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BUILDING BRIGHTER FUTURES
12 24
The viewing platform at Kaaterskill Falls.
by David McIntyre
COMMUNITY PAGES, PAGE 40
DEPARTMENTS
6 On the Cover: Elisabeth Ladwig
The cover image was inspired by a Shel Silverstein poem.
9 Esteemed Reader
Jason Stern remembers Barney, a remarkable horse
11 Editor’s Note
Brian K. Mahoney on how foreign words can sometimes express situations better than English ones.
FOOD & DRINK
12 Rooted in Resilience
Factory farms dominate much of the US, but Hudson Valley small-scale operations champion sustainable, community-centered agriculture, preserving local heritage and resisting industrialization’s toll on animals, the environment, and family farms.
14 Sips and Bites
Recent openings include Parrillada Family Meals in Rosendale, Isola Wine & Tapas in Kinderhook, Athena2Go in Poughkeepsie, Bernadette’s Bistro in Kingston, Big Eddy’s Brewing Co. in Narrowsburg, and Cozy Corner Cafe in Cold Spring.
HOME & GARDEN
18 Warehouse Fleecing
A dilapidated warehouse becomes a whimsical, art-filled home and studio, blending history, creativity, and trompe l’oeil mastery in Claverack.
HEALTH & WELLNESS
28 Floor Plan
Pelvic floor therapy offers personalized, holistic care to address stigma-shrouded dysfunctions impacting daily life.
HOLIDAY SHOPPING GUIDE
32 Buy Local This Season
With so many independent creators and curators across the Hudson Valley, Catskills, and Berkshires, it’s never been easier to buy high-quality handcrafted items.
COMMUNITY PAGES
40 Catskill: A Community in Motion
New shops, a comedy festival, and housing initiatives highlight Catskill’s growth and resilience.
50 Catskill Pop-Up Portraits by David McIntyre
THE RIVER NEWSROOM
48 Preserving Paradise
Community Preservation Funds empower Hudson Valley municipalities to protect open spaces, historic sites, and natural resources for future generations.
RURAL INTELLIGENCE
56 The Hidden Heroines of Anita Kunz
Discover unsung heroines in “Original Sisters,” a striking portrait series celebrating women’s global achievements.
Photo
12 24
A cartoon from Swami Salami, a collection of Michael Esposito’s work for the Woodstock Times stretching over 40 years.
BOOKS, PAGE 59
ARTS
58 Music
Peter Aaron reviews Apple Eye by Droney Rose. Michael Eck reviews Rhythm Edge by Eric Person. Tristan Geary reviews Fermata by Michael Eck. Plus listening recommendations from Liam Singer, the owner and manager of Avalon Lounge in Catskill as well as a musician and composer.
59 Books
Richard Kreitner reviews A Hudson Valley Reckoning by Debra Bruno, in which the author uncovers the region’s (and her own family’s) unsettling legacy of slavery, weaving rigorous research with personal reflection in a profound and necessary historical exploration.
Plus short reviews of Queer Mythology: Epic Legends from Around the World by Guido A. Sanchez; Ghosts of a Holy War by Yardena Schwartz; Swami Salami by Michael Esposito; Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Biography by Joseph Luzzi; and American Still Life by Jim Naremore.
60 Poetry
Poems by Genie Abrams, Pulkita Anand, Ryan Brennan, David L. Levitt, C. P. Masciola, Sean J. McDermott, Emily Murnane, George Payne, Jim Raskoski, Jim Savio, Ilyse Simon, and Missy Wallace. Edited by Phillip X Levine.
THE GUIDE
62 The surprising childhood of actress Sharon Washington is chronicled in the new film When My Sleeping Dragon Woke
65 The art collective Shaboom lampoons Court TV in its exhibit “Presumed Ignorant” at Art Omi in Ghent.
67 The art collective Shaboom lampoons Court TV in its exhibit “Presumed Ignorant” at Art Omi in Ghent.
69 Yigal Ozeri’s hyperrealistic portraits at Ethan Cohen Gallery
70 Live Music: Lee Fields, The Ladybug Transistor, and more.
71 Short List: A John Waters Christmas, Unitard, and more.
72 Highlights of museum and gallery shows across the region.
HOROSCOPES
76 Objects in Rearview Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear
Cory Nakasue reveals what the stars have in store for us.
PARTING SHOT
80 Before the Storm
A poem and painting by Amitava Kumar.
Stardust and Storylines
By Remy Commisso
Most of my works are centered around nature and all of my pieces are set completely or partially outdoors, because they’re reminders of that connection. I think we’ve lost a lot of that over the decades,” says Elisabeth Ladwig, a New Paltz-based photographer and collage artist who creates stories from the mundane objects around her. In Starpolish, “the actual five-pointed stars are origami stars that I folded and hung from the ceiling by fishing line. Then I swayed them and I just took picture, picture, picture,” she says.
The idea for the composition came to Ladwig from Shel Silversteins “Somebody Has To.” The poem offers a plea for an impossible goal.
Somebody has to polish the stars, They’re looking a little bit dull. Somebody has to go polish the stars, For the eagles and starlings and gulls Have all been complaining they’re Tarnished and worn.
To create her magical realist images, Ladwig works from photographs she’s taken of the objects and animals around her. She then digitally blends the photo composites in Photoshop for a contiguous scene. For instance: after seeing her late father-in-law’s fire escape ladder, she knew she had to incorporate it into her vision for Starpolish
In almost all of Ladwig’s images, you can spot woodland animals, birds in flights, and flowers or fungi. In her image Dryad of Kinship, the natural elements appear in the clothing. “I was walking through the woods with my husband on a hike, and I happened to walk by this tree and it was covered in turkey tail fungus on the trunk and I just saw a dress,” she says.
Her work has a mystical, fantasy look to it. The dream-like images all portray women in a scene of divine nature. Contemporary artists like Catrin WelzStein and Brooke Shaden have inspired Ladwig’s feminine-centered fairytales.
The idea of refreshing friendships and forming deeper connections in life drove Ladwig to create Starpolish. She hosted “starpolish parties.” “It was an evening full of exercises for meditation and introspection and magic,” Ladwig says.
With Starpolish, as with all of her images, interpretation is up to the viewer. Ladwig poses for all her work, yet you can never make out facial features or any sort of identity to the subject. “I want the viewer to be able to decide for themselves. The viewer is just as much a writer of those stories as I am,” she says.
Ladwig’s work will be exhibited as part of the Mohonk Mountain House Art Fair from December 10 through 12, open to overnight guests and day guests with a reservation that allows for house access.
Portfolio: Elisabethonearth.com
The Mystical Art of Elisabeth Ladwig
Left: Starpolish, Elisabeth Ladwig, digital photographic collage Right: Her Favorite Things, Elisabeth Ladwig, digital photographic collage
EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Brian K. Mahoney brian.mahoney@chronogram.com
CREATIVE DIRECTOR David C. Perry david.perry@chronogram.com
DIGITAL EDITOR Marie Doyon marie.doyon@chronogram.com
ARTS EDITOR Peter Aaron music@chronogram.com
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
Andrew Amelinckx, Winona Barton-Ballentine, Julia Dixon, Michael Eck, Tristan Geary, Lisa Green, Richard Kreitner, Amitava Kumar, David McIntyre, Cory Nakasue, Sparrow, Jaime Stathis, Taliesin Thomas,
PUBLISHING
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 Fliakos andrea.fliakos@chronogram.com
media specialists
Kaitlyn LeLay kaitlyn.lelay@chronogram.com
Kelin Long-Gaye kelin.long-gaye@chronogram.com
Kris Schneider kris.schneider@chronogram.com
ad operations
Jared Winslow jared.winslow@chronogram.com
marketing
MARKETING & EVENTS MANAGER
Margot Isaacs margot.isaacs@chronogram.com
BRANDED CONTENT WRITER
Xenia Ellenbogen xenia.ellenbogen@chronogram.com
administration
FINANCE MANAGER
Nicole Clanahan accounting@chronogram.com
production
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR
Kerry Tinger kerry.tinger@chronogram.com
PRODUCTION DESIGNER
Kate Brodowska kate.brodowska@chronogram.com
interns
Remy Commisso, Maggie Baribault office
45 Pine Grove Avenue, Suite 303, Kingston, NY 12401 • (845) 334-8600
mission
Founded in 1993, Chronogram offers a colorful and nuanced chronicle of life in the Hudson Valley, inviting readers into the arts, culture, and spirit of this place. All contents © 2024 Chronogram Media. All rights reserved. ChronogramMedia.com
WINTER GIFT MAKING FAIR
Mountain Laurel Waldorf School 16 S Chestnut Street, New Paltz, NY 12561
Sunday, Dec 8 @ 11am-4pm
Looking for the perfect gift to warm the hearts of those you love? You’re likely to find it - or create it - at this fun-filled whole-family community event!
mountainlaurel.org • 845-255-0033
Interested in enrollment at Mountain Laurel? Call 845-255-0033 to arrange a private tour.
The Bard Queer Leadership Project (BQLP) provides a four-year dual major BA degree program combining Queer Leadership and a second academic field.
Discover Livingston Street
Socially Responsible Care and Education for the Young Child www.LivingstonStreet.org | 845-340-9900 20 Livingston Street, Kingston, NY 12401
Livingston Street is hiring for our Program Lead Position Resumes may be submitted to hiring@livingstonstreet.org
Offering full-year programming for children ages 2 years/9 months through 5 years old in Kingston. With a focus on emotional/social development, communication skills, and community, Livingston Street creates an enchanted and engaging learning environment that is appropriately challenging and fun for children. Activities at Livingston Street include outdoor play, the arts, early literacy games, dramatic play, reading, sensory play, making friends, and much more!
esteemed reader
by Jason Stern
“Let us envisage a rider on his horse, cantering along the side of the mountain. ‘I’ is the rider, ‘Myself’ the horse; ‘I’ this individual essence, this potential being, ‘Myself’ this power of functional manifestation…
With his hand securely on the rein, his mount will have no chance of straying down the path that leads to the precipice. Wide awake, the rider keeps an eye on ‘Myself’, the horse, and guides him unfalteringly along the ridge. The one keeping watch, the other carrying the watcher, they make a complete whole.
Thus related, they will go far.”
—Henri Tracol, from a lecture given at the Salle du Musee De L’homme, Paris, on March 6, 1967
My horse’s name was Barney. Her coat was reddish brown with a lighter mane. She stood at a height of 12 hands, technically a pony, but she was not small. Her mother, as I recall, was Shetland and her father, American Quarter Horse. Sitting on her bare back when I was six or seven years old, her size matched mine perfectly.
We lived on a homestead in far north New York, near the Canadian border. So vast was the pasture that I often had to search for Barney when I got home from school. On hot days I walked the craggy landscape to find her hidden in the shade of a copse, standing in the cool stream that ran under the trees. In winter, when her coat was long and thick with undercoat, she might be on the far side of the barn sheltered from the wind.
She would be munching grass or hay with one ear barely turned toward me as I approached but I knew she sensed me coming long before I found her. As I drew near she lifted her head and I scratched her neck and buried my face in her mane.
When I was little I led Barney to a stump or big rock to get on. As I grew I was able to leap onto her back from the ground. At first, I dove on belly first and swung my leg around. I was eventually able to hold on to her mane and swing a leg over in a graceful arc. She barely acknowledged me perched on her back while she grazed.
In the pasture I would give a kick and try to encourage Barney to take me for a ride but she ignored the command and continued her grazing. If I really wanted to ride I would get her bridle and try to get the bit between her teeth even as she clenched her jaw in resistance. This was a cue to go for a ride and I opened the gate to travel into the forest on the far side of the pasture.
Barney had a pleasant gait but her trot was punishing, especially without a saddle, so I pleaded with and cajoled her to break into a canter. No amount of kicking with my heels or yelling “Giddy-up, Barney! Giddy-up!” had the desired effect. She would canter unenthusiastically for a little way, then slow to a painful trot, and then back to a walk again. She ran when she wanted to, for instance when we were returning to her pasture where she would once again graze in peace.
Once, after a frustrating period of encouraging Barney to run, she suddenly broke into a gallop and ran at full speed under a tree branch. I was instantly clotheslined and I found myself on my back on the forest floor checking to see if anything was broken. It never happened again, as I learned to duck low when she ran for the trees, suffering only some scrapes as the branches raked my back.
But when Barney decided to turn it on she ran flat out and so fast that the bobbing rhythm disappeared. I could feel and hear the pounding of her hooves but at top speed her gait became smooth. The wind pulled tears from my eyes and I bent down over her strong neck, her head reaching out in front. These were the moments that I craved, not only for the thrill of speed but because it felt like my will and the will of this powerful animal were one. Barney and I loved one another. We were friends. She showed me how to love and receive love. She taught me something about coming into a right relationship with the animal of my own organism. The process of coming to symbiotic power, of cooperation and unity of rider and horse, left an indelible glimpse of how I may relate with Myself
The Best Selection of Knives From Around The World!
We’re coming to the season for celebrating and great food. That’s why we stock the best selection of kitchen tools in the area— More than any other kitchen store offers. It’s why more chefs come to Warren Kitchen & Cutlery for their kitchen tools! For them, it’s personal. It’s also the reason our customers keep coming back year after year.
WK&C carries and stocks the Hudson Valley’s best selection of fine cutlery, cookware, appliances and accessories! Where else would anyone shop for for their kitchen?
•Unique and rare knives from around the world.
•Cookware, bakeware and barware.
by Brian K. Mahoney
Bruciamo Tutto
The summer my father graduated from high school, 1964, race-related riots began ripping through American cities. It started in Harlem following the shooting of a Black 15-year-old by a white, off-duty police officer on July 18. Six days later, there was a riot in Rochester, the city where he lived. Like most riots in the 1960s, it began with a police incident that spun out of control: (White) police officers arrested a 19-year-old (Black) man at a street party in the Corn Hill neighborhood (largely Black), and simmering tensions boiled over.
Rochester’s Black community had grown exponentially since the beginning of the 1950s, ballooning from nearly 8,000 to 32,000 in 1964. Many had fled from the racism of the South in search of a better life, but new arrivals found dilapidated housing, prejudice, and high unemployment—joblessness for Blacks was over 16 percent while white unemployment was 2.5 percent.
The Rochester riot lasted three days. Governor Nelson Rockefeller called out the National Guard—1,500 troops occupied the city, the first such use of troops in the North since the Civil War. Two hundred and fifty stores were looted or burned in Corn Hill. Nearly 1,000 people (predominantly Black) were arrested. Five people died and 350 were injured.
One of the casualties was my grandfather, Patrick Mahoney. Patrick had immigrated to the US in 1924 to escape the sectarian violence in Ireland, where a Protestant militia had burned down the family store, nearly killing everyone inside. He made his way to Rochester, got a job at the Genesee Brewery, met a girl (an ItalianGerman immigrant), and had a couple kids. By 1964, Patrick had settled into a quiet alcoholism that required his younger son, my father, to pick him up most evenings from bars near the brewery and drive him home across the city.
On the night of July 24, Patrick was struck by a brick thrown through the windshield of my father’s car as they drove through Corn Hill. Already anesthetized, my grandfather required a dozen stitches but was otherwise unharmed.
The incident played a pivotal role in my father’s life but not in the way you might expect. Rather
than react with anger or resentment toward the rioters who had injured his father and broken the windshield of his Ford Galaxie, it sparked empathy in him. (Though I’m not sure empathy as we understand it was a thing yet in 1964.)
My father wondered what magnitude of despair would drive people to destroy their own neighborhood as a form of protest. It kindled within him a thirst for social justice and led him to a life of public service. He became a social worker, working in the Corn Hill-like neighborhoods of Bed-Stuy and East New York in Brooklyn in the 1970s where despair was thick on the ground. He then went into public health, crusading for awareness and treatment of the AIDS epidemic in the ’80s from within the New York City Public Health Department.
I’m a late learner when it comes to empathy. It would take several lifetimes of therapy to unpack why, but let’s just say that some who know me well have suggested that I suffer from Empathy Deficit Disorder. (For the record: I’m not a psychopath. I’m an asshole.) Recently, out hiking with my bestie Tim, I said “I’m sorry” after hearing him relate a vexing anecdote.
“Did you fart?” Tim asked.
“No,” I said, “I was trying to be empathetic.”
“Don’t do that,” Tim said. “It’s confusing when you do that.”
The turning point for me, empathy-wise, was 2016. As shocked and appalled as any other libtard by Trump’s election, I saw no way forward except through engagement. Here’s what I wrote in these pages in December 2016:
It starts by listening, methinks. What if we started to have informed and honest conversations about what’s most important to us? What if we found out that what we had in common was more powerful than our differences? What if we tried engagement? Kneejerk opposition and blind hatred can’t be the only option. What if we started by affording the political other the same treatment we hope for ourselves: not assuming that they are the shittiest
people imaginable. What’s the worstcase scenario? That we find out that our deepest fears are true and the 60 million Americans who voted for Trump [76 million in 2024] are really terrible people? That feels a lot like where we are now, and that’s a nonstarter for the longevity of the republic. Because folks, what happened in the 2016 presidential election was not about Donald Trump. It was about upending the status quo. There is new energy percolating in the country. We can choose to hate it or we can help try and shape it. Our choice.
Here we are again. I could have written that just as easily today. And, after a brief interregnum of government as usual, it’s back to government as deeply unusual. (Let’s not get into the Matt Gaetz of it all.) The people who voted for Trump may not be the shittiest people imaginable, but it’s difficult for me to understand why anyone would make that choice, because the level of cruelty it enables against so many people is so great.
There’s my lack of empathy staring into the empathetic void of 76 million. It reminds me of something the philosopher Alain de Botton wrote after the 2016 election: “We shouldn’t be surprised by our fellow citizens. That is what the human animal is really like: very sweet at points from close up, usually generous to small children and the elderly, hard-working, but highly prone to delusion, tribal, offended by strangers, disinclined to rational analysis, and with a fondness for slaughter and reckless messianic plans.”
When I woke up on November 6 to find out that Trump had won the election, the story of the Rochester riots came flooding back to me. America is just like Corn Hill in 1964. There’s clearly some despair, and the majority of the neighborhood is so disillusioned with the status quo that they’ve decided to burn down their own neighborhood. Again.
Bruciamo tutto, from the Italian: Let’s burn everything.
Rooted in Resilience
HUDSON VALLEY EMBRACES SMALL-SCALE FARMING SOLUTIONS
By Maggie Baribault
In the early morning, thousands of animals stir restlessly in overcrowded barns, packed tightly in the dim light of industrial farms across the country. Their lives, reduced to numbers on a production line, reflect established trends in factory farming: faster, cheaper, and larger scale. Behind the walls, the story of how food is made is one of efficiency over welfare, as animals endure harsh conditions to meet the demands of a booming national market. As factory farming expands, the ethical and environmental costs grow with it.
A new interactive map, released by environmental group Food & Water Watch (FWW), paints a picture of factory farm domination in America. The resource introduces density rankings based on the USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture that reveal the high concentration of factory farms nationwide. The accompanying report and New York-specific fact sheet detail how this “rapid industrialization, underpinned by federal and state policy incentives and the failure to regulate factory farm pollution, comes at the direct expense of communities and the environment.”
The organization defines a factory farm as a
large-scale animal operation in a confined area that meets certain size requirements: 500 or more beef cattle, 500 or more dairy cows, 1,000 or more hogs, 500,000 or more broiler chickens, and 100,000 or more egg-laying hens.
New York State has seen explosive factory farm growth; now more than half of its counties meet the FWW rank of “severe” or “high” for megadairy density. According to FWW’s report, in just 20 years, New York has doubled the number of factory dairy farms. “Today, New York State is home to 318 mega-dairies, containing an average of 1,337 cows, collectively producing twothirds as much waste as the entire state’s human population,” the report states. The largest dairies in New York today exceed 25,000 head.
“America has become a factory farming nation. Industrial animal warehouses pockmark our rural communities and litter our environment with tidal waves of unchecked pollution,” says FWW Research Director Amanda Starbuck. “While our politicians and regulators look the other way, these corporate cash cows are only getting bigger—and their impacts are only getting more catastrophic. Enough is enough. New York needs to put a halt on the expansion of this filthy industry now.”
Conversely, small-scale operations (those with fewer than 500 head) have plummeted. New York is bleeding family farms, Starbuck says. New York reported roughly one-third as many family-scale dairies in 2022 compared to 2002. The number fell by 1,900 (43.5 percent) from 2017 to 2022 alone. Farmers who manage to hang on face rising costs, negative returns, and mounting debt.
“It makes me very angry because this is not an inevitable system. This system does not just happen in a vacuum,” Starbuck says. “There have been deliberate attempts over the past decades to concentrate more and more power into the hands of fewer. I’m mad that industrial agriculture has put profits over the environment, family farmers, and healthy communities.”
Nevertheless, the Hudson Valley has a rich agricultural heritage, with most of the region still largely free of factory farms. FWW reports show that Ulster, Dutchess, and Orange counties have none, while Green has one, Sullivan two, and Columbia three, with low to moderate density rankings. By contrast, Wyoming County in the Finger Lakes region houses 26 factory farms with over 47,000 animals. Small-scale farms continue to play a vital role in the region’s economy and culture.
Ruby Duke of Raven & Boar raises heritage breed, pastured pigs in Chatham.
Life and Heart
A local small-scale farm in East Chatham, Raven & Boar raises heritage breed, pastured pigs and is the only pig farm in Columbia County to have an existing grazing plan, implemented to manage, sustain, and enhance the land and animals’ ecological balance.
