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Chronogram arts.culture.spirit.
contents 4/09
news and politics
home & garden supplement
21 while you were sleeping
62 garden of earthly delights
Anger as career booster, approval for low-cost female condoms, and more.
.
Crispin Kott talks with the experts about native and organic backyard plants.
24 a call to arms: an interview with robert weissman Lorna Tychostup talks with the author of How Wall Street Betrayed America.
28 beinhart’s body politic: biff! bang! boom! (crash.) Larry Beinhart wonders how 13,000 economists got it so wrong.
art of business 30 giving credit .
70 cooking up a well-balanced life Lorrie Klosterman examines how the Institute for Integrative Nutrition defies the conventional wisdom about food, lifestyle, and diet.
74 Flowers Fall: ego, interrupted Field notes from a Buddhist Mom’s experimental life. By Bethany Saltman.
Kelley Granger finds out the reasons why local banks are thriving.
fiction 48 garden city .
whole living guide
Mimi Moriarty’s tale was a runner-up in our 2008 Short Story Contest.
54
business services 58 tastings A directory of what’s cooking and where to get it. 65 business directory A compendium of advertiser services. 75 whole living directory For the positive lifestyle.
The Cafe at the Wild Hive Farm Store’s Marinated Feta and Radish Salad features Four Brothers Farm Goat Feta with Poughkeepsie Farm Project’s watermelon radishes and Conuco Farm’s sunflower shoots. FOOD & DRINK
4 ChronograM 4/09
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4/09 ChronograM 5
Chronogram arts.culture.spirit.
contents 4/09
arts & culture 34 portfolio
104 parting shot Sala-meander by Kenneth Cooke.
Kingston Renaissance man Hendrik Dijk exhibits this month at KMoCA.
36 MUSEUM AND Gallery GUIDe
the forecast
40 music
82 daily calendar
Peter Aaron feels the noise with Dan Seward of Bunnybrains. Nightlife Highlights by DJ Wavy Davy, plus CDs by Jen Clapp Lonesome Sunbeam. Reviewed by Crispin Kott. The Princes of Serendip What She Said. Reviewed by Sharon Nichols. Sangeeta Michael Berardi Earthship. Reviewed by Erik Lawrence.
44 BOOKS Pauline Uchmanowicz profiles poet Charles Simic.
46 BOOK reviews Anne Pyburn reviews FEED ME! edited by Harriet Brown and Two Weeks Under by Rivka Tadjer. Marx Dorrity reviews Emily Post by Laura Claridge.
52 Poetry Poems by Brett Boes, Patrick Carroll, Allen C. Fischer, Anthony G. Herles, Katie Litteral, Richard Loveland, Emmy Mac, Elaine Mills, Paula Orlando, Judith Saunders, Marlene Tartaglione.
54 food & drink Don Lewis goes with the grain at the Wild Hive farm store in Clinton Corners, part cafe, part bakery, part purveyor of local foodstuffs. Peter Barrett visits.
Comprehensive listings of local events. (Daily updates of calendar listings are posted at Chronogram.com.) PREVIEWS 81 Jeff Crane reviews the sculptures of John Cleater at Nicole Fiacco in Hudson. 83 Luc Sante, author of Low Life and Kill All Your Darlings, talks with Peter Aaron. On April 6, Sante will lecture at Vassar College, part of itsPublic Voices series. 87 The rite of spring is celebrated on April 25 when the Center for Symbolic Studies hosts its 19th annual Beltane Festival. Anne Pyburn previews. 89 The Hudson Valley Philharmonic, in collaboration with a coalition of local choral groups, will perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on April 18 at UPAC. 93 Jay Blotcher talks with David Hajdu, author of comic book history The Ten-Cent Plague. Hajdu will be reading and signing at Joshua’s Cafe on April 4. 95 Disbanded since 1998, post-punk garage-rock legends Chrome Cranks reunite at Backsage Studio Productions in Kingston on May 5, kicking off their reunion tour.
planet waves 98 finding your missing piece Eric Francis Coppolino on a way out of our tense self-relationship. Plus horoscopes.
91
John Cleater’s The Last Giant Squid Sperm and Pink Sink at Niccole Fiacco Gallery.
images provided
FORECAST
6 ChronograM 4/09
THE
BARDAVON
PRESENTS...
HUDSON VALLEY PHILHARMONIC
THE N INT H
R ONA N T Y NA N
JO D E E MESSINA
k . d . l ang
JUDY COL L I N S
SATURDAY APRIL 18, 8 PM AT UPAC
SUNDAY APRIL 19, 5PM AT THE BARDAVON
FRIDAY APRIL 24, 8PM AT UPAC
SATURDAY APRIL 25, 8 PM AT UPAC
SUNDAY MAY 3, 7 PM AT UPAC
Dr. Edwin Ulrich Charitable Trust
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4/09 ChronograM 7
on the cover
Chas 3
eric bean | archival pigment print | 2008
April 24-26, 2009
B ASIL TWIST Dogugaeshi Master puppeteer Basil Twist unfolds a journey of images influenced by the tradition of Japanese dogugaeshi stage mechanism technique and his own encounters with the remaining rural caretakers of this once popular art form. Lightning quick sliding screens, a magnificent puppet of a white fox, and trompe l'oeil perspective, featuring original shamisen compositions played live.
Fr iday, 24th, 8 PM Saturday, 25th, 4+8 PM Sunday, 26th, 2 PM
At the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center | Troy, NY
8 ChronograM 4/09
www.empac.rpi.edu | 518.276.3921
When aspiring photographer Eric Bean moved to New York City in 1989, he entered the trade in the traditional way, as an assistant to an established photographer. Bean, however, disliked the subservient nature of assistant work and got a night job at a photo lab instead, chasing his own photography clients during the day. Within two years—an exceptionally short period of time in this field—Bean had established himself as a professional photographer. For the past 20 years, Bean has worked primarily in the fashion industry, shooting for clients including Salvatore Ferragamo, Bill Blass, Avon, Harry Winston, and De Beers. Currently, Bean is focusing more on his fine art work, the languid pace and autonomy of which he enjoys, in contrast to the often frenetic world of fashion. “If I’m on a fashion shoot, there are 10 people making decisions,” says Bean. “It’s creativity by committee. You have to fight for your vision.” Drawing on his experience in the world of fashion, Bean has authored two books with Jennifer Bidner, on the view from both sides of the lens: Complete Guide for Models: Inside Advice from Industry Pros for Fashion Modeling (Lark Books, 2004) and The Lighting Cookbook for Fashion and Beauty Photography: Foolproof Recipes for Taking Perfect Portraits (Amphoto Books, 2005). Eighteen months ago, Bean and his partner decided to raise bantam chickens at their home in Kerhonkson. (Bantam chickens are one-third the size of standard breeds, usually only three to four pounds.) An unforseen adjunct to this foray into animal husbandry has been a series of photos featuring his chickens. The portraits look an awful lot like fashion photography, a fact not lost on Bean. “I had to laugh at myself at some point, because I realized I was shooting like fashion photography,” says Bean. “I was waiting for just the right pose; waiting for the turn of the head over the shoulder.” And chicken behavior, Bean confides, is not all that different from the ways of urban fashionistas. Describing one of his chicken’s states of general excitement, Bean says, “He’s like every fashion queen I know in New York—always out of his head over something.” Photographs by Eric Bean will be exhibited through May 31 at High Falls Mercantile, 113 Main Street, High Falls. (845) 687-4200. www.highfallsmercantile.com. Portfolio: www.ericbean.com. —Brian K. Mahoney
Our Patients are our #1 Priority! During 2008, Benedictine Hospital and The Kingston Hospital received a #1 Rating in Patient Satisfaction by the National Research Corporation. Margaretville Hospital received a #1 Rating for Patient Satisfaction from Health Care Acquisition Performance System. Our commitment is to remain #1 and to provide our patients with compassionate care, quick response, and most of all a smile and a helping hand from every one of our physicians, nurses and staff members. We welcome you to visit our web site at www.hahv.org and learn how our hospitals are making a difference in the community.
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EDITORIAL Editorial Director Brian K. Mahoney bmahoney@chronogram.com creative Director David Perry dperry@chronogram.com senior Editor Lorna Tychostup tycho56@aol.com Books editor Nina Shengold books@chronogram.com health & wellness editor Lorrie Klosterman wholeliving@chronogram.com Poetry Editor Phillip Levine poetry@chronogram.com music Editor Peter Aaron music@chronogram.com proofreader Candy Martin
contributors Emil Alzamora, Peter Barrett, Larry Beinhart, Jay Blotcher, Brett Boes, Patrick Carroll, Eric Francis Coppolino, Jan Larraine Cox, Jeff Crane, Marx Dorrity, Allen C. Fischer, Kelley Granger, Anthony G. Herles, Annie Dwyer Internicola, Crispin Kott, Erik Lawrence, Katie Litteral, Richard Loveland, Emmy Mac, Jennifer May, Elaine Mills, Mimi Moriarty, Sharon Nichols, Paula Orlando, Anne Pyburn, Fionn Reilly, Bethany Saltman, Judith Saunders, Kim Scafuro, Sparrow, Marlene Tartaglione, Pauline Uchmanowicz, Lynn Woods
PUBLISHING FOUNDERS Jason Stern & Amara Projansky publisher Jason Stern jstern@chronogram.com advertising sales advertising director Shirley Stone sstone@chronogram.com business development director Maryellen Case mcase@chronogram.com Sales associate Eva Tenuto etenuto@chronogram.com sales associate Mario Torchio mtorchio@chronogram.com sales coordinator Jennifer McKinley jmckinley@chronogram.com ADMINISTRATIVE chief operating officer Amara Projansky aprojansky@chronogram.com; (845) 334-8600x105 business MANAGER Ruth Samuels rsamuels@chronogram.com; (845) 334-8600x107 PRODUCTION Production director Teal Hutton thutton@chronogram.com; (845) 334-8600x108 production designers Mary Maguire, Eileen Carpenter Office 314 Wall Street, Kingston, NY 12401 (845) 334-8600; fax (845) 334-8610
MISSION
Chronogram is a regional magazine dedicated to stimulating and supporting the creative and cultural life of the Hudson Valley. All contents Š Luminary Publishing 2009
SUBMISSIONS calendar To submit calendar listings, e-mail: events@chronogram.com Fax: (845) 334-8610. Mail: 314 Wall Street, Kingston, NY 12401 Deadline: April 15
poetry See guidelines on page 52. fiction/nonfiction Submissions can be sent to bmahoney@chronogram.com.
10 ChronograM 4/09
Quality Dental Care NEW PALTZ, NY
In finding a dentist
it’s important to make the best choice. Dr. Schwartz is a knowledgeable, caring, and experienced professional. He LISTENS to your concerns and does a thorough diagnosis of any problems. Then we DISCUSS options and COMMUNICATE with you until you are satisfied with any plan of treatment or maintenance. We are a small office in a small town. But we offer a level of treatment that you would expect in a large city. Dr. Schwartz is a graduate of NYU College of Dentistry. He continues to pursue additional training at dental education centers across the nation in such subjects as periodontics, orthodontics, implantology, and surgery. Dr. Schwartz has been at this location for eleven years. You will see the same dentist every time. You will notice that the dentist spends more time with you and takes more of a personal interest in your care than just about any other health professional you’ve ever met! We provide general dentistry including family care, implants, artistic cosmetic dentistry, surgical and non-surgical periodontics, extractions, root canal, and other services.
