogether completely freaked out by the idea of my own creativity. Something clicked in me when I read Amanda’s book, particularly the sections about her time as a street performer. It made me realize how boring it was to shut yourself off from things that you don’t understand at first and might make you a little uncomfortable. I became really interested and receptive to musicians who had something to say, and a lot less afraid to take risks creatively.” Storey would go on to perform, elatedly, with Palmer for 2018’s “The Sounding Joy” Christmas concert at Levon Helm Studios, an annual benefit for social assistance group Family of Woodstock’s Washbourne House homeless shelter in Kingston, and at other area events.
Palmer credits crowdfunding with keeping her and Ash afloat during her stressful stretch of being alone and unable to work—outside of an occasional livestream performance of fan-requested songs and podcasts— while the two were quarantined in New Zealand. She
does admit, though, that she had many moments of unease at not being able to give the fans more while she was unable to tour or record with her band. “I’d written this bestselling book about it being okay to ask for help when you’re an artist and you’re trying to do your art,” she says. “And here I was, freaking out about my life and feeling guilty that I needed help. My [nearly 1,500] patrons really had my back, though. They continued to donate through Patreon, messaging me with encouraging words and telling me, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay. Here, pay your bills. Do what you need to do. We’ll help you and we’ll still be here when you start up again.’ So that whole time was a life-changing trial, and it’s been so incredibly amazing and humbling to have support like that.”
Also crucial during her Kiwi confinement was the system of socialized medicine that is a given in the South Pacific nation. “To be able to take Ash to the hospital there when he broke his finger and there not being a bill at the end of the visit—that was a powerful moment,” says Palmer. “It reminded me about how back in America we just take for granted the whole state of being stressed and in terror over getting hit with these huge bills for health care and having to figure out how to pay them.”
Another dramatic difference between life in New Zealand and America, one that struck a chord just recently, is the contrast between the countries’ gun laws. Semi-automatic weapons were banned almost immediately in New Zealand after the horrific 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings. “Ash had really enjoyed learning to fish when we were in New Zealand,” says the artist, who has since her return to the US has been part of a TED-sponsored program that works with inmates at the maximum-security prison in Coxsackie. “So one day I said, ‘Hey, let’s go get you a fishing rod and go fishing!’
and I took him to [local sporting goods chain]. We turned the corner into the fishing tackle area of the store, which, it turns out, is right next to the gun department—and, right there in front of me and my seven-year-old kid… there’s an actual assault rifle just sitting there for sale.” Palmer chokes up a bit, clearly emotional. “So then I’m thinking, ‘How do I talk to him about this? How do I deal with having to think about this, after all of these school shootings?’, You know?” She shakes her head.
The current assault in America on abortion rights has also been on the mind of the single mother—a veteran of three abortions herself. “One of the themes of There Will Be No Intermission is abortion, and I toured all of 2019 with abortion activists as part of the production,” Palmer says. “Watching the direction of what was going on in the US with abortion rights when I was that tour and then getting back to more of it has been a horror show.”
But back she is. And while preparing for a performance this month at the Bardavon—one of only three solo shows she’ll be doing this year—Palmer has been reembracing and is being reembraced by the Woodstock creative community she’d been away from for so long, bonding with the other new mothers there along with their kids and collaborating with some of the many musicians who also call the region home. Back as well are the Dresden Dolls, who played three sold-out shows last year at town venue Colony and are gearing up for a US tour in May and June (six of the tour’s 12 dates are already sold out).
“As long as I can, I want to make songs that make sense and mean something to anyone who hears them,” says Palmer. “To be an artist of service.”
Honky
April 5, 12, 19, 26. Local guitar whiz Connor Kennedy rose from taking his first musical steps at area open mics to performing with Lindsey Webster, Kate Pierson, and Little Feat’s Bill Payne to joining the revived Steely Dan. This month, Kennedy, who’s also led his own bands and recently toured with Rachel Yamagata, is running this country music series at Rice Hall VFW Post 1386. With a promise of “dancing, cold beer, hot pickin’,” each night will feature Kennedy and his crack band of drummer Lee Falco, keyboardist Will Bryant, and bassist Brandon Morrison. Pedal steel great Cindy Cashdollar will join the group for the April 12, 19, and 26 shows. 7pm. $10. Kingston. Facebook.com/connorkennedymusic
Laufey
April 7. “I’m definitely very influenced by composers like Ravel and Chopin,” says Icelandic-Chinese singersongwriter Laufey (pronounced “Lay-vay”). “But when I discovered the Great American Songbook and the music of George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers, it felt like this middle ground between jazz and classical that suited me perfectly.” Raised between Reykjavík and Washington, DC, Laufey, who here visits the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, mixes pop jazz and lo-fi bedroom pop and has collaborated with the Icelandic Symphony and London Philharmonia orchestras. (Joan Osbourne plays with Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams April 14; the Manhattan Chamber Players perform April 23.) 8pm. $24-$44. Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Mahaiwe.org
April 10. Described as “the most future-seeking guitarist working right now” by NPR, Mary Halvorson has brought vital new breath to the New York experimental jazz scene. As a band leader she’s released an armful of acclaimed albums, and as a collaborator she’s worked with leading lights like Marc Ribot, John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Jessica Pavone, Weasel Walter, Tom Rainey, Elliott Sharp, and Ches Smith. Her new project Clone Decay, which also features Kalia Vandever on trombone and Weston Olencki on trombone and electronics, hits Quinn’s for this April date. (Drummer Bryan Kopchak hosts the first Thursday jazz jam April 6.) 8:30pm. $20. Beacon. Facebook.com/QuinnsBeacon
April 13. Malian master of the ngoni, an ancient traditional lute found throughout West Africa, Bassekou Kouyate has worked with such names as Paul McCartney, Youssou N’Dour, Ali Farka Toure, John Paul Jones, Bela Fleck, the Kronos Quartet, Taj Mahal, Blur’s Damon Albarn, and Snarky Puppy’s Michael League. Mentored by the great Toumani Diabate, he became a member of the kora virtuoso’s Symmetric Orchestra in the 1980s and with his wife, singer Amy Sacko, produced a number of popular cassettes and was in constant demand on Malian television. He brings his enchanting band, Ngoni Ba, to the Falcon for this rare upstate appearance. (The Jeff “Tain” Watts Quartet jams April 2; SunDub stirs it up April 22.) 7pm. $30 suggested donation. Marlboro. Liveatthefalcon.com
Rick Wakeman
April 15. In which the hallowed Yes keyboardist makes his way back to the Bearsville Theater for an evening of his music and stories. Before his time in Yes and Strawbs, Rick Wakeman was a much sought-after session musician in the late 1960s and early 1970s who played on more than 2,000 records that include such hits as Cat Stevens’s “Morning Has Broken” and David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and “Life on Mars”; he’s also played with other notable artists like Donovan, Cilla Black, Marc Bolan, Black Sabbath, Lou Reed, Mary Hopkin, Al Stewart, Elton John, and John Williams. 8pm. $49-$79 advance; $54-$84 day of show; $150 VIP meet and greet. Bearsville. Bearsvilletheater.com
Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams
April 22. For this rollicking night, hometown heroes Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams return to the spot where it all happened—“it” being Levon Helm Studios, the site where Live at Levon’s!, their newest album, was recorded. Guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Campbell and singer and guitarist Williams are, of course, very familiar with the venue, having both been long-time accompanists of the late Band drummer, who called the rustic venue his home. Expect a packed turnout for this event headlined by today’s beloved first couple of American roots music and their ace band. Will Lawrence warms up. (Cabinet opens up April 13; the Heavy Heavy weighs in April 14.) $80 seated, $45 standing. 7:30pm. Woodstock. Levonhelm.com
“If you look at this, it’s heartbreaking, in a way,” remarks Tilman Baumgartel, a visiting media scholar from Berlin standing on the second floor of the Greene County Council of the Arts in Catskill. We are surrounded by artifacts from the life of Douglas Davis, a video pioneer who died in 2014. Soon after his death, these videocassettes, film canisters, posters, silkscreens, and photographs were taken from Davis’s studio at 80 Wooster Street in SoHo and deposited in an old house in Saugerties. In the intervening nine years, mice and silverfish have thrived among the artworks, and the roof of the house nearly collapsed. Now the materials have been cleaned and sorted, but it’s still unclear if the videos will play.