“Factory farming is devastating our food system. It pushes for a monoculture of genetics specific to its processing practices while degrading the value of meat by mass-producing it and making it a commodity,” owner Ruby Duke says. “It’s our responsibility as consumers to educate ourselves on where we get our food and what kinds of businesses we want to support. Eating commodity factory-farmed meats is not good for our bodies, our environment, our culture, or the animals whose lives we are taking.”
Duke raises her pigs in the fields and woods of her 100-acre property, where they have a diverse diet of foraged crops grown for them like oats, peas, daikon radishes, and alfalfa, mixed in with wild forage from the woods like acorns. They also feed on whey from local local goat cheese producer Ardith Mae Farm and local grain.
She selects heritage breeds for variability in docility, build, and resilience to the climate, as well as to continue their legacies. “It is important for us to continue raising heritage breed pigs to help preserve these old, diverse genetics,” Duke says.
“Every day we need to make choices for where we put our dollars, hearts, minds, and mouths. My life and heart is at my farm, where I am focused on raising animals in the most ethical, regenerative, and sustainable way I can, while
honoring the life of each animal,” she says. “Small farms are feeding communities, and I hope that continues to be recognized, respected, and supported.”
Community Mission
Barton and Becky Collins Brooks of Catskill Wagyu at Hilltop Farm are members of the Rondout Valley Growers Association, a nonprofit organization committed to celebrating, educating, and advocating for the importance of local farming in central Ulster County. The organization connects a network of 119 local farmers, offers micro-grants to support them, aids in marketing, and acts as a conduit of information for legislation and policy through its weekly newsletter, Farmer to Farmer. “The Rondout Valley Growers have been invaluable for us and a lot of other farmers,” Becky Collins Brooks says.
With surrounding developmental pressure and the finite amount of land they own, she says, “We farm within the limits of our land. We never push the ground to the point of being barren. We want our land to be productive and healthy.” This means constantly feeding the soil with what she calls a “closed-loop system.” Hilltop Farm has 60 cattle, who eat hay grown onsite. Their manure is then collected in a building that prevents runoff, with a filtering drainage system so that the water that hits the pasture is clean. The manure is spread over the soil to replenish nutrients. What results is a healthy ecosystem, evident in the vast biome of beneficial insects, earthworms, and snow fleas that appear in late winter.
The couple sells their wagyu beef directly from the farm to customers. They also offer “cull
animals” (old or male dairy cows) at a reduced rate or donate them to a food pantry. “We believe that all people deserve to be fed well,” Collins Brooks says.
Hilltop Farm’s mission is centered around community. “We’re woven into the fabric of our community, and they’re woven into our farm, and that feels so good,” says Collins Brooks. “That’s the best thing—when you realize you’re doing something good for the people around you.” She had a friend who ate one of her chickens for Rosh Hashanah dinner, and got a text the following morning saying it was the most flavorful, juiciest chicken they’ve ever had. “Farming is hard. We work hard and our bodies hurt, but when we get one text like that, it makes every moment worth it.”
These farms are just two examples of how the Hudson Valley is resisting the national trend toward factory farming consolidation. While large-scale operations dominate much of the US, the region remains committed to small-scale, sustainable agriculture, preserving its longstanding farming heritage and fostering a diverse, community-centered economy.
“We are so grateful to do what we do, where we do it, in the Hudson Valley. It is so beautiful it hurts your heart. When you have a large piece of beautiful land in a place where land is premium, we look forward into the future with great hope and a large dose of pragmatism,” she says. “It’s more than a financial investment. It’s a place that is spiritually fulfilling. We wake up every morning feeling truly fortunate. We are not owners of this land, though we own it; we are stewards, and in order to give this gift to the next generation, we need to steward it right.”
“We build relationships,” says Becky Collins Brooks of Hilltop Farm in Accord “Once people set foot on this farm, they are part of this farm.”
Becky Collins Brooks and Barton Brooks of Catskill Wagyu at Hilltop Farm.
Parrillada Family Meals
378 Main Street, Rosendale
Serving up healthy and hearty dinners is a family affair for the Chub crew. Husband and wife MaryLu and Ramon “Junior” Chub are the owners of Parrillada Family Meals, which opened in April. Junior’s brothers Marcial and Tomas are business partners in the venture, and sister-in-law Claudia Turcio Chub serves as restaurant manager. Even the chefs are two Chub cousins, Melvin and Douglas. While MaryLu and Junior trace their roots to El Salvador and Guatemala, the menu at Parrillada instead features Turkish and Italian cuisines. Think kebabs and pastas, pitas, and paninis. The key word is “parrillada,” Spanish for “grilled.” Fresh and flavorful is the name of the game, whether entrees are grilled, roasted, or lightly sauteed.
Parrilladafamilymeals.com
Bernadette’s Bistro
299 Wall Street, Kingston
The menu at Bernadette’s Bistro, which celebrated a soft opening in Kingston’s Stockade District in October, features mouthwatering dishes with a focus on locally sourced ingredients. Braised short ribs ($40) are served with a red wine sauce over mashed potatoes. The half -roasted duck ($40) is finished with a berryinfused creme de cassis sauce, and the pork shank ($36) is topped with a white wine mustard cream sauce. Chef/owner Agustin Gonzalez Rojas started working at local restaurants at age 15 after immigrating from Mexico to Kingston, working his way up from dishwasher to cook. With the support of his family, this is his first solo restaurant. Bernadettesbistro.com
Isola Wine & Tapas
16 Hudson Street, Kinderhook
Wine and tapas have arrived in downtown Kinderhook thanks to sommelier Hillary Zio. Isola—Italian for “island”—opened in October and exclusively features wines sourced from the islands and coastal regions of Europe. And Zio selects wines that reflect the distinct minerality of their place of origin. The Old World, trattoria-inspired interior in the historic building comes courtesy of designer Anthony D’Argenzio of Zio and Sons (and This Old Hudson). Chef Fernando Castro, formerly of the Maker in Hudson, offers a menu inspired by the flavors of Europe’s coasts and designed to perfectly pair with Isola’s wines. Dishes include Brussels sprouts and pomegranates with coconut yogurt and chile ($15), scallops with demi sec tomatoes and champagne vinaigrette ($26), and lamb Merguez with apricots over couscous ($24). Isolawinebar.com
Athena2Go
48 Eastdale Avenue North, Poughkeepsie
While fans of the award-winning Athena Gyro are still mourning the closing of the Fishkill location in October, solace can be found in a takeout option, Athena2Go, which just opened in Eastdale Village. Guests can select pitas stuffed with gyro, souvlaki, or bifteki ($11.99 each), pick platters full of grilled chicken breast or falafel (both $21.79), or opt for traditional dishes like moussaka or pastitsio (each $20.49). All will be wrapped up and taken to go. A sit-down option is still available at the restaurant’s original home in LaGrangeville. Athenagyro.com
Big Eddy’s Brewing Co.
93 Main Street, Narrowsburg
Big Eddy Brewing Co., the first craft brewery to come to Narrowsburg, celebrated its grand opening on November 2. The alehouse serves traditional beer varieties—like IPAs, kolschs, and stouts—alongside New York-made cider, wine, sour ales, seltzer, and canned cocktails. Brewmaster Jake Johnson and his wife Alison co-own the spot with Caitlin and Tom Coacci. Since there’s nothing like pairing a great brew with some barbecue, Smokd brings the heat, with chef Jean Paul Medina’s wood-smoked meats, as well as vegetarian options. Imagine brisket, ribs, or pulled mushrooms alongside your favorite drink.
Bigeddybrewingco.com
Cozy Corner Cafe
129-131 Main Street, Cold Spring
In the heart of Cold Spring, Cozy Corner Cafe has become a local fixture since opening in May. Located in the space once occupied by Hudson Hil’s, the cafe is the brainchild of Jessika Martinez and Ramiro Prolo, who bring a mix of Argentine and Uruguayan influences. The couple’s commitment to quality is evident in dishes like hand-cut empanadas with chimichurri and aioli ($16) and simply grilled fish with grilled vegetables and mashed potatoes ($30), all made from locally sourced ingredients. Other dishes include a goddess salmon burger ($23), tofu bowl ($20), sweet and crispy eggplant sandwich ($16), and a sizzling dish of provoleta ($14), a traditional Argentine dish of melted Provolone served in a hot skillet.
@cozycornercafe.ny
—Marie Doyon and Maggie Baribault
Sommelier Hillary Zio’s Isola Wine & Tapas adds to the high-caliber culinary scene in Kinderhook.
The Dutch
253 Main Street, Saugerties Dutchalehouse.com
The Dutch, located in the heart of Saugerties, is a classic, cozy retreat known for its locally sourced comfort fare and welcoming atmosphere. Originally opened in 1933 on the heels of Prohibition, The Dutch has evolved over the years, while still honoring its history and community roots. Today, the kitchen serves a menu of from-scratch dishes, focusing on hearty flavors that highlight the Hudson Valley’s seasonal ingredients. House specialties include expertly smoked BBQ and comforting favorites, all crafted with care by Chef Jim.
Owned by Dallas and Ted Gilpin, who fell in love with Saugerties and The Dutch long before they took the reins, The Dutch carries forward their deep commitment to community. Regular trivia and live music nights bring extra energy to the space, drawing locals and visitors together. Every detail, from the wood-fired smoker to the carefully curated tap list featuring local brews, speaks to The Dutch’s dedication to bringing people together in an authentic, welcoming setting. Whether locals or newcomers, guests can expect a warm, family-friendly atmosphere that honors both tradition and taste. With rustic décor that reflects its history, The Dutch is an inviting place to gather, savor, and celebrate all year round
Casita Berkshires
1111 Mass MoCA Way, North Adams, MA Casitaberkshires.com
Casita serves regional Mexican cuisine inspired by Chef Justin Forstmann and his team’s Mexican focused culinary training, travels abroad and Mexico City street stalls. Fresh, local and sustainable ingredients showcase the bounty of the Berkshires and the hard work of local growers and farmers. At Casita, sustainability is at the heart of every decision. From thoughtfully sourcing products and ingredients, to teaming up with Second Chance Composting-the team is dedicated to leaving a positive impact on both their plates and the planet.
Dave King and Frank Tartaglione’s rambling home was originally built as a place to comb and bale sheep’s wool, then served as a machine shop, and eventually left empty before the two stumbled on the building in 1986. Since then, the two have reimagined the open concrete block warehouse into a live-work complex and converted a former agricultural shed into a screened porch. They also cleared scrub and garbage from the three-acre property, then landscaped with added trees, hydrangeas, and flower beds.
The home’s most recent remodel included a large painting studio for Tartaglione. Designer Patterson Scarlett helped reimagine the workspace which includes storage and exhibition areas. Several of
oil on panel abstract works line the walls.
Tartalione’s
Warehouse Fleecing
An Illustrated Home in Claverack
By Mary Angeles Armstrong
by Winona Barton-Ballentine
True story: Writer Dave King and Artist Frank Tartaglione found an abandoned warehouse outside Claverack and completely transformed it. How they did it, however, is a matter of perspective. Chock full of history, both real and imagined, their 5,000-square-foot home and studio complex is a light-filled warren of illustrated walls, whimsically deceptive flourishes, creative reuse of space, and a few tricks. Stories line the walls. Some of them come from King ’s extensive library, but others are straight from the mind and through the brush of Tartaglione, an accomplished tromp l’oeil painter and artist, all tied together with one, very imaginative, thread.
Originally part of the area’s extensive sheep and wool industry, the couple have taken the warehouse’s originally intended use and spun it into something completely different. “Our home is unlike anyone else’s,” admits King. “It ’s expressive, welcoming, and totally idiosyncratic.”
Tartaglione in a doorway dividing the home from the screened porch. An abstract artist, Tartaglione took up tromp l’oeil decorative painting to support his creative work and became an accomplished muralist and master of the three-dimensional, layered decorative style that deceives the eye. He put his skills to use transforming the warehouse into a palatial home.
Photos
City Nights
The couple met in 1975, when King moved to New York City from Ohio, and came across Tartaglione, an art student, in a bar. “I’d come to New York to be around artists,” explains King. “As soon as I heard he was an artist, I was smitten.” To support their creative careers, they began driving taxis and picking up odd jobs—anything that would allow them to paint. When their friend Robert Jackson, a muralist and master of trompe l’oeil style painting, suggested they help with his decorative painting business, they jumped at the opportunity. “He was the doyen of decorative painters in the US at the time,” says Tartaglione, a Buffalo native. “Ever since I was a small child my heart and mind have been in the decorative arts.”
Both learned the specialized style of painting, which means “to deceive the eye” and developed the skills to create convincing three-dimensional illusions on two dimensional surfaces. Tartaglione’s growing skills landed him many prominent projects, including at the Metropolitan Museum and in Washington, DC at the White House, Blair House, and the State Department. “Just the scale of those projects made things interesting and fun,” he says. “I was hired to paint entrance halls, fireplaces, and marble trim. It was a vote of confidence and a feather in my cap.”
Country Roads, Take Them Home
By the early eighties the two were feeling the constraints of painting and living in a Brooklyn
Top: By adding interior walls and a fireplace the couple created an ample living space. The warehouse’s slanting roof height ranges from 12 to 16 feet. The couple believe the reinforcing steel beams, which run the length of the building, were added in the 1950s. “They’re quite striking,” says King. “We were careful to preserve the industrial history of the building in the redesign.” The abstract above the fireplace is by Tartaglione.
Bottom: One of the couple’s earliest projects was to add windows throughout the building. In the parlor, second-hand industrial windows came from the Bronx. Artist Amy Sillman’s painting Bad Dog hangs above the fireplace.
apartment. After King inherited $10,000, they decided to buy a separate studio. “But even then there was nothing for that price,” says King. Instead, they headed north to the Hudson Valley where they ’d been visiting friends for almost a decade. “ We went looking for a bare architectural space that could accommodate both our studios,” says King. They zeroed in on Columbia County, a region that offered ample peace and affordability. “Frank bought a county map and drove every road looking for possible candidates,” remembers King. “It was only by chance that he saw this building out of the corner of his eye.” Outside of the hamlet of Mellenville, right off County Route 9, Tartaglione spotted a dilapidated cinderblock warehouse overgrown with weeds and vines. After investigating and then nixing a former gas station, Tartaglione suggested looking at the warehouse, even though he was skeptical of the size. They brought a friend and went to check it out.
Imagined Futures
Built in 1949 by the grandfather of Oliver North, former member of President Reagan’s security staff and central to the Iran-Contra scandal, the original 80-by-40-foot concrete warehouse was used to comb and bale sheep’s wool. “ There was a tiny railroad that ran along the North Creek,” says King. “ Farmers would send their wool down here to be combed.” The original warehouse had a small office, a loading dock and two restrooms. Otherwise, “ it was really just a concrete block rectangle, no interior partitions, no windows, no anything,” says King. The building had been expanded in 1951 with the addition of a storage room, reinforcing steel beams, and an agricultural shed enclosed with sheet metal. After that it was rented to various businesses, then left abandoned when a previous owner ’s apparel business went bust.
Top: Tartaglione was inspired by the Catholic school lunchrooms of his youth to create the eat-in kitchen. The checkered wax linoleum floors (faux), wood trim (faux), and exposed copper pipes (real) give the space a cafeteria feel. Tartaglione created the faux Picasso drawing for the Merchant Ivory film Life with Picasso
Bottom: Tartaglione wanted the kitchen’s playful design to feel like a basement, so he added a staircase to an (at the time) non-existent second floor. “I wanted it to be a place where we could cook comfortably and also enjoy the surroundings,” he says. The wainscoting (faux), bedboard (faux), and milk lights (real) give the illusion of a basement lunchroom. “We had to add a guest room at the top of the stairs to justify the staircase,” adds King.
Sitting on three acres, “shaped like Oklahoma with a panhandle going down behind the house to the tiny stream” says King, the property had sat empty for at least a decade when they stumbled on it. Still there was something about the raw, blank nature of the place that appealed. “Our friend climbed up the side of the building on one of the vines,” remembers King. “He walked around on the roof a bit, came back down and said, ‘Buy it.’” That was 1986. It was the beginning of a multidecade project that would transform the forgotten warehouse into a canvas for creative reinvention.
Pulling Wool Over Eyes
The two immediately got to work on the space. The lack of facilities didn’t deter them: They set up air mattresses on the concrete floor and cooked on a hotplate, then spent weekends improving the building, while working out of the city during the week. “Because there was no furnace those first three years we’d go to the movies to get warm, then to Kozel’s for burgers,” says King, mentioning the iconic local restaurant that recently closed after operating for nearly a century. “It was extremely romantic.”
After cleaning the cinder blocks and attempting to get the original furnace running, then replacing it entirely, the couple began working with architect Merrick Wochek and Tartaglione’s father Joseph to divide the interior into livable spaces. “Originally we wanted a modernist interior to contrast with the industrial look of the exterior,” explains Tartaglione. “However that was beyond our means at the time. “Instead, the couple decided to play up the industrial aesthetic and get creative.
By adding interior walls at the rectangle ’ s
center, the couple carved out a large kitchen, bedroom, and living room. After finding secondhand industrial-sized windows and three hipped skylights in the Bronx, they “strapped all of them to the top of a mini-van and then drove them upstate,” says King. They punched holes in the cinderblock walls for the windows and installed the skylights over the enclosed kitchen, a hallway and an interior bedroom, filling the building with light.
While planning the kitchen’s design, Tartaglione was struck by an ironic inspiration. “ The design started out as kind of a joke,” he explains. “I’d been painting faux marble baseboards, inlaid ceilings, and limestone walls. No one ever wanted faux linoleum.” He decided
to recreate the Catholic school basement lunchroom of his childhood. “I painted the floors to look like over-waxed linoleum,” he says. “ Then added and painted a staircase to suggest the room was in a basement.” Faux bead board wainscoting and real milk glass light fixtures complete the lunchroom tableau.
Re-Imagined History
They continued to draw on Tartaglione’s decor skills and both of their rich imaginations to create the remaining interior rooms. “ We added lots of faux everything, including faux wide pines, faux wood grain, and painted patterns throughout,” says Tartaglione. They added an art-filled parlor with a fireplace in one corner of the building,
Top: A recently completed guest room is decorated with a vintage map and sculpted wings by artist Daniel Sean Murphy.
Middle: Tartaglione embellished the second-floor guest room with a lush mural and wood-beam accents. The couple relied on multiple contractors and designers with the building’s redesign. However, “after the initial layout we realized that Frank had a more three-dimensional imagination than almost anyone,” says King. “So he did most of the rest. “
Bottom: After adding a tower to give the building symmetry, Tartaglione painted faux brick trim— including a circle to suggest a removed clock face—and a faux oculus window to the building’s exterior. “I wanted to suggest the passage of time,” says Tartaglione. “Dave calls it ‘an imagined history.’”
carved out two more bedrooms, and revamped the old women’s restroom into an elegant whitetiled space. After tearing off the sheet metal, they transformed the agricultural shed into a large, screened-in porch.
To add symmetry to the building ’s exterior, Tartaglione designed a faux clock tower with a real office and a third-floor porch. “ We really wanted to keep the lost quality of the place,” says Tartaglione. To suggest the passage of time, he painted faux brick trim along the walls and a large brick circle to suggest a removed clock face. “It was all an attempt to give our plain Jane pile of concrete blocks some interest,” he says. They also converted the former loading dock into a studio space for Tartaglione and added a library office for King.
Meanwhile, King had found himself at a crossroads. “I’d moved to New York to be an artist, but I’d gotten far off track. I felt I’d lost my way.” One day, while waiting for a burrito on Avenue A, he wrote a story on a placemat. “I was shocked how hard it was,” King says. “But I was immediately hooked.” He began taking writing classes at The Writer ’s Voice and decided, after a teacher implored him to stop wasting his life and write a book, to enroll in graduate school at age 40. “And that was it,” explains King.
In 2005 King ’s first novel The Ha-Ha was published to wide acclaim, winning him the Rome Prize in literature and was included on many best-of-the-year booklists. King continues to write, as well as teach at NYU—that is when he’s not helping Tartaglione with their home’s next iteration. “I give all the credit to Frank, who’s really the mad genius of the property,” says King. “I’m just the guy who sat around and asked ‘ Who moved my damn books?’”
New Year, New You
The New Year is the quintessential time to start fresh and renew commitments to bettering the mind, body, and soul. Whether it’s health, finances, spirituality, or new hobbies, there is a wealth of local resources in the Hudson Valley to start those resolutions right.
Linemen Institute of the North East (845) 247-7393 Linemeninstitute.com
The Linemen Institute of the North East (LINE), located in the Hudson Valley, offers specialized training for those pursuing a career in the powerline industry. Through hands-on, immersive instruction, students develop essential safety, climbing, and equipment-handling skills, preparing them to enter the workforce as confident and capable lineworkers. LINE provides a rigorous and supportive environment, focused on fostering teamwork, resilience, and technical expertise needed to succeed in this essential field.
Lourdes Laifer Coaching
(845) 262-0259
Lourdeslaifercoaching.com
Reclaim self-worth and attain transformation with expert life coaching. Certified life coach Lourdes Laifer holds a BA in Psychology and a Positive Psychology Specialization Certification. Embodying empathy, resilience, and guidance, Lourdes helps her clients heal, rediscover self-belief, reduce stress, and find inner peace using targeted strategies, somatics, and other modalities. Contact Lourdes to start healing today.
Joanna Leffeld aka Moolah Doula (845) 706-4145 Joannaleffeld.com
Joanna Leffeld helps clients heal their relationship with money through compassionate, somatically attuned sessions. Sessions facilitate releasing selflimiting beliefs and embodying abundance while living one’s true purpose. Step into the future by booking a session today.