MARLIN SCHWARTZ, DDS 845 255 2902 www.schwartzqualitydental.com 4/09 ChronograM 11
letters Lingering Clouds To the Editor: The letter to the editor in this month’s Chronogram [“The Clouds of War Reposting,” 2/09] regarding Jason Stern’s views on Israel was disturbing. I understand the impetus to print it and to create a spirit of inclusion. I have a harder time understanding how something so mired in shortsightedness and defensiveness belongs next to pages of progression and open-mindedness. I could spend hours arguing the points expressed in the letter to you, but I would guess you are aware of the obvious ironies and untruths. I am constantly and consistently baffled that many “liberals” or “progressives” in America step in line on every issue except the Israeli/Palestinian issue. Somehow, on this one issue, militants become terrorists, and Arabic assertions are propaganda. It boggles the mind that an entire population can be so blatantly imprisoned, occupied, humiliated, and “terrorized” and still be considered equals in the constructs or blockades to peace. One of the first Chronograms I read when I moved here four years ago contained some thoughts by you on the Palestinian struggle. They were enlightened, compassionate, and in tune with everything your magazine embodies. Since then I have read many issues of the magazine and never been disappointed by the purity of ideal and the struggle for truth. Printing the letter from this disenfranchised reader, pontificating on why a few dead Palestinians is more forgivable than a few more, all the while condemning you for your pontificating, was the first stain on the hope I felt upon my first readings. Despite the claims of the letter writer, it is a rare and indeed astonishing act of bravery to show compassion for the Palestinians and objectiveness in their plight. I want you to know how much I admire your willingness to speak in the search for truth and not to fear the barrage of condemnation that can accompany any questioning of the Israeli government’s positions. This is an issue that stirs up intense emotions, and the term anti-Semitic follows all too easily. It is sad that the letter writer assumes you would be unwilling to give back land that once belonged to Native Americans. Unless I am missing something Jason strikes me as just the sort who would be open to reparations that might repair such an injustice. There are many similarities between the plights of the Native Americans and the Palestinians. It is unfortunate that someone could be so out of tune with right as to indicate the impossibility of justice. I wish you all the courage of your convictions and admire your willingness to share them with the world. Jason Broome, Accord Editor’s Note: Jason Broome is a regular contributor to this magazine. The Painting Poet To the Editor: A minor complaint here, but you really could use more thorough editing. I found the “Waking Van Winkle” piece in the February 2009 issue quite infuriating. The author, for all her literary pedigree, apparently had no clue that Thomas Cole was an artist, founder of the Hudson River School of painting. She seemed to think he was a poet. Anyone with any sense of the Hudson Valley and its rich history should know that he was an artist. Later on, she made reference to “Edmonton, Canada.” This would be akin to saying someone is from Sacramento, USA. If you say “Edmonton, Alberta,” everyone would realize it was Canada. These minor quibbles aside, I enjoy your publication—the coverage of the arts in our region is generally excellent. John Duda, Fleischmanns Editor’s Note: While John Duda is right to point out that Thomas Cole was first and foremost a painter—and indeed should have been identified as such in the article—Cole was also a published poet.
Chronogram welcomes Letters to the Editor If you would like to share your thoughts on somethng you read in the magazine, send a note of 400 words or less to: 314 Wall Street, Kingston, NY 12401, or bmahoney@chronogram.com.
12 ChronograM 4/09
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Go Green ENERGY FAIR at Mountain View Studio 20 Mountain View Ave. Woodstock, NY Exhibition of Wind, Solar & Geo Thermal Technology. Top Experts discuss Net Zero & Sustainable Energy Sources.
May 16th, 2009 10am-6pm ADMISSION: Suggested Donation $10 Directions: Take Rock City Rd. north at Village Green, first Left onto Mountain View Ave. adjacent to Artists’ Cemetery. Interested Exhibitors call 845-679-0901 or email kngfu2003@yahoo.com
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russell monk / vassar college
local luminary
josh de leeuw LEADING LIGHTS OF THE COMMUNITY
Earlier this year, 23-year-old Josh De Leeuw was awarded second place (and $10,000) in the RoboChamps Kia Motors Urban Challenge, a worldwide programming competition sponsored by Microsoft and Kia Motors. The RoboChamps tournament challenged participants to write a program using Microsoft’s Robotics Developer Studio software to drive a robot car autonomously through a virtual 3-D city. A 2008 Vassar College alumnus in cognitive science, De Leeuw works as a research associate at Vassar’s Interdisciplinary Robotics Research Laboratory, where he is developing an underwater swimming robot (RayBot) to test evolutionary hypotheses under the direction of Professor John Long. De Leeuw’s other hobbies include playing saxophone and piano and writing music; he won an award for best student composition at Vassar in his senior year. De Leeuw is an enthusiastic proponent of robotic technology, and he is designing a small commercial hobby robot to sell as a kit. —Jan Larraine Cox
How long do you think it will take before a real robotic car can drive through a real city? Typically, complicated problems like developing an autonomous robotic car are much easier to solve in simulation than in the real world. For example, in the simulated environment for the RoboChamps competition there were no shadows. This makes computer vision much simpler than it would be in a real-world case because there is much lower variation in color. The red traffic light will always be the same red, since there is no variation in brightness due to shadows. Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to be the passenger if it tried to drive in the real world. I suspect that the next major step will be trucks that automate highway driving but still have a human operator to drive on local roads, much like airplanes that use autopilot. How do you communicate with robots? One experiment that we are working on at the Interdisciplinary Robotics Research Lab at Vassar involves robots that can be trained by a human operator. When the robot does something wrong, such as driving into a wall, we send it a signal that tells it that that was a bad thing to do; if the robot does something right, we send it a reward signal that reinforces the behavior in the future. I have a Roomba, a commercially available robotic vacuum cleaner, and I can communicate with my Roomba in a number of different ways. There are buttons that I push to tell it when and where I want it to clean. It sings a little tune if it gets stuck or if it is finished cleaning. This is really basic stuff that I still view as a form of communication.
What excites you about the idea of working in the robotics field 20 years from now? I am really excited about working on biologically inspired intelligence for robots. All humans have this fantastically powerful computational device, their brain, and yet we still don’t really understand how it all works. One way to test theories about biological intelligence is to model the theory in a robot. By building a system that is predicted to be intelligent in some way and observing the successes and failures of that system we can learn a lot about what sort of underlying mechanisms it takes to create intelligence. I think that the field of robotics is going to be even more exciting in 20 years than it is today, but I think that the real fuel for the explosion in the field will not be the big universities and corporations, but the garage-based tinkerers and hobbyists. Most of the commonly available and affordable microcontrollers—the robot equivalent of a brain—are only capable of handling insect-level intelligence. As computing technology gets cheaper, I think we’ll see more hobbyists get really involved in coming up with some creative ideas for robotics. What is the value of robotics for the US military? Dangerous environments are optimal for robots and provide a great incentive for the development of robotic technology. When human lives are at stake in a combat zone, robotic technology becomes priceless. We are seeing an increasing number of military applications for robots, including some robots that are armed. There were a few remotely operated robots that were deployed in Iraq. These robots were not autonomous; they required a human operator to control them and be responsible for all the decisions and actions of the robot. The intelligence of these robots is significantly less than on a smart-guided missile; they
are basically weaponized remote control vehicles. Even though the robots were pulled from operation before ever firing a shot, the program still provoked debate about the ethics of arming robots, which is obviously very complex. Describe your current projects at Vassar. I’m currently working on a few different projects. One is an underwater swimming robot, RayBot, modeled after the electric ray. The goal for that project is to build an underwater robot that swims very efficiently by mimicking the body shape and swimming motion of a real ray. One of the most exciting parts of the project has been working with the real rays. We have an adult female and several of her offspring in our aquarium. We analyze video of the rays to better understand how they swim. Then we take what we learn from the real rays and try to mimic it using the robot. Another project that I’m working on is giving robots the ability to learn causal relationships on their own. Our current goal is to give the robot the ability to predict what it will sense in the future. Humans do this all the time. When you move around in the world, your brain is making and confirming predictions about what you will see next. For example, objects consistently appear larger in the visual field as we move closer to them, and so the brain can predict that an object will grow larger if you move toward it. By giving robots the ability to learn causal relationships as they explore the world we hope that their intelligence will also grow and develop. I programmed my virtual car to drive in a very specific environment. The hallmark of truly robust intelligence is that it is smart in many different environments. Our goal is to give robots a way to learn causal relationships whether they sense the world with a camera, lasers, sonar, or any other type of sensor.
4/09 ChronograM 15
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Chronogram seen The events we sponsor, the people who make a difference, the Chronogram community.
Above: LGBTQ Center President Ginny Apuzzo and Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell at the Center gala in Poughkkepsie on March 7. Right: Joan Morgan performing in “The Vagina Monologues” at the Rosendale Theater on March 22.
Chronogram sponsors in april: varieties in meditational experience at mountain view studio in woodstock (sundays in april); hudson valley green drinks at il continori, wappingers falls (4/8); hudson valley green fair (4/25 & 4/26)
4/09 ChronograM 17
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Esteemed Reader If you want to escape prison—and we’re talking about a universal prison as well as a physical prison—you’ve got to be very quiet. You can’t let the guards know you’re going to escape.You’ve got to find other people who have escaped prison before you and who know the way, and you dig tunnels to go under the wall, or build ladders to go over it…Going to prison was the best thing that ever happened to me. Without it, I would never have been able to find myself. —Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (wrongly convicted of triple murder and exonerated after 20 years in prison) Esteemed Reader of Our Magazine: The entrance to the prison was through brick columns and a pool of bright fluorescent light. Small snow flakes hovered and fell, creating a soft coating on the cement and concertina wire-topped fences. Inside was dry heat and stale air. We waited in a line to turn over our keys and cell phones, and empty our pockets of everything but lint, before walking though a metal detector that rang loudly as I passed. I froze, unsure of what to do. “Your belt” said the guard. People passing through security gathered in groups until guards, some in front, others trailing, guided us through something like airlocks, with steel doors locking behind us before the next door opened. We inserted our hands through a hole in a window of one-way glass, to have them stamped with invisible ink, by an invisible stamper. We made our way through a maze of hallways, with small groups of men looking out of brightly lit rooms with hungry, curious expressions. This was our first sight of inmates who live there for decades, often dying within the walls that they enter, sometimes as early as their teens. I was with a group of people from the community who had come at the invitation of a teacher of dancing—in this case teaching dance to a group of inmates at a maximum security prison. That night the inmates were to demonstrate what they had been practicing and rehearsing with the teacher every Sunday for 3 years, 52 weeks a year, 6 hours a week. Our group entered a typical gymnasium—it could have been in any high school built in the 1960s, with abundant basketball hoops and wooden accordion bleachers. Inmates mingled with visitors, clearly eager for the contact. They were mostly dark-skinned men, and burly. It was difficult to imagine them dancing. The dance began with a warm-up routine that was parts chi kung, modern dance, and calisthenics. The 30 men stood in lines on the gym floor and did their practice. I felt more like a voyeur than an audience member. They exuded an intensity and focus that was in contrast to that of the onlookers who sat back in folding metal chairs, betraying the softness of our daily lives. Behind us, several hundred other inmates watched from the bleachers. There was heckling, but the dancers were unfazed. The convicts performed well-choreographed-and-executed modern dance pieces for over an hour. They danced as though they had nothing to lose, and as though their life depended on it. In a circle after the performance the audience offered comments and questions. I could only say, “I have learned tonight from these men how I should live my own life.” I have long seen the absurdity of the US penal system. I’ve held the notion that it is wrong to lock people away for most of their lives; that no crime warrants life in prison. I’ve read of countries like the Netherlands that are more lenient and have lower crime rates (the longest sentence for any crime in Holland is seven years). I have believed that the US prison system is a corrupt, profit-driven, criminal institution that has no connection to the origin of the penitentiary, in which criminals “become penitent” to emerge cleansed of their sins. But going inside a maximum security prison to watch inmates dance gave a more direct impression. I saw 50-year-old men who have been inside since they were 17, and with baby faces that made them look 30, seeming to be at peace with their karma, with the hand they had been dealt. Some had earned advanced degrees in prison and applied for and been denied parole scores of times, by a system that is invested in keeping them incarcerated. I saw conditions of oppression and harshness that allowed certain of those men to develop themselves, with the help of their teacher, in a way that remains elusive to most civilians who are incarcerated in the prison of our psychic inertia, though believing we are free. Prisoners cannot suffer that illusion and some are able to make use of their conditions. The Sufis tell us that to conquer death one needs to “die before you die.” In watching the dancing inmates I saw men who, for a few moments at least, were free before they were free. —Jason Stern 4/09 ChronograM 19