Baumgartel opens one of the 16mm film cans and smells it: “No vinegar!” This is good news. When film decays, it smells like vinegar.
“Douglas Davis: Inter-Actions (Selected Works 19701980)” is a retrospective of the influential Fluxus artist opening on April 15 in two locations: CREATE Gallery in Catskill and Hudson Hall in Hudson.
“Davis had two super-successful careers, one as a writer and one as an artist,” says Baumgartel, who is researching and cataloguing the artist’s archive. Douglas Davis was the art critic for Newsweek for 19 years, and quite possibly the first person to use the term “postmodern” in print. He penned three books, including Art and the Future (1973). Davis was also one of the earliest video artists, experimenting with the new medium in the 1960s.
Davis broke the “fourth wall” of video, by directly addressing the screen itself. He would erect a freestanding window in front of a camera so he could press his face and other parts of his body, against it. (Sometimes he performed naked.) Davis appeared to be pushing himself against the viewer’s TV screen. The intention was to make a human connection through the cold medium of television.
Electronic Hokkadim (1971) was a performance at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, in which Davis arguably invented the call-in TV show. Images on the screen would respond to sounds listeners made over the phone. The intention was to make television a twoway medium, not simply a broadcast. Idealism was at the foundation of his art. Davis envisioned a worldwide democracy where everyone participated at home, electronically—a self-governing global village.
He also created more abstract works, such as Present Tense (1975), an installation consisting of a TV turned toward a wall. An observer could only see the faint reflection of the screen—television transformed from a source of entertainment to a flickering light, intended as an aid to meditation.
For a retrospective of his work at the Whitney Museum in 1994, Davis created The World’s First Collaborative Sentence, one of the earliest artworks on the Internet. Anyone could add to the sentence, and write anything they wanted, as long as they didn’t use a period. The Collaborative Sentence combined many of Davis’s ideas: democracy, spontaneity, the liberating power of
“DOUGLAS DAVIS: INTER-ACTIONS (SELECTED WORKS 1970-1980)” AT HUDSON HALL AND CREATE GALLERY
April 15-May 28 Hudsonhall.org; Greenearts.org
technology. This conceptual work went into the Whitney collection and is currently available online.
What was revolutionary 52 years ago appears charmingly quaint today. Davis’s 1970s mustache makes him look like an undercover cop. And most of the images from the videos are in black and white. By the `70s, broadcast TV had gone to color, but the avant-garde still worked in shades of gray.
The person who rescued Davis’s archive was Margaret Nowack, a Catskill resident with a master’s degree in museum studies from George Washington University. She worked as curator at two historic houses, the Woodrow Wilson house in Washington, DC, and Villa Finale in San Antonio. Last October, she hired three helpers and a U-Haul trailer and saved Douglas Davis from oblivion.
“Douglas Davis: Inter-Actions (Selected Works 19701980)” will run April 15 through May 28 at the CREATE Gallery in Catskill and at Hudson Hall.
—Sparrow
Two concurrent exhibitions at LABspace in Hillsdale present a dynamic juxtaposition of personhood and place: The group show “Body High” offers a fantastical perspective of the human form in an energetic blowout of colorful chaos, while “Dee Shapiro: Peripheral Visions” transports us to gritty street corners and stoic cityscapes devoid of any figures at all. Side by side, these shows are a visual feast of varying proportions: The imaginative gymnastics of human embodiment as witnessed in “Body High” are balanced by the solitary scenes of Shapiro’s architectural isolation.
With “Body High” living up to its buoyant title, nine artists explore the multidimensional realms of mortal realities through paintings and works on paper that occupy the entire gallery space from floor to ceiling in an all-out celebration of radical compositions and diverse styles. Zohar Lazar’s dense, cartoon-like, psychedelic illustrations of delightfully bizarre characters and Michael Van Winkle’s motley troupe of frolicking fellows with oversized fingers and noses, for example, are contrasted with Lois Dickson’s abstracted female at a dance class and Julia Schwartz’s simple gouache series of a lone woman in various states of repose with her kitten.
The diversity of the “Body High” panorama is further fleshed-out through sacred scenes of male intimacy by Jacob Fossum; richly hued contorted bodies by Olivia Tawzer; ashen ghostlike figures by Pauline Decarmo; and sweet, silly, and kinky paintings by Kelsey Renko and Rebecca Litt. One lap through this exhibit does indeed produce a sense of euphoria, and a second
round reveals yet another layer of pleasing jubilation.