Got2Lindy Dance Studios
Kingston & Marlboro Classes (845) 236-3939
Got2lindy.com
Got2Lindy Dance Studios’ mission is to turn non-dancers into dancers and strangers into friends. The studio is dedicated to creating an open, welcoming, and safe community for everyone, with no partner or experience needed. Join the fun—mention Chronogram and get $10 off on the next beginner swing dance class series for new students!
BDY/PWR
(972) 740-5293
Bdypwr.com
Get a jump on a healthy 2025. Beacon-based certified National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) trainer Elizabeth Vargas of BDY/PWR helps people start their year right! Workouts can be in-person or online, pre and postnatal, and cater to weight loss and nutrition goals. Book a session online or by phone to meet health goals together.
SYNC Psychological Services & SYNC Somatics™
admin@syncpsych.com
Syncpsych.com
This group psychotherapy practice is dedicated to serving a diverse, vibrant clientele. Psychologists, psychoanalysts, social workers, mental health counselors, and creative arts therapists offer passionate and compassionate care, addressing individual challenges, whether emotional, relational, cultural, racial, sexual, or political. Multiple location offerings include New York City, the Hudson Valley, Connecticut, and online.
Whole Sky Yoga
3588 Main Street, Stone Ridge Wholeskyyoga.com
A sweet little sanctuary located in the Marbletown Multi-Arts building, Whole Sky fosters a welcoming and non-judgmental environment, where folks of all backgrounds can convene and explore their practice. With a full schedule of yoga classes seven days a week, as well as Pilates and Barre, seasonal workshops, teacher trainings, and community gatherings—there is truly something for everyone.
Ride for Mental Health
Rideformentalhealth.org
Join The Ride for Mental Health and help “Ride Away the Stigma”! This annual event is not only a cycling journey through the stunning Hudson Valley, but also a powerful movement to support mental health research, treatment resources, and efforts to end the stigma associated with mental illness. Riders of all ages and skill levels are welcome. With routes ranging from the scenic Rail Trail to challenging climbs, there’s an option for everyone, whether it’s a family-friendly day or a rewarding challenge. The funds raised make a tangible impact by supporting organizations like McLean Hospital, global leaders in mental health care, research, and education, as well as support for local non-profit organizations like the New Paltz Youth Program and the Maya Gold Foundation. Participant involvement directly contributes to expanding resources and support systems for individuals and families facing mental health challenges. Join as a rider or volunteer to be part of this passionate community working toward meaningful change. Register today and bring friends, family, and colleagues to be part of this impactful journey. Visit rideformentalhealth.org to sign up, learn more, and pedal forward together.
Floor Plan
Mapping Your Pelvic Health
By Maggie Baribault
Often dismissed or misunderstood, pelvic floor dysfunction affects millions, limiting daily life and well-being. pelvic floor therapy offers holistic, personalized solutions, empowering individuals to regain strength, mobility, and confidence.
Pelvic floor physical therapy is an emerging field in the US, though in many European countries, pelvic floor rehabilitation is a standard part of women’s healthcare—widely practiced, culturally accepted, and integral to overall well-being. Here, pelvic floor dysfunction and its debilitating effects have long been shrouded in stigma and relegated to whispered conversations. Yet, the pelvic floor—a crucial network of muscles supporting the bladder, uterus, and rectum—is central to a wide range of health issues that affect people at various stages of life. When compromised, pelvic floor dysfunction can be profoundly debilitating, affecting everything from movement and sexual health to basic physical autonomy. Whether due to postpartum recovery or the natural changes of aging, this often-overlooked condition can severely limit daily life, causing people to avoid exercise, social activities, or even leave their homes. It’s time to break the silence, and acknowledge that these are not only conversations we can have—but conversations we must have.
Pelvic Floor Issues Affect Everyone
Pelvic floor issues can affect anyone—men, women, transgender individuals, and people of all ages. As Tylene Lizardi, a pelvic floor therapist at Monarch Physical Therapy in New Paltz, explains, it can be the new mom dealing with changes from pregnancy and vaginal delivery, someone recovering from a cesarean section or hysterectomy, an individual who has undergone gender reassignment surgery, a man with penile or testicular pain, the older gentleman who underwent a prostate procedure, a person trying to conceive but unable to have penetrative intercourse, or someone with endometriosis who finds themselves with abdominal and pelvic pain interfering with daily life.
However, pelvic floor dysfunction is most common among women, particularly as they age. Nearly 24 percent of women in the US experience pelvic floor disorders, such as urinary or fecal incontinence, constipation, painful intercourse, sexual dysfunction (including difficulty reaching orgasm), pelvic floor prolapse, and diastasis recti
(the separation of abdominal muscles), according to the National Institutes of Health. These issues become even more prevalent with age, affecting over 40 percent of women aged 60 to 79, and nearly half of women aged 80 and older. Hormonal changes and the natural loss of muscle mass (known as sarcopenia) weaken the pelvic floor, often requiring extra effort to maintain strength through targeted exercises and proper nutrition.
The stigma surrounding pelvic floor dysfunction is a significant barrier. Many women are told incontinence or pelvic pain is simply a “normal” part of aging, childbirth, or surgery. As Lizardi points out, society often dismisses these issues with humor. “How many times have you heard a joke on TV or in conversations of, ‘Don’t make me laugh or I’ll pee myself?’” she asks. “While these problems are common, they’re not normal. I hear so many patients say, ‘I wish I had known about pelvic rehab sooner.’” For many, the first time they hear about pelvic floor therapy is years after they began experiencing symptoms. Even if a
woman raises pelvic floor issues with her primary care doctor, many doctors are unfamiliar with pelvic floor physical therapy and may offer generic advice, such as doing more Kegels—an approach that can, in some cases, worsen the problem.
Luba Starostiak of Lotus Physical Therapy in New Paltz and Rockland highlights that women’s health issues in general have been historically under-researched, contributing to the dismissal of pelvic health concerns. “When women complain about pain or dysfunction, their concerns are not always taken seriously,” she says. “This has led to a lack of proper care and understanding.” However, as awareness grows, pelvic floor physical therapy has emerged as a valuable treatment for many pelvic health concerns, empowering individuals to regain control over their bodies and live without the limitations these issues often impose.
Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy
Pelvic floor physical therapy begins with a thorough assessment, often involving vaginal or rectal assessments, to identify the muscles or
systems contributing to the dysfunction. Based on this evaluation, therapists may use targeted exercises, biofeedback, electrical stimulation, and manual techniques like myofascial release and vaginal dilation to help retrain the muscles. In addition to physical treatments, therapists provide guidance on diet, relaxation techniques, breathing exercises, and other lifestyle factors, and create a personalized, progressive program incorporating orthopedic, neurological, and manual therapy techniques. At-home exercises, such as stretching, stress management, core stability work, and vaginal weights, may be included as part of the comprehensive treatment plan. While therapy in the office is important, much of the healing happens through self-care and consistent at-home practice.
Diet and Lifestyle Factors
Diet can play a key role in pelvic floor health, with certain foods and beverages exacerbating both urinary and bowel incontinence. Starostiak explains that acidic foods like coffee, black tea,
citrus, and tomato-based products can irritate the bladder lining, leading to increased contractions and leakage. Similarly, inadequate hydration can lead to concentrated urine, which further irritates the bladder lining. Starostiak also notes inadequate fiber intake or foods that cause gas or bloating can contribute to constipation, putting pressure on the bowel and bladder. She also highlights the importance of addressing food sensitivities, such as those related to irritable bowel syndrome, suggesting to see a nutritionist or gastroenterologist.
However, Lizardi is quick to emphasize the importance of a tailored approach to diet: “This is very individual. There is a lot of fear-based information to avoid specific foods and beverages or follow restrictive dieting plans, which can be harmful,” she says. “It is important to work with a multidisciplinary team to identify potential food triggers and the safest way to address them.”
Beyond diet, other lifestyle factors are essential for maintaining pelvic health. Staying hydrated by drinking four to six ounces of water per hour,
Nearly 24 percent of women in the US experience pelvic floor disorders. Among other treatments, therapists use targeted exercises to help retrain muscles.
Sarah LaMoy ACUPUNCTURE
A supportive healing space for gentle somatic integration. Specializing in women’s health, nervous system regulation
emptying your bladder every two to four hours, and practicing mindful elimination (taking time and relaxing when using the bathroom) can help support pelvic function. Moving your body in ways that bring you joy, getting out in nature and enjoying morning sunlight, and finding ways to manage stress like meditation or meaningful social interactions are also important for overall well-being.
A Holistic, Individualized Approach
Although Kegel exercises (or pelvic floor contractions) are commonly recommended for pelvic floor dysfunction, they are not always the solution. Dr. Kegel, who developed these exercises, believed they could strengthen pelvic muscles, but the approach has evolved. As Starostiak notes, Kegels are not appropriate for everyone—especially for those with tight, high-toned pelvic floors where relaxation and stretching are more beneficial. Similarly, Lizardi emphasizes that pelvic floor dysfunction can stem from a variety of causes, including weak, overactive, or uncoordinated muscles, or even issues outside the pelvis, like hip or foot problems. Therefore, a personalized, comprehensive approach is essential, targeting the root cause rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all method like Kegels.
“How many times have you heard a joke on TV or in conversations of,
‘Don’t make me laugh or I’ll pee myself?.’ While these problems are common, they’re not normal. I hear so many patients say, ‘I wish I had known about pelvic rehab sooner.’”
—Tylene Lizardi, pelvic floor therapist
Each person’s care is tailored to their specific issues and goals. “There is no one-size-fits-all approach,” Lizardi says. “A good physical therapist will understand the patient’s story. We look at the whole person. Pelvic floor issues tend to encompass multiple systems—nervous, musculoskeletal, immune, gastrointestinal, and urinary. We must wear many hats and understand how various body systems interact to impact the patient’s symptoms and how to best address them.”
“Each individual is unique,” Starostiak agrees. “There is no cookiecutter recipe for treating pelvic floor dysfunction.”
When seeking treatment, be sure to find a physical therapist with specialized training in pelvic floor rehabilitation to ensure the best care for your needs. You can get a referral from your primary care doctor, OB/GYN, or midwife, or reach out directly to a physical therapist with expertise in pelvic health. Some therapists accept insurance, while others may not, so it’s important to confirm coverage beforehand. In the Hudson Valley, there are pelvic floor specialists working in both private practices and larger medical groups, including Nuvance at Northern Dutchess Hospital and Vassar Brothers Medical Center. Through personalized, non-invasive therapy and lifestyle adjustments, individuals can effectively address pelvic issues and regain control, improving overall quality of life.
HOLIDAY Shopping Guide
With so many independent creators and curators across the Hudson Valley, Catskills, and Berkshires, it’s never been easier to buy bespoke. From locally sourced herbal remedies to fine jewelry, gourmet provisions, well-designed decor, and more, here’s a roundup of thoughtful holiday gifts that are sure to surprise and delight.
Kingston Social
237 Fair Street, Kingston (845) 202-0078 @kingstonsocialny
Kingston Social for the holidays! Nestled in Uptown Kingston, this charming cafe, mercantile, and gallery is the place to discover the most delicious Italian coffee and holiday goodies, from beautifully curated gifts for everyone on the holiday list alongside the stunning Pink Water Gallery walls displaying the work of contemporary local artist Caroline Burdett. Discover everything from panettone to sipping chocolate, wonderous toys for kids, Dansk cookware for the kitchen, and so much more. Kingston Social welcomes everyone in for the holidays!
Catskills Candle Studio
5977 Main Street, Tannersville (518) 203-3181
Catskillscandlestudio.com
Catskills Candle Studio candles are the perfect gift for Catskills Mountain lovers, offering a way to bring the magic of The Catskills into the home. Each one captures the fresh, nature inspired atmosphere of the mountains, making every burn a special escape to the outdoors. Visit the Tannersville Studio, shop online, or find the candles at trusted retailers. Experience the handcrafted quality that make these candles truly one-of-a-kind.
Lightfoot Woods
Red Hook Lightfootwoods.com
Discover the enchanting world of Lightfoot Woods, where Caitlin Lightfoot crafts one-of-a-kind jewelry in the Chocolate Factory’s Five Foot Seven Studios. Using collected crystals and stones set in recycled precious metal, each piece is a unique totem, embracing mindfulness and honoring nature’s powerful forces. By appointment at the Red Hook location, experience these treasures firsthand. Connect online at Lightfootwoods.com or on Instagram @lightfoot_woods. The journey to nature-inspired beauty begins here.
Graceland Tattoo
2722 West Main Street, Wappingers Falls (845) 297-3001
Gracelandtattoo.com
Adel Chefridi Fine Jewelry
47 East Market Street, Rhinebeck Chefridi.com
Visit Adel Chefridi Fine Jewelry, nestled in the heart of Rhinebeck Village, to find a beautiful and expansive selection of jewelry, as well as a curated collection of fine gift items for everyone’s gift list. With sterling silver pieces starting at $160, a wide selection of engagement rings, and handmade fine jewelry in 18 karat gold and platinum, Adel Chefridi’s designs are true treasures of the heart. Adel Chefridi has become a fan favorite among Hudson Valley residents, earning the coveted top spot in the Chronogrammies in the Jewelry Store category for 2024.
The Rhinebeck Studio and Flagship Gallery are run by Adel and his wife Corinne, with a small team of jewelers and jewelry industry experts. Each piece that leaves the studio is personally tended to and inspected, ensuring the exacting standards they’ve become so well known for. Chefridi’s designs are handmade with the utmost care for detail and craftsmanship. Come experience the warm and inviting atmosphere of the Rhinebeck Flagship Gallery, shop online, or visit one of the 100 Adel Chefridi Jewelry stockists nationwide.
Be a hero for the holidays with a gift certificate to Graceland Tattoo! Its team of artists has been creating beautiful, bold work and soft, delicate pieces here in the heart of the Hudson Valley for over two decades, and are trusted in their craft. They offer custom designs, high-quality jewelry, and a commitment to safety and craftsmanship. Available in any denomination, tattoo or piercing gift certificates are a perfect present to unwrap.
Eleish
Van
Breems Home
11 Main Street, New Preston, CT Evbantiques.com
Rhonda Eleish and Edie Van Breems have been advocates of Scandinavian design for more than two decades. Best friends since fifth grade, the two founded their eponymous Scandinavian brand in 1997 with a focus on antiques which has since expanded to include an interior design firm and home stores. All along their mantra has been and continues to be, “bring good design to everyone.”
In their New Preston shop, find fine Gustavian and Rococo antiques, as well as Scandinavian mid-century furniture masters rubbing shoulders with sustainable and sophisticated contemporary furniture made by Verellen, Cane-line, and Thayer Coggin. Sofas and chairs upholstered in fine Belgian linens and performance fabrics, handcrafted walnut and ash lamps, tables and casegoods, rugs, lighting by Louis Poulsen and St Louis are invitingly arranged in the main rooms of the soothing and welcoming space. The Scandinavian fantasy continues into the DISH room, serving up Nordic tableware, linens, gifts, and home goods in a nod to the building’s previous shop owner, Paulette Peden. In this inviting sun drenched room the full force of Rhonda and Edie’s passion for good design and ease of lifestyle on full display with Swedish and Finnish heritage brands such as Gustavsberg, Marimekko, and Skultuna and newer product designers such as Sweden’s Reijmyre glassworks.
5681 Route 28, Phoenicia (845) 688-9957 Phoeniciadiner.com
From the heart of the Catskills to the kitchen table! Available in classic Buttermilk, Buckwheat, or Vegan varieties, Phoenicia Diner’s famous pancake mix has been redesigned in new luxe packaging. It makes a special gift for a friend or a lovely morning at home. Crafted from whole, GMOfree ingredients and produced in New York, these mixes are available from specialty stores throughout the region and at Phoeniciadiner.com.
Twin Star Orchards, Home of Brooklyn Cider House
155 North Ohioville Road, New Paltz Twinstarochards.com Brooklynciderhouse.com
Come for the Winter Market, stay for the cider! The Tasting Room at Twin Star is open for the winter with a cozy holiday bazaar as the star of the show (weekends November 23-December 22). Weekly rotating makers offer a local one-stop shop for everyone’s gifting needs—jewelry, candles, woodwork, ceramics, sweets, spirits, and more. Brooklyn Cider House ciders are a welcome addition to every holiday meal. Take a bottle home, or better yet, give loved ones the gift of a Small Batch Club subscription.
Phoenicia Diner
4 Park Place, Hudson (518) 697-5633 Hudsonroastery.com
Their recent expansion to the corner of Warren Street and Park Place offers additional seating along with a view into the Roast Room for a total coffee experience. They are known for having the best artisanal roasted coffee in town, showcasing exclusive signature blends and single origin beans, all roasted weekly. With nine exclusive types to choose from, there is sure to be the perfect gift for every coffee lover. Gift cards are also available to indulge in the total experience featuring a chef inspired breakfast/lunch along with specialty coffee beverages and freshly baked croissants.
Milestone Mill
336 Plaza Road, Kingston (845) 852-0120 Milestonemill.com
Milestone Mill is dedicated to bringing sustainably grown, nutritionally complex grains back to the table. Rooted in the Hudson Valley, Milestone Mill crafts local, artisanal, grain-based foods in order to support regenerative farming and sustainably feed the community with healthy food. It currently offers a variety of flour, corn meal, beans, popping corn, corn tortillas, and tortilla chips. No preservatives, no bleaching, just essential goodness, grown and crafted right here.
EJ Bonbons and Confections
2 Old Forge Road, Woodstock Ejchocolates.com
Anybody knows that local shopping strengthens the community for businesses and customers alike. Emily Kellogg, a Woodstock native and one-half of the husband-wife duo behind EJ Bonbons and Confections, is no stranger to this reciprocity. “Bonbons may be our business, but we are also the faces behind the counter, retail department, shipping department, dishwashers, and chocolatiers,” says Kellogg proudly.
Kellogg handpaints each bonbon with precision and heart, making them an offering for the senses. Prior to opening the business, Kellogg, a pastry chef, met her husband, Pierre Pouplard, while working at the three-Michelin-starred restaurant Per Se.
When they found their storefront in downtown Woodstock, the labor-of-love approach felt important to embrace; a relative provided most of the shop’s renovations. A few years later, a next-generation treat connoisseur, Kellogg and Pouplard’s toddler Luca, now runs around the shop.
Kellogg firmly believes in the motto “No treat adorer left behind.” Select bonbons are vegan, gluten-free, or cater to spirits enthusiasts. The shop also makes caramels, chocolate bars, house-made sorbets, and ice creams for holiday pie dolloping.
Cranberry apple and banana speculoos are dazzling flavors from the latest selection of ornately decorated yet flavor-punched bonbons. Leaning into the holidays, the shop will roll out its well-loved annual peppermint bark and chocolate ornaments to adorn Christmas trees.
Bonbons are stable for 10 days on the counter and up to a month in the fridge, chocolate bars last a year, and chocolate-covered nuts up to five months. Stop by the shop, order online, or buy a gift card from a family-powered business.
Hudson Roastery
Newberry Artisan Market
236 Main Street, Saugerties (845) 247-3002 Newberryartisanmarket.com
This exciting artisan market hosts over 35 local Hudson Valley vendors including pottery, jewelry, unique designer clothing, eco friendly body products, vintage, art, and more right in the heart of the Saugerties Village. Come see beautiful products and meet the friendly staff who are ready to help with guidance for a total shopping experience!
Newhard’s—The Home Source
39 Main Street, Warwick (845) 986-4544
This is the season of thanks and gratitude, a time to enjoy the company of friends and family and nature’s surrounding beauty. There is no better time of year to visit the Warwick Valley! Newhard’s—The Home Source has been called the “Emporium of Everything” and is filled with treasures to make one’s home a little bit warmer, more beautiful, gracious, and happy. Take a moment to discover the town and the Village of Warwick, its history, wonderful restaurants, and friendly stores. Find Newhard’s on Facebook and Instagram.
Century of Style
6859 Route 32, Greenville (518) 797-3300 Centuryofstyle.com
An amazing shopping destination and a treasure chest of one-of-a-kind finds. Their collection spans 100 years, hence the name: Century of Style. They have everything for one’s home and holiday list. Especially for the season, find holiday trimmings, women’s fashion and jewelry, men’s club room of gifts, timeless mid-century décor, fine china and silver table top, and vintage guitars and vinyl. Open 11am-5pm, closed Tuesdays.
Brass Monkey Home
26 Main Street, Cold Spring (845) 393-0090
Brassmonkeyhome.com
In Cold Spring’s newest store, find a revolving international pantry, home furnishings, tabletop decor, and thoughtfully curated gift items that support makers and artisans around the globe. Come shop their collection of unique and one-of-a kind finds—no passport required. The shop is located on lower Main Street, just through the tunnel to the river.
DBO Home
Sharon, CT (860) 364-6008
Dbohome.com
DBO Home is a husband and wife designer/maker team in Sharon, Connecticut. Their handcrafted pieces combine porcelain, leather, wood, and bronze to create one-of-a-kind gifts that elevate everyday moments. Each piece is made to order, one by one. Discover the perfect holiday gift to make this season truly special.
Hummingbird Jewelers
23A East Market Street, Rhinebeck (845) 876-4585
Hummingbirdjewelers.com
Hummingbird Jewelers is grateful to celebrate its 47th year as Rhinebeck’s full-service jewelry store. This holiday season, they have curated a collection of fine designer jewelry from around the globe. Whether it’s repair, restoration, repurposing of family heirlooms, or the creation of a new piece of fine jewelry, Hummingbird Jewelers is there to satisfy all their customers’ needs.