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Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced in late February that photographs of flagcovered caskets may be published, reversing an 18-year-old ban on coverage of American war dead. The Obama administration is working out the details, however; families will have the final decision on whether or not to allow the press into the ceremonies held at Dover Air Force base in Delaware, the official US entry point for caskets of war dead. The policy, enacted by President George H. W. Bush in 1991, at the beginning of the first Gulf War, was a response to an incident during the invasion of Panama in 1989. During a update Bush news conference about the progress of the invasion, US TV networks used a split screen to show the arrival of the first bodies at Dover Air Force Base from Panama. Source: United Press International, Associated Press Spain set a new record for wind-power generation on March 5 as gales blew across the country, with more than 40 percent of the country’s energy needs being covered by wind turbines mid-morning. For the month of February, renewable energy sources provided 31 percent of Spain’s total power needs. The country is on track to cover half its energy needs with renewable sources by 2020. Source: The Guardian
The Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi, who gained notoriety for hurling his shoes at President Bush during a news conference in Baghdad last December, was sentenced to three years in jail on March 12. At his trial Zaidi had pleaded not guilty, claiming that his footwear fusillade was “a natural reaction to the crimes of the occupation.” Some experts on Iraqi domestic policy said they expected Zaidi to be pardoned before serving the full sentence. A statue erected in Zaidi’s honor (pictured above) in his hometown of Tikrit was taken down by order of the Iraqi Parliament. Source: New York Times According to a Harvard Medical School study, getting angry at work may help boost your career. The study followed 824 people over the span of 44 years, finding those who repressed their frustration were three times more likely to say they hit a career road block. Professor George Vaillant, lead author of the study of adult development, said that while uncontrolled fury is destructive, that people who are assertive while remaining respectful tended to be more successful. Source: BBC News Attorney General Eric Holder announced in late February that the Justice Department will no longer raid medical marijuana dispensaries in states where they are legal under state law. Currently, there are 13 states where medical marijuana is legal; however, there has been an ongoing federal resistance to the dispensaries, landing dispensaries owners in jail and out of business. Over the past two years, more than 100 individuals have been criminally charged—even though they were operating in compliance with state law. While the Drug Enforcement Administration has made arrests in all 13 states where dispensaries are illegal, it has been most actively prosecuting a no-tolerance policy in California. Source: AlterNet, SafeAccessNow.org Ryan Allen, a George Mason University senior and professional drag queen, was crowned homecoming queen at a sold-out basketball game against Northeastern University in late February. Allen, dressed in a gold-sequined top accepted his tiara and sash in front of a cheering crowd. Allen, known on campus for his drag queen personality, Reann Ballslee, lip-synched a Britney Spears song in zebra-print pants for the talent portion of the homecoming queen competition. Source: Associated Press On March 11, the Food and Drug Administration approved the FC2 Female Condom. While Chicago-based Female Health Company’s new product will not be available to American consumers for a year, FDA approval allows the United States Agency for International Development and other US organizations to buy it for distribution overseas, where it is already distributed in 77 countries. The FC2 is also touted as being quieter than the FC1, due to its softer material. Source: Reuters
The largest-ever study of weight-loss methods, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in March, has found that weight loss is assured as long as you reduce calories. For the study, more than 800 overweight adults in Boston and Baton Rouge were assigned to one of four eating regimens—loosely based on the principles of popular diets like Atkins—which cut 750 calories from the normal diet. After two years, every diet group had lost (and often regained) about the same amount of weight regardless of which diet had been assigned. Source: New York Times The International Narcotics Control Board reported in late February that despite the continuing heavy US military presence in Afghanistan, the country remains the world’s largest producer of opium. Afghanistan is the source of 90 percent of the world’s opium, producing 7,000 tons in 2008. Though it has been the leading source of heroin to the Western world for almost three decades, Afghanistan is now facing a domestic drug abuse crisis, with at least one million people addicted to the drug. In addition, the BBC reported in February that it had received information suggesting that 60 percent of the police force in the southern province of Helmand used drugs. Source: BBC News, Inter Press Service Danish research company Aresa has developed a genetically modified tobacco plant—dubbed the Bio-Sensor—that will be able to detect land mines. Here’s how it works: The plant changes from green to red when it contacts high-levels of nitrogen dioxide that have leached from underground explosives. The plan is to drop seeds from a plane over a known or suspected mine-riddled area, wait 10 weeks for the plants to grow, then look for the red leaves. The UN estimates that there are more than 110 million active land mines scattered across 68 countries. Source: Plenty Twelve universities, including Michigan, Georgetown, and Columbia have ended their apparel-licensing agreements with the Russell Corporation since the company closed a unionized factory in Honduras employing 1,800 workers. On January 31, Russell, a subsidiary of Fruit of the Loom, which is owned by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, shuttered its Jerzees de Honduras plant, where management and the union were in a contract dispute, claiming that the closing was the result of economic considerations, not unionization. Source: New York Times A Dallas high school principal, Donald Moten, with the help of the security staff at South Oak Cliff High School, reportedly locked feuding students in a steel cage to settle disputes with bare-knuckle fistfights. The fights occurred several times over the course of a two-year period, prior to Moten’s 2008 resignation due to a grade-changing scandal involving athletes. Moten, a former Dallas police officer who once lied about being kidnapped and robbed at gunpoint to get out of work, may face criminal charges. Source: Dallas Morning News
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Brian K. Mahoney Editor’s Note Where the Stress Falls
W
hen does the statute of limitations expire on beginning every conversation—be it with someone I run into on the street, with old friends in far-flung locales, with acquaintances at parties—with: How are you doing? The doing in this case being shorthand for the state and forecast of one’s economic status. The real question is a number of interrogatives bundled together. Are you continuing to make the kind of money you made before the onset of this as yet unnamed financial malaise? (The Great Regression, perhaps?) Have your stocks tanked? Did your employer cut your health coverage? Know anyone who’s been laid off? Are you concerned you won’t be able to retire when you want to? What do you do with the fear (that can mount quickly to paranoia) about your ability to make money in the future? I know it has to do with our obsession with abstract value—money in this case. As a penurious twenty-something, I never understood the relentless talk of real estate and the stock market at social gatherings. Surely there were more interesting topics—art, books, movies, gossip, travel. Now, as a homeowner and someone who understands my financial well-being is tied to the stock market whether I invest in it or not, I’ll chat for hours about MLS listings and market trends. It’s not that I’ve lost the enjoyment of gushing about the latest book I’ve read, or finding out who’s sleeping with whom—that material is evergreen. Part of it has to do with the fact that I can talk about money with anyone. Regardless of how much we respectively earn or own, or what we do to make our money, we share common ground as wage-earning cogs in the 21st-century economy. It should also be noted that talking about money is a marker of real adulthood (like drinking scotch and having children, those other acquired tastes denoting maturity). Especially since most of us, whether we’re 38 or 62, still can’t believe we’re taken seriously as adults. It has to do with a threshold point in our lives having to do making money. Once we begin to settle into the routine of jobs, apartments, houses, and things (couches, cars, flat-screen TVs, travel), we need to continue to earn at least as much as we are currently making, and we are usually conspiring to make more money in order to have more or better things. (Even as I write this, overlooking the deck in my backyard, I’m thinking of how I’m going to pay for the pair of Niles OS
7.3 outdoor speakers ($550) that my friend Burt Penchansky at Burt’s Electronics introduced me to recently.) Our attachment to money comes with uncertainty, however, and this goes back to the “How are you doing?” question. At its core, it’s an existential inquiry: How are you dealing with uncertainty? For uncertainty is the air we breathe currently; it’s the weather that we are all holding our umbrellas against. And while uncertainty can be exciting—think of the delicious thrill of falling in love that owes so much to mystery and suspense—it seems more enervating in this case. This cloud of unknowing negativity is starting to aggravate me. So I have an idea. Not a solution that will fix the meltdown in the markets or inflate home prices or create five million new jobs. Just a little conceptual frame for dealing with uncertainty. It came to me as I was listening to a recitation of the rising unemployment figures for the umpteenth time. The latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Department of Labor reports that nonfarm payroll unemployment increased to 8.1 percent in February. After I was done mindlessly fretting I started thinking: Well, if 8.1 percent of us are out of work, that means that over 90 percent of us have jobs! Nine out of ten people I pass on the street could be on their way to work, that hub of certainty. (NB: Actual unemployment figures are probably higher than what is reported in the news as the long-term unemployed and those who have simply opted out of the job market are not accurately tracked.) It’s about where the stress falls. Is it on employment or unemployment? And this is no Pollyanna-ish call for positivity, to see the glass as half full when it is really two-thirds empty. I’m not going to tell you that the plastic bag wound around a tree limb 40 feet up in my yard is a boon because I know that bag isn’t clogging up a landfill or strangling a dolphin. It’s an eyesore, and as soon as I can figure out how the heck to get it down, I will. It’s about emphasis. There will always be uncertainty. We know we are going to die but not when. But what’s to be done about it? We can’t let it paralyze us. And neither should the economy. In fact, I’m done talking about it. Don’t ask me how I’m doing. I and you and we are going to be just fine. I’m certain of it. With gratitude to Susan Sontag for the title.
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NEWS & POLITICS World, Nation, & Region
a call to arms
How Wall Street & Washington Betrayed America An Interview with Robert Weissman By Lorna Tychostup “Our frontiers of today are economic, not geographic. Our enemies of today are the forces of privilege and greed within our own borders.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt, January 8, 1936
S
old Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America,” a report issued by the Institute for Public Accuracy, begins with A Call to Arms that asks, “What caused this catastrophe?”—that is, the current economic disaster engulfing the US and international communities. The report gives a detailed accounting of whom, how, and why the very regulations that were created to stave off a crisis like this were slowly and purposely legislated away. It reveals a symbiotic relationships between fat cat lobbyists with enormous amounts of money to invest in elected officials and legislators who were more than willing to both ignore and jettison these protections. An ever-tightening ring of fire, “Sold Out” scalds readers’ sensibilities as it explains how the latest brotherly band of “forces of privilege” ripped off citizens and created today’s no-end-in-sight financial meltdown. It ends with 10 prescriptive actions that incensed Americans can and should take, because despite the exposure of these feckless inbreeders of greed, many continue to act with impunity, defend their actions, and/or attempt to sell Americans more lies amid woeful stories that it is not they, but nameless others, who are responsible for what economist Nouriel Roubini calls the, “Made-off Ponzi economy.” Dubbed “Dr. Doom” due to his dire (yet accurate) forecasts, Roubini predicts no economic relief will occur until 2010, if even then.Yet each and every Wall Street rally—at least six in the last year—is touted as proof that the crisis has bottomed out and recovery has arrived. Roubini calls these rallies “dead cat bounces”—a trader’s term that implies even dead cats bounce when dropped from great heights. Perhaps these are not lies, but protective musings put forth by the same folks who said that disclosure and transparency in speculative and predatory investing practices would “confuse investors.” Or perhaps the false positive of this talk of recovery is meant to sidetrack Americans from harsher realities—that the very people who created this crisis are lucratively being rewarded with gobs of taxpayer money. Richard Blumenthal, attorney general of Connecticut—home of insurance giant American International Group (AIG), the recipient of a $185.5 billion bailout despite fleecing investor’s savings—announced that subpoenaed records show AIG actually paid out $218 million—$53 million more than the reported $165 million—in bonuses with 73 executives receiving at least $1 million and 5 getting over $4 million. As more secret details are revealed, private security companies are being hired to protect executives’ homes and offices from demonstrators looking to vent their ire. The Connecticut Working Family’s party is planning a bus tour of these financiers’ homes to “give folks…who are struggling and losing their homes, jobs and health insurance an opportunity to see what kinds of lifestyle billions of dollars in credit-default swaps can buy.” Educational and informative, “Sold Out” will certainly not confuse. Senior editor, Lorna Tychostup interviewed its lead author, Robert Weissman by phone from his office in Washington, DC in late March.