The transition from “Body High” and its enunciated adventure of the corporeal into the adjacent gallery and the exquisite atmosphere of Shapiro’s urban and pastoral landscapes is a dramatic shift in scale and focus. All uniformly measuring 2 by 10 inches and painted between 2000 and 2010, this series of horizontal works are stunningly perfect in their reverence and reflection. Ranging from familiar visions of compact urban thoroughfares from her travels around the globe to the muted geometry of rural life, every one of Shapiro’s paintings is a mini masterpiece. When my eyes landed on Cardenas (2003), this petite representation of fading afternoon light at an intersection somewhere in Cuba moved me to tears with its purity and pause. Among these painted treasures by Shapiro, works such as East 94th Street (2002), Red Hook (2007), and Cruising the Hudson (2009) capture the dignity of the New York region and its varying geographies.
Shapiro’s Peripheral Visions is a poetic encapsulation of a periphery that exists somewhere between time and timelessness, and these works also attest to a decade gone-by for the artist. “Every 10 years I try something else,” Shapiro says. Thus, the physical-metaphysical encounter to be had at LABspace this month—from gracefully silent metropolitan moments to the wild miscellany of bodily eccentricity—invites us to consider the carnal and the industrial as parallel spheres of human revelry and realization.
—Taliesin ThomasThe Carnal & the Industrial “BODY HIGH” AND “DEE SHAPIRO: PERIPHERAL VISIONS” AT LABSPACE
Through April 30 Labspaceart.blogspot.com
“Just What I Needed,” “My Best Friend’s Girl,” “Drive,” “Shake It Up”—the Cars created some of the biggest hits of the 1970s and ’80s. The band’s image was that of cool, serious rockers, so it might be a surprise to some fans to learn that their keyboardist, Greg Hawkes, who’ll play Cars classics with Boston band Eddie Japan at Daryl’s House on April 29, counts big band prankster Spike Jones as one of his influences and performed musical comedy before joining the nascent new wave icons.
“Oh, I love Spike Jones!” enthuses Hawkes, who toured and recorded with comedian Martin Mull and was briefly half of a Firesign Theatre-esque duo prior to meeting Cars founders Ric Ocasek (guitar, vocals, songwriter) and Benjamin Orr (bass, vocals) when he played on the sole 1972 album by their previous project, the folk-based trio Milkwood. “I guess some sensibility of that comes out on [toy instrument-augmented Cars track] ‘I’m in Touch with Your World,’ which I played ratchet and Acme siren on.”
Hawkes was born in Fulton, Maryland, in 1952 and majored in composition and flute at Berklee College of Music in Boston. He was with a band called Waves and doing studio work when he met Ohio transplants Ocasek and Orr during the Milkwood sessions, which led to his membership in their next project, Richard and the Rabbits. When that outfit disintegrated, he joined Mull’s revue and folk rockers Orphan before replacing future Gov’t Mule keyboardist Danny Louis (then known as Danny Schliftman) in the newly assembled Cars. The quintet quickly became staples on Boston’s budding punk scene, and local radio airplay of their demos got the big labels a-callin’. They signed with Elektra for their 1978 debut The Cars, which sold six million copies; Candy-O came in 1979, bearing the Top 20 “Let’s Go,” followed by 1980’s Panorama (“Touch and Go”), 1981’s Shake It Up (the Top 10 title track and “Since You’re Gone”), 1984’s Heartbeat City (“You Might Think,” “Magic,” “Drive,” “Hello Again”), the 1985 Top 10 single “Tonight She Comes,” and 1987’s Door to Door (“You Are the Girl”). The band split in 1988, although in 2005 Hawkes and Cars guitarist Elliott Easton put together the touring New Cars with Todd Rundgren and his Utopia bandmates Kasim Sultan and Prairie Prince. In 2010, the Cars started up again, minus Orr, who died in 2000, to record Move Like This in leader Ocasek’s hometown of Millbrook. Following their 2018 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and Ocasek’s 2019 death, the surviving Cars called it a day.
Hawkes hooked up with Eddie Japan to coproduce the ensemble’s 2017 album Golden Age and began playing Cars songs with the seven-piece act soon after. “I was reluctant to do it at first, because I didn’t want it to be perceived as a tribute band,” says the multi-instrumentalist, who indulges his lighter side by performing and recording solo ukulele versions of Beatles, Tin Pan Alley, Christmas, and, yes, Cars songs. “But the members are great musicians, and it’s been really fun. So we’ve kept it going, just doing a show once in a while. Forty-five years after the first Cars album came out, I’m still amazed that people know the songs—let alone that I’m still playing them.”
April 8 at Arts Society of Kingston
Local actor Taylor Seupel’s short film Suicide Eyes—a 14-minute dark comedy meant to prompt discussion of an oftentaboo subject—returns for an encore following its February debut. Hailed by educators as a must-see, the film follows a young man named Jake who decides to end his life. Still, there are circumstances he can’t escape and events that unfold— to which he must bear witness. Join Seupel, a SUNY New Paltz grad, for a Q&A following the screening. Askforarts.org
“Tinder Live! with Lane Moore”
April 8 at Colony Woodstock
Tired of spending your Saturday nights swiping left (or right)? Lean into the ridiculous reality that is online dating at “Tinder Live! with Lane Moore.” Watch as Moore takes to the stage to project her phone screen as she swipes through the local harem of men on Tinder and engages in an evening of playful, interactive hilarity with the audience. Followed by an exclusive book signing with Golden Notebook, two weeks before Moore’s second book, You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships as an Adult, drops on April 25. Colonywoodstock.com
April 15 at Unison Arts Center
Fans of John Burton’s radio show and podcast “Home from Here”—stemming from his depiction of a mental health crisis and the ensuing legal journey— won’t want to miss his mid-month performance in New Paltz to benefit Unison Arts Center. “I think the subjects of mental health, creativity, music, the legal system, and a redemptive path through all of that resonate way more broadly than I thought they would,” says Burton, whose show (which took four years to write) is testament to the arts pulling him back into community and binding us all together. With guitarist Rich Dashnaw. Unisonarts.org
The Bard Lectures with Neil Gaiman
April 15 and 16 at the Fisher Center
Award-winning author Neil Gaiman joins the 20th anniversary season at the Fisher Center with a lecture series on writing, in which he will explore creative strategies, share stories, and offer advice—live and in-person. The Bard professor and Fisher Center Advisory Board member’s illustrious career, spanning journalism to graphic novels plus myriad accolades for stage and screen writing, serves as the foundation for his talks. The conversation commences with “Why Be a Bard?” and “A String of Pearls: How We Come to Be Us” and concludes in October with the final trio of talks. Fishercenter.bard.edu
April 25 at The Egg
In a bout of serendipitous timing (March marks the show’s 20th anniversary season), the current cast of the Emmynominated “Whose Line is it Anyway?” will descend upon Albany to hatch a hilarious evening of improv, live at the Egg. Join Ryan Stiles, Greg Proops, Jeff B. Davis, and Joel Murray as they present 90 minutes of improvised comedy (and song!) inspired by audience suggestions and, by extension, participation. Watch and wait as witty scenes reveal the next stage star—who could be you. Fun for all ages plus PG-13 language. Theegg.org
April 20 at Hudson Hall
Hudson Hall’s inaugural film series, Movies on Mainstreet, invites audience members to experience the magic of the single-screen picture palace each month via classic films curated by hometown heroes. April’s pick, Odds
Against Tomorrow (director Robert Wise’s taut 1959 noir partially shot on location in Hudson and featuring myriad local residents as extras) is not only rooted in Columbia County—the film’s dramatic focus, a heist, goes down in Hudson—
April 7-27 at Upstate Films
Local film buffs take note: April is the coolest month to catch one of 21 flicks showcasing the art of cinematic sound in Saugerties and Rhinebeck. Sonic Wave, a month-long celebration at Upstate Films, is putting the brand-new speakers, amps, and controllers at Starr Cinema and Orpheum Theater to the test beginning April 7. Settle into your seat for music from across the ages, including Prince: Sign o’ The Times, Carole King: Live from Central Park ’73, Little Richard: I am Everything, and The Who’s Tommy. Copresented with Bardavon Presents. Upstatefilms.org
A still from Prince: Sign o' the Times, screening this month as part of Upstate Films' "Sonic Wave" series.