Pegasus Footwear
10 Mill Hill Road, Woodstock; 3 East Market Street, Rhinebeck; 27 North Chestnut Street, New Paltz; Pegasusshoes.com
Visit Pegasus for a beautiful selection of supportive footwear, like this velvety Gore-Tex waterproof boot from the European comfort experts at ARA! Pegasus is a unique destination that offers personalized fitting service and an amazing, curated selection. Whether for hiking, traveling, exercise, or everyday life, the staff at Pegasus will make everyone’s shoe dreams come true—even those who have faced footwear challenges in the past. Stop in for top brands that specialize in making feet feel and look great.
111 Greenkill Avenue, Kingston (845) 853-2400
Zephyrfloat.com
When the holiday haze has settled, most people crave a serious reset. An hour suspended in a pool of salt water at Zephyr Float offers a remedy for all that accumulated stress—and the weight of gravity itself.
“We live in a world where we’re constantly overstimulated. A sensory deprivation tank removes all the external buzzing,” explains owner Veronica Sedda, LMT, who took over the business with her husband in April after five years of working at Zephyr Float and watching clients experience its impacts firsthand.
Pioneered as a wellness technique over 40 years ago, a float session in a sensory deprivation tank delivers a variety of benefits. Zephyr Float’s five-by-eight-foot rooms provide plenty of space to float freely in 12 inches of body-temperature water dissolved with 1,000 pounds of Epsom salt—buoying a person into a state of weightlessness and mental quietude.
“The complete calm is incredibly beneficial for our minds,” says Sedda. “You also get all the benefits of the electrolytes and magnesium from the Epsom salt, which provides rest for your joints, tendons, and vascular system, and helps heal muscle tissues, lowers blood pressure, and provides temporary chronic pain relief, among a variety of other benefits.”
This holiday season, Zephyr Float is offering ready-to-gift specials and packages, including a Black Friday/Cyber Monday package ($99 for two floats, or a 60-minute massage) and a gift card promo (buy a $100 gift card, get $25 free) using promo code GIMME25. Both specials can be booked on the egift site online or over the phone. For additional offerings, visit the website.
Produced by Chronogram Media Branded Content Studio.
Zephyr Float
The Spa at Litchfield Hills
407A Bantam Road, Litchfield, CT (860) 567-8575 Litchfield-spa.com
Step into the enchanting atmosphere of their annual Holiday Bazaar, where a world of thoughtful gifting awaits! From November to December, their heated popup shop transforms into a festive haven, showcasing a curated selection of clean beauty, wellness, and luxury lifestyle items that will bring cheer this giving season.
Stanza Books
508 Main Street, Beacon (845) 674-4707
Stanzabooks.com
Stanza Books is an independent bookstore on the historic east end of Beacon’s Main Street. Specializing in contemporary literary fiction, genre fiction, history, and children’s books, Stanza is the place for book clubs, writing workshops, author visits, story hours, special orders, and more.
Newt
58 North Front Street, Kingston (845) 514-2924
Newtboutique.com
Find the perfect gift for everyone at Newt. With an eclectic selection of home décor, jewelry, art, candles, and toys, Newt has something special for all ages and tastes. Plus, their special selection of gift wrap and cards make it a true one-stop-shop for all holiday needs.
The Pass Berkshires
1375 North Main Street
Sheffield, MA (413) 644-6892
Thepass.co
Shop for farm-fresh flower well into winter with The Pass Berkshires’ latest harvest of high-quality, high-TAC cannabis. Grown directly behind their retail store, The Pass is the premiere Southern Berkshires spot to shop locally-grown and -produced cannabis products along with a curation of the best products around the state.
Horses for a Change
Esopus (845) 384-6424
Horsesforachange.org
Celebrating the magic that happens when humans and horses connect in a supportive, non-competitive atmosphere. With a large indoor riding arena and heated viewing area, this nonprofit offers riding lessons all winter, for folks of all ages and levels, including pony rides for the littles and an equine-facilitated mental health program. “We emphasize empathy and understanding of our non-verbal, but very communicative companions,” says Director Nancy Rosen. Gift certificates for pony rides, lessons, and summer riding weeks available.
Whimsy Flower Farm
Kerhonkson (480) 206-3302
Whimsyflowers.com
Whimsy Flowers, a full service floral design farm, introduces 2025 “Flower Drops” - 6 week delivery subscription service. It offers a curated selection of their farm grown flowers and those from trusted growers. With three pricing tiers, it makes a beautiful gift idea which elevates both personal and retail spaces.
Woodstock
Wine & Liquor
63 Tinker Street, Woodstock (845) 679-2669
Woodstockwineandliquor.com
Whether shopping for wine lovers, Scotch collectors, or Cognac connoisseurs this holiday season, Woodstock Wine & Liquor is the boutique wine and spirits shop in the heart of historic Woodstock with just the right gift for them all. Gift packaging and free local delivery is available, and ordering online is easy on their website.
Chronogram Subscription
Chronogram.com/subscribe Give the gift of arts, culture, and spirit, all year long. A subscription to Chronogram makes a great gift for everyone’s holiday shopping list. Get a 12-month subscription for only $36.
The Shops at Emerson
Emerson Resort & Spa
5340 Route 28, Mt. Tremper (845) 688-2828
The Shops at Emerson carries a distinct selection of modern farmhouse decor and furnishings, contemporary clothing, hand-crafted artisan kaleidoscopes, nostalgic toys, local food products, Catskills souvenirs, and holiday decor. With their signature personalized service, The Shops at Emerson staff is happy to help find the perfect gift for everyone this holiday season.
Birch Spa
&
Boutique
73 Crown Street, Kingston (845) 331-7139
Birchkingston.com
Self-care at its absolute best, right in the heart of Uptown Kingston. Massage, facials, and reiki are all available, and couples massage too! Shop the boutique for unique and fun finds, skincare, gifts, and simple luxuries. Full menu, gift certificates, and online booking at Birchkingston.com.
The Common Good
119 Canal Street, Ellenville Thecommongoodny.com
The Common Good believes in the power of stories! Nestled in the scenic foothills of the Shawangunk Mountains, this bookstore offers a diverse selection of fiction, nonfiction, and children’s titles, along with journals, candles, and gifts. Stop in for coffee or a cocktail and find something for everyone.
Michelle Rhodes Pottery
By appointment (845) 417-1369 or deepclay@mac.com
Michellerhodespottery.com
Hudson River Homesteaders
71 Palatine Park Road, Germantown (518) 925-3515
Hudsonriverhomesteaders.com
Hudson River Homesteaders Country Store is a family-owned shop offering their pasture-raised meats, handcrafted body care, fresh breads, baked goods, and unique gifts from local artisans. Discover quality, sustainable products while supporting local craftsmanship. Their newly renovated space is an inviting place to shop and experience authentic, community-driven goods.
Far Out Finds
Gardiner (347) 395-3956
Faroutfinds.com
This Hudson Valley-based furniture resource provides a curated selection of affordable, vintage furniture. Their workshop has imported and restored vintage mid-century modern furniture since 2013. Contact the store to visit and view selections in person. Flexible opening hours are by appointment; shipping and delivery options are available. See the full inventory online.
Made In Kingston
YMCA, 507 Broadway, Kingston Madeinkingstonny.com
Made In Kingston is a celebration that highlights all things handcrafted and created in Kingston, featuring more than 70 local artists, businesses, food vendors, and more. Thursday, December 5th, 3-8pm at the YMCA in Midtown. Free parking and admission. Shop local for the holidays!
Haven Spa
6464 Montgomery Street Rhinebeck (845) 876-7369
Havenrhinebeck.com
Give the gift of beauty and relaxation this holiday season! Haven Spa is a self-care sanctuary where relaxation and pampering meet aesthetic and skin health. Day spa services include rejuvenating massages, luxurious body treatments, relaxing facials, manicures, pedicures, waxing, eyebrow/lashes, and more. Med spa services include Botox, micro-needling, fillers (Juvéderm, Restylane), and more. Annual gift card promotions are available for the months of November and December. Follow Haven Spa on social media for details.
A Community in Motion CATSKILL
By Andrew Amelinckx
Photos by David McIntyre
The pulse of Catskill is quickening. From the new businesses downtown to an inaugural comedy festival, and a water park where children romped this past summer, you can feel a sense of movement. And while there are roadblocks to maneuver past—one of the most serious being affordable housing—the community continues to push forward.
Openings Abound
Toko Provisions, at 428 Main Street, is a sensory experience where the appetizing scents of baked goods mingle with the sound of jazz drifting from speakers amid a well-curated selection of food, from locally produced bacon to gourmet crackers. Behind the counter you’ll find Toko Harada-Szarapka, who will happily make you one of her signature beef curry
sandwiches or sell you a perfectly prepared pie. She opened her business in April in the building that used to house the Catskill Country Store, where she once worked. She’s been a part of the area’s culinary scene since 2015 and started her career in Japan working as a pastry chef. “I always liked American style pastries—pound cakes, pies, and scones,” she says.
Toko Provisions is just one of several new businesses that have opened this year. There’s Stay Forever Gift Shop at 397 Main Street, offering a range of items from home goods to kids’ toys; The Little Art Shop where you can pick up everything for your creative endeavors at 444 Main Street; and Return Brewing Outpost, which opened in September in the old Crossroads Brewing Company building at 201 Water Street, where you’ll find a range of delicious beers brewed locally.
Lincoln Auctions holding a sale inside a former Baptist church on Main Street where they also have a multi-vendor antiques emporium.
Opposite, top: The new visitors center at Thomas Cole National Historic Site was designed by renowned architect (and Cole board member) Stephen Shadley.
Opposite, bottom: Sloop Eleanor sailing on the Hudson. The 121-year-old boat was brought back to life by the Catskillbased nonprofit Hudson River Historic Boat Restoration and Sailing Society.
Another recent addition is Chemistry Wine Bar. For Dori Fackler, owning a wine bar has been a longstanding dream, which she fulfilled in July when she opened at 354 Main Street. “I found this space and fell in love with it, and I really love the town and people,” she says via email. “Response has been good. People find the space cozy and comfortable, and really like the cheeseboards and other food selections as well as the extensive wine selection. I’m excited for the holidays!”
This year also saw the opening of a brand-new kind of business in Catskill. Budd’s Dispensary, the first cannabis shop in Greene County, opened in November next to Beer World on West Bridge Street. Sonny Patel, who owns both the beer distributor and Budd’s, subdivided part of Beer World to create the new cannabis business.
On the flip side, a downtown anchor, New York Restaurant, which has been a mainstay for nine years, closed in November. The owner, Natasha Witka, didn’t give any specific reasons
for shuttering in a Facebook post announcing the closing. “It has not been an easy call to make, however we are ready to pass the torch along,” she wrote. “There are exciting changes ahead!” She thanked the staff and patrons. “The friendships we have made, and the time that we shared will stay with us forever,” Witka wrote. She didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
Construction continues apace at the Gateway Greene Commercial Park on the east side of the New York State Thruway Exit 21, according to the Greene County Industrial Development Agency. The new Stewart’s Shop had its ribbon cutting in September, Central Hudson has begun extending gas lines to the Commercial Park—the future site of a three-story, 92-room Hampton Inn—and construction on the new Greene County Visitors Center is set to begin this winter and, if construction stays on schedule, it will open next fall.
Lots of Laughs
In the mid-20th century, the Borscht Belt, made up of hundreds of resorts in the Catskill mountains, was a haven for stand-up comedy. Thanks to Stephan Bradicich and Robbie Chafitz, cofounders of the Catskills Comedy Festival, the region is once again playing host to comedians. “We were looking for a way to give back to the local area,” Bradicich says.
Over three days in October, the festival had 18 events in six venues, with dozens of national, regional, and local acts, including headliner Bobcat Goldthwait. They filled more than 1,000 seats and had audience members from as far away as Florida and California. Bradicich and Chafitz were mindful about keeping the festival accessible to all, with an average ticket price of $25 and making 30 percent of the events free. The event brought steady foot traffic to village businesses.
The proceeds from what is planned to be an annual event, went into hosting three storytelling workshops prior to the festival with a storytelling performance held at Bridge Street Theatre during the festival. They also hosted a student comedy workshop. “Since we finished with money in the bank we will continue to hold workshops throughout the year and hope to reach more students as we grow,” Bradicich says.
Daniel Ward, village trustee, SprayGround committee members Teri Weis and Brenda Vandermark and SprayGround Board President Joseph Kozloski at the town's water park, which opened this summer.
Hudson/Catskill Housing Coalition: Cofounder Claire Cousin, Executive Director Tanya Jackson, Director of Operations Elliott Matos, and Board President Shirlee Cross. The Black-led nonprofit tenants' rights group was instrumental in getting the town to opt in to the state's Good Cause Eviction Law.
Similarly, the town of Catskill continues to play host to—and act as a setting for—various filmmaker’s visions. In March, the cast and crew of Between the Temples, directed by Nathan Silver and starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, spent a day shooting in the hamlet of Jefferson Heights. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival and was screened in September at the Mountain Cinema at the Doctorow Center for the Arts in Hunter. Another film, the indie comedy Oh Hi, was in Catskill shooting in September with a crew of around 45 people, according to Erin Dennin, the senior tourism marketing manager for Greene County.
The economic benefits of having film productions come to the area are many, from the casts and crews who need places to stay and eat, to helping to boost tourism, according to Dennin. “Films and television shows shot in the Great Northern Catskills serve as free advertising for the region,” she says. “The scenic beauty and unique charm of the region may attract more people, boosting both tourism and local businesses. The ripple effects extend across various industries and contribute to the overall prosperity of the region.”
Another new addition to the village is the Catskill SprayGround splash pad at Elliot Park, which had its grand opening in July. The splash pad is a play area with fountains, water jets, and other water features that’s open from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Two local service organizations, Cultivate Catskill and the Fortnightly Club, spearheaded the project after a life-long Catskill area resident, Randy Fried, passed away and left Cultivate Catskill $10,000.
“We wanted to do something significant with the money,” Cultivate Catskill President Shelly Pulver says. “We thought a sprayground would be great, since we’ve never been able to have a pool in the village.”
They raised $200,000 for the project, with strong support from the village government, area and regional organizations, and businesses, along with $75,000 in allocated state funding through the efforts of New York State Senator Michelle Hinchey. “It’s really amazing for a community this size,” Pulver says. “People were very generous.”
Cultivate Catskill has been helping to beautify
Catskill since 2013 and is responsible for all the hanging flower baskets, various flowers, trees, and plants on Main Street, and the village’s holiday decorations. It also sponsors the Solstice Stroll with the village’s merchants. During the annual event, to be held once again on Saturday, December 21, from 5 to 8 pm on Main Street, which will be closed to traffic and lined with fire pits. Downtown shops will be open and there will be a variety of entertainment, including a fire eater and a stilt walker.
Pro-Housing
The continuing lack of affordable housing not only in Catskill, but across the Hudson Valley, has become front and center with two new state initiatives including the Pro-Housing Community Program and the Good Cause Eviction law. Across the state, rents have gone up by as much as 60 percent since 2015 and home prices by as much as 80 percent according to the New York State Division of Homes and Community Renewal. In August, the village
Toko Harada-Szarapka in Toko Provisions, one of several new businesses on Main Street.
Dori Fackler has paired her love of antiques and wine in Chemistry Wine Bar on Main Street.
board adopted the Pro-Housing Community Program pledge and has promised to streamline permitting for multi-family homes and adopt policies that “affirmatively further fair housing,” among other steps. In October, the state certified the village.
“The Village of Catskill is now the first Pro-Housing Community in Greene County,” says Dan Ward, Village Board Member, via email. As such, Catskill has access to a pool of $650 million from funding programs reserved for Pro-Housing Communities. One of these is the Downtown Revitalization Initiative, which the village has applied for and is hoping to receive. The program provides $10 million in funding to each of 10 small or rural communities across the state for targeted revitalization.
The other state initiative related to housing is the Good Cause Eviction Law, which went into effect in April, but requires municipalities to opt in. “Good Cause guarantees lease renewals, limits rent hikes, and stops unjust evictions,” Elliott Matos says. Matos is the director of operations for the Hudson/Catskill Housing Coalition (HCHC), a Black-led nonprofit tenants’ rights organization. “Housing insecurity is growing and unfair rent increases are a huge part of the problem,” he says.
The HCHC has been involved in advocating for
the new law at the state level since 2021. Locally, the organization has pushed to get the village of Catskill to opt in to the law by collecting eviction data, explaining the community’s needs to the board, mobilizing residents to attend the village meetings, and working with other local housing justice organizations like Catskill Artists and Creatives for Housing Equity, among other initiatives.
Matos believes the village of Catskill needs to pass the law to keep low-income and working-class people and families in their homes and in this community. “Additional benefits are had by business owners who are looking to staff their establishments with local residents who are housing secure,” he says
The Catskill Village Board has had two public hearings, on October 30 and November 13, to discuss the proposed law. “These hearings are a way the public can voice their opinions and concerns and that the village board can listen,” Ward says. Relatedly, because of the need for more housing in the village, the board is also considering another potential solution. “Right now, we are looking into accessory dwelling units and how they could potentially help with the housing issue,” Ward says. The board passed the law unanimously at the second hearing, three to zero, with one abstention and one board member not present.
Ken Bundy, owner of Bundy TV and Electronics Repair on Route 9W says he gets clients from as far away as Connecticut and New Jersey because of a scarcity of repair shops in the region.
Clockwise from top left: Ben McCarthy fixing a bicycle at the Catskill Repair Cafe.
Gertjan Meijer, founder of Arteque, which produces highquality reproductions of art on fabric panels, in his Catskill studio.
In the Weeds
This year also witnessed an ongoing legal battle between a Jefferson Heights resident and the town of Catskill over her lawn. Jenae DiNapoli’s property has a variety of native plants, including those that attract pollinators, but she ran afoul of a state law that sets the maximum height at 10 inches for weeds, which the law defines as “uncultivated vegetation” and includes “grasses” and “briars.” Some of her plants were far above that height. “They came to her and said we’re going to start fining you daily until you cut your lawn,” Carlin Meyer, DiNapoli’s pro bono attorney, says. “They threw out numbers like $1,000 a day and, later on, $500 a day.”
The law excludes “cultivated vegetation” such as gardens, flowers, trees, and shrubs. “We took the position that she was cultivating a pollinator garden,” Meyer said. After two hearings, Catskill Town Judge Richard Paolino issued a decision in the case on September 13 that took DiNapoli’s intention of creating a pollinator garden on her property into account. But he determined that the
property “appeared overgrown” and “that her efforts had been hindered by weeds and overgrown grasses surrounding recently planted flowers and trees,” in the court order.
Paolino ordered DiNapoli to cut the grass and keep it under 10 inches, but didn’t impose any fines as long as she “complies with the court’s directive to clean and maintain the garden” and makes sure she doesn’t violate the law again. He advised her to better organize her garden with raised beds and a “clearer definition of the pollination garden,” which DiNapoli has done, according to her lawyer. “What was really going on was a battle of aesthetics—they didn’t like the way it looked, in my opinion,” Meyer says. “She’s a young woman who just wants to protect nature. She left the grass there to protect all kinds of pollinators and wildlife.”
Catskill continues to grow and flourish amid issues big and small through the efforts of both individuals and the collective. Whether it’s providing a place to cool off on a hot summer day, bringing laughter, or attempting to provide a stable home, the residents of this community continue to advance step by step.
Artist Rani Ban outside The Little Art Shop on Main Street.
Preserving Paradise Hudson Valley Community Funds Save Heritage and Habitat
By Maggie Baribault
Nestled on a scenic bend of Route 213 in Stone Ridge, Marbletown Meadows is 100 acres of fields and woodland farmed by the Osterhoudt family since 1778. The land offers sweeping views of the Shawangunk Ridge, Ashokan High Point, and contains a hidden African American burial ground. It is rich in both beauty and history. The municipality has designated this formerly private land for recreation through a community preservation fund, making it accessible to all and supporting a broader movement to safeguard vital ecosystems for future generations.
Community preservation funds (CPFs) originated in Massachusetts in the early 2000s to support local initiatives for preserving farms, forests, historic buildings, open spaces, and other ecologically important areas, funded by a one-time fee on home sales. Local community preservation committees (CPCs), typically consisting of five to nine members, oversee these programs and make recommendations on Community Preservation Act (CPA) projects to
the local legislative body. Municipalities must receive authorization from the New York State Legislature and a majority community vote through a ballot referendum to establish a CPF. Within the Hudson Valley, Westchester, Putnam, and Ulster Counties, as well as the Towns of Fishkill and North East in Dutchess County, are authorized to establish CPFs.
The Towns of Red Hook and Warwick led the way as early adopters in 2007. The Town of New Paltz passed the measure in 2020 with over 70 percent voter support. The Towns of Gardiner and Marbletown followed in 2022, and the Town of Chatham approved the measure in 2023.
The Town of Red Hook has raised over $6 million since the launch of its CPF 17 years ago, which has been leveraged with matching funds from land trusts and county, state, and federal governments on a three-to-one basis, says Town Supervisor Robert McKeon. “We’ve protected over 4,000 acres and 45 farms,” he says. “It has not only enabled us to maintain our quality of life, but also supported tourism and other businesses in town.”
Paying It Forward
Michael Sweeton, the former town supervisor of Warwick and now member of the Orange County Land Trust, says Warwick’s CPF has generated $17 million, which has been leveraged to almost double that amount. The funds have been used to purchase land along Greenwood Lake for public access and a former camp on 85 acres that is now a community park with pools, pickleball courts, a theater, and cabins. “Even the people who have to pay say, ‘You made me pay for this and I see why,’” Sweeton says. “It’s a critical tool to building quality in the community, and all our residents view it favorably.”
Rich Parete, the town supervisor of Marbletown, says in its first year, their CPF raised $300,000 and qualified the town for a $500,000 matching state grant. This allowed the town to acquire the 100-acre farm formerly known as Osterhoudt Flats, renamed Marbletown Meadows, in May 2024. The site has been transformed into a public park and preserve with a driveway, parking area, and walking paths.