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The report begins by cataloging how the financial sector drowned political candidates in more than $1.7 billion in campaign contributions and another $3.3 billion on lobbyists, hired to press for deregulation. That’s a total of $5.2 billion spent on both Democrats and Republicans, and deregulation schemes that began with the Reagan administration. What did that money buy? The crucial removals of regulatory restraints on Wall Street, commercial banks, and insurance companies that led them to build up the house of cards that has collapsed and destroyed, not only many of these leading firms and the financial sector, but the overall national economy and also the global economy is traceable in large part to policy decisions that were purchased in large part by that $5 billion. Explain the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and the difference between commercial and investment banks. The Glass-Steagall Act was adopted as a response to the financial misdeeds that contributed to the collapse of the stock market in 1929 and the Great Depression. It imposed a separation between commercial banks that offer savings and checking accounts and mortgages, and investment banks and Wall Street security firms that engage in a diverse array of speculative investment activities. Glass-Steagall was adopted to prevent the abuse by commercial banks that put depositors’ money at risk by putting it into risky investments that they had undisclosed interests in. The act was meant to keep investors’ money safe, prevent it from being used for speculative purposes, and to protect the commercial banking system, which is so important to the overall economy. It prohibited commercial banks from offering investment banking and insurance services, thus creating a “firewall” between commercial banks and high-risk activities of speculative securities firms. Starting in the 1970s, there was a steady erosion of Glass-Steagall protections, and more exceptions were made enabling commercial banks to get involved in more speculative activity. This culminated in 1999 with the Financial Services Modernization Act, which formally repealed Glass-Steagall and related laws. The repeal was driven by the already-announced merger of Citibank and insurance giant Travelers Group—a merger not permissible under existing Glass-Steagall provisions. But they had a two-year window of review and went ahead with the merger, counting on their ability to get the law changed, which they achieved. What about the role of lobbyists? They swarmed the halls of Congress, poured money in, mobilized key CEOs to pound on members of Congress to convince them that Glass-Steagall was an outdated regulatory structure no longer relevant in the modern world. They wanted modernization so we could have the benefit of a single checking account and investment account. They talked of having the consumer benefits of a “financial supermarket”—certainly very modest at the time and now ridiculous looking, compared to the disaster that has been wrought.
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
caption
AIG CEO Edward Liddy interacts with protestors from the group “Code Pink” as he arrives to testify before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises on Capitol Hill in Washington, dc, on March 18, 2009.
Citigroup lobbying expenses totaled $88,460,000 between 1998 and 2008, almost twice that of JPMorgan Chase, the next largest financier. Yes, Citigroup, along with Goldman Sachs, is the avatar of the influencepeddling financial firms. In the case of Citigroup, and to some extent Goldman Sachs, you have this peddling personified by Robert Rubin who was once the chair at Goldman Sachs, entered the Clinton administration, became the Treasury Secretary, was anointed by Time magazine as a member of the Committee to Save the World, left the position of Treasury Secretary, and is presently a private citizen.What people don’t know is that at the same the time he played a crucial and essential role in brokering the repeal of Glass-Steagall he was negotiating his next job, as an executive in the newly merged Citigroup. And he managed to come out of that, even as the financial crash was ensuing, and become a top adviser to the “wise men” surrounding the Obama transition team. Now his stock has fallen sharply. Disgraced by the performance of Citigroup and his claim that he didn’t know that the very aggressive speculative activity they were involved in would collapse, Rubin has faded from the scene. But a lot of his acolytes remain in top positions, including Larry Summers on the National Economic Council and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. People are concerned that many “veterans of the money industry that hold elected officials in their deep pockets” are now getting key appointments to theTreasury, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other agencies. Yes. There is a gold-plated revolving door that goes between Wall Street and the financial regulatory agencies. Many of these top officials have come from Wall Street and then you see many of them going back to Wall Street. Looking at just 20 private firms, we found they hired 140 previously high-ranking members of former administrations, Congress, or Congressional staff as lobbyists.
The report states: “The repeal of Glass-Steagall contributed to the high-flying culture that led to this current disaster.” After Glass-Steagall, we saw the rapid consolidation of the commercial and investment banks, primarily the commercial banks buying up the investment banks. More generally, we saw the giant mega-banks, moving increasingly to adopt the speculative, high-risk, gambling-intensive culture of Wall Street—exactly what Glass-Steagall was intended to stop. The incredible abuses of the 1920s came roaring back, engaging billions and billions of dollars of trade in derivatives, crafting mortgage-backed securities, and floating on the froth of a housing bubble that was certain to pop with disastrous consequences. But the short-term return was too great for them to resist. Brilliant MIT or Cal Tech mathematicians “calculated half-mile-long algorithms” that no one understood that supposedly showed how secure mortgages (AAA) could be mixed together with high-risk mortgages and predatory loans, and somehow all would come out of the mix AAA-rated and ready for sale as secure investments? They would take a big collection of mortgages that were mostly subprime, meaning relatively high risk and many of them predatory rip-off loans, pool them and then break them into tranches. The theory behind this was that if you pooled together enough of these loans you would spread the risk. There might be a problem in one neighborhood in Cleveland, but the problem would not be replicated elsewhere, and you could avoid the potential high-level risk by pooling together hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of these mortgages into a single “security.” That turned out to be completely and utterly wrong.
4/09 ChronograM news & politics
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As early as 2002, Warren Buffet called mortgage-backed securities “weapons of mass financial destruction,” and yet such critics were ignored by the executive branch, Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, et al. The short version of the story is that the financial sector got involved in ever more esoteric investments that they claimed were low risk but were not. They were able to do it with little to no regulatory controls because those controls had been removed, and attempts at new controls were defeated by Wall Street and its allies in government. The report illuminates the conflict of interest between credit-rating firms and the financial institutions whose mortgage assets they rate and says it is like “referees being paid by the players.” Please explain. Alchemy—an inexplicable process by which bad was pooled together with good and then 80 percent of it was suddenly rated AAA—was used to create these mortgage-backed securities. There are three credit-rating companies—called agencies to give the perception they are public entities, but they are not. They are for-profit corporations and hold the overwhelming share of the credit-rating business. They gave the AAA ratings to these very poor-quality bonds. They are paid by the entities that issue and sell the bonds to give them ratings. If the credit rating company gives a bad rating to a bond, there is a good chance that that issuer will not do business with them again. This is an absolute direct conflict of interest. We are finding more and more internal e-mail memoranda within these credit-rating companies acknowledging the conflicts and their awareness that they were rating poor-quality bonds very highly. Despite this, they kept doing it because they were being paid very well. Moody’s, the most prominent of these companies, had the single highest rate of return of any company in the Fortune 500 during much of the past decade. This became an incredibly profitable business. The AAA rating deceived investors into believing they were investing in safe and secure bonds at inexplicably high levels of return. A lot of pension funds and municipalities are not allowed to invest in bonds unless they are AAA or highly rated and rely on these credit-rating companies to be accurate. So the pension and government money flowed in and now these investors, both individual and institutional, are now finding they had been tricked into buying poor-quality investments they were told were gold. Can you give me an example of a predatory loan scheme? It’s a loan typically made to a relatively financially unsophisticated lower-income person that he or she can’t afford. Typically, the borrower is deceived as to the actual terms of his or her loan. People started making initial low payments with the sense that that amount was what they were going to owe on a monthly basis, but then after two years a new rate would kick in and they would owe much more than they were paying, and their mortgages became completely unaffordable.The worst of the predatory loans targeted minority and lower-income communities, but it became part of an expanded business model to use these abusive terms. The story told either implicitly or explicitly by mortgage brokers was: “Well, you can take a loan that’s got crazy terms but is at least reasonable for the first few years, because, due to the housing boom, you could just refinance and start all over again.” There is just no way that that could keep going on for eternity. It was based on the perpetual existence of a housing boom that was unsustainable and certain to pop. Aren’t there laws to protect consumers against these schemes? Some states adopted some very good anti-predatory loan rules and were very significantly able to reduce the scale of predatory lending at banks they were able to control. This is where the regulatory story gets so ugly. First, the federal agencies completely refused to enforce existing federal laws against predatory lending. So the Office of the Comptroller of Currency [OCC], which supervises 1,800 nationally chartered banks, took three consumer protection actions against predatory lenders in this decade. Second, they refused, despite the pleas of consumer and community groups, to address the nature of the evolving abusive terms of predatory lending. Third, the OCC, and its parallel entity, the Office of Thrift Supervision, both nullified the ability of states to enforce their own state predatory loan protection laws against federally chartered institutions. So federally charted banks were given the freedom to avoid any enforcement action under state consumer protection law. Another element leading to the current financial crisis are “off-balance-sheet” accounting practices that hide the true financial health of banks. How do these practices work? 26
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It’s pretty hard to explain because it sounds so contradictory to common sense. The purpose of a balance sheet is to explain the financial health of an entity. Corporations have this ability to hide money-losing assets and liabilities in something that is not revealed on the actual balance sheet shown to investors. A lot of the abuses surrounding Enron involved the extremely elaborate use of “off-balance-sheet” entities, often called “special purpose vehicles,” or SPVs. After Enron, efforts were made to limit the ability of companies to do this but banks maintained special rights to use them. Mortgage-backed securities were put into these off-balance- sheets with two benefits. First, there was always a chance the mortgage-backed securities would go bad and the bank should hold capital against the risk. Using an off-balance sheet, banks were able to avoid holding the extra capital. Second, when the mortgage-backed securities turned toxic, they didn’t appear on the bank’s balance sheet, so the extent of its losses were unclear. So there is no transparency and no knowledge that your bank’s financial health is collapsing? Yes. It is one of the major factors about the uncertainty over the state of the banks right now. You don’t know what they own, and even if you do know, it’s not clear what it is worth. These off-balance-sheet [assets] enabled banks to disguise their losses. Derivatives—an estimated $683 trillion exist today—total more than 10 times the actual value of all the goods and services produced by the entire planet. Mortgage-backed securities are actual collections of mortgages—so there is really something there. But derivatives are “derived” from actual assets. Derivatives are so very abstract and are piled upon other derivatives—abstractions upon abstractions—and these collections are completely unregulated. Efforts at potential reforms to regulate financial derivatives by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission were stopped by leaders in the Clinton administration, including Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Alan Greenspan. Retrospectively, these reforms would have avoided many of the problems that subsequently came. In 2000, the Congress, led by then Senator Phil Gramm, who went on to become an executive at the Swiss bank, UBS, by law prohibited the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating financial derivatives—and that’s where we stand today. In the absence of any regulation, or even monitoring, these derivatives spiraled completely out of control. So there are an estimated $683 trillion financial derivatives in the world. No one has any sense of who owes what to whom or on what conditions, because there is not even any sort of a central clearinghouse or exchange like the stock exchange. The result is enormous vulnerability in the financial system. AIG’s story is that it made a lot of terrible bets through derivatives. The reason why it is allegedly so important to bail out AIG is that those bets were made with so many other financial institutions—that if AIG cannot pay off, then many other institutions that were relying on AIG paying will collapse and we will have a cascade of institutional failure too devastating to permit. There was intentional creation over the last decade of financial instruments so complex that almost no one in these firms even knew what they were. Worse, they interconnected institutions in a complicated set of relationships that absolutely no one in the world understands because no bird’s-eye view was created because they were unregulated. The result has devastating real-world effects. A form of mass delusion that went on in Wall Street, the financial sector, and to some extent in the government sector that permitted these things to get so out of control. Not only did they heap all this harm on the rest of us, but they actually destroyed their own institutions. Explain debt-to-net-capital ratio rules. Debt-to-net-capital ratio rules apply to investment banks and securities firms. For a few decades the basic rule had been that the net capital ratio was 15 to 1, limiting how much borrowed money securities firms could use for investment. This is called “leverage.” An entity using borrowed money can increase the scale of its bets dramatically. Potential returns are much higher because firms invest not only their own money, but the borrowed money as well. The downside is if the bets go bad, they don’t have the capacity to pay off what they borrowed, which is why the SEC established the debt-to-net-capital ratio—to avoid volatility and speculation. In 2004, all five of the big Wall Street firms met with the SEC and persuaded it to remove the debt-to-net-capital ratio. The SEC then allowed them to set aside capital