but also includes a special exhibition of original on-set photographs provided by the Hudson Area Library History Room. Indeed, there’s no place like home. Hudsonhall.org
“Rude Mechanics”
April 20-30 at Bridge Street Theater
Despite its long-ago setting (London, January 1612), “Rude Mechanics” rings hauntingly relevant. The world-premiere by playwright Eric Hissom unfolds in a South Bank theater (in the court of King James) as they frantically prepare for a royal performance. What begins with a spear carrier in Shakespeare’s troupe ultimately gives way to a period comedy about the insanity-turned-wonder of trying to create art—and by extension produce theater—during a time of pandemic, ahem, plague. Like the River Thames, this show promises to be fast and furious (not to mention fun and likely phenomenal). Bridgest.org
Tig Notaro
April 21 at the Bardavon
After her September 2022 appearance in Poughkeepsie was canceled, Tig Notaro is poised to say hello to Dutchess County. Again. Lauded for an ability to bring levity to heavy moments (“Hello, good evening, I have cancer” is the opening of her 2012 album, Live), Notaro—named one of the “50 best stand-up comics of all time” by Rolling Stone—is bringing the “Hello Again” tour to the Bardavon in celebration of lots of things—chief among them Drawn, a 2021 animated stand-up special turned album. Swing by and say ‘hi.’ Bardavon.org
Benefit for the Vanaver
Caravan’s Projects in Auroville
April 22 at Matagiri
Since 2014, the Vanaver Caravan has created cultural exchange programs in India, sharing world dance and music in schools and communities. This winter, they visited to Auroville for the fifth time, working with 200 students from the Aikiyam School. On Earth Day, Matagiri in
Mount Tremper hosts a benefit concert for the Caravan to sustain their wok in India. The concert will open with a performance by semi-retired satirists Mikhail Horowitz and Gilles Malkine, followed by Bill and Livia Vanaver, fiddler Chelsea Needham, and members of the Vanaver Youth Dance Company along with special guests. The music and dance company, which celebated its 50th anniversary in 2022, is one of the most longstanding and vibrant parts of the Mid-Hudson Valley arts ecosystem. Vanavercaravan.org
John John Brown
April 22 at Howland Cultural Center
John John Brown’s “concerts” are nothing short of novel: The Kerrville New Folk winner is at home sharing the stage with giant comics, iconic photographs, and moving panoramas—all of which converge in “Songs, Stories, & Art— Lessons from Strangers,” an original project turned live performance. Brown introduces his audience to 14 distinct characters (from an aging Vietnam veteran to a young man with mental illness wandering through Walmart) while strumming his six-string and delivering a moral: Each of us has a story others can learn from. Howlandculturalcenter.org
Hudson Valley Tango Festival
April 28-30 at the Senate Garage Enthusiastic dancers and brave newcomers alike are invited to Dojo Dance Company’s Tango Festival 2023—featuring a full slate of master classes, afternoon practicas, and evening milongas for all abilities. Revel in the strains of live music from the Latin Grammy award-winning Pedro Giraudo Tango Quartet (Saturday) and Pittsburgh Tango Trio with Javier Sanchez (Sunday) and watch the seductive steps of tango stars Hugo Patyn and Celina Rotundo, direct from Buenos Aires. Dojodancecompany.com
—Hannah Van SickleAfA unique book of poems sharing stories in an authentic way. ‘Afsanah” means; ‘story’ in Urdu Language.
510 WARREN ST GALLERY
510 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“Pointe du Vue.” Photographs by Lionel Delevingne. Through April 30.
THE ALDRICH CONTEMPORARY
ART MUSEUM
258 MAIN STREET, RIDGEFIELD, CT
“Kathleen Ryan: Head and Heart.” Large-scale sculptures. Through May 14.
ART GALLERY 71
71 EAST MARKET STREET #5, RHINEBECK
“Heather Schwegler.” Paintings. April 1-30.
ANN STREET GALLERY
104 ANN STREET, NEWBURGH
“'Cause We Be Complicated:Dialogues of Black Artists.” Group show. Through April 29.
ART OMI
1405 COUNTY ROUTE 22, GHENT
“Shared Space—Collective Practices.” Work of four international collaborative design practices: WIP, FUNdaMENTAL Design Build Initiative, Colloqate Design, and Assemble. Through May 7.
ARTS SOCIETY OF KINGSTON
97 BROADWAY, KINGSTON
“Silk & Stone.” Paintings by Susan Angeles and terrazzo art furniture by Larry Godfried. April 1-30.
ATHENS CULTURAL CENTER
24 SECOND STREET, ATHENS
“In the Moment.” Group show. April 22-May 21.