The acquisition of Warwick County Park was underwritten by the town's community preservation fund.
Future plans include footpaths through the fields and 40 acres of forest, a sleigh riding hill, ice skating pond, picnic area, bird watching area, and an open-air pavilion. Parete says without the CPF, the town wouldn’t have been able to get the state grant or protect this area.
Purchases like these are rare opportunities for small municipalities like Marbletown, which often lack the budgets to match large grants without significantly raising taxes. CPFs enable smaller communities to match grants using accumulated funds. Establishing similar funds in other Hudson Valley municipalities could help them qualify for additional matching grants, significantly increasing the resources available for land preservation.
“People want to live in communities that value open space,” Parete says. “I have had several towns reach out with questions about the fund. I tell them about all the positive feedback I get from residents and visitors of Marbletown Meadows and that they won’t regret enacting a CPF.”
Kingston Votes for a Preservation Fund
The City of Kingston recently established its own CPF residents overwhelmingly voted for Local Law 10 on the November 5 ballot—which will enable the protection of local waterways, historic sites, urban agriculture, and the creation of new parks, preserves, trails, and open spaces.
“This fund is important to every citizen of Kingston,” says Michael Drillinger, the board chair of the Kingston Land Trust and president of the Campaign for Kingston Community Preservation Fund. “It will positively impact the lives of residents and visitors because it provides a mechanism to better preserve the natural and historical heritage of the City of Kingston.”
The Kingston CPF will be funded by a one-time realestate tax of 1.25 percent that only applies to properties selling above the Ulster County median sales price, which is currently $376,500. Buyers of such properties will only pay the tax on that portion of the sales prices greater than the median sales price. That means if a buyer pays $500,000 for a property, they would be taxed 1.25% on the amount of $123,500, which is $1,543.75.
The city’s Natural Resources Inventory identifies two primary areas richest in natural resources: one in the northeast part of the city, consisting of the forests and shoreline along the Hudson, and the other in the southwest, consisting of the uplands of the Rondout Creek. The plan also proposes protecting and providing public access to the Esopus Creek, creation of a park in Midtown, and protection of the Tannery, Main Street, and Twaalfskill Brooks.
After all precincts reported, the proposition to approve Local Law 10 of 2024 passed with 6,100 votes in favor and 3,684 votes against. The law establishes the clean water, urban agriculture, historic resources, recreation, and natural areas preservation fund, funded through a 1.25 percent tax on the transfer of real property interests.
“Preserving these scenic areas will protect vulnerable wildlife, combat climate change through absorption of carbon, and provide recreational opportunities for everyone in the city in harmony with nature,” Drillinger says. “Kingston will have a valuable tool to preserve its resources and way of life as a counterbalance to the development of much-needed housing and the city’s growth.”
The 113-acre Cookingham Farm trails along Route 9 in Red Hook opened to the public in October.
Marbletown Meadows is a once-in-a-lifetime purchase of 100 acres in the municipality.
Red Hook has protected over 4,000 acres and 45 farms since passing its community preservation fund 17 years ago.
Catskill
Portraits
Pop-Up
by David McIntyre
Things got a bit wild at the Catskill photo shoot when 15 members of Ukulele Catskill showed up at CREATE Gallery on November 9—we were all a little strung out for a minute there. Thanks to Stella Yoon and the good folks at CREATE for hosting us and kudos to all the proud Catskillians who showed up to represent their fair town.
Opposite:
Top row: Christina Dietmann, organizational manager for Wheelhouse Creative Education Center; Deb Parker, owner, Sister Salvage; Jesse Bransford, artist and professor; Joanne Ziello, retired art teacher; Allen Shadow, writer.
Middle row: Drew Gillespie, artist and product designer; Elizabeth diGiacomantonio, artist and art therapist; Gregory Howard, artist; Carole Sayle; Lydia Daiel, retired.
Bottom row: Anne Appel, Peyton’s; Andrew Amelinckx, author and journalist; Ben McCarthy, chair, Catskill Democratic Committee; Pim Zeegers, owner of Citiot; Tom Berry, visual artist.
Bottom row: Abbie Zuidema, creative arts therapist and psychotherapist; Chrisie Cordrey of Corduroy Shop and Debbie McGrath; Rabbi Zoe B. Zak of Temple Israel of Catskill and Cantor Suzanne Bernstein; Anna Victoria, photographer and Nick Cacace, engineer; Betsy Jacks, executive director, Thomas Cole Historic Site;
Top row: Ukulele Catskill: Debbie Allen, founder, Black Dome Press, Carmen Borgia, musician, Eva Pepe, musician, Jerelynn Mason, retired, Rich Keyes, retired, Calice Montesano, blind rehabilitation outpatient specialist at the Albany VA and visual artist, Jerry Curtis, retired, John Sturman, professor of computer science at RPI, Michael Della Rocco, retired fire chief, Liz Martinez, Donna McGrath, Siouxzanne Harris, retired special education teacher, Jeanie Douglas, educator, Pat Jason, retired, Barbara J. Saxe;
Join us for the December issue launch party on Thursday, December 5, from 5:30-7:30pm at Left Bank Ciders, 150 Water Street in Catskill.
Top row: Jennifer Greim, director of advancement and external affairs, Thomas Cole Historic Site; Karac Ruleau, event marketing and Kyle Hoedl; Lisa DiPietro, Lisa Schlossberg, and Frances; T Boris-Schacter, youth coordinator for the Columbia Greene Addiction Coalition.
Middle row: Debra Trebitz, photographer; Kulvinder Kaur Dhew, director, Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts; Eamon Martin, artist and actor; Ave Siecinski, artist, Artworks Painting; Amy Thompson, food business consultant.
Bottom row: George Jurgsatis, antiques dealer, Townhouse Antiques; Yoko Izu, artist and UX content designer; Nancey Rosensweig, midwife, Catskill Holistic GYN/ Midwifery, Dan Arshack, criminal defense attorney; Greg Hamm, owner, Willa’s; John Sowle, artistic director Bridge Street Theatre with Steven Patterson in 1987.
Top row: Anna Victoria, photographer; Grace Cain, ceramicist at Cone Zero; Sammy Maine, tour manager; Brian McGowan and Lori McGowan, Catskill Health Food Store; Christine Vines, adjunct assistant professor at Vassar College, Brendan Bo O’Connor, professor at SUNY Albany; Joe Stefko, book publisher, Charnel House and drummer and Liz Shaw, owner/designer, Liz Shaw Design; Max Ocean, maltster and cofounder and Zane Coffey, brewer and cofounder, Subversive Malting and Brewing.
Middle row: Lizbette Martinez, artist; Joe Gerardi, Supposium Motion Graphics and Bethany Richardson, acupuncturist; Jane Toby, filmmaker, poet, activist, teacher of Italian and Shebar Windstone, media worker and activist; Kenn Richards, artist and musician; Michele Saunders, Catskillian from Paris; Elbert Perez, artist and mechanic.
Bottom row: Sari Lila Will, interior designer, Brad Will, architect, Rudy Will, barkitect; Cheryl Cross, owner/ chef La Conca Doro Restaurant; Hudson Talbott, writer/ illustrator and Jay Lesenger with Morgan; Cultivate Catskill crew: Shelly Pulver, Margaret Nowack, Hudson Talbott, Marilee Hobbs, Amanda Lion, Cindy Putorti, Brie the dog.
Top row: Amanda Malmstrom, associate curator, Thomas Cole National Historic Site; Chelsea Streifeneder, owner of Body Be Well Pilates; Bruce and Jeanne Byers, Bruce Byers Photography and Hill Street Gallery; Nicole Madden, development manager, The Olana Partnership; Marietta Fagan, barista/hairstylist, Citiot.
Middle row: Marta Bartolomei, owner Potter’s Table Bakery; Stephanie and David Fisher, retired educators; Tom Illari, owner, Catskill Collectibles.
Bottom row: Rodney Greenblat, teacher at the Catskill Zen Circle with Melody.
Inset: Amanda Dibre, Eliana Assaf, Jo Anna Valdez, and Madison Breemen.
Close to Catskill: Small Towns, Big Appeal
Known for its abundance of hikes, rugged peaks, and the tallest cascading waterfall in the state, Catskill is a paragon of natural Hudson Valley beauty. Not to be missed while admiring the mountains is the nearby burgeoning bustle— the surrounding towns of Greenville, Cairo, Hunter, Windham, Athens, and Tannersville reveal hidden and well-known Greene County gems.
Mama’s Boy Burgers
6067 Main Street, Tannersville (518) 589-6667
Mamasboyburgers.com
When Mama’s Boy Burgers opened in 2015, owner Michael Koegel made a promise to use locally sourced, top-quality ingredients in all their dishes—a commitment
Ukulele Catskill Group
Ukulelecatskill.com
The Ukulele Catskill Group, led by Carmen Borgia, brings songs and sweetness to the heart of the Catskill community. Welcoming players of all skill levels, the group hosts lively jam sessions, rehearsals, and performances. The light-hearted atmosphere inspires laughter and learning, cultivating the togetherness of the charming Catskill region’s cultural scene.
that customers of the awardwinning burger and ice cream joint in Tannersville can savor in every delicious bite.
“We’ve been extremely lucky to partner with JJF Farms,” Koegel explains. “Their black Angus cattle are raised humanely, without any hormones. We use a proprietary blend of their grass-fed beef to create
our signature burgers, giving them an authentic flavor that you won’t find anywhere else in the Catskills.”
One of Mama’s Boy’s standout features is its wide range of housemade sauces—from herbed mayo, a signature “hot mama” sauce, to a classic, savory-sweet house sauce— used on burgers, as dippers for crispy fries and onion rings, and even as salad dressings.
The menu also satisfies vegetarians and vegans alike with its stand-out falafel and mushroom burgers and its seasonal produce offerings, including tomatoes, potatoes, sweet corn, and Brussels sprouts from Story Farms, located just 10 miles away.
“We go through a lot of potatoes because we make our own fries,” Koegel says.
No meal is complete without a sweet treat. The rich, creamy frozen custard is the perfect base for milkshakes in dozens of flavors. Or, try a scoop of locallymade Del’s Ice Cream, a Hudson Valley favorite.
In its nearly 10 years, Mama’s Boy Burgers has established itself as a Catskills institution, earning “bestof” accolades across the Hudson Valley and even gaining recognition from renowned publications like Food and Wine
Killercat
Mountain House
Hunter
airbnb.com/h/killercatmountainhouse @killercatmountainhouse
Get cozy this winter at Killercat Mountain House, an ultra-private Airbnb retreat that sleeps 10 guests and is just 5 minutes from Hunter Mountain. The Parisian-chic décor gives design lovers Insta-worthy moments inside and out, while epic views and amenities allow outdoor enthusiasts to indulge all season long.
Produced by Chronogram Media Branded Content Studio.
Hidden Heroines
By Julia Dixon
History pop quiz:
Can you name the leader of the largest pirate fleet in history? Who was the first person to fly solo, non-stop, from England to North America, a more difficult trip than Charles Lindbergh’s eastbound flight? What about the youngest playwright to win a New York Drama Critics’ Circle award, or the author of the first English language autobiography?
The feats themselves may be entirely unknown to you, and the commonality between each may surprise you: All of these individuals were women.
“Original Sisters: Portraits of Tenacity and Courage,” on exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, through May 26 of next year, is a growing collection of over 450 acrylic portraits of women both historical and contemporary, spanning continents and cultures, traversing industries
and interests. Well-known American pioneers such as Sojourner Truth and Gloria Steinem are nestled amongst dozens of unknown, unsung, or forgotten women who have made lasting contributions to global society.
The paintings are similarly scaled, composed, painted, and installed. Because of this, the exhibition and concept may seem easy to minimize, the way a Zen garden may look like a simple arrangement of sand, rocks, and plants. But what Kunz has achieved—due in large part to the pandemic, which provided her with the time and space to begin this project—is, in fact, a broad yet remarkably deep anthropological study of women: Who they are, how they persevere, and what they can accomplish.
“It’s a collection of really great stories,” Kunz explains from her home in Toronto. “I’m thinking about lost history. I started researching some
women [during the pandemic] and I started realizing that these should be household names.”
Each painting is accompanied by a roughly 100-word profile that Kunz also wrote. These truncated biographies are perfect portals into imagination. Longer than a tweet but shorter than a Wikipedia page, they tell the bold, innovative, and/or creative story of the nearly life-sized portrait above it. Rendered with delicate hatching, flat color, symbolism, and distinctive typography (the subject’s name is often their replicated signature), the artworks have an even greater power individually; they pridefully demand to be seen. While women’s accomplishments today are more conspicuous than ever, sexism continues to be prevalent. “Nine out of 10 people still have a bias against women,” Kunz says, citing the UN Development Program’s June 2023 Gender Social Norms Index report. “That’s a sobering statistic.”
Anita Kunz’s “Original Sisters” at the Norman Rockwell Museum
Two paintings from Anita Kunz’s “Original Sisters: Portraits of Tenacity and Courage,” on exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, through May 26 of next year.
According to the report, only 27 percent of respondents worldwide believed that women having the same rights as men is essential for democracy. Nearly half believed that men make better political leaders than women do, and 43 percent believed that men make better business executives than women do.
Kunz, who studied commercial arts in the mid-1970s at the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCAD U) in Toronto, used her connections with male teachers and art directors to build an incredibly successful career in editorial illustration. Her paintings graced the covers of Rolling Stone, the New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Time, Newsweek, the Atlantic, Variety, and the New York Times magazine, among others. But the pace of production and increased editorial control over content left her feeling creatively depleted.
“I started doing my own work on the side—big paintings— thinking about where I came from in art school,” she says. “I didn’t have any female teachers. I went to workshops [led by] the top people, but it was sadly lacking any women. We didn’t have any art history [at OCAD], so I never learned about female artists.”
Kunz’s digital excavation allowed her to unearth remarkable women artists unfamiliar to her but also largely absent from our culture, a canon that includes Camille Claudel, a talented sculptor overshadowed by Auguste Rodin; Margaret Keane, the painter of big-eyed portraits whose husband claimed were his own; Augusta Savage, a sculptor who struggled against racism and financial hardship; Ethel Reed, an influential yet tragic poster designer and illustrator; and Rose O’Neill, the first published female American cartoonist and, at one time, the highest-paid female illustrator in the world.
The setting of this exhibition, the Berkshires’ Norman Rockwell Museum, is fitting in so many ways, not the least of which is its executive leadership. Gender parity of museum boards and directors is improving, according to a new report by the American Alliance of Museums, but larger museums are 38 percent less likely to have women directors.
Helmed for nearly 40 years by Laurie Norton Moffatt, Norman Rockwell Museum continues to buck this trend. However, the longtime director points to her mentors—Lila Berle, Jane Fitzpatrick, Polly Pierce, and the museum’s founders—as essential in paving her way, as well as the many women cultural leaders active long before her.
“I think of Amy Bess Miller establishing Hancock Shaker Village followed by [its] recent female leaders; Berkshire Museum’s first director, Laura Bragg; Gertrude Robinson Smith, early founder of Tanglewood; Margaret French Crescent, founder of Chesterwood; and my many contemporary colleagues,” she says.
The museum’s practice of not only exhibiting hundreds of women illustrators but collecting their work is also a testament to its dedication to “Original Sisters” and its mission.
“We are an active collecting institution, and we seek all types of illustration,” says Jane Dini, curator of exhibitions. Among its new additions are 42 illustrations by Kunz and three Berkshire sisters— Elizabeth Freeman, Edith Wharton, and Shannon Holsey, President of the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohican Indians—commissioned in the style of “Original Sisters,” all donated by Kunz herself.
Perhaps the most moving aspect of the exhibition is the feeling of wanting to capture the stories of your remarkable women or, for me, envisioning the portraits and profiles of just a fraction of the four billion women living, innovating, nurturing, creating, saving, attempting, and inspiring right now, this very moment.
“I think the exercise is really quite poignant and remarkable, and something we should all reflect on,” says Dini. “How we engage our own histories.”
For more stories about the Berkshires and Northwest Connecticut, visit Ruralintelligence.com.
27 Housatonic St. Lenox, MA Open 5pm to 1 am Kitchen Till Midnight
selected shorts
john pizzarelli big band
billy f gibbons
cows and holly
jane curtin, joanna gleason
michel gill, bhavesh patel
dear mr. sinatra the centerpiece of zz top sandra boynton tries to explain her wild new christmas album sat dec 14 at 1pm
7pm
Droney Rose Apple Eye (Praxis Classics Records)
Named for a parodic 2005 web series, yacht rock is the retroactively applied catchall term for the saccharine sounds that soaked the airwaves in the late 1970s and early 1980s—performatively earnest hits by carefree, soft-rocking elites with trimmed beards, puka-shell necklaces, and Hawaiian shirts. Stuff that precocious punkers of a certain age (ahem) loathed like a trip to the dentist. But there could be no denying that, as annoying as so many of those AM-golden tunes seemed back then, they could also be addictive earworms. Ditties that were hummed under the breath when no one else was around, mulled in the mind as archetypal guilty pleasures. And in many of them lurk layers of surreptitious subversiveness and emotional complexity that bely their pastel presentations. On Apple Eye, Margaretville duo Droney Rose (Patricia and Damian Catera) peels back the maudlin macrame to expose the hidden strangeness and unwittingly unsound hearts of some of these not-so-shallow-after-all oldies.
You know the tunes: Gary Wright’s “Dream Weaver,” Michael Murphy’s “Wildfire,” Bob Welch’s “Sentimental Lady,” Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight,” and four more. With Damian on guitars, synths, electronics, and other instruments and Patricia on dreamy vocals, the two deconstruct these syrupy, sun-dappled staples, pulling and stretching them like sugary strands of cotton candy until in the end each is a skeletal, barely-there outline of the original. Unsettling and weird but somehow wistfully reassuring—and a lot of fun—Apple Eye is candy-dipped, avant-garde genius.
—Peter Aaron
Eric Person Rhythm Edge (Distinction Records)
Remixed, remastered, and reissued almost two decades after its initial release, Missouri-born Hudson Valley jazz saxophonist Eric Person’s Rhythm Edge shows the young composer— then already a veteran with Dave Holland, Chico Hamilton, and the World Saxophone Quartet—exploring the form and planting the seeds that would blossom into his current world-class status. References abound not just in sound, but even in title, with the propulsive opening track “Tyner Town” echoing the pulse of John Coltrane, and “Majestic Taurean Majesty” hinting at the Ellington-meets-Bach shiver of Charles Mingus’s “Taurus in the Arena of Life.” Even the cover image nods towards trumpeter Freddie Hubbard’s 1970 classic Red Clay, which inspired Person early on. But these are just allusions. Person and stellar company—including guests Ingrid Jensen (trumpet), Robin Eubanks (trombone), and Jarod Kashkin (piano)—quickly establish a singular identity that has only been refined on subsequent releases, including 2022’s stellar Blue Vision
—Michael Eck
Michael Eck Fermata
Despite his singing about vagrancy and waywardness, Michael Eck’s album Fermata is infused with an American optimism. It’s no surprise that the Albany resident and occasional Chronogram contributor released three volumes of poetry, as songs like “String of Perch” stand alone as poetry delivered with energetic vocals. A song like “We Are Left to Wonder” is skeletal folk, with man-and-ukulele honesty. Other tracks, such as “The Deep End,” are fleshed out with the delicate guest vocals of Rosane Raneri. The mellow upright bass of Bob Buckley and spidering mandolin of Sten Isachsen complement tracks like “Frank is Burning.” Confessional songs like “Daniel’s Song,” whether autobiographical, fictional, or somewhere in the foggy middle, steep the album in a sense of heartache that the maker has come to terms with. Note the bookending tracks “When I Rise” and its reprise, these and what’s in between them surrender to the unknowable jingle-jangle of the world.
—Tristan Geary
SOUND CHECK | Liam Singer
Each month we ask a member of the community to tell us what music they’ve been digging.
I have a three-and-a-half -year-old who’s deeply uninterested in anything beyond Disney soundtracks, so my personal listening habits are compromised these days. But I have moments to myself late at night, or on my weekly drives up to Restaurant Depot. My most-played record this year has likely been Tikiman Vol.1 by the long-time vocalist/producer Paul St. Hilaire. Deep, atmospheric electronic dub in the world of Pole or Rhythm & Sound. Really sonically complex, and also physically makes me feel very good. This past month, I’ve been enjoying Rectangles & Circumstance by Caroline Shaw and So Percussion. I’ve loved all their collaborations, which are full of constantly surprising and imaginative songs that are somewhere between modern composition and experimental pop.
I’m fortunate to be exposed to so much great music through running Avalon, and I’m often listening to artists who have recently performed or are about to. PG Six is playing next month, and I finally sat down with their
wonderful record Murmurs & Whispers—harp-based folk songwriting with beautiful lyrics and inventive arrangements. Also on the folk kick, I’ve been listening to Allysen Callery, who is a massively under-appreciated songwriter out of Westerly, Rhode Island—great Nick Drake-/Sandy Denny-inspired stuff, but also dark enough that it works when she collaborates with the occasional metal band. She played Avalon recently, and I’m hoping to do a residency with her next year. Mark Trecka is a great musician who recently moved back to Beacon after spending some time in Paris. His work takes the tools and palette of experimental/noise artists (tape loops, pedal chains) and forms them into songs that coagulate and dissipate around his gorgeous vocals. He just put out a new album called Fool Signals, and that’s the next thing I’ll be diving into. Also looking forward to exploring the work of Wished Bone, a lo-fi songwriter who recently played Avalon and really blew me away.