to offset potential losses based on their own internal-risk models—how risky they thought their bets were, not by some absolute standard developed by the SEC. The lid was thrown off? Yes. Firms then increased their leverage to 30 to 1, or in the case of Merril Lynch, 40 to 1. The leader of the band of persuaders was Henry Paulson, the chairman of Goldman Sachs, who then became Treasury Secretary under President Bush. The impact was this group was able to expand the scale of their bets, and when the bets went bad they were much less able to handle the losses, and this led to the firms going broke or being merged out of existence, and two of the firms taking big hits. So these guys went to the party, got too drunk, put all their chips on the table, and lost. But because they are so big and important, the biggest financial speculators in the country get reimbursed by taxpayer money to the tune of $700 billion and Congress rebuffed any effort to provide any sort of accounting of how this taxpayer money should be spent? That’s exactly what happened. The Bush bailout came in two bits—$350 billion first and then an additional $350 billion. There were no conditions on how the banks would use the money that they were given, no obligations for the banks to revise the mortgages they held to bring the principle down, no controls on executive pay, no incentives so that these institutions would behave differently in the future. Economist Nouriel Roubini forecasts that the US is only halfway through a severe recession and that February’s stimulus package is not large enough to bring recovery until 2010. Greed and deception fueled this financial crisis. Speculators who made tremendous profits have been bailed out by taxpayer money. People are being hit incredibly hard. What can be done? The stimulus package was not enough, and it is very important for there to be massive public support for another stimulus package at least as big. It is equally important that people understand that President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package adopted in February is separate, completely unrelated to Bush’s November bank bailout bill. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being thrown around in both cases, and because the Republicans intentionally tried to confuse the issue there is some mixing in the public’s mind of the two. About 30 percent of the stimulus will be spent on tax cuts, but the rest represents government money spent on health care, education, and to some extent on green investments to “jump start” or invest in the economy, put people back to work. The two problems with the stimulus package was one, too much money went to tax cuts, which is an inefficient way to attempt to reenergize the economy, and, two, it was too small compared the size of the overall national economy in light of the extent of the economic slowdown. Getting the economy moving, getting people to work, using up the spare capacity in the economy is completely separate from how you handle the financial institutions and the bank bailout money—the $700 billion that was approved at the end of the Bush administration. First: We need more stimulus. Second: In the financial sector, we are almost certain to see the government taking over some of the big banks. As the government clears out and sells off the parts that are not functioning, the government will inevitably take on the losses and that will be a big hit to the taxpayers. There is really no feasible way around that. But some of the pain can be spread to the shareholders—the shareholders get nothing and some of the bondholders should be required to pay some of the costs. When the banks are then put back into the private sector—for example, Citigroup—they should be broken up into a lot of different component pieces so we don’t have the problem of the “too big to fail” bank. And the component pieces should be obligated toward serving social purposes and not engage in the abusive behavior the financial sector has been [engaging in]. [Editor’s note: Regulators, blinded by rising stock prices, did not challenge banks that grew large via mergers and acquisitions. By mid 2008, the top five banks held more than half of the assets controlled by the top 150 financial institutions and were considered “too big to fail”—implying they would be rescued by taxpayer money regardless of how much risk they took on and therefore could continue their unregulated, free-for-all investing.] Third: We need dramatically stricter rules to regulate the way the financial sector works. There will be new financial regulatory laws passed in 2009. But
what is up for grabs is how stringent the rules will be and whether they really act to prevent this kind of disaster from occurring again. Specifically, exotic securities should be prohibited altogether.They don’t serve a social purpose and are just too risky for society to tolerate. New securities should be registered in advance and shown to be safe and beneficial to the overall system before they are permitted on the market. Fourth: Glass-Steagall-type barriers should be imposed. Fifth: There needs to be new methods created for consumers to organize and band themselves together so they can monitor and act as a counterweight to the influence of the big financial institutions. Sixth: There should be a financial transactions tax imposed on trade and all these exotic securities to slow down speculation, and, incidentally, raise a lot of money that will come almost overwhelmingly from the rich people who engage in all the speculative activity.
moody’s, one of the most prominent bond ratings agencies—paid by the entities that issue and sell the bonds—had the single highest rate of return of any fortune 500 company during much of the past decade. But we still have a very well-funded financial lobbying force in place, ready and able to continue to fight any and all attempts at regulating greed-inspired investing.These lobbyists have been filling the pockets of elected officials and others who not only ignored regulations already in place but worked to legislate regulations into oblivion. The obvious moral of the story is, we need campaign finance reform, but we can’t wait around for that. Wall Street interests are still spending tons of money in Washington and remain very influential despite having brought such disaster down on the entire country. What’s different is that the public is really angry and keenly aware of the responsibility of the Wall Street firms. Members of Congress understand there is such intense public outrage. The balance of power has really shifted in the direction of the public interest, but what remains unclear as we get down to an actual legislative fight over financial regulations is, has it shifted enough to impose really serious controls over Wall Street and does the public have the ability to organize and the mechanisms to organize itself well enough to engage on very specific demands. Congress is very averse right now to the idea of more money for a bank bailout because there is such a visceral response from a public mobilized around that general issue. On financial regulatory issues we are going to have to have a comparable level of outrage and mobilization if we don’t want to be outsmarted by the lingering effects of the Wall Street money interests. A young contractor asked me, “Is it really our fault? Do we just need to keep buying things?” This business of blaming people is really awful. That individuals or we, the public, must take responsibility because we have been irresponsible is a sham, a misreading of history, and is an evil effort to divert responsibility from where it rests. The financial sector has been brought down by the leading institutions doing exactly what they wanted to do with no public controls whatsoever. They have no one else to blame but themselves. We can blame as well the government regulators who capitulated to their demands, but it is exactly clear who is responsible for this financial disaster—and it is not us. 4/09 ChronograM news & politics
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ION ZUPCU
Commentary
Larry Beinhart’s Body Politic
Biff! Bang! Boom! (Crash.)
“According to the United States Department of Labor there [are] 13,000 economists in the US. About 400 colleges and universities grant about 900 new Ph.Ds in economics each year.”—Wikipedia.com Blathering busted nickel, Batman! Thirteen thousand of them, and all of them were wrong about the economy! How can that be? It’s the Joker, Robin. The Joker? He trapped them in the Mirrored Funhouse in Looney Land. It was a fiendish plot indeed. That’s a lot of economists to trap in one funhouse. Holy humping, how did he capture them all? You forget how terrifically twisted the Joker’s devilishly diabolical schemes are. He didn’t have to capture them. He told them how fabulously fantastic the fun was in the Funhouse, and those woeful wrecks wandered in willingly. But, Batman, it’s in Looney Land. Didn’t that tip them off? The sign got worn and faded. After all, it was painted way back in 1929. Then someone came along and painted it over to say “Morning in America.” But, Batman, why did they stay? The mirrors, Robin. Once they were inside all they could see—and for that matter, hear—was themselves. So they went round and round, seeing and hearing themselves, over and over, until that was all there was. They weren’t even really mirrors, they were themselves and one another. Come on, Batman, you must be joking. No. No, I’m not, Robin.Though I will admit, I am metaphoring. It really is comic-book strange. We would expect that there would be different schools of thought among economists. That some of them would have said the US economy, and the world economy that depended on it, had serious flaws. That there would be a theory, or a set of theories, out there, ready to explain what happened when it did happen. That there would be theories, ready at hand, about how to fix things. There are not. The facts were available. There was a “boom” from 2002 to 2007. Virtually no jobs were created. Median income declined. Manufacturing declined. During that “boom” consumer debt went up 60 percent. The national debt increased by 61 percent. The trade deficit increased by 50 percent. All the growth in those years—an increase of 37 percent in GDP—can be accounted for by an increase in debt. It’s one thing to incur debt in order to invest. To build something that will pay off the debt. But here, nothing was being created except a huge credit bubble. So why weren’t economists pushing the panic buttons? Because economics is theology. Not science. Not even social science.
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Great gobs of gold, Batman! Isn’t theology for religions? Yes, Robin. According to the priests of capitalism, we can trust in the magic of the market to make business people honest, bankers prudent, profits fairly apportioned, hard work and thrift rewarded, resources efficiently allocated, investment directed to the greatest good, the economy sound, and end war. Holy batshit! Did people believe that? Yes, young Robin. And there are people who still do. How is that possible? The Joker, Robin. It’s the Joker. After the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, America became a mixed economy through the New Deal. It curbed the excesses of financiers, put in safety nets, and gave power to working people. That stabilized and significantly improved the economy. That lesson seemed, for many years, to be set in stone. Then came World War II. The government made a massive investment. When the war was over, we were the only modern industrial state left standing. That investment had bought us the major market share in everything— manufacturing, science, education, and agriculture. The war was rarely looked at in terms of a capital investment that paid off royally, which is unfortunate. Because that points the way to a true recovery. Not through war, but through investing in what will make us economically strong and sound, as a society, as a whole. During the ColdWar, we became re-obsessed with the polarity of Capitalism vs. Communism. All that was good came from Capitalism. All that was evil, from Communism. Therefore, our success had to have come Capitalism! Not from a mixed economy. Therefore, said the theologians, the more capitalistic we were, the more success we would have. Cut taxes and deregulate! Put more money in the market and make the market free to do freedom stuff! Memories faded. We were rich enough to take our riches for granted. That became the new dogma. Just like in the Roaring Twenties! (Though nobody said that—until after the crash of 2008.) Great tapping canes, Batman! Are people really as blind as bats? Economists certainly are, Robin. And the media and the politicians too. How can it be, when the truth is so obvious? The Joker, Robin. He’s… Yes, still out there. Plotting. He’s in a fiendish conspiracy with Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, all the Republican members of Congress, and CNBC. And many, many others. Is capitalism a crazy, crackpot concoction of cupidity? No, Robin. Capitalism has many virtues. But it has many vices, too. It needs to be protected from itself. It does many things very well. But there are many things it can’t or won’t do. Are we going to commence a caped crusade against capitalism, Batman? No, but we must do something to rescue the economists trapped in Loony Land’s Hall of Mirrors.