BAU GALLERY
506 MAIN STREET, BEACON
“Weather Wear.” Mixd-media textiles addressing the crisis of climate change. April 8-May 6.
BILL ARNING EXHIBITIONS / HUDSON VALLEY
17 BROAD STREET, KINDERHOOK
“Notational.” Work by John Hatfield, Robin Kahn, and Paula Hayes. Through May 13.
CAROL COREY FINE ART
6 NORTH MAIN STREET, KENT, CT
“Abloom.” Floral and plant work by Elise Ansel, Andy Harper, Susan Hartnett, Mathias Meyer, James Mullen, Tim Nighswander, Shelley Reed, and Lorna Ritz. Through April 23.
CARRIE HADDAD GALLERY
622 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“In the Balance.” Work by Joy Taylor, Cinda Sparling, Ralph Stout, Joseph Richards, Peter Hoffman, and John Griebsch. Through April 16.
CATSKILL ART SPACE
48 MAIN STREET, LIVINGSTON MANOR
“Carter Hodgkin, Nene Humphrey, and Jon Kline.” Through May 6.
CENTER FOR PHOTOGRPAHY AT WOODSTOCK
474 BROADWAY, KINGSTON
“Black Photobooth.” Over 100 miniature portraits of Black Americans, mostly from the 1930s and 1940s. Through June 4.
CRAVEN CONTEMPORARY
4 FULLING LANE, KENT, CT
“In Conversation.” Nine works by Bruno Leydet, each paired up with work by another artist, including David Hockney, Alex Katz, Nan Goldin, Catherine Opie, and others. Through April 16.
CREATE CATSKILL GALLERY
398 MAIN STREET, CATSKILL
“Stepping Out of History: Telling Our Own Story.” Exhibition of work by women-identifying artists. Through April 9.
“Douglas Davis—Inter-Actions: Selected Works 1970-1980.” A selection of video performances, publicity posters, prints, and photographs. In conjunction with a simultaneous show at Hudson Hall. April 15-May 28.
CUNNEEN-HACKETT ARTS CENTER 9 & 12 VASSAR STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE.
“Energy Shift.” Work by Penny Dell. Through April 28.
D’ARCY SIMPSON ART WORKS
409 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“Why Look?” Paintings by Xan Peters. Through April 30.
DIA BEACON
3 BEEKMAN STREET, BEACON
“Jack Whitten: The Greek Alphabet Series.”
Forty works from Whitten’s Greek alphabet series. Through July 10.
ELIJAH WHEAT SHOWROOM
195 FRONT STREET, NEWBURGH
“Amplifier” Installation of oversized paintings by Marton Nemes. Through April 29.
FORELAND
111 WATER STREET, CATSKILL
“Foreland Artists Group Show.” Work by Tania Alvarez, Jesse Greenberg, Kathryn Lynch, Heather Bursch, Padma Rajendran, Caitlin MacBride, Susan Lisbin, Corinne May Botz, Samantha Bittman, Maggie Hazen, Amanda C. Mathis, Elbert Perez, Lisa M. Thomas, Philip Buller, Clair Catillaz, R. B. Schlather, Henri Broyard, Lyle Ashton Harris, Sam Vernon, Marlene McCarty, Marc Swanson, Nicole Cherubini, Laleh Khorramian, Tomaz Capobianco, Cat Tyc, and Jeremy Sutton. Through April 16.
FRANCES LEHMAN LOEB ART CENTER
124 RAYMOND AVENUE, POUGHKEEPSIE
“What Now? (Or Not Yet).” Work by Andrea Carlson, Andrea Geyer, Jeffrey Gibson, Marsden Hartley, Jenny Holzer, Sky Hopinka, Arnold J. Kemp, Wangechi Mutu, Dorothea Tanning, Nari Ward, and Audra Wolowiec. Through May 7.
GALLERY40
40 CANNON STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE
“Prayers & Plastic” and “Ancestral Tales.” Suprina and Elisa Pritzker. April 1-30.
GARAGE GALLERY
17 CHURCH STREET, BEACON
“Another Place.” Paintings by Scott Daniel Ellison and photographs by Susan Keiser. April 8-23.
GARDINER LIBRARY
133 FARMER’S TURNPIKE, GARDINER
“1970s Celebrities & Notables.” Photographs by Michael Gold of celebrities in the 1970s, including John Belushi, Phil Rizzuto, Cicely Tyson, and many others. April 5-May 1.
GARNER ARTS CENTER
55 WEST RAILROAD AVENUE, GARNERVILLE
“Sari Dienes and Vladimir Cybil Charlier.”
Through April 23.
GARRISON ART CENTER
23 GARRISON’S LANDING, GARRISON
“Sandy Moore: This Happened.” Paintings. April 8-May 7.
“Tony Moore: Eternal Becoming.” Ceramic sculptures and fire paintings. April 8-May 7.
GREEN KILL
229 GREENKILL AVENUE, KINGSTON
“Tom Corrado, Deirdre Day, Franc Palaia.” Group show. Through April 29.
The Ancestor, Xan Peters, oil on canvas, 72 x 36 inches. Part of the exhibition “Why Look?” at D'Arcy Simpson Arts Works in Hudson through April 30
GRIT WORKS | GRIT GALLERY
115 BROADWAY, NEWBURGH
“Figures, Burden, Loneliness.” Work by Morris Shuman, David Patino, and David Lionheart. Through April 23.
HESSEL MUSEUM OF ART
BARD COLLEGE, ANNANDALE
“Rising and Sinking Again.” 16 exhibitions organized by CCS Bard’s graduating class. April 1-May 28.
HUDSON MILLINER ART SALON
415 WARREN ST, HUDSON
“Experience.” Fine art and photography from Robin Rice Gallery. Through April 28.
HUDSON HALL
327 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“Douglas Davis—Inter-Actions: Selected Works 1970-1980.” A selection of video performances, publicity posters, prints, and photographs. In conjunction with simultaneous show at CREATE Council on the Arts in Catskill. April 15-May 28.
HUDSON VALLEY MOCA
1701 MAIN STREET, PEEKSKILL
“Through the Eye of the Needle.” Group exhibition of handcrafting featuring Inez Andrucyk, Jan Baracz, Jill Bell, Anita Bracalente, Jodi Colella | Jaynie Crimmins, Adrienne Cullom, Sandi Daroza, Natasha Das, Sherry Davis, Sophia DeJesus-Sabella, Donise English, Philippe Halaburda, Jill Kerttula, Natalya Khorover, Barbara Korman, Carole P. Kunstadt, Lori Lawrence, Nicole Mazza, Sharon Pierce McCullough, Patricia Miranda, Elizabeth Morisette, Ellie Murphy, Diana Noh, Erik Jon Olson, Karla Rydrych, Michael Seri, Arlé Sklar-Weinstein, and Mary Tooley Parker. Through April 22.