Liam Singer is the owner and manager of Avalon Lounge in Catskill as well as a musician and composer. Theavalonlounge.com.
Queer Mythology:
Epic Legends from Around the World
Guido A. Sanchez
RUNNING PRESS TEENS, 2024, $19.99
Catskill resident and middle school teacher Guido Sanchez has collected cultural folklore from all over the world with a queer lens. From Tu’er Shen, the Chinese rabbit god who protected those yearning to come out in an unaccepting world to the Filipino goddess Lakapati, Sanchez proves that queer identities are nothing new and they have existed from the beginning of civilization. The Hawaiian religious myth of Lono and Kapa’ihi tells the story of two lovers reuniting, creating rivers and streams with their happy tears. These myths that have been told for thousands of years are about family, love, creation, and reflect labels that people use today. The short retellings are accompanied by striking illustrations by James Fenner.
Ghosts of a Holy War
Yardena Schwartz
UNION SQUARE AND CO., 2024, $29.99
In her newest book, Schwartz provides historical context to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. Schwartz is an award-winning journalist who spent a decade reporting in Israel and now lives in Rhinebeck. Ghosts of a Holy War goes back to the 1929 Hebron massacre, a seminal event in Arab-Israeli relations, when 70 Jewish residents were murdered by their Arab neighbors. Schwartz demonstrates how the conflict today cannot be understood without the context of ground zero of this century-old war, which began long before the occupation, the settlements, or the state of Israel ever existed.
Swami Salami
Michael Esposito
BUSHWACK BOOKS, 2024, $24.95
Woodstock legend Michael Esposito has lived an eventful life. In the late ‘60s he was the lead guitarist in the psychedelic band the Blues Magoos. He became a monk of a Western Orthodox church perched high on Meads Mountain Road in 1972, and in the `80s he inherited a bike shop, Old Spokes Home on Tinker Street, which he still operates. He was also the resident cartoonist at the Woodstock Times for 40 years, making wry commentary on small town life through his alter ego, Swami Salami. This book collects over 300 cartoons, with an introduction by Woodstock Times publisher Geddy Sveikauskus.
Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Biography
Joseph Luzzi
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2024, $24.95
Joseph Luzzi, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature at Bard College, follows the many trails left by Dante Alighieri’s masterpiece that takes the poet on a journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven, exploring the state of the human soul after death. Luzzi tracks the epic poem’s reception over the centuries and how it has left its mark on writers from Giovanni Boccaccio to James Joyce. With this book, Luzzi unfolds Dante’s thoughts and dives into the lasting impacts of the work on censorship, the role of canonical literature, and organized religion.
American Still Life
Jim Naremore
REGAL HOUSE PUBLISHING, 2024, $19.95
Naremore, originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, now lives in Hudson. His first novel The Arts of Legerdemain as Taught by Ghosts, won the Independent Publisher’s Book Awards Bronze Medal for “Best First Novel” in 2017. American Still Life tells the story of Skade Felsdottir, a photojournalist who struggles with addiction and selfloathing. When her photo-essay book is unsuccessful, she returns to bad habits and reconnects with her ex-boyfriend while befriending another young woman named Kit. Felsdottir and Kit confide in each other until disaster strikes and Felsdottir is forced to make life-anddeath decisions about being a starving artist.
—Remy Commisso
A Hudson Valley Reckoning
Debra Bruno CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS, $32.95, 2024
Beautiful, bucolic images of the Hudson Valley and the Catskills have drawn people to this region for centuries. As painted by the likes of Thomas Cole and Frederic Church, these pictures, with their soaring mountains, cascading waterfalls, and gold-tinted sunsets, captured the essential goodness of America—a republic blessed and protected by powers unseen, only hinted at in the landscape’s sheer grandeur.
But these images were always misleading, incomplete—not only because they ignored the industrial spoliation already underway, and not only because they erased the indigenous peoples who had called the place home for millennia. As Debra Bruno notes in an absorbing and rigorously researched new book, such images also obscured another unpleasant reality: the enslaved Black people who had worked the land and built the wealth of the area’s early settler families— including, to her surprise and chagrin, the author’s own.
Appalled, Bruno sets out to learn everything she can about this “dismal” side of Hudson Valley history—and the myths and lies that have been used to cover it up. Earlier studies suggested that the region’s slaves “were seldom ill-treated,” among other self-comforting pap. To this “kinder, gentler storyline,” Bruno offers a much-needed corrective. Like the “treacherous currents of the Hudson,” Bruno finds that with history there’s “the placid surface and an altogether different situation underneath.”
By the mid-1600s, when the region was still part of Dutch-run New Netherland, imports from Africa began replacing captive Native Americans and indentured Europeans as the go-to source for forced labor. Slavery spread rapidly. In some areas, enslaved Africans made up as much as 28 percent of the population. The book focuses on Bruno’s hometown of Athens and other towns south of Albany on the west side of the Hudson—Catskill, Coxsackie, New Baltimore. It’s full of astonishing tales of suffering and resistance. During the Revolution, one family’s servants stuffed every gun in the house with ash, intentionally leaving the family unprotected when British-aligned Native Americans came bursting through the door. Bruno also relates a devastating story from the 1890s about an elderly Black woman named Emily, whose children had long ago been sold away from her. As she aged, Emily crafted a homemade doll collection as a stand-in for her children. The collection drew kids in the New Baltimore area. “Did the little girls who played with the dolls realize what those dolls represented?” Bruno wonders. “What were their names, those dolls and those lost children?”
Bruno can’t answer those questions, of course. Yet she works unstintingly to track down the names of others whose lives and stories would otherwise have been lost. Early in her search she meets Eleanor C. Mire, and she is startled to discover Mire descends from people whom her own ancestors enslaved. Bruno uses newspapers, diaries, public records, and every other conceivable resource to enliven her rich and disturbing portrait of life in the early Hudson Valley. She confesses to having spent as much time “poking around old cemeteries” as in libraries and archives, but such a freewheeling approach gives the book a visceral and deeply personal feel. Bruno describes a sense of having been “called” to the work of peering into the dismal underside of her family’s history—and her nation’s— and haunted by the ghosts of the forgotten past.
A Hudson Valley Reckoning closes with a steely consideration of how centuries’ worth of wrongs might begin to be made right: simply put, by starting close to home. “Repair is coming,” she confidently writes, noting progress in how the story is finally being addressed by new signage and programming at local museums from Westchester’s Philipsburg Manor to Albany’s Philip Schuyler Mansion. A descendant of area Huguenots, she joins the advisory board of the Ulster County Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an official public body whose website offers a trove of research, including a map of every location in the area tied to slavery in some way. “I had this sense of people carefully placing tiny puzzle pieces into a vast landscape,” Bruno writes. “When it’s done, the picture will be vast and maybe even mind-blowing.”
— Richard Kreitner
Abstractions
Rage is a jammed front door and order is children slaughtered in Gaza. Justice is a feeling that a judge has after lunch and common is talking about the weather, hoping to talk about something that matters. Solitude is sitting at the Walmart bus stop, looking at a girl in a car asking who are those people sitting there. Ecstasy is buying a pizza for a party of friends and family, walking it in the front door. Evil is the story in the paper that I can’t read, I see the headline and flip as fast as possible. Gratitude is fresh air. Bobby Bare is on the radio at 2:22 am. My mind is a number. My children at the zoo. Mercy is knowing me. Faith is believing in me. Hunger is the way I feel I am doing something better than me. Peace is swimming with my kids in a pond, the snapping turtles never appear. War is a dream. History is a dream. An angel who helps my little crises.
—George Payne
Grief
She walks home slowly
Thinking about what the doctor said Going over every word Again and again
Closing the door to her apartment She sits at the table
Buries her head in her arms and cries, Mourning the moments in the last six weeks Squandered on worry
—Jim Savio
Come Sit on the
Porch
Come sit on the porch with me, my love, while the world falls apart. A tumorous cloud at the river rises rapid, like milk boiling over a too-small pan. It emerges enorming, forming a storm as unique steam startles and enrages it.
And now look: The whole sky is a color I’ve never seen. It begins to go a blackish green. While the wind whips the brackish waves, sailors scatter and fishers flee for the nearest dock. Why feign shock? This is what we have made for ourselves. The world has turned on us, as we have turned on the world.
Rain is pelting the melting streets (not cooling—just angry).
Outside, the sun fried us all morning; now a torrent keens and screams. There seems no air. We are poaching; we are boiling. Shall we suffocate, or drown? Come sit down and drink, my love, a toast to the end of the world.
—Genie Abrams
I hope you find your dreams like the corner of a kite. It takes you up, up, up, way above your reality. You will expand, see new perspectives, laugh and feel light as a feather.
No need to hold on too tight, just a pinch.
At the bottom corner, You will soar high, Swirl in circles.
The sky will be more blue than ever before. Clouds float by, many shapes and sizes.
Oh look, there is another kite,
Let go as that dream comes true and grab hold of the new one beside you
Your vision is real, you feel yourself grow, change shape and drift with the wind.
Just like your dreams, taking you higher, your energy becomes electric, your dreams are realized…
Let go of the kite, Your dreams have come true.
You soar on your wings, the kite is adrift…
A new soul it waits for.
—Missy Wallace
Jimerick #3
When I’m in a tower I’ll give you an hour; I may hold a pair, Or be lifted to swear; I can measure a mare, Show a singer I care, Be loaned out as aid, Waved, shaken, or laid. What am I?
—Jim Raskoski
Last Words of a House on Fire
Please remember my fever—
The sidewalk chill—
How at the last, I tried to warm you—
An effigy - grief and firewood—
And I prayed for you, if you can call it prayer—
You - light of me cupped in the eye
As a valley-bed cradles the dying sun—
You - the air we might break and share as bread—
The men in helmets, the clouded moon,
The wailing o’er the town, all my ghosts set free—
But you - rain on your cheeks, barefoot and bedless—
Newly haunted and orphaned to the morrow—
Would that I could hold you as before—
Would that I could shelter you from this.
—Emily Murnane
Dating
I’m rusty
I write my new lover a poem
On the back of old wedding stationary
Handmade paper
Brittle from thirty years in the drawer
The violets disintegrate as did our union.
I’m stale
My wardrobe offers nothing original I look nightly for a new accessory I thrift for passion
I bargain hunt for intimacy
BOGO for positive regard and trust.
I’m impatient
I hunt through the recycle bin
Used torn repurposed
I’ll eat with a spork from long ago take out
I know how to make do
I’m aged
My address book a cemetery
Or more like a map
Pushpins on my timeline
Markers of memories
Updating their status
I’m parched
Hiking out of the Grand Canyon
My boyfriend leaves me water by a rock
His pace impatient with mine
The jar smells from peanut butter
And when I arrive
Ants have swarmed its crevices
Contaminate my ration
Of water.
I’m eager
To be fed from a stainless spoon
Drink quenchingly from the fountain
Be large
I want to cause pause.
—Ilyse Simon
Embracing Gone
I was embracing gone
After they went
And that’s one stiff hug.
I bet gone felt like Lake Erie
Stuck between parentheses (dam it!).
Now tributes are tributaries
That gift rivers to cemeteries
But the fluent words
Merely float memories downstream
While the sky heavy atop my canoe
Still won’t let me paddle up itWon’t even drop me a tow rope
And pull
To where mom and dad
Talk the woof woof woo
Of the speechless shamans
Of Hound Heaven
Frolicking all ahowl in om
As oarless in love
As the salmon that get all the way up
To their dearest
Who gesture “sit” and “stay” “You’ve come all this way”.
—David L. Levitt
Incident
Furnace goes out no oil no heat so you build a fire center of living room floor smoke sets off alarms as the floor burns and fire falls through to basement just like everyone you love has fallen away just like hopes & dreams are consumed by the blaze of your ambition to make a life so perfect that no detail is overlooked just like your smoldering smile greets the rushing sirens.
—C. P. Masciola
first love dry leaves carried by the summer wind
—Pulkita Anand
I Made a Poem
An inveterate scribbler
Not chosen, not rhymed.
Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you, Lives untroubled among simple and quiet words.
He escapes a smeared fate
Knowing he does so nobly, then he dies.
—Sean J McDermott Firepit
Our firepit is full of flowers
she’s asked me not to burn.
So I gather up more stone and set it down in a new circle.
Love is like that—
flowers growing where a flame was; beginning over once again.
—Ryan Brennan
Rise from Slumber
When My Sleeping Dragon Woke and the Curious Childhood of Sharon Washington
By Peter Aaron
It sounds like a fairytale, a magical dream along the lines of A Night at the Museum
A little girl and her family live inside a library—a big, big library filled with rows and rows of books that go on for as far as the eye can see. Every evening after school, the little girl plays for hours and hours between the towering bookcases, sprawled out on the floor with any book she could ever want to read. She loves learning about all sorts of incredible things, and she loves immersing herself in all the fantastic stories on the shelves. But believe it or not, this fairytale actually happened in real life. At least it did to one little girl. And that little girl grew up to be a highly respected actress and playwright. Her name is Sharon Washington, and her fascinating childhood is the focus of When My Sleeping Dragon Woke, a documentary produced and directd by her husband, documentary filmmaker Chuck Schultz.
“I was doing one of my first professional shows out of drama school, and we were all sitting on stage during a break, telling stories about our families,” says Washington in the film. “I told my story, and everybody was, like, ‘Well, you have to tell that story. That’s an amazing story.’”
Feeding the Fire
As late as the 1970s, the buildings that housed the branches of the New York Public Library were still being heated by coal furnaces, each of which had to be maintained by an appointed custodian. Because the furnaces had to be kept running
24/7 in the colder months, each branch—there were over 30 of them around the city at the time—contained a hidden apartment where the custodian, and his family, if he had one, lived, to ensure that there was always someone on site to stoke and maintain the system.
Washington was born in 1959 and her father, a transplanted Southerner who was also the deacon at the family’s Pentecostal church (her mother worked as a secretary to the pastor, Sharon’s godfather), was the house custodian at the St. Agnes branch of the New York Public Library on Amsterdam Avenue in the Upper West Side. This was where she spent her early childhood.
“I remember having my birthday parties in the library when I was three or four years old, and whenever I had a babysitter, they had an easy job—I couldn’t go outside, so they’d just let me run around in the library while they kept an eye on me,” Washington says. “Our apartment was up two flights above the main floor. Sometimes I’d go down to the library after hours and just walk around and look in all the display cases that were there. I remember there was a Ukrainian Easter egg in one of them. Where else would I have seen a Ukrainian Easter egg as a little girl in New York back then? I took [living in the library] for granted then because I didn’t know anything else. I thought it was cool, and when I was a little older and started having friends over so did they. But it wasn’t until I started visiting their homes that I really started to understand how different my home life was from theirs.”
Steeple to
Stage
The actress credits church for sparking her interest in performing. “The Pentecostal church is very participatory,” she explains. “We’d go to church Tuesday through Sunday, and there’d always be lots of speeches and pageants. There was the chorus, and the minister would have his sermons. I think that gave me my love of storytelling, which was also an outgrowth of my love of reading. I’d read Shakespeare and when I saw his work performed, it made me go, ‘Wow, people actually do this—perform stories for a live audience.’” (In a poetically perfect path, she would later appear several times on the New York Shakespeare Festival stage, playing opposite Denzel Washington [no relation] in “Richard III” and Christopher Walken in “Coriolanus.”)
Washington attended the college-preparatory Dalton School, an experience that made her more aware of social class. “Other kids would have their birthday parties at the Paramount screening room, or their family would rent out [iconic toy store] FAO Schwarz for a night,” she recalls, adding that her time as a student of color in the school’s diverse, tight-knit community equipped her for myriad social situations. Before graduating, she had a box office job with the Manhattan Theatre Club, where she served for two years as the club’s managing director’s personal assistant before going on to earn a BA from Dartmouth and study international government and African-American studies at Yale, where she’d eventually earn an MFA in drama.
A scene from When My Sleeping Dragon Woke, directed by Chuck Schultz.
But despite her love of acting, she hadn’t seriously considered it as a career when she started college. “I thought I would join the foreign service and go work in Africa or overseas,” she says. “I didn’t think my parents would be too happy about struggling to put me through college and then me telling them I wanted to be an actor.” The buzz that came with her starring in the original production of August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” at Yale Repertory Theatre, however, changed things. “After that, I was all in,” Washington says.
Roll Camera
Chuck Schwartz grew up in the Montclair/ West Orange, New Jersey, area. After moving west on his own to catch the tail end of the hippie scene in San Francisco in 1974, he found himself increasingly interested in learning about filmmaking. “I was dating a woman there who was a conceptual artist, so by being around her I started seeing a lot of experimental and underground films and films by directors like Herzog and Kurosawa,” he says. “That got me thinking, ‘Wow, I want to do this.’”
He produced a low-budget 1977 documentary about beekeepers before heading back east to New York and taking a job with director and music video producer Bob Giraldi, a stint that included the making of the landmark video for Michael Jackson’s 1983 hit “Beat It” and the infamous 1984 Pepsi commercial that saw the singer’s hair catch fire during the shooting. By the next decade he’d returned to producing his own films, starting with 1992’s One Day at a Time, about the lives of twin sisters with cerebral palsy; subsequent titles would include 2003’s The Rural Studio (about the work of architect Samuel Mockbee and Auburn University’s Rural Studio), 2007’s Five Days in
July (about the 1967 Newark riots), and 2016’s The Last Crop (about the struggles of aging-out farmers in California’s Central Valley).
The couple met in 1996 through a close mutual friend who’d attended Yale when Washington was there. “He got our friend to invite me to what I thought was a script meeting,” says Washington, with a laugh. “And things just kind of took off from there.”
Acting Up
One thing that had certainly taken off by the time the two began seeing each other, and continues to blossom, has been Washington’s stage and screen work. Her 30-years-andcounting career has seen her nominated for a 2023 Tony Award as the cowriter of the Broadway musical “New York, New York.” On Broadway, she also starred in “The Scottsboro Boys,” while her off-Broadway turns include “Dot” at the Vineyard Theatre; “Wild with Happy” and “Caucasian Chalk Circle” at the Public Theater; “While I Yet Live” and “String of Pearls” at Primary Stages; and many others. Her television credits list is packed with parts on “The Blacklist,” “One Life to Live,” “Bull,” “Blue Bloods,” “Madam Secretary,” “Law & Order” and its spinoffs, and other shows as well as voiceover spots for Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, and PBS-TV. Washington’s many movie appearances include roles in Joker, Diehard with a Vengeance, Malcolm X, School of Rock, Michael Clayton, Birdwatching, Down with the King, On the Basis of Sex, and, most recently, Sing Sing and Joker: Folie a Deux. The latest play she’s written, “A Colored Mirror,” was selected for residencies at the New Harmony Project and SPACE on Ryder Farm.
“Achieving certain heights and transforming
from a stage actor to a film and television actor to a celebrated playwright, I think that is what makes Sharon’s personal story so special,” says her Sing Sing costar Colman Domingo. “Chuck is very interested in very human stories, and I’m really happy that he took to examining his own wife as a subject and her work as an artist. He knows where her imagination lies and knows where her imagination flies.”
When My Sleeping Dragon Woke’s storyline is meta in feel. Besides telling the tale of Washington’s unusual upbringing, it follows her work in writing, producing, and starring in “Feeding the Dragon,” a one-woman stage adaptation of the story, which is also planned as the subject of a Scholastic picture book version titled The Little Girl Who Lived in the Library. Drama occurs in the documentary and play iterations of the tale when Washington comes to terms with her late father’s alcoholism, something that she hadn’t previously confronted as it was never spoken of when she was a child.
She and Schultz left their 39th-floor Hell’s Kitchen walkup behind for a home in Millbrook in 2018 and Sleeping Dragon was completed not long after, premiering locally in September 2023. Perhaps the most poignant moment associated with the release of the film thus far came when it was shown at Dartmouth College.
“After the screening, I was observing this young Black woman from the audience,” says Schultz. “She came up to Sharon and said, ‘You’re me, I’m you.’ That was pretty moving for me.”
“We all have stories to tell,” says Washington. “And they’re all important.”
When My Sleeping Dragon Woke can be viewed free of charge the entire month of December at Bit.ly/chronogram-wmsdw.
Left: In When My Sleeping Dragon Woke, Sharon Washington looks back on her unusual childhood home. Right: Washington and Schultz at the recent Chagrin Documentary Film Festival in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.
Kantrowitz, Among the Trees 2024, courtesy the artist.
Photo by Nicholas Burnham
Breaking the Shell
THE BANG GROUP’S “NUT/CRACKED” AT KAATSBAAN CULTURAL PARK
December 20-22
Kaatsbaan.org
When it’s the holiday season, you can’t swing a bough of holly without hitting another earnest-but-tired community production of Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker.” New York dance company the Bang Group’s “Nut/Cracked” is not one of those. Conceived by choreographer David Parker, who cofounded the Bang Group in 1995, the show puts an irreverent spin on the classic by incorporating not just traditional ballet, but also tap dancing, disco, swing, and even a few hilarious sight gags. We spoke with Parker via email ahead of the company’s performances of “Nut/ Cracked” at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in Tivoli. —Peter Aaron
The Bang Group turns 30 years old next year. Congratulations! What comes to mind as you look back at what the company has accomplished over the decades? How do you see it evolving as you head into the next decade?
We’ve succeeded at creating a form of contemporary dance that embraces tap dancing, humor, ballet, contemporary dance, vaudevillian innovation, gay culture, and theater. It is always driven by rhythm and devoted to the revelation of intimate relationships and states of mind. I see this form creating ever deeper connections between genres at the level of rhythm, thereby erasing boundaries and opening doors to new choreographic possibilities. This work has kept us in the public eye for over 30 years and shows every sign of continuing to do so.