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4/09 ChronograM news & politics
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art of business
Bill Spearman, Mid-Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union president and CEO
giving credit
I
The Strength of Local Lenders
f it’s Friday, there must be a bank failing somewhere across the country.” That was the dire beginning of a CNNMoney.com article written by David Ellis toward the end of February. Just a few days later, National Public Radio aired some good news: There had been a hiring spree, even in this economy. Then the sobering news: it was the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. adding hundreds of fresh employees to the new Irvine, California, office to deal with the country’s massive number of collapsing banks. According to the FDIC’s failed banks list, 25 banks closed in 2008 alone—a number that’s just two less than the list records for the entire scope of October 2000 through the year 2007. So far in 2009, there have been more than a dozen additional closures. But if you scroll down the list of failures, you won’t notice one community bank from the Hudson Valley. In fact, if you talk to Rhinebeck Savings Bank’s President and CEO, Michael Quinn, he’ll tell you that while Washington Mutual and IndyMac were going under in 2008, his bank experienced its best year in earnings. “I think part of [that is due to] the good economy we’ve had in this area and part of it is the lending that we do,” he said. “We don’t do subprime lending, which is creating most of the headlines in the country, and we are a fair lender. People want to say it’s conservative, and maybe it was, compared to practices that have been out there over the last 10 years. But a lot of those practices are proving to be completely insane.” Especially now, community banks seem more comfortable identifying themselves as conservative—what was once viewed as a negative is now a buzzword for peace of mind. Quinn said he recalls instances where custom30
community notebook ChronograM 4/09
by Kelley Granger photographs by Hillary Harvey
ers would become frustrated that Rhinebeck Savings wouldn’t meet the loan terms that lenders like Countrywide Financial were willing to offer. Now that the bubble has burst, it’s the community financial institutions that are poised to vocalize the long history of products and services they’ve offered. Many of the community banks in the Hudson Valley are more than 100 years old and have weathered the Civil War, the World Wars, and the Great Depression, as well as more modern financial turmoil like the savings and loan crisis in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Throughout this time, most of these banks have stuck to their traditional terms of lending and have steadily, and safely, grown because of it. James Davenport, the president and CEO of Rondout Savings Bank, said that the big bank failures and forced mergers of the past year are mainly due to drifting from banking basics—abandoning sound loan underwriting principles and then owning securities backed by questionable residential mortgages. At his bank, they focus on the time-honored techniques of determining credit merit. “Rondout Savings Bank has always had a responsible, conservative credit culture,” he said. “We approach our loan underwriting from a commonsense perspective. We get to know our borrowers and require down payments, cash flow, decent credit scores, and collateral. Our strong asset and capital base underpins our rock solid balance sheet.” Knowing the borrower has also been a major key in differentiating community and national banks. Quinn said that Rhinebeck Savings makes a point to get to know the people in the community, and by doing so, it makes it easier to help them through difficult times. “One of the famous ‘five Cs’ of credit is character, and I think local banks know the character base of customers
more so than large banks that are making decisions out of the area,” he said. This community knowledge impacts the bank’s lending choices; Quinn said Rhinebeck Savings is continuing to give money to local businesses that are dealing with tough times in part because the bank believes in their experience and talent, and that they’ll still be standing at the end of the day. Paul Merski, chief economist for the Independent Community Bankers of America, also touched on this point in an address before Congress in January. Merski told lawmakers that while community banks represent only 12 percent of bank assets, they make 20 percent of all small business loans and make half of all small business loans under $100,000. The businesses they fund are responsible for creating 70 percent of the net new jobs in the country. “Community banks rely on relationship lending in their communities, not on relationships with investment banks or hedge funds,” Merski said in the address. “Community bankers live and work in the communities they serve and do not put their customers and neighbors in loan products they can not possibly repay. While community banks did not cause the current turmoil, they are well positioned and willing to help get our economy back on track.” Beyond a more personal connection than national counterparts, community banks also have an advantage over bigger banks because they know the community’s market better. “When a customer chooses to bank at a community bank such as Rondout Savings Bank, they inherently get the value of local leadership,” said Davenport. “All of our credit decisions are made locally, and we intimately know the markets we do business in. We fulfill the role of ‘trusted advisor’ to our customers.” Marjorie Rovereto, the president of Ulster Savings Bank, said that being local encourages community banks to really apply ethical business practices and to price competitively, because they know they’re going to see customers walking down the street. “We look for the best business decision for everybody involved,” she said. “If we ever err, it’s on the side of the customers, to do better for them, and you don’t see that with larger banks that have particular policies and don’t have negotiating powers.” One illustration of this is the fact the community banks aren’t governed by the interests of the stockholder, just the stakeholder—the customer. “Community banks don’t have the constant reminder that they have to make quarterly earnings to give quarterly dividends,” Rovereto said. “It’s driven in a much different way.” Not having to be concerned about boosting a short-term stock price allows banks to invest in things that will be a benefit in the long term, like new technology, employee training and development, and new products. “Although these investments may depress short-term earnings,” said Davenport, “we can look beyond the next few quarters or year and know the allocations are worth it since they will help both the bank and our customers.” Credit unions have also been faring well based on their not-for-profit cooperative model of business that is without any sort of stockholder role. According to the National Credit Union Administration, there are more than 10,000 credit unions in the country today, with over $480 billion in assets serving more than 79 million people. “We have only one group of people to please, and that’s the members of the credit union,” said Bill Spearman, president and CEO of Mid-Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union. “Our philosophy is that our member is our first priority. We only go into the investment market if our member demand for credit is not where it needs to be. Additionally, most of us are federally chartered, so we’re regulated by the National Credit Union Administration, which has pronounced fairly strict regulations in terms of our powers and what we can invest in, and we’re very strictly monitored.” There has been some news about the $1.1 billion loss that US Central Federal Credit Union, the wholesale financial center of the nation’s corporate credit unions (which then provide services to the retail credit unions), reported for 2008. Spearman said these are paper losses that will be recapitalized by the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund, which will then be replenished by the retail credit unions themselves, not taxpayers. “In our particular case, we’ve never cost the American taxpayer one dollar, and we’re proud of that,” he said. “And it’s very effective for us in Congress, and we want to continue to keep that process going.” Though the majority of the more than 8,000 community banks in the US have remained secure, this segment of the banking industry has suffered its
Michael Quinn, Rhinebeck Savings Bank president and CEO
share of failures. Quinn said many of the community banks that have gone under were in “high-flying” areas like Florida and California, where real estate development was booming, and indeed, National Public Radio reported that many of these bank failures were due to aggressive lending to commercial real estate developers who now are not paying back the funds. But here in the Hudson Valley, playing the conservative card is paying off. Rondout Savings Bank reported growth for its loan portfolio and its deposit base in 2008, and Davenport said the bank purchased branch space that tripled its size. Rovereto said that she believes Ulster Savings went the last five years without owning any foreclosed properties, and even now said the bank owns only four properties out of the 15,000 they service. Community banks throughout the Hudson Valley are hoping that unsettling financial times will remind the community of the advantages of banking locally. “The more you support the local businesses and the local banks, those profits stay in this community and drive lending in this community,” said Quinn. “It doesn’t get shifted to other areas where another, larger bank may have opportunity and isn’t concentrated in this area.The more business we have, the more we’re able to do, not only for our customers but also for the communities in which we live and serve.” Rondout Savings Bank Five locations in Kingston and West Hurley www.rondout.com
Rhinebeck Savings Bank Ten locations in Ulster and Dutchess Counties www.rhinebecksavings.com
Mid-Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union Nine locations in Dutchess, Orange, and Ulster Counties www.mhvfcu.com
Ulster Savings Bank Twelve locations in Ulster, Dutchess, Greene, and Orange Counties www.ulstersavings.com
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Gallery exhibits too!
Faith and Fantasy in Outsider Art from the Permanent Collection February 13 – April 26, 2009 Howard Finster Jesus Saves–Angel, 7/9/1992, 1992 C o l l e c t i o n o f T h e Fr a n c e s L e h m a n L o e b A r t C e n t e r, Va s s a r C o l l e g e ; g i f t f r o m t h e c o l l e c t i o n o f Pa t O ’ B r i e n Pa r s o n s
The exhibition works by thirt years includin Finster, Menn Miller, Donald Nataniel Walk
Philipse Manor Beach Club © 2008 Ted Kawalerski
Top to Bottom THE HUDSON RIVER
Photographs by TED KAWALERSKI GALLERY HOURS
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portfolio ChronograM 4/09
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THE FRANCES LEHMAN LOEB ART CENTER VASSAR COLLEGE Poughkeepsie, NY
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chronogram
arts & culture april 2009
Hendrik Dijk paints Figure Head 1, which will be hung from lower Broadaway streetlights in June for the Quadricentennial celebrations. The banner shows the figurehead of the Zeven Provincieen, a replica of a 17th-century Dutch ship presently being built in Holland. PORTFOLIO, page 34
4/09 ChronograM portfolio
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Portfolio Hendrik Dijk
In his life and art, Hendrik Dijk defies the current fashion for specialization. He is a painter, photographer, architectural and industrial designer, sculptor, teacher, contractor, and community leader. Last fall, he traveled to Virginia Tech to present a painting commissioned by the university to commemorate the 2007 shooting tragedy. It was an abstract work with a luminous blue background titled Threads of Remembrance. His exhibition this month at the Kingston Museum of Contemporary Arts (April 4 to April 30) couldn’t be more different—photographs of World War II concrete bunkers in the Dutch countryside. This fall, Dijk will exhibit large-scale geometric paintings at R&F Handmade Paints in Kingston. Born and raised in the Netherlands, Dijk moved to Kingston in 1986 and was one of the pioneers who sparked the renaissance of the Rondout district. His murals still adorn forlorn corners of the city, and the 1851 firehouse he and his wife bought and restored has become a beloved landmark. Dijk is a co-founder and past president of the Arts Society of Kingston and founder of the Kingston Biennial Sculpture Exhibition. His geometric paintings are in collections around the world and have been exhibited at leading venues in the Mid-Hudson Valley, including the Kleinert/James and Carrie Haddad galleries and the Samuel Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz. www.hendrikdijk.com. —Lynn Woods
(clockwise from top right) In Het Veld; Met Koeien; In Het Bos; photographs, 2008.
hendrik dijk on his work A Concrete Enigma
A Peripatetic Beginning
On Photography
[Several years ago,] I passed by these bunkers when traveling near Utrecht. I asked a friend what they were, and he said, “I don’t know, the Germans built them.” I found out there are more than 200. They are only in a particular area of the Netherlands. It’s called the New Dutch Waterline, an area with sluices and locks that could be flooded in three hours [as a defense]. These bunkers were built for the German soldiers [so that they could] flee aerial attacks.
When I was 15, I didn’t know if I wanted to be a sailor or an artist. I became a sailor immediately after high school at age 16 and went into the merchant marine for a year. I learned very quickly I didn’t want that to be my life; it was like a prison being on the big ship. I then attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academie [in Amsterdam], studying architecture and ceramics. It was very hard to get into the academy, which was founded by a member of a group that believed in the purity of art and included Mondrian. Then I traveled extensively, to Japan, Scotland, and South Korea, for half a year and did a lot of gouaches. I exhibited in Japan in 1975 and 1977. I came back to Holland and went into industrial design, making ceramics for a company that sold designs all over Europe.
I started doing photography in 1980. It was basically satisfying to my eyes. As an artist your eyes are your life. [What I photograph] has to talk to me, it has to tell me it wants to exist. Photography was also really great because I didn’t have to spend time in a studio—it was mobile. This summer I will have a display of my photographs in a very big Dutch furniture store in Amsterdam. The store is in a galleria mall that has Frank Gehry-type walls. It’s the only furniture store in that mall and people come from all over Holland to shop there. I will be exhibiting three sizes of photos on panels arranged in a 15-by-3-foot grid.
What intrigues me is their decay. Nature has created patinas on these things. They are in the woods and in the fields among the cows; they have been incorporated in the farmyards because they are too expensive to remove. I want to inventory them and [ask people], What do you know about these places? For example, I would love to have a group picture of all the kids conceived inside of them.
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portfolio ChronograM 4/09
(clockwise from left) Figure Head 1, acrylic on canvas, 2009; Rietveld 2, oil on canvas, 2008; Threads of Remembrance, oil on canvas, 2008.
A Fresh Approach to Design
Afternoon Painter/Evening Sculptor
Art for the People
My mind is always designing. The shed [I designed in my back yard] is in line with design-solutions stuff I’ve done in buildings. The thought was that the roofline does not need to be straight. I bought a big beam and cut out a curve. This is not complicated; it’s a very simple carpenter’s method that anybody can do.
I’m really behaving as if I don’t have a worry in the world, and I can just do what I want. I’ve never ferociously marketed my work, which on one side I consider a weakness and probably a mistake. But I’d rather teach and share my knowledge with kids and have a chance to be taught by them, rather than get into a rut where I make $150,000 and have a show once a year and everything sells out and I’m not alive. I do identify with the Renaissance frame of mind. It’s only in the 20th century where the demands of the market were that I paint like this and paint like that. What’s wrong with being a painter in the afternoon and a sculptor in the evening? The only reason people became adverse to that was because of the demands of the marketplace. That philosophy is, luckily, being defeated.
Art changes people’s energy. It slows you down like a massage; somebody tickles you. It wakes you up, just by forcing you to ask the question, What is that? I think it’s a divine signal, because when people lose their creativity they are dead. Art is always a signal to people to really trust their own creative hearts.
[For buildings,] there needs to be a very good balance between openness in a space and simultaneously a feeling of protection. That’s the task for space. The other one, for objects, is that it is different, interesting, functional, and so not boring. It’s really playing.
People think that famous art and museums are the big idea. But they are just symbols. The essence of art is that it’s being made and accessible to the common man, to people who have hardly any education but have this inextricable urge to express themselves. At heart I’m a blue-collar painter, because I really believe that art should hang in people’s living rooms. That’s the reason why I make smaller landscapes and do photography, [to make pieces that] are affordable.
4/09 ChronograM portfolio
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galleries & museums
Pia Oste-Alexander’s …with the bodies, a Collage with woodblock print, part of “the river,” a juried group show at the woodstock artists association & museum.