JANE ST. ART CENTER
11 JANE STREET, SAUGERTIES
“Go Figure.” Group show. April 8-May 7.
KARMA ROAD ORGANIC CAFE
11 MAIN STREET, NEW PALTZ
“Born Wild.” Nude in nature fine art photography and mixed media work by Elsa Marie Keefe. Through May 1.
KATONAH MUSEUM OF ART
134 JAY STREET, KATONAH
“Miniature Worlds: Joseph Cornell, Ray Johnson, Yayoi Kusama.” Exhibition explores how social networks shape artistic practices in the owrk of three pioneering artists. Through June 25.
Untitled (Sun Box), Joseph Cornell, wood and glass box construction with wood, metal, glass, paint and printed paper collage, 10 1/2 x 15 x 5 inches, c.1958
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
LLC, New York, NY
© 2023 The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation /
Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Part of the exhibition “Miniature Worlds: Joseph Cornell, Ray Johnson, Yayoi Kusama” at the Katonah Art Museum through June 25.
KENISE BARNES FINE ART
7 FULLING LANE, KENT, CT
“Brett Eberhardt and Gregory Hennen.” April 1-May 14.
KINOSAITO
115 7TH STREET, VERPLANCK
“Murray Hochman: New Dimensions.”
“Patrice Renee Washington: Tendersweet.” Both shows through May 7.
KLEINERT/JAMES ARTS CENTER
34 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK
“These Days.” Byrdcliffe annual members’ show.
Through April 16.
LABSPACE
2642 NY ROUTE 23, HILLSDALE
“Body High.” Paintings of the human form by Pauline Decarmo, Lois Dickson, Jacob Fossum, Zohar Lazar, Rebecca Litt, Kelsey Renko, Julia Schwartz, Olivia Tawzer, and Michael Van Winkle. Through April 30.
“Peripheral Visions.” Paintings by Dee Shapiro. Through April 30.
LIGHTFORMS ART CENTER
743 COLUMBIA STREET, HUDSON
“Unraveling the Journey x 3.” Work by Ifetayo Cobbins, Chimba, and Virginia Dow. Through April 16.
LONGYEAR GALLERY
785 MAIN STREET, MARGARETVILLE
“Farms, Farmers, and Farming: A Tribute to Local Agriculture.” Group show. Through April 23.
MARATHON
6 MARKET STREET, ELLENVILLE
“is it a dream or a memory?” Group show. Through May 14.
MARK GRUBER GALLERY
13 NEW PALTZ PLAZA, NEW PALTZ
“Avian Art.” A bird show. Through May 6.
MASS MOCA
1040 MASS MOCA WAY, NORTH
ADAMS, MA
“Love from Vicki Island.” Playful and provocative sculptures by Daniel Giordano. Through September 30.
MUROFF-KOTLER VISUAL ARTS
GALLERY
491 COTTEKILL ROAD, STONE RIDGE
Broken Monarchs.” Installation by Marielena Ferrer on the effects of confining animals that naturally migrate. Through April 14.
NEWBERRY ARTISAN MARKET
236 MAIN STREET, SAUGERTIES
“Go Figure Sculpture.” Group exhibition. April 8-May 14.
PAMELA SALISBURY GALLERY
362 1/2 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“Elliot Green: Ascension.” April 8-May 14.
“Judy Pfaff.” Paintings. April 8-June 18.
“Lothar Osterburg: The Long Way In.” April 8-June 18.
“Will Hutnick: Eternal Sunshine.” April 8-June 18.
PINKWATER GALLERY
56 NORTH FRONT STREET, KINGSTON
“Homebase.” Paintings by Pakistani-American artist Roohi Saleem. April 1-May 21.
PRIVATE PUBLIC GALLERY
530 COLUMBIA STREET, HUDSON
“Snowman: Recent Paintings.” Work by George Lawson. Through April 8.
"Ship/Dock/Three Houses and the Night Sky."
Sculptural installation by Donna Dennis. Curated by Chris Freeman. April 22-May 28.
SAMUEL DORSKY MUSEUM OF ART
1 HAWK DRIVER, NEW PALTZ
“Hudson Valley Artists 2023: Homespun.”
The 2023 edition of the annual Hudson Valley Artists exhibition explores how 18 artists are re-interpreting traditional crafts and “women’s work.” Through April 16.
“Be Who You Are: Portraits of Woodstock Artists”. Photographs by Harriet Tannin. Through July 16.
“The Historic Woodstock Art Colony: The Arthur A. Anderson Collection.” Through July 23.
SEPTEMBER
4 HUDSON STREET, KINDERHOOK
“Freaky Flowers.” Work by Nicole Basilone, Annie Bielski, Han Cao, Jennifer Dierdorf, Sheila Gallagher, Valerie Hammond, Allison Hester, Melinder Keifer, Melora Kuhn, Judith Linhares, Becca Mann, Katie Minford, Sarah Alice Moran, Taylor Morgan, Donna Moylan, Jo Nigoghossian, Alison Owen, Amy Ross, Sonia Corina Ruscoe, Allison Schulnik, Ellen Siebers, Eleni Smolen, Caitlan Rose Sweet, Becca Van K, Julia Von Eichel, and Darren Waterston. April 1-May 28.
STONE RIDGE LIBRARY
3700 MAIN STREET, STONE RIDGE
“Fork in the Road.” Art by incarcerated individuals curated by Claire Wasserman. Through April 29.
LACE MILL GALLERIES
165 CORNELL STREET, KINGSTON
“Larry Alice: 1952-2022.” Paintings, sculpture, and writing by Larry Alice. April 1-30.
SUSAN ELEY GALLERY
433 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“Form Undone.” Mike Childs and James Isherwood. Through April 9.
TIME AND SPACE LIMITED
434 COLUMBIA STREET, HUDSON
“Father Knows Best.” Work by Christine Heller. Through April 23.
TIVOLI ARTISTS GALLERY
60 BROADWAY, TIVOLI
“Sculpture and Ceramic Show.” Group show. April 28-May 28.
TURLEY GALLERY
98 GREEN STREET, SUITE 2, HUDSON
“PrtScn.” Work by Gracelee Lawrence. April 8-30.