At this point, “Nut/Cracked” itself has been in existence for more than 20 years. How did the show come into being, and how has it changed over time? For those who haven’t seen it, how would you describe it and what makes it different from the many other “Nutcracker” productions that people have to choose from during the holiday season?
“Nut/Cracked” was commissioned by Dance Theater Workshop (now NYLA) and the Carlo Felice Opera House in Genoa, Italy, in 2003. This came about because I had choreographed a work called “Bang and Suck” in 1992, and it had become very popular on tour, especially in Europe. It was, not surprisingly, about intimate relations between two men, myself and my dance partner Jeffrey Kazin, and the second section of it was danced to “The Grand Pas de Deux” from “The Nutcracker” featuring Jeff and I engaged in classical partnering accomplished through mutual thumb sucking. An Italian presenter saw this and commissioned an evening-length work that dealt with the whole “Nutcracker” in the same spirit. This “Nutcracker,” which I called “Nut/Cracked,” was created for my beloved downtown dance world in New York City and the scrappy, plucky, gritty spirit of its denizens. I thought we deserved our own homemade, dance-forward, irreverent version that reflected who we are and what the winter holidays have come to mean for us. It is a plotless, comic/subversive, neo-vaudevillian version of “The Nutcracker” that highlights percussive dance elements and is leavened by humor and a gender-fluid approach to the casting as well as a hearty dollop of gay/queer sensibility. It is not a satire, but a loving tribute restated in contemporary terms in my own (New York) dialect.
Which choreographers have inspired you? I grew up simultaneously training in tap, ballet, and modern dance in the ’70s. I didn’t see these forms as in any way opposed to one another, so I drew on them equally as I began to make my own work. My biggest inspiration at the time was Twyla Tharp, who was also doing this in the work that I saw at that time: “Deuce Coupe,” “Eight Jelly Rolls,” “Sue’s Leg,” “The Fugue,” and “Baker’s Dozen.” I was also terribly inspired by Merce Cunningham’s work, due to its unyielding formalism, theatrical potency, and syncopated rhythms. My colleagues of the time in New York City also influenced me: Tere O’Connor, Keely Garfield, Susan Marshall, Bebe Miller, Ralph Lemon, and Sara Hook (with whom I collaborated often). I also worked with two wonderful experimental tap dance companies during the ’80s and ’90s, Gail Conrad’s Tap Dance Theater
by Julie Lumberger
and Anita Feldman’s Body and Soul. I am drawn to the dancing and choreography of Golden Age Hollywood musicals, primarily those of Fred Astaire and, to a lesser extent, Gene Kelly, because they were so strongly inflected toward psychological, romantic, and theatrical communication and because they used tap dancing as a kind of dramatic engine and not solely as a form of music. They were also completely legible as drama and as dance at the same time and almost always got right to the point.
The Bang Group is known for the uniquely percussive nature of its performances. When many people see the term “percussive dance,” they might think of traditional tap dance or over-the-top shows like “Stomp.” How is your approach to percussive dance different from those variants?
I think my approach is more oriented toward the exposure of relationships, states of mind, psychology, and the humor that flows from them than on rhythmic virtuosity per se. Even when we are dancing a physicalization of a musical score, which we often do, I seek to reveal the way we are with each other in the world rather than in an otherwise abstract dimension.
Besides being entertained, what do you most hope that people pick up on about the show while attending one of the “Nut/Cracked” performances at Kaatsbaan this month? What feelings or experiential effects are you most interested in conveying?
I’m most interested in conveying a sense of freedom. Each of the 20 odd sections of “Nut/Cracked” is centered on a present, a gift, that allows the dancer to transform in some way and to give free rein to some fantasy incarnation or impulse—these include toe shoes, bubble wrap, a takeout noodle, a Christmas tree, a feather boa, red gloves, snow and snow hats, bouquets of flowers, and on and on until finally the gift is already ours, our own two thumbs. It’s a paean to the body electric in its myriad incarnations. For me, “Nut/Cracked” offers a sense of timeless, genderless, ageless liberation and the ability to reconfigure old traditions into new celebrations.
Members of Bang Group from left: Emily Tschiffeley, Amber Sloan, and Jeffrey Kazin
Aaron Mattocks and Erin Gottwald in Bang Group's "Nut/Cracked"
Photo
Hudson Valley Free Day
Dia Beacon Riggio Galleries 3 Beekman Street Beacon, New York diaart.org
part of the "Presumed Ignorant" exhibition.
Photo by Christian DeFonte
Court and Spark
SHABOOM’S “PRESUMED IGNORANT,” AT ART OMI IN GHENT
Through January 26
Artomi.org
“There’s moments where you’re laughing so hard you’re crying,” remarks curator Sara O’Keeffe, about the art collective Shaboom. Their show, “Presumed Ignorant,” is at Art Omi in Ghent until January 26.
The show lampoons Court TV, which began in 1991, and reached its apex with the O. J. Simpson trial for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in 1995. One of the more unheralded American inventions, Court TV combines the justice system with lowbrow entertainment—hence the exhibit’s clever title. Televised trials were one of the precursors of reality TV. Now that a convicted felon is president-elect, this exhibition is particularly timely. (Followers of Court TV— which was rebranded in 2008 as truTV—are known as “gavel groupies.”)
Court TV is based on the theory that adjudication can be a fun competition. And indeed, a trial is a bit like a football game: There are two teams; one loses, one wins. Viewers choose their allegiance, and hope for victory.
When you walk in “Presumed Ignorant,” you enter a courtroom made of cardboard. “They wanted to
play with the notion that everything could fall apart at any time; that things are really just Scotch-taped together,” O’Keeffe explains. Also, the low-cost art mirrors the low-tech video of voyeuristic TV. The judge, on a high platform, is a red-eyed monster with an English-style white wig. Behind him, instead of “In God We Trust,” is a LED display with phrases like “99 cent wings w/ bottomless shrimp shooters” and “staff member orgy in breakroom.”
Shaboom is influenced by Arte Povera, an Italian art movement that found beauty in simple materials like stones and rags. The collective is also inspired by punk, and in fact two of the members are in bands. Lex Vaughn has been a drummer for a number of groups, including Lesbians on Ecstasy. Paul Soileau has performed as the “drag terrorist” Christeene with Faith No More, Peaches, and Suicide. This is Shaboom’s first East Coast show. Videos by Samara Halperin appear in the exhibit, including three advertisements for a mythical law firm, Popper, Jape, and Huh—played by the three members of the collective, in clownish outfits. “Have you recently been divorced and were not even married? Are you currently seeking a restraining order on yourself?” asks one of the ads. The three lawyers, all brandishing shiny gavels, vow to help hapless litigants. Two outdoor billboards also advertise this giddy law firm (“Sullied the Family Name?” one of them asks, before adding parenthetically: “Us Too”), then gives an actual phone
number, 1-888-54 SHABOOM, on which to leave desperate pleas. Recordings of these phone calls play in the Art Omi restrooms.
Another video montage, of actual TV commercials for lawyers, is even more absurd—including one where a Dallas attorney named Brian Loncar deliberately wrecks an automobile, then emerges, proudly reciting his contact info.
There’s a longtime relationship between the justice system and visual art. Sketch artists capture the emotional moments of a trial, creating pictures to fill TV screens and dominate newspapers. Two prominent artists, Nayland Blake and Scooter LaForge, made sketches of Shaboom’s performance at the show’s opening on October 5. These colorful, impulsive “courtroom drawings,” including phrases like “I Hate My Life” and “Obviously Guilty,” are now part of “Presumed Ignorant.” (Another Shaboom performance is planned for January; stay tuned to Art Omi’s Instagram account for more details.)
We’re used to musicians collaborating—for example, the Miles Davis Quartet—but visual artists working together is less common. It makes gallery goers nervous to see a neo-expressionist painting of a sinking sailing ship (one of the pieces in the show) with no name beneath it. But Shaboom is an entity in itself, with its own comedy and wisdom.
—Sparrow
A satirical billboard by Shaboom collective. Recordings of actual phone calls to the 888 number play in the Art Omi restrooms as
HIGH
Faces of Freedom
YIGAL OZERI’S “THE TRUTH OF A PORTRAIT” AT ETHAN COHEN GALLERY AT KUBE ART CENTER IN BEACON
Through January 20
Ecfa.com/kube
Let’s be real: It smells like political-dump-farts everywhere. And lately I am hearing voices in my head who harken back to my high school social studies class and the kindhearted dude who taught it. He was a jovial type who occasionally jumped atop his sturdy wood desk to make a dramatic statement about politics in the USA. His method was effective and unforgettable: “Listen up!” was his point. The voices persist as I recall his entertaining antics: What are the history lessons bound to be repeated? What would my once-WWII-Nazifighting-now-stardust grandfather have to say about those who support hatred? What was the homework assignment? WTF is happening to democracy?
The Israeli artist Yigal Ozeri’s solo show “The Truth of a Portrait” at Ethan Cohen Gallery at KuBe Art Center in Beacon provides a powerful response: capability! And culpability. We believe in those who demonstrate their capacity to steer with care. Featuring large-scale photorealist paintings that tower across the space and drawings of elected officials and individuals who have spent their lives fighting for our freedoms and civil rights, this show is an outstanding celebration of champion humans, minus the image of a doomy Donald Trump (2020) from behind.
The in-your-face line-up includes undisputable heavyweights: Martin Luther King (2020), John Lewis (2020), Barack Obama (2020), and the lovely Michelle Obama (2020) looking in his direction, her face equally tense and tender. Ozeri’s portraits are intensely proud and pure: Kamala Harris (2024) and her beaming smile, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (2020) and her inquiring gaze, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (2020) and her deliberate grin. The works are blunt: James Baldwin (2020) stares at us incredulously while Pope Francis (2020)
apprehensively holds his head in his hand and Bernie Sanders (2020) looks on with a chuckle. The combined power of these renowned figures—with the mighty George Floyd (2020) portrait as the emotional anchor for the entire room—is utterly remarkable (and Ozeri’s painterly photorealist talent is astonishing). Amid the palpable elation produced by these portraits, Floyd’s eyes are fiercely gentle as they rip through your soul. What more can be said here?
Alas, the deplorable issues persist: the ills of global oppression, racism, sexism, and environmental horrors pile up and run berserk. Never mind, Ozeri won’t have it. With his pre-Raphaelite-meets-Chuck Close style and unwavering command of paint, his works are stunning embodiments that lift us higher. Every face in the room echoes the sentiment: “Listen up and do your part, too!’ Damn that stench, and the horrors that face American history. Let us praise those—artists and politicians alike—who remain devoted to the core value of this great nation: Liberty and justice for all!
—Taliesin Thomas
Trump Exists, Yigal Ozeri, oil on canvas, 72 x 48 inches, 2020
Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Yigal Ozeri, oil on canvas, 72 x 48 inches, 2020
The Ladybug Transistor
December 6 at Tubby’s in Kingston
Associated with the influential Elephant Six collective of neo-psychedelic indie pop bands (Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control, Apples in Stereo), the Ladybug Transistor was founded in Brooklyn in 1995 and is led by singer and guitarist Gary Olson. Currently the group is touring in celebration of the 25th anniversary of their third album, The Albermarle Sound, which appeared on Merge Records in 1999. Lightheaded and Kyle Forester open. (Basic, Chris Brokaw Rock Band, and New Orthodox rock December 4; the Ar-Kaics and Benny Trokan bash December 7.) 7pm. $22.50.
Harriet Tubman
December 7 at the Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center in Poughkeepsie
Presented by Elysium Furnace Works at the Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center’s VBI Theater, out jazz trio Harriet Tubman burns with a freedomsearching fire that echoes that of their abolitionist namesake. Comprised of guitarist and vocalist Brandon Ross, bassist Melvin Gibbs, and drummer J.T. Lewis, the New York band channels the heated, exploratory sounds of electric-era Miles Davis, mid-1960s John Coltrane, the great Jimi Hendrix, and beyond. (From Stage to Screen Acting Studio presents “Peter Pan Jr.” December 14-15.) 8pm. $30 advance, $40 door.
Kathy Mattea
December 8 at the Egg in Albany Grammy Award winner Kathy Mattea is the current host of NPR’s “Mountain Stage,” a consultant on Ken Burns’s multi-part PBS documentary Country Music, and one of the most beloved voices in contemporary acoustic-based country, bluegrass, and folk music. For this special holiday program, “A Winter Gathering with Kathy Mattea: Good News and Other Favorites,” the singer will assuredly dip back to her acclaimed 2003 album Joy for Christmas Day (The Screaming Orphans’ Christmas show lights up December 7; Samara Joy brings holiday cheer December 16.) 8pm. $49.50, $59.50.
John Pizzarelli Big Band
December 21 at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, Massachusetts
The jazz guitarist and host of NPR’s “Radio Deluxe” brings his 17-piece big band to the Mahaiwe in support of Dear Mr. Sinatra, his exuberant 2006 album made in tribute to the Chairman of the Board. The swinging show encompasses well-known Frank Sinatra hits like “Witchcraft,” “In the Wee Small Hours,” and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”; favorites from Sinatra at the Sands, the singer’s landmark 1966 live collaboration with Count Basie and Quincy Jones; his work with Antonio Carlos Jobim; and more. (The Berkshire Bach Society presents “Bach at New Year’s” December 31.) 8pm. $49-$109.
Assembly Grand Opening with the Felice Brothers
December 30-31 at Assembly in Kingston
Last month brought the wonderful and welcome news about the unveiling of Assembly, a new live music venue in Kingston’s Stockade district aimed at filling the mid-sized-nightclub vacuum left by the loss of the late, lamented BSP. The new nightery will host this soft grand opening with performances by power-house local indie folk rock quartet the Felice Brothers. Located in a historic former school building at 236 Wall Street, the renovated, 450-capacity venue boasts a state-of-the-art sound system in a space that was acoustically designed by renowned architect John Storyk (Electric Lady Studios, Bearsville Theater). Booking at the new venue is being overseen by Impact Concerts, which has presented the Woodsist Festival and other high-profile concert events. (On December 31 after midnight will be a free after-hours party featuring DJ Jams Bond.) 7pm, both nights. December 30: $54.56. December 31: $66.39.
Lee Fields
December 31 at the Bearsville Theater in Bearsville
The thought of ringing in the new year with soul singer supreme Lee Fields sounds sweet, indeed. Nicknamed “Little JB” for his physical and vocal similarities to James Brown, the North Carolina-born Fields debuted with a run of singles that began in 1969. The rise of disco saw him walk away from performing in the 1980s, but by the ’90s he was back, going on to record with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings and find a new young, appreciative audience with his own records on the Daptone label. (Puss N Boots step up December 6; Marky Ramone’s Holiday Blitzkrieg bops December 13.) 7pm. $59.65-$106.65. —Peter Aaron
Lee Fields plays Bearsville Theater December 31.
caption tk
A still from the documentary Union, which will screen at Upstate Films' Starr Cinema in Rhinebeck on December 12.
FOIA Love
December 5 at Howland Cultural Center in Beacon
“FOIA Love” is a one-of-a-kind comedy and bluegrass show that pairs laughs with toe-tapping tunes. (FOIA stands for Freedom of Information Act, which requires disclosure of government information.) The event takes a humorous look at the world of public records, inspired by strange and outlandish documents, like FCC complaints about “The Big Bang Theory” being too violent. The award-winning bluegrass band, featuring mandolin player Tristan Scroggins, Bennett Sullivan from Steve Martin’s Bright Star, Austin Alfano, and Nick Conte, will provide the soundtrack for the evening.
“Always…Patsy
Cline”
December 6-8 at the Rosendale Theater
The Rosendale Theater hosts “Always…Patsy Cline,” a heartfelt production from the Phoenicia Playhouse, directed by Orvi Vargas. The musical tells the story of the iconic country singer’s enduring friendship with Louise Seger, an adoring fan who first met Cline in a Texas honky-tonk in 1961. Through humor, emotion, and 27 of Cline’s beloved hits, the play offers an intimate glimpse into her personal life, including letters to Seger, always signed “Love always…Patsy Cline.” Erin Hebert stars as Cline, with Rebecca Brown Adelman portraying Louise. Performances feature a live honky tonk band and run Friday and Saturday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 4pm. $25.
“The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley”
December 6-15 at Shadowland Stages in Ellenville “The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley” invites audiences back to the beloved world of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, this time from the perspective of the downstairs staff at Pemberley during the holiday season. Following the success of “Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley,” this charming sequel by Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon adds a festive twist as Mr. Wickham—ever the dashing troublemaker and former nemesis of Mr. Darcy—makes a special appearance, stirring up holiday chaos. With a cast of loveable characters, including Mrs. Reynolds, the loyal housekeeper, and the spirited new servant Cassie, the play weaves a heartwarming story of family, class, and forgiveness, all wrapped in holiday cheer and classic Austen wit.
Winter Walk on Warren Street
December 7 on Warren Street in Hudson Hudson’s 28th Winter Walk, presented by The Foundry at Hudson, returns with its signature blend of holiday magic and community spirit. The free event transforms Warren Street into a festive wonderland complete with live
music, holiday performances, and plenty of opportunities for seasonal shopping. Window displays compete for attention, while delicious treats fill the air with irresistible aromas. The highlight of the evening is a stunning fireworks display, presented by Hudson Hall. 5 to 8pm.
Union
December 12 at Starr Cinema in Rhinebeck Union is a powerful documentary that takes viewers inside the 2022 Amazon warehouse unionization effort on Staten Island. Directed by Brett Story and Stephen Maing, the film immerses audiences in the tense, behindthe-scenes struggle faced by workers fighting against a corporate juggernaut’s anti-union tactics. Shot over a year, with much of the footage captured by the workers themselves, Union offers an unflinching look at the personal stakes and collective determination of those pushing for change. Following the screening, Amazon labor union organizers Brima Sylla and Kathleen Cole will participate in a talkback moderated by Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha. 7pm.
“Doctor Marigold” by Charles Dickens
December 13, 15, 20, 22 at Park Theater in Hudson “Doctor Marigold” brings Charles Dickens’s final “Christmas Number” to the stage. Written in 1865, the story follows a cheap jack—a traveling vendor selling household wares from his cart—who, over time, learns that the people he meets along his journey have given him more than he could have imagined. The one-man show, starring John McManus, immerses audiences in the language and vivid characters of Dickensian England, where even the most flawed and struggling individuals reveal unexpected depths. With its themes of redemption and human connection, “Doctor Marigold” remains a poignant reflection on the value of simple acts of kindness. $25.
Selected Shorts at the Mahaiwe
December 14 at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Back by popular demand, Selected Shorts returns to the Mahaiwe with a special holiday edition featuring Jane Curtin, Joanna Gleason, Michel Gill, and Bhavesh Patel. The celebrated actors will read a selection of short stories filled with humor, emotion, and seasonal warmth. The event brings the popular public radio series to life, offering an opportunity to hear stories performed by stars of the stage and screen. Known for its diverse mix of established and emerging writers, the afternoon promises a blend of laughter, reflection, and holiday cheer. 1pm. $35 to $45.
Variable
December 14 at Tinker Street Cinema in Woodstock
Variable is the story of two brothers, Doug and Jamie Kennard, on a 10-year quest to ski all 81 peaks in the Catskills and Adirondacks. Against a backdrop of relentless winter conditions, physical injury, and the tragic loss of a spouse their journey becomes a battle against time, climate change, and their own limits. (Jamie co-owned Kingston wine bar Brunette with his wife Tracy, who died in 2021.) Q&A to follow. 5pm. Free.
Stissing House Craft Feast
December 14 and 15 at Stissing House in Pine Plains
This holiday season, the Clare de Boer’s celebrated Stissing House restaurant will transform into a winter wonderland of handcrafted treasures. For two days— Saturday from 12 to 6pm and Sunday from 10 to 4pm— the air will hum with the sound of conversation, the clink of ceramics, and the earthy scent of leather and pine. Tables will be piled with exquisite textiles, handwoven baskets, knives, jewelry, and furniture, each piece telling a story. Vintage finds will mingle with new creations, as makers and collectors gather in this cozy, festive space.
A
John Waters Christmas
December 16 at Old Dutch Church in Kingston
This holiday season, Big Gay Hudson Valley presents an evening with the one and only John Waters for a riotous, no-holds-barred Christmas celebration. Waters delivers two hours of irreverent humor, unapologetic holiday jeering, and his signature brand of subversive cheer. Forget the sugar and spice—this is a Christmas celebration for the bad little nonbinary boys and girls, with Waters at the helm as St. Nick the Dick. Expect bawdy humor, filthy gifts, and a chaotic good time with drag queens, holiday beatings, and a merry dose of subversion. 8pm. $45 to $85.
Unitard in “Holiday on Thin Ice”
December 20 at Unicorn Bar in Kingston
Get ready for a hilarious holiday romp when New York City’s outrageous comedy trio, Unitard, takes the stage for a twisted celebration that blends sharp wit with social, political, and sexual satire. Expect a night of riotous sketches, clever monologues, and irreverent humor from Unitard members Mike Albo, Nora Burns, and David Ilku. Special guest Gloria Gross-Glorius (aka Lex Powell) makes a rare comeback, promising a dazzling performance. Presented by Beth Lisick and Jodi Lennon, the duo who brought laughs to Saugerties with the More Than a Feeling Comedy Fest earlier this year. Doors at 7pm. Show at 8. $25 advance.
—Maggie Baribault
510 WARREN STREET GALLERY
510 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“Photography to Chat About.” Photographs by Ken Tannenbaum. December 6-29.
ART OMI
1405 COUNTY ROUTE 22, GHENT
“Shaboom: Presumed Ignorant.” Installation by the Shaboom collective: Silky Shoemaker, Paul Soileau, and Lex Vaughn. Through January 26.