ANN STREET GALLERY artists without borders
nude & naked
museums & galleries
BRILL GALLERY
140 ANN STREET, NEWBURGH 562-6940 ext. 119. “Art Brut: Group Exhibition.” Outsider art that refers to works by those outside of mainstream society. Through April 4.
ARTS UPSTAIRS
North Adams www.brillgallery109.com 800.294.2811
60 MAIN STREET, PHOENICIA 688-2142. “Madness.” Through April 12.
ASK ARTS CENTER 97 BROADWAY, KINGSTON 338-0331. “Audrey Steinhorn Photography: Natural Beauty Revealed.” April 4-25. Opening Saturday, April 4, 5pm-8pm. “Five Artists/Five Media.” April 4-25. Opening Saturday, April 4, 5pm-8pm.
ART BRUT
BAU 161 MAIN STREET, BEACON 440-7584. “New Work by Catherine Walshman.” Through April 5. “XLIV.” Inauguration photos by Adrian Eisenhower. Through April 5.
Group Exhibition February 21-April 18
BCB ART
Gallery Talk
Saturday, April 18, 2pm
Ann Street Gallery 104 Ann Street Newburgh, NY 12550
Hours: Thurs – Sat 11am - 5pm
(845) 562-6940 x 119 www.safe-harbors.org
116 WARREN STREET, HUDSON (516) 828-4539 “The Peaceable Kingdom.” April 4-May 17. Opening Saturday April 4, 6pm-8pm.
BETSY JACARUSO STUDIO 54 ELIZABETH STREET, RED HOOK 758-9244. “Botanicals, Still Life & Land Journeys 2009.” Annual student watercolor workshop show. April 3-May 2. Opening Friday, April 3, 6pm-8pm.
BRILL GALLERY ECLIPSE MILL- STUDIO 109, NORTH ADAMS, MASSACHUSETTS (800) 294-2811. “Artists without Borders.” Works by Anita Rydygier, Rieko Fujinami, and Joanna Gabler. Through May 31.
CABANE STUDIOS FINE ART GALLERY AND PHOTOGRAPHY 38 MAIN STREET, PHOENICIA 688-5490. “Pin Up Show: Photographs and Prints.” Through May 3.
CARRIE HADDAD GALLERY 622 WARREN STREET, HUDSON (518) 828-1915. “Sacred Ground.” Marlene Wiedenbaum, Thomas Locker and Jeff Briggs. April 2-May 10. Opening Saturday, April 4, 6pm-8pm.
Center for photography at woodstock 59 tinker STREET, woodstock 679-9957. “Anthology of Trends.” Tarrah Krajnack and Wilka Roig. April 11-May 24. “Pics.” Regional Collegiate Invitational Exhibition. April 11-May 24. Opening for both shows on Saturday, April 11, 5pm-7pm.
SAMUEL DORSKY MUSEUM OF ART SUNY NEW PALTZ, NEW PALTZ 257-3858. “Analog Catalog: Investigating the Permanent Collection.” Through June 14. “Bradford Graves: Selected Works.” Through June 14. “Eva Watson-Schutze: Photographer.” Through June 14. “Taking a Different Tack: Maggie Sherwood and the Floating Foundation of Photography.” Through April 8.
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museums & galleries ChronograM 4/09
’60s
THE STORY OF THE AND WOODSTOCK.
AT THE SITE OF THE 1969 WOODSTOCK FESTIVAL
1969 MARCH ON WASHINGTON
MUSIC & HISTORY PLAY ON.
SEE THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY CHOPPER BUILT BY
SEE THE SITE. VISIT THE MUSEUM. BECOME PART OF THE HISTORY.
83 Main Street New Paltz, New York 12651 Mon thru Fri 10 am to 6 pm Sat 10 am to 5 pm Sun 12 pm to 4 pm
T i c k e t s a t B e t h e l W o o d s C e n t e r. o r g Phone 1.800.745.3000 or Box Office B e t h e l , N e w Yo r k | R o u t e 1 7 , E x i t 1 0 4
4/09 ChronograM museums & galleries
museums & galleries
Art Store 845.255.9902 Fax 845.255.1016 Web www.mannysart.com
37
DUCK POND GALLERY
THEATRE
9
SCHOOL OF FINE & PERFORMING ARTS
SAMUEL DORSKY MUSEUM OF ART 845.257.3844 www.newpaltz.edu/museum Hours: Tuesday – Friday 11a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. & Sun. 1-5 p.m. Admission is free and open to all. Wheelchair accessible.
Tickets Call the Box Office at 845.257.3880, or order online at www.newpaltz.edu/theatre
MUSIC
Student Honors Recital Tuesday, April 7 at 8:00 p.m. 0ARKER 4HEATRE s &REE
Current Exhibitions
ARTS EVENTS
Taking a Different Tack: Maggie Sherwood and the Floating Foundation of Photography Through April 8, 2009 Eva Watson-Schütze: Photographer Bradford Graves: Selected Works analog catalog: Investigating the Permanent Collection Through June 14, 2009 Gallery Talk Eva Watson-Schütze: Photographer Thursday, April 2 at 7:00 p.m. Conducted by curator Tom Wolf Faculty Poets Presents: Harry Stoneback Tuesday, April 14 at 5:00 p.m. Gallery Talk analog catalog: Investigating the Permanet Collection Thursday, April 23 at 7:00 p.m.
Student Chamber Jazz Ensembles Tuesday, April 28 at 8:00 p.m. McKenna Theatre $6 general admission, $5 seniors/staff, $3 students
Chris Doyle (Foundations)
For a complete listing of current exhibitions and public programs, visit: www.newpaltz.edu/museum
FOVEA EXHIBITIONS 143 MAIN STreet, BEACON 765-2199. “Hard Rain: From Memory to History by Anthony Suau.” Through May 3.
G.A.S.
GALERIE BMG
Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in Lecture Center 102. FREE and open to all.
Docent-Guided Tours of Bradford Graves: Selected Work Sundays, April 5, 19, 26 from 2:00-3:00 p.m. Free and open to all
40 CENTER STREET, ELLENVILLE 647-1497. “Tomorrow’s Artists Today.” Ellenville High School student works. Through April 1.
Music Therapy Students in Concert Thursday, April 23 at 8:00 p.m. .ADIA -AX 3HEPARD 2ECITAL (ALL s &REE
ARTIST LECTURE SERIES
Ongoing
ELLENVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY
196 MAIN STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE 486-4592. “10.” An exhibition of 10 best emerging artists of 2009. April 18-May 10. Opening Saturday, April 18, 6pm-9pm.
It’s a Grand Night for Singing Thursday, April 30 at 7:00 p.m. .ADIA -AX 3HEPARD 2ECITAL (ALL s &REE
Gallery Talk Bradford Graves: Selected Works Saturday, April 25 at 3:00 p.m.
128 CANAL STREET, PORT EWEN 338-5580. “Water Color by Staats Fasoldt.” April 4-25. Opening Saturday, April 4, 5pm-8pm.
Student Composition Recital Thursday, April 16 at 8:00 p.m. .ADIA AND -AX 3HEPARD 2ECITAL (ALL s &REE
Brahms Requiem Sunday, April 26 at 3:00 p.m. St. Joseph’s Church, Elting Avenue, New Paltz $6 general admission, $5 seniors/staff, $3 students
Public Programs
museums & galleries
Blood Wedding By Federico Garcia Lorca McKenna Theatre April 16, 17, 18, 23, 24, 25 at 8 p.m. April 19 & 26 at 2 p.m.
Wednesday, April 8
Victor Faccinto (Painting)
Wednesday, April 29
Sign up to receive reminders of arts events on campus at www.newpaltz.edu/artsnews or send email to arts@newpaltz.edu.
For a complete listing of arts events:
845.257.3872
www.newpaltz.edu/artsnews
12 TANNERY BROOK ROAD, WOODSTOCK 679-0027. “Elements and Inks.” Works by Dan Burkholder. April 3-May 18. Opening Saturday, April 4, 5pm-7pm.
THE GALLERY AT R & F 84 TEN BROECK AVEnue, KINGSTON 331-3112. “Mimi Czajka Graminski: The Spaces Between.” April 4-May 23. Opening Saturday, April 4, 5pm-7pm.
GCCA CATSKILL GALLERY 398 MAIN STREET, CATSKILL (518) 943-3400. “Notart.” Solo exhibition featuring the late Columbia County artist Arthur Tieger. April 18-May 30. Opening Saturday, April 18, 5pm-7pm. “Outside the Lines 2009: Greene County Youth Exhibit.” Through April 11. “Sculpture on Man.” April 18-May 30. Opening Saturday, April 18, 5pm-7pm.
GCCA MOUNTAINTOP GALLERY 5348 MAIN STREET, WINDHAM (518) 734-3104. “Greene County Arts and Crafts Show.” April 11-May 23. Opening Saturday, April 11, 2pm-4pm.
GO NORTH GALLERY 469 MAIN STREET, BEACON www.gonorth.com. “The Sacred Balance of the Irreverent: Remembering Audrey Chibbaro.” Through April 5.
THE HARRISON GALLERY 39 SPRING STREET, WILLIAMSTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS (413) 458-1700. “Abstract Paintings by Tracy Helgeson.” April 4-30. Opening Saturday, April 4, 5pm-7pm. “Still Life.” Stanley Bielen & Paul Goldberg. May 2-27. Opening Saturday, May 2, 5pm-7pm.
HESSEL MUSEUM OF ART BARD COLLEGE, ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON 758-7598. “CCS Bard Exhibition.” Five exhibitions curated by 2nd-year students in the graduate curatorial studies and contemporary art program. Through April 5. “CCS Bard Hessel Museum Exhibition.” First-year graduate students will curate an exhibition. Through May 24.
HUDSON BEACH GLASS GALLERY 162 MAIN STREET, BEACON 440-0068. “The Quad Show.” Through April 27.
HUDSON OPERA HOUSE 327 WARREN STREET, HUDSON (518) 822-1438 “For All Who Are Kept In, For All Who Are Kept Out.” Works by Myron Polenberg. April 4-May 2. Opening Saturday, April 4, 6pm-8pm.
HUDSON VALLEY CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART 1701 MAIN STREET, PEEKSKILL (914) 788-0100. “Origins.” Use of primal materials such as clay, fiber, wood, aluminum, stone, and soil as mediums. Through July 26.
JOHN DAVIS GALLERY 362 1/2 WARREN STREET, HUDSON (518) 828-5907. “Fran O’Neill.” April 2-26. Opening Saturday, April 4, 6pm-8pm.
JOHN’S CUSTOM FRAMING 2330 STATE ROUTE 32, NEW WINDSOR 534-3349. “Visions from the Collective Unconscious.” A retrospective spanning 65 years: artwork of Lydia Strawbridge. April 4-May 23. Opening Saturday, April 4, 3pm-7pm.
KENT ART ASSOCIATION 21 SOUTH MAIN STREET, KENT, CONNECTICUT (860) 927-3989. “Kent Art Association Early Members Show.” Through April 12. “Kent Art Association Spring Juried Show.” April 19-May 25. Opening Friday, April 24, 5pm-7pm.
KINGSTON MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART 105 ABEEL STREET, KINGSTON www.kmoca.org. “Schuilbunkers.” April 4-30. Opening Saturday, April 4, 5pm-7pm.
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museums & galleries ChronograM 4/09
LA BELLA BISTRO 194 MAIN STREET, NEW PALTZ 255-2633. “Moments Caught.” Pastel and oil paintings by Dorothy Hellerman. Through April 17. “Multi-Media by Natalie Minewski.” April 19-May 29. Opening Sunday, April 19, 4pm-6pm.
LIFEBRIDGE SANCTUARY 333 MOUNTAIN ROAD, ROSENDALE 658-3439. “Lucinda Sisniega Abra: 25 Years of Exploration.” Opening Friday, April 3, 6pm-8pm.
our town
MILDRED I. WASHINGTON ART GALLERY DUTCHESS COMMUNITY COLLEGE, POUGHKEEPSIE, 431-8610. “Night Visitors.” Paintings and sculptures by Franz Heigemeir. May 4-May 29. Opening Wednesday, May 6, 5pm-6:30pm.