UNISON ARTS & LEARNING CENTER
68 MOUNTAIN REST RD, NEW PALTZ.
“Soul Reflections.” The work of the Soul Reflections Photography Collective: Ben Eichert, Micah Fornari, Melanie Gonzalez, Maria Fernanda Hubeaut, Kristopher Johnson, and Michael Torres. Through April 2.
VASSAR COLLEGE MAIN LIBRARY
124 RAYMOND AVENUE, POUGHKEEPSIE
”Beauty out of the Ashes: Printed Works of the Harlem Renaissance, 1923-1936.” Through June 12.
VISITOR CENTER
233 LIBERTY STREET, NEWBURGH
“Provenance.” Work by Sophia De JesusSabella, Soull Ogun, Patricia Orpilla, Sagarika Sundaram, and Mia Wright-Ross. April 15-June 3.
WEST STRAND ART GALLERY
29 W STRAND ST, KINGSTON
“Figurative Images: Seeing and Being Seen.” Work by Judith K. Brodsky, Roca Rodriguez Calero, and Carmen Lizardo. April 1-May 14.
WIRED GALLERY
11 MOHONK ROAD, HIGH FALLS
“Split Vision.” Paintings by Raul Serrano. Through May 6.
WOMENSWORK.ART
4 SOUTH CLINTON STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE
“Visions of Spring.” Group show. Through April 22.
WOODSTOCK ARTISTS ASSOCIATION AND MUSEUM
28 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK
“Active Members’ Spring Exhibition.” Group show. Through April 16.
“Restoring Indigenous Voices: Landscapes from the Permanent Collection.” Through April 9.
“Small Works: Play/Fun.” Group exhibition is juried by Melanie & Ryan Cronin of Cronin Gallery. Through April 16.
“Alpine & Riverine.” Group show of regional artists juried by Willian L. Coleman, Wyeth Foundation Curator. April 21-June 4.
“Norma Morgan: In the Lands of the Moors and Catskills.” Paintings, drawings, and engravings by Norma Morgan (1928-2017). April 21-September 10.
“Sabine Reckewell: On Opposite Sides.”
Site-specific installation made up of curving linear geometries of various yarns and industrial webbing. April 21-June 4.
“Scott Chasse: Friends in Higher Places.” Paintings of UFOs. April 21-June 4.
By Cory Nakasue
The beginning of April brings the middle of Aries season. All of the energy that we bottled up over the winter is now ready to explode into one hearty push to make something (anything) happen. Aries isn’t so concerned about the results of its actions so long as there is action. Even though Mercury moves into slower-paced Taurus on the 3rd, it’s no match for the explosive energy that’s possible around the 11th as the Sun and Jupiter conjoin in Aries. Venus also has a spring in her step as she moves into fleet-footed Gemini. This month’s full moon in Libra, on the 6th, may give us a little smack on the wrist if we’ve overstepped our bounds in all of our excitement. It’s more of a love-tap than a reprimand. That Libra influence is just reminding us that if we move too fast or forcefully, someone might get hurt.
April is also host to an extremely rare hybrid solar eclipse in Aries on April 20th. A hybrid solar eclipse combines an annular and a total solar eclipse where the former becomes the latter and then usually reverts back. This event symbolizes the month so perfectly as we have signals to run out the door and signals to go back home. In fact, on the day of the premature-weirdo eclipse in just-do-it Aries, the sun enters wait-for-it Taurus. To add to the conflicting forward-backward shenanigans, Mercury stations retrograde in Taurus on the 21st.
This month is a teaser for sure. It’s like watching the trailer for a movie you can’t wait to see, and then finding out it won’t be released until next year. Netflix reruns it is. Or, maybe we can learn to savor excitement, relish anticipation, and use patience as a way to extend our enjoyment.
ARIES (March 20–April 19)
You’re usually so focused on chasing the object of your desire that you forget to consider what you’d do with it if you caught it. Maybe your true desire is the chase. This month you have an excellent opportunity to parse out what you’re attracted to because it’s useful and meaningful to you, and what you’re attracted to because it’s running away from you. Tremendous amounts of energy are available to you right now for expanding your sense of self. You’d do well to focus some of that energy on what will support the growth of the person you’re becoming.
TAURUS (April 19–May 20)
Even you, slow, steady Taurus, can have a few tricks up your sleeve, and the fact that no one suspects any surprise moves from you, makes you trickier. How could you use this to your advantage? Especially when it comes to communications, could a backtrack, U-turn, or some other reversal make you look or feel particularly good? Sometimes Taurus feels that once it’s made up its mind about a matter, it has to stick to it. This month’s astrology is asking you to let yourself off the hook of interminable consistency. Find that loophole. Raise some eyebrows!
GEMINI (May 20–June 21)
Imagine you at a loss for words! Even with Venus gracing your sign for two more weeks, it can’t quite keep you from feeling a certain blockage between mind and mouth. Only, it’s not your conscious mind that has your tongue all tied up, it’s the thoughts and feelings that are lurking beneath the surface. All of sudden, you’re second-guessing yourself. “Is what I’m about to say true?” “Is that what I really think?” While frustrating for someone so usually glib, this month is a gift. It offers the opportunity for your dual personas to catch up with each other.
CANCER (June 21–July 22)
With a Sun-Jupiter conjunction and solar eclipse lighting up the sector of your chart that governs visibility and reputation, get ready to be seen! Typically, you tend to be quite private, so this may feel uncomfortable. Take some precautions to avoid over-exposure. For those of you who’ve been toiling away in obscurity, get ready for some long overdue recognition! With Mars in your sign (finally), after being hidden for seven months, most of you might desire the spotlight. And some of you may be chasing positions of greater influence, power, and responsibility. It’s because you’re ready.
LEO (July 22–August 23)
After last month’s big shake-ups in your sign, you might be looking forward to things slowing down. This month’s Mercury retrograde offers you the chance to slowly comb through any agreements or decisions that were made in haste at the beginning of the year. The crisis is over, and now it’s time to do the meticulous clean-up work and retrofitting that will help secure a situation at work or in significant relationships. It may be very tempting to skip steps right now. Think of ways to make the work of feeling your way through the morass of information a pleasurable and meaningful experience.