BAU GALLERY
506 MAIN STREET, BEACON
“Joel Brown and Onaje Benjamin.” Ceramics and photographs.
“Vicennial Anniversary.” BAU members group show. Both exhibitions December 14-January 5.
BILL ARNING EXHIBITIONS
HUDSON VALLEY
17 BROAD STREET, KINDERHOOK
“Over Decades.” Work by Judy Glantzman and Stephen Lack. Through December 8.
CARRIE HADDAD GALLERY
622 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“Unexpected Light.” Work by Jane BloodgoodAbrams, Leigh Palmer, Harry Orlyk, and Regina Quinn. December 6-January 26.
CATSKILL ART SPACE
48 MAIN STREET, LIVINGSTON MANOR
“Robin Crookall, Lizzie Scott, David Storey, and Barbara Weissberger.” Through December 29.
CHANGO LIFE ARTS
211 FISHKILL AVENUE, BEACON
“Botones del Sofa.” Work by Amy C. Wilson. Through December 28.
CLARK ART INSTITUTE
225 SOUTH STREET, WILLIAMSTOWN, MA
“Abelardo Morell: In the Company of Monet and Constable.” Photographs. Through February 17.
DANIEL ARTS CENTER
AT SIMON’S ROCK
84 ALFORD ROAD, GREAT BARRINGTON, MA
“Harry Levenstein.” Ceramics. Through January 15.
D’ARCY SIMPSON ART WORKS
409 WARREN STREET, HUDSON.
“Wither and Bloom.” Paintings by Jordan Baker. Through December 31.
DIA BEACON
3 BEEKMAN STREET, BEACON.
“Bass.” Installation by Steve McQueen comprising 60 ceiling-mounted lightboxes that journey through the complete spectrum of visible light in concert with a sonic component. Through December 31.
DISTORTION SOCIETY
155 MAIN STREET, BEACON
“Two Things Are True.” Group show curated by Michelle Silver and Sarah Hanssen. December 14-January 10.
ETHAN COHEN GALLERY AT THE KUBE ART CENTER
211 FISHKILL AVENUE, BEACON
“Yigal Ozeri: The Truth of a Portrait.” Series of large-scale photorealist oil paintings representing some of America’s most influential and significant political leaders. Through January 20.
FORELAND
111 WATER STREET, CATSKILL
“Anne Schaefer.” Installation. Through February 16.
Emergence 1, Carol Levine, colored pencil on Arches paper, 39.5" x 29", 2024. From "Emergence," an exhibition of drawings inspired by Joseph Campbell at Woodstock Artists Association and Museum through December 29.
FRANCES LEHMAN LOEB ART CENTER
124 RAYMOND AVENUE, POUGHKEEPSIE
“Reproductive: Health, Fertility, Agency.” Traveling exhibition organized by Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. Through February 2.
GALLERY 495
495 MAIN STREET, CATSKILL
“As Above, So Below.” Work by Melanie Luna. Through December 22.
GALLERY40
40 CANNON STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE
“Best in Show.” Group show of work that has a special place in each artist’s heart. December 7-January 26.
GEARY CONTEMPORARY
34 MAIN STREET, MILLERTON
“I have time for death and rebirth.” Work by Eve Biddle. Through December 15.
GREEN KILL
229 GREENKILL AVENUE, KINGSTON
“Peter Head, Richard Treitner.” Paintings and photographs. Through December 27.
GW Bridge—Level 3, Ken Tannenbaum, photograph.
From "Photography to Chat About" at 510 Warren Street Gallery in Hudson, December 6-29.
GRIT WORKS | GRIT GALLERY
115 BROADWAY, NEWBURGH
“River Reflections.” December 7.
HIPPOCRATES GALLERY
211 HURLEY AVENUE, KINGSTON
“Ice Dreams.” Photographs by Joel Mandelbaum. December 7, 12-5pm.
HUDSON HALL
327 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“Community Canvas.” Art by area schoolchildren. December 7-22.
HUDSON VALLEY MOCA
1701 MAIN STREET, PEEKSKILL
“Crit Ecologies: Artists, Community, Criticality.” Group show curated by Patricia Miranda. Through December 7.
“Psychological Portraiture.” Group photography show. Through June 30, 2025.
JANE ST. ART CENTER
11 JANE STREET, SAUGERTIES
“Welcome Home.” Juried group show. Through December 14.
KINDERHOOK KNITTING MILL
8 HUDSON STREET, KINDERHOOK
“Cradled.” Objects, soundscapes, lighting, ephemera, and experience curated by Frances McDormand and Suzanne Bocanegra. Through December 22.
KINGSTON POP MUSEUM
672 BROADWAY, KINGSTON
“Granny Takes A Trip.” Pop-culture memorabilia for show and sale. Through December 19.
LABSPACE
2642 NY ROUTE 23, HILLSDALE
“Holiday.” Group show. December 14-February 23.
LAND GALLERY
30 CHARLES COLMAN BOULEVARD, PAWLING
“Holiday Show.” Group show. Through December 31.
MAGAZZINO ITALIAN ART
2700 ROUTE 9, COLD SPRING
“Maria Lai. A Journey to America.” Comprehensive overview of Maria Lai’s (1919–2013). Through July 28, 2025.
MARK GRUBER GALLERY
13 NEW PALTZ PLAZA, NEW PALTZ
“Holiday Salon Show.” Group show. Through January 31.
MASS MOCA
1040 MASS MOCA WAY, NORTH ADAMS,
MA
“Like Magic.” Simone Bailey, Raven Chacon, Grace Clark, Johanna Hedva, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Cate O’Connell-Richards, Rose Salane,
Petra Szilagyi, Tourmaline, and Nate Young use healing earth, witches’ brooms, AI, divination, and more to imagine care-full and joy-full futures into being despite the peril promised by the past and present. Through August 31, 2025.
ML 1843
3705 MAIN STREET, STONE RIDGE
“Tiny Art by Polly Pen.” An unusual (and sometimes humorous) combination of vintage frames repurposed with original paintings. Through December 8.
MUROFF-KOTLER ARTS GALLERY
491 COTTEKILL ROAD, STONE RIDGE
“Making.” Work by Michael Asbill, Thomas Sarrantonio, and David Soman. Through December 6.
OLIVE FREE LIBRARY
4033 ROUTE 28A, WEST SHOKAN
“In the Still of the Night.” Annual small works show curated by Nathalie Andrews and Susan Shaftan Perrin. Through January 4.
PINKWATER GALLERY
237 FAIR STREET, KINGSTON
“By Moonlight: The Magical Landscapes of Caroline Burdett.” Paintings. Through January 7.
QUEEN OF ROGUES
2440 ROUTE 28, GLENFORD
“Gulnar Babayeva.” Sculpture and ceramics. Through December 14.
ROBIN RICE GALLERY
234 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“No Ordinary Blue.” Paintings by Erica Hauser. Through December 22.
SAMUEL DORSKY MUSEUM OF ART
1 HAWK DRIVE, SUNY NEW PALTZ
“In and Out of Lineage: Tracing Artistic Heritage Through SUNY New Paltz Faculty.” Group exhibition featuring artwork by 20 members of the University’s Departments of Art and Design. Through December 8.
SEPTEMBER
4 HUDSON STREET, KINDERHOOK
“All at Once.” Work by Anne Beresford, Diane Dwyer, Sacha Ingber, Natalie Lerner, Ellen Lesperance, Holly Mills, and Sam Vernon. Through December 22.
THE SPARK OF HUDSON
502 UNION STREET, HUDSON
“Our Town On The River.” Work by Chiarra Hughes Mba, David McIntyre, Gretchen Kelly, Ifetayo Cobbins, Jonathan Simons, Kim Bach, Michelle Fox Smith and Pauline Decarmo. Through December 7.
SPENCERTOWN ACADEMY
ARTS CENTER
790 ROUTE 203, SPENCERTOWN
“Small Works 2024: Regional Fine Arts and Crafts.” Group show curated by Meryl Enerson. Through December 15.
View of Monet's Garden #3, Giverny, France, Abelardo Morell, tent-camera image, 2023. From "In the Company of Monet and Constable," an exhibtion of tent-camera images inspired by 19thcentury painters at the Clark Art Institute through February 17.
SUGAR MAPLES CENTER FOR CREATIVE ARTS
35 BIG HOLLOW ROAD, MAPLESCREST
“Millennial Nostalgia.” Ceramic sculpture by Jackie Fischer. December 14-December 21.
SUPER SECRET PROJECTS
484 MAIN STREET, BEACON
“Touch Grass.” Paintings and sculpture by Ian Clyde. Through December 7.
“Studio Work: Where Art Finds a Home.” Group show. December 14-January 7.
SUSAN ELEY FINE ART
433 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“Flowers Shall Grow.” Ellen Hermanos retrospective. Through December 22.
THE LACE MILL GALLERIES
165 CORNELL STREET, KINGSTON
“Holiday Art Show.” Group show of inexpensive work suitable for gifting. December 7-29.
THE MILDRED I. WASHINGTON ART GALLERY, DUTCHESS COMMUNITY COLLEGE
1 GALLERY CIRCLE, POUGHKEEPSIE
“The Art of Tarot: Rachel Pollack.” Tarot designs by Rachel Pollack. Through December 13.
THE RACONTEUR BAR & KITCHEN
10 MARBLE AVE, PLEASANTVILLE
“Women in Gold.” Paintings by Steven A. Worthy. Through December 17.
THE REINSTITUTE
1395 BOSTON CORNERS ROAD, MILLERTON
“Holiday Art Show.” Pop-up holiday art show featuring work by 35 artists. December 7, 1-3pm.
TIVOLI ARTISTS GALLERY
60 BROADWAY, TIVOLI
“Holiday Show.” Group show of small works and handcrafted pieces. Through December 21.
TREMAINE ART GALLERY AT THE HOTCHKISS SCHOOL
11 INTERLAKEN ROAD, LAKEVILLE, CT
“The Circe Effect: Women’s Creative Power Reclaims the Narrative.” Work by Chelsea Steinberg Gay, Dana Robinson, Katiushka Melo, Donna Dodson, and Madeleine Conover. Through January 25.
TROUTBECK
515 LEEDSVILLE RD, AMENIA
“The Urgency of Leisure.” Work by Dana Robinson. Through January 12.
TURLEY GALLERY
98 GREEN STREET, SUITE 2, HUDSON
“Counterpart.” Paintings.
“Index.” Paintings by Hank Ehrenfried.
“Scattered Sun.” Installation by Heidi Norton. All exhibits through December 22.
THE WILLIAMS COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART
15 LAWRENCE HALL DR., WILLIAMSTOWN, MA.
“Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art”. Teddy Sandoval retrospective. Through December 22.
WOMENSWORK.ART
12 VASSAR STREET, 3RD FLOOR, POUGHKEEPSIE
“Spirit of the Season.” Small works exhibition. December 6-22.
WOODSTOCK ARTISTS ASSOCIATION AND MUSEUM (WAAM)
28 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK
“Masters of Divinity: Religious Art from the Permanent Collection.” Group show curated by Nicole Goldberg. Through December 31.
“Carol Levine: Emergence.” Drawings influenced by Joseph Campbell. Through December 29.
“Gratitude.” Annual members’ holiday exhibition and sale. December 1-29.
WOODSTOCK BYRDCLIFFE GUILD
36 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK
“5 x 7 Show.” Group show. December 6-22.
WOODSTOCK SCHOOL OF ART
2470 ROUTE 212, WOODSTOCK
“Instructors Exhibition.” Group show. Through December 14.
YWCA ULSTER COUNTY
209 CLINTON AVENUE, KINGSTON
“Too Marvelous for Words.” Group show. Through December 21.
Horoscopes
By Cory Nakasue
Objects in Rearview Mirror are Closer Than They Appear
This month, four major celestial bodies pause to change direction, and we get two new Moons. Every week there’s an opportunity to back-track or untangle ourselves from the past few months. December opens with a new Moon in Sagittarius on the 1st. Optimism is easier to access as we dream up new ways to retool our perspectives. Piecing together information from contradictory sources to create coherent narratives is highly supported.
Our tactics regarding the pursuit of desires shifts gears as well. Mars stations retrograde in Leo on December 6th, and actions from the past come roaring back to haunt us. If you dropped the ball a couple months ago, pick it back up. Create a new strategy. On the 7th, Venus leaves conservative Capricorn for rule-breaking Aquarius. Necessary shake-ups can resuscitate relationships that have been flatlining.
A confounding full Moon in Gemini coincides with Mercury’s station direct on December 15. We may receive game-changing information about a deeply held belief. However, that doesn’t mean we’ll necessarily know what to do with this new intel. Confusion, second-guessing, and denial will be common mental states on the days surrounding this full Moon. Be patient, and adopt a wait-and-see approach before committing to a moral stance on a subject.
Things become clearer as we near the Sun’s entrance into Capricorn (the winter solstice) on the 21st. When the Sun transitions from Sagittarius to Capricorn, we move from the world of possibilities and unbridled imagination to the world of material reality and strict limits. This is echoed further in Jupiter’s (Sagittarius’ ruler) confrontation with Saturn (Capricorn’s ruler) on the 24th. The second new Moon of the month on the 30th, this time in Capricorn, encourages us to take realistic, baby steps toward a sober and mature understanding of the world we live in.
ARIES (March 20–April 19)
Finding the perfect words to describe something doesn’t make it true. Your mind is swimming in great ideas, brilliant metaphors, and ingenious maneuvers, but what are they in service of? Language can be a useful bridge between imagination and reality, but it could also be what gives us a false feeling of accomplishment. What steps can you take to embody your language, an image, or an inspiration? How can you charge your musings with kinetic energy or mobilize other people? Communicating big ideas is one of your strengths this month. You could win a gold medal for brainstorming.
TAURUS (April 19–May 20)
This month, it’s your ability to be flexible that gives you the most stability. When the world around us is fluctuating, we’re safest when we mirror its movements. People want you to be a sounding board for new and exciting ideas. Your ability to estimate how multiple tacks might pan out makes you a sought after partner. While you’re waxing hypothetical, just remember that the word “hypothesis” contains the word “hype.” Before you make binding promises about what you can deliver, or invest material capital into a venture, make sure you have tangible resources. Speculate with abandon. Commit with caution.
Cory Nakasue is an astrology counselor, writer, and teacher. Her talk show, “The Cosmic Dispatch,” is broadcast on Radio Kingston (1490AM/107.9FM) Sundays from 4-5pm and available on streaming platforms. AstrologybyCory.com
GEMINI (May 20–June 21)
Truth and fact are often the same thing, except for when they’re not. Something can be emotionally true, even if there’s no way to prove it: We can’t quantify it with data, or even touch it, but it’s still true. Sometimes facts and figures lie. How do you decide what to act on? This dilemma is likely to show up in your important relationships. You’re also figuring out what to believe about yourself. There’s the definite possibility of you “getting high on your own supply,” but maybe you really are that great. What are your relationships mirroring back to you?
CANCER (June 21–July 22)
Put down the newspapers. Turn off the television. Hop off the social media platforms, and refrain from gossip. The only information you need right now comes straight from your own nervous system. How’s your breathing? What does your gut feel like? Don’t know? Not sure? Time to incorporate better check-in practices with your body-mind. Wander off into the woods without listening to music or podcasts. Seek out a meditation or restorative yoga teacher. Only you know what’s true and right for you. Too much irrelevant information muddies the waters of your deep knowing. Don’t discount the messages from your dreaming mind.
LEO (July 22–August 23)
Is it optimism or is it escape? Is it substantial communication or is it just noise that obscures any real message? You may be enjoying some of the big, fiery energy that’s come into your life recently. Hopefully you used it to reinvigorate any creative projects or promising romances that were put on the back burner. There’s also the possibility that the fresh infusions of adrenaline and dopamine blunted murkier, more complex subject matter. The temptation to gloss over contradictions is strong, but the richness of your creative/ romantic life exists in these complicated spaces. Choose slow burns over hormonal spikes.
VIRGO (August 23–September 23)
You’ve come to the conclusion that anywhere and anyone can be home if you trust yourself. You feel freer than you’ve felt in a long time, and you don’t even have to leave your own house. Privacy affords you the ability to connect to wisdom that grounds you. If you wish to share this wisdom with the world, it must pass through the prism of your multifaceted mind. Don’t expect your deep inner experience and the expression of it to be the same thing. One is for you. The other is for the public. This kind of compartmentalization will keep you sane.
LIBRA (September 23–October 23)
Sometimes we think we’re experiencing intuition when what we’re really feeling is nostalgia. When we’re mentally overwhelmed, uncertain, or threatened by new information, it can be easier to entrench in familiar pathways of thought. We’ll proclaim that something “just feels right,” when the truth is, it’s just recognizable. You’re more susceptible than usual to the influence of “the group” and of charismatic folks with social capital. It’s easy to find comfort by surrounding yourself with authority figures. I challenge you to find some alone time this month, preferably in unusual surroundings. What do you really believe when you don’t have “expert” input?
Chronogram
SCORPIO (October 23–November 22)
You’ve become privy to secret knowledge. It’s powerful, and therefore a bit disturbing. Sometimes we think that if we just had enough knowledge, X-ray vision, or code-breaking skills, we’d feel more secure. Be careful what you wish for. Too much insight into others can be a burden. Quests for absolute truth can leave us feeling captive when what we really want is freedom. It can be difficult for Scorpio to take things at face value and emotionally distance itself from its thinking. This month’s full Moon in Gemini reminds you that there are two sides to every story, and both are valuable.
SAGITTARIUS (November 22–December 22)
Stop trying to make everything “right.” The fact that you think there is a “right” way to think, to be, or to see, indicates some errors. This lesson began last month, and it continues this month. Polarization is your worst enemy right now, and it promises much internal frustration and conflict in relationships. You must question yourself. You may think questioning yourself is a sign of weakness, or lack of conviction. In the case of December, these questions actually sharpen your perspective by leading you to the full story that you’re often chasing. Learn that multiple things can be true at the same time.
CAPRICORN (December 22–January 20)
If you’ve been feeling lost for the past few weeks, things are about to change. Buried memory, your dream life, the regulating of your nervous system, and all other forms of “thinking” that happen below the threshold of consciousness have been hard at work. By the new year, the subliminal might come crashing through to your conscious mind. Answers, results, and realizations might hit you like a ton of bricks. Until then, gently tend to your imagination. Try deep reading, games that involve questions, riddles, or the solving of puzzles. You’re grooming your body-mind by using oblique strategies.
AQUARIUS
(January 20–February 19)
The verdict is in. Who, of your many friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, have you selected to form your dream team? You’re not only looking for those who are aligned with your values and goals, you want people who will challenge you in ways that make you better. Who holds your feet to the fire? Who inspires you to be a truer version of yourself? Be discerning. At the New Year, you’ll need some reliable back-up to tackle a formidable situation. There will be lots going on behind the scenes and in places you don’t usually look.
PISCES
(February 20–March 19)
As of late, you’ve had problems being perceived the way that you want. It’s as if a gremlin has scrambled every message you’ve tried to send. That’s all about to get straightened out. You can now correct any misconceptions that have caused you trouble. You may have learned over the past few weeks that you have misconceptions about yourself. Moments of private questioning are needed to project an authentic image out to the world. How would you like the world to see you? Don’t be too strict with your branding. Shapeshifting is your birthright—a feature, not a flaw.
Ad Index
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Bard College at Simon’s Rock 8
BCMT Co. / Art & Furniture Gallery .......66
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Birch Spa & Boutique 39
Brass Monkey Home 36
Cabinet Designers, Inc 21
Casita at Mass MoCA 16
Catskill Ballet Theatre 75
Catskill Health Food Store 45
Catskills Candle Studio 32
Century of Style (aka Trysor) 36
Colony Woodstock 10
The Common Good 39 Curious 75
Custom Window Treatments 22
Cutting Edge Design 25
DBO Home 36
Dia Beacon 66
Doma 31
The Dutch 16
EJ Bonbons and Confections 35
Eleish Van Breems Home 34
Emerson Resort & Spa 39
Emily Benazzi - Real Estate 25
Far Out Finds 39
Friends of Clermont ................................68
G.L. Decorative Finishes 25
Garrison Art Center 68
Glenn’s Wood Sheds 22
Got2LINDY Dance Studios.....................27
Graceland Tattoo 33
Green Cottage 77
Grit Gallery 66
H Houst & Son ........................................25
Habitual Designs 21
Harmonious Development 79
Haven Spa
Harm nious Development
• Morning Exercises + Sittings • Gurdjieff Movements
• Themes for Study of Head, Heart + Body 21st Century Seekers: A Practical Work for Being Thursdays @ 7pm 64 Plains Road, New Paltz Meetings are free of charge,
Before the Storm
This morning my wife said to me that the Central Hudson electric company without telling us had cut down three trees in our backyard.
I was writing an essay about an artist who had seen, as a child, her mother cutting out her own face from all the family photographs.
I looked out of the window and then at my wife. How easy would living become if it was easy to say anything.
Translated from the original Hindi by Amitava Kumar
Amitava Kumar is the Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College and the author of over a dozen books, including My Beloved Life (2024).
Before the Storm, Amitava Kumar
Embrace the holiday season.
Cozy up in a charming boutique hotel. Restore your soul at a wellness retreat. Breathe in the crisp air on a rail trail or a mountain hike. Go holiday shopping in our charming small towns. Indulge in inventive, Catskill-icious cuisine and The Good Taste Craft Beverage Trail.
Peace, Love & Lights: Nov 29-Dec 2 at Bethel Woods • Dickens on the Delaware: Dec 14 in Callicoon
Happy Holidays