VIRGO (August 23–September 23)
Any gaps in your education or skill set might show themselves now. No need for embarrassment or shame, just think of it as a friendly cosmic reminder to revisit some old lessons, research, or studies. Your ruling planet, Mercury, is turning retrograde on the 21st. It’s quite possible that your thoughts are drifting back to former teachers and maybe even going back to school. This month, there’s treasure to be found in going back to basics and reassessing the origins that your more complex ideologies come from. A few steps back could solve some equations that haven’t been adding up lately.
LIBRA (September 23–October 23)
Around the full moon in your sign on the 6th, differences between yourself and others may be exaggerated. Instead of being instantly turned off, and deeming this “other” an enemy, take a closer look. You’ll be rewarded with an expanded and more inclusive view of yourself. Usually, our outsized, knee-jerk repulsions to others are reactions to parts of ourselves we have not accepted. Taking a step toward something or someone who seems threatening in an attempt at understanding can be liberating! Basically, direct all the Libra harmonizing you’re so good at toward situations that look antagonizing. You’ll be revitalized!
SCORPIO (October 23–November 22)
You finally have the energy and inspiration to make big, sweeping changes in your everyday life. You’re ready to tackle projects you’ve been dreaming about by implementing schedules and sharpening the tools needed to get the work done. How dare these other people slow you down! The people in your life aren’t just trying to annoy you, they want to remind you that if you go too hard, too fast in your pursuit of change, you’ll burn out. They also want to remind you that they exist and deserve as much attention as your personal obsessions.
SAGITTARIUS (November 22–December 22)
Your horoscope ruler, Jupiter, is having a meeting with the Sun in bombastic Aries. This is like pouring gasoline on the sparks of your imagination. You’re in the midst of a visionary wildfire. Passions (artistic, romantic, and recreational) could consume you. Enjoying this ferociously good time could just be a great way to reconnect to your vitality. You could also mold these inspirations into creative expressions, relationships, or life changes that will keep the fire burning for years to come. Planets that are occupying your chart’s work sector suggest that you possess the tools to cultivate these runaway flames.
CAPRICORN (December 22–January 20)
I recommend that you take a look at The Garden of Earthly Delights, the famous painting by Hieronymus Bosch. What do you see? Do you see a punishment for the indulgence of the flesh or a warning about the temptations of pleasure? Or, do you see a celebration of the body and nature? However you interpret these images, take note. Your impressions might reveal new insights about how your approach to sex, romance, and all material gratifications are changing. What’s the difference between a guilty pleasure and your sensual birthright? What you think about pleasure changes your experience of it.
AQUARIUS (January 20–February 19)
Looks like you’re itching for a change of scene. The ironic thing is, the “new” experience you’re craving might be satisfied by revisiting the past. You left something behind a couple of years ago. Whether it was a place, person, job, or ideology, there’s something in your past that needs to be revisited and, perhaps, reclaimed. This may take some courage on your part, which you have in spades. You may be surprised to find that this item from your past can be new to you. There truly is nothing new under the sun, only new ways of seeing.
PISCES (February 20–March 19)
As your life begins to take a new shape, don’t forget to put some extra effort toward the things that will sustain this new shape. It’s time to be a little selfish, especially with your money, material assets, or anything else that’s of high value to you. This is usually a difficult thing for the more universally minded Pisces to do, and it can also be a main contributor to a sense of low self-worth. I’m not advocating stinginess—that goes against the basic nature of Pisces. Just pay yourself first. This includes attention, compliments, and respect.
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Dozens of black birds rushing in the same direction catch my eye. Dozens and dozens more follow, taxing and then defeating my powers of multiplication. I am once again in the starlings’ world, unexpectedly immersed in their secret religion.
It is not strictly their numbers that force me to stop and tune my eyes and ears to their rituals, but also their faithful dedication. Ten thousand beauties, each with its own fine wings of pearlescent darkness, move as one body, reverently submitting to a singular call that each seems to hear as clearly as a bell ringing.
Flying to assembly on branches of maple and oak, the starlings’ cacophonous chatter would indicate frenzy if not for the causal order displayed in the trees. The faithful are patiently waiting for the latecomers, who trickle in, claiming their seats. I blink and lose sight of the single bird whose flight I was tracking. She has found her place and is suddenly indistinguishable from the others around her. There is no hurry as they wait, and just when it seems everyone is present and content to sit, the mystical bell is rung again—another silent signal causes a slow cascade, a spilling over of souls descending to the ground.
A shower of black snowflakes falls from a blue sky as, one by one, each creature reaches a moment of fullness, and releases. Inexplicably, one leaves a
branch where others stay and wait, so that the air is always filled. The trees slowly empty and the ground fills up with birds, like an hourglass that streams a steady flow while sand disappears and accumulates in proportion. The loud chatter is also proportionately diminishing; not the decrescendo of a choir, where all begin to gradually sing more softly, but a dropping out of voices altogether. The great dive from branch to ground is done silently, and the chatter comes from fewer and fewer until the last of the black lace drops to the ground like a falling veil.
Feet on the earth, the congregation assumes a humble posture for a few moments, bowing to collect whatever nourishment can be found—a bite of something to eat, a drop to drink. With mouths busy, there is only a murmur from the gathering that blankets the ground. Then suddenly, with a clockwork precision that once again transforms many thousands into one, the air is filled with a boom and an echo like a far-away cannon shot. Each small, delicate body has beat two wings against the air at the same moment, and they rise, as one, into the sky. No trompe l’oeil painting is necessary on the ceiling of their cathedral, which is always open to the sky, the heavens, and the ringer of the bells.
—Mary Woodburn
Some things are just better in a particular season, like wool socks, fresh tomatoes, and pumpkin spice lattes. It’s true, too, if you want to go solar. While adding solar to your home or business is a smart decision at any time, spring is the ideal time to go solar and save money!
Fun fact: on average, there’s 20-25% more sunshine in April than in March, and those numbers only get better as we move into the summer months. More sunshine plus more daylight means more energy fueling your solar array. And in New York, your utility even allows you to “bank” the unused energy you produce as credits toward your energy bill in the off-season. That means the solar goodness just keeps on giving all year round.
Need a few more reasons to check out solar? Going solar means moving away from fossil fuels and using the sun’s clean energy to power your life, which is huge for our communities and for the world…Not to mention you could reduce your electricity bill by as much as 90% and have nearly 50% of the cost of your solar installation covered if you’re eligible for New York State and Federal incentives.
Have we piqued your interest? If so, now is the time to maximize your investment, bank as many solar credits as you can, and cut your energy bill and carbon footprint to boot. Spring into action and contact SunCommon today to make your green dreams a reality!