MONTGOMERY ROW SECOND LEVEL 6423 MONTGOMERY STREET, RHINEBECK 876-6670. “Venturing Out.” Photographs by Maryann Larson. Through April 20.
MUROFF KOTLER VISUAL ARTS GALLERY SUNY ULSTER, STONE RIDGE 687-5113. “SUNY Ulster Student Works ‘09 Gallery Exhibit.” April 29-May 10. Opening Wednesday, April 29, 1pm-2pm.
NEWBURGH FREE LIBRARY 124 GRAND STREET, NEWBURGH 563-3619. “Community Art Show.” April 5-24. Opening Sunday, April 5, 2pm-4pm.
NICOLE FIACCO GALLERY 336 WARREN STREET, HUDSON (518) 828-5090. “John Cleater: Appendages.” Through April 11.
RIVERFRONT STUDIOS 96 BROAD STREET, SCHUYLERVILLE information@riverfront-studios.com. “The Season Opener.” Works by Sandy Dovberg and Paul Kant, Paul Goldberg, Lea McCloskey, Nancy Mygatt and Noah Savett. Through April 25.
RIVERWINDS GALLERY
museums & galleries
172 MAIN STREET, BEACON 838-2880. “A Journey along the Hudson River Line.” By Frédéric Lére. Through April 16.
ULSTER SAVINGS BANK 7296 SOUTH BROADWAY, RED HOOK 758-4020. “Red Hook Pastel Group.” Elaine Ring, Janet Borda, Milly Sugarman, Ginger Grab, Anna Bagnall, Keith Gunderson. Through April 11.
UNISON ARTS AND LEARNING CENTER 68 MOUNTAIN REST ROAD, NEW PALTZ 255-1559. “Sam Spanier (1925-2008).” April 5-26. Opening Sunday, April 5, 2pm-4pm.
UNISON GALLERY WATER STREET MARKET, NEW PALTZ 255-1559. “Paintings by Sara Nelson.” April 3-26. Opening Friday, April 3, 5pm-7pm.
VAN BRUNT GALLERY 137 MAIN STREET, BEACON 838-2995. “The Quad Show.” Through April 27.
VARGA GALLERY 130 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK 679-4005. “March Showcase.” Works by Visionary Art Collective members. Through April 5.
VITA GALLERY 12 OLD FORGE ROAD, WOODSTOCK 679-2329. “Simple Observations.” Photographic works by four high school students. April 24-May 24. Opening Friday, April 24, 5pm-8pm.
WALLKILL RIVER SCHOOL AND ART GALLERY 232 WARD STREET, MONTGOMERY 457-ARTS. “Duet Again: Paintings and Photographs by Susan Daly Voss and John Voss.” April 1-30. Opening Saturday, April 4, 5pm-8pm.
WARNER GALLERY 131 MILLBROOK SCHOOL ROAD, MILLBROOK 677-8261 ext. 130. “Drawings and Paintings by Peter Charlap.” Through April 18.
WINDHAM FINE ARTS GALLERY 5380 MAIN STREET, WINDHAM (518) 734-6850. “Paintings by Lizbeth Mitty.” Through April 27.
WOODSTOCK ARTISTS ASSOCIATION AND MUSEUM 28 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK 679-2940. “Children Under Occupation: Art as Healing.” 26 paintings by Palestinian children. April 11-25. Opening Saturday, April 18, 4pm-6pm. “Eva Watson-Schutze and Her Circle.” Paintings and photographs. Through April 26. “The River.” Solo show by Michael J. Heinrich, works by Rosalind Robertson. April 4-May 3. Opening Saturday, April 4, 4pm-6pm.
4/09 ChronograM museums & galleries
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by peter aaron
Basketful of Noise The Bunnybrains
ph ot o by Fi on n Re illy
Music
J
ohn Doe Records and Books, in the 300-block of Warren Street in Hudson, is pretty hard to miss. A former service station, its parking lot is now an obstacle course of rust-covered file cabinets and paint-peeling bookcases, tables, chests of drawers, and other antique furniture for sale. Inside the 1950s brick building’s front room are a couple racks of chicly garish vintage clothing. Beyond, in the back rooms and the adjacent wide-open garage, is where one finds the advertised goods. Each of the three dusty chambers is a thick jungle of disorganized stacks, boxes, and buckling shelves of old LPs, 45s, magazines, paperbacks, and ephemera, making the site a veritable Tut’s tomb of castoff cultural riches. It’s the kind of place a vinyl and book junkie calls heaven. Somewhere to while away a whole afternoon, getting your fingers dirty unearthing treasures while your groaning, toe-tapping mate, if you have one, gives you the evil eye and goes off to find a latte. 40
music ChronograM 4/09
Lording over this vast, beautiful mess is shop owner Dan Seward, a gangly, long-haired slacker whose downward gaze and quiet demeanor have led more than a few to mistake him for a curmudgeon. He’s not. The moment you engage him, you find that he’s happy to offer what he knows about certain items or to make small talk about the weather or the town. “I came to Hudson about five years ago,” he says. “The store used to be across the street, in a basement that I rented for $200 a month. Before I ended up here I had a shop in Pawling for a while, then one in Tivoli, another in Rosendale. Retail’s in my blood, man. And recession or no recession, I’ve never seen so many people buying records—it’s crazy. So it’s going really well.” Apparently it is, as he recently opened an annex down the block and with his partners has plans to open another location, John Doe Jr., in Greenfield, Massachusetts. But retail isn’t all that Seward does. He also fronts a band: the Bunnybrains. In a pivotal scene of Hesse’s Steppenwolf, the protagonist Harry Haller, in the persona of the title character, is out for a walk when he stumbles upon the Magic Theater, its neon sign bearing the enigmatic legend NOT FOR EVERYBODY. The Bunnybrains are not for everybody. A loose-knit cooperative with Seward as the only constant (its website lists an incredible 65 past and present members) that began in his home state of Connecticut in 1988, the band is a kind of nose-thumbing, willfully tuneless, acid-damaged, psychedelic noise unit very much akin to early Butthole Surfers or San Francisco’s legendary Flipper—not something likely to make the playlist of your local Clear Channel franchise, to be mild. And as portends another enticing sign outside the Magic Theater, one that reads ANARCHIST EVENING ENTERTAINMENT, the Bunnybrains’ squalling, brain-bashing shows are heavy on spectacle—unhinged, shambolic performance art that usually finds the bearded Seward in makeup and a dress and the other members holding forth in animal or wrestler’s costumes, the stage adorned with bizarre props and flashing strobes. Seward, whose stage name is Dan Bunny, has absolutely zip in the way of musical training. “I play guitar or keyboards on some of the songs but I don’t know what I’m doing at all,” explains the 45-year-old. “If someone asked me what a G chord was, I’d have no idea. Most of what we do is made up on the spot, but if I do have some kind of melody or riff I’m thinking of I just kind of hum it to the rest of the band and we work it out. Sure, it’d be great to be more competent, and I guess if I really wanted to learn to play, like, 12-bar blues or some kind of Woodstocky world music, I could. But why? Those bands are fine, but there’s already enough of them around.” Seward grew up in Danbury, Connecticut, where he learned his day trade by working in record stores and opened for local hardcore bands in the guise of performance artist Eg the Poet, whose act with “musical” accompanist Malcolm Tent proved too punk for the punks. “The scene in Connecticut at that time was all of these really militant straight-edge kids, and they absolutely hated me,” recalls the soft-spoken, dry-humored Seward. “I’d read my poems and throw eggs at them, smear jelly and jam all over myself, pull spaghetti out of my underwear, [pretend to] fuck pizzas and frozen chickens on stage. I thought I invented what I was doing; then I found out about [pioneering performance artists] Karen Finley, Joanna Went, people like that. Years later, I learned that a lot of the kids secretly respected me for being different, but when I was on these bills with [hardcore crew] Youth of Today or whoever, most of the audience just wanted to kill me.” Nevertheless, at the time Seward actually did have his fans, two of whom were SUNY Purchase students Bob Barrett (aka Bobby Bunny) and Elisa Flynn of garage-synth duo Invaders from Sears. The pair had by then already concocted the Bunnybrains as the name for a theatrical noise/improv side project and invited Seward and Tent to join in time for a gig at Brandeis University in 1988. Before long, the group was playing the Northeast underground circuit and cranking out self-released cassettes and vinyl with individually handmade sleeves in editions of 300 copies or less. A few of these raw scraps of DIY rumpus made their way to the turntable of then Matador Records tastemaker Johan Kugelberg. “I really liked the unpretentious energy of the singles, and I started passing them around the office,” recalls Kugelberg, who has since worked for American Recordings and today writes for garage rock zine Ugly Things.
The other powers at Matador were similarly smitten, and soon the label that has also been home to such influential acts as Pavement, Liz Phair, the John Spencer Blues Explosion, Guided By Voices, and Cat Power was offering the Bunnybrains a deal. “We did one [self-titled 1995 vinyl-only] album with Matador, which came in this pink plastic envelope cover that was really expensive for the label to make, and no one bought it,” Seward says. “[The band was] very much anti-CD back then because we grew up with vinyl and thought ‘these new CD things’ were elitist, so Matador indulged us by doing vinyl only—which now I see as being really stupid because it meant we never got any airplay or reviews. [The label] didn’t ask us to do another record after that, and I don’t really blame them.” The band continued with an occasionally augmented cast, gigging regionally and releasing more singles on under-the-radar labels until 2002, when Tent, Flynn, and Barrett left the fold, the latter citing the band’s “sellout” into musical orthodoxy—i.e., playing the odd actual song instead of only freeform noise—as his main reason for quitting (the three later reunited as BunnyBrains 88 and now play under the moniker Ultrabunny). But Seward disputes such accusations and has continued to fly the freak flag, leading varying Bunnybrains lineups (the latest includes co-lead vocalist Jamie Mohr, bassist Jason “Wolfman” Martin, guitarist and keyboardist Ross Goldstein, guitarist Mikey Corcoran, and drummer Joe Terry) and building the band’s underground stature via limited releases of new studio material, as well as “official bootlegs” like 2006’s three-CD Triple Live Mayhem on Belgium’s Audiobot imprint. What really cemented the group’s legendary indie status, however, were two events: the release of 2004’s career overview Box the Bunny (Narnack Records), a monolithic boxed set containing four CDs and a bonus live DVD that racked up rave coverage in the indie press, and a 2005 national tour supporting freak folk golden boy and devout fan Devendra Banhart. “That tour was really weird, but really cool, too,” says Seward. “Here we were, this band none of Devendra’s fans had ever heard of, looking all crazy and making this really fucked-up noise in front of audiences full of college hippie girls. And we’re sharing Devendra’s big Snoop Dog tour bus. But we actually went over pretty well, which was amazing. I had kids come up to me after we played and thank me, saying, ‘Wow, man, I just came [to the concert] from my really shitty job and the release of seeing you guys really helped me feel better.’” Besides Banhart, another of the Bunnybrains’ famous fans is acclaimed pop singer and bassist Me’Shell Ndegeocello, who as of late has been collaborating with Seward on a soundscape project. “Being around Dan is experiential and insightful,” she says. “The Bunnybrains are a mind-child that opened the door to my courage.” This month sees the release of What Makes You Think You Can Save Yourself (from yourself) (Independent), the first full-length CD of new Bunnybrains material in 10 years. Kicking off with the snot-nosed garage anthem “It’ll Be Alright,” the self-financed disc moves to a hilariously whacked reading of the Big Bopper’s “Chantilly Lace” before descending into the usual mind-bending chaos via cuts like “Your Dream Ass Is Mine,” “Suicide,” and “Baby Likes to Rock (in the Country).” “The new album cost us less than $500 to make,” says Seward, beaming. “And it took us about as long to record as it takes to listen to, which I think is perfect, really.”The band has lined up a few shows to promote the album, though this time out Seward’s commitment to his stores precludes any lengthy touring. In addition to opening the Greenfield shop, with the help of investors Seward plans to convert the service station location into a combination farmers market/cafe/jazz club this year while moving all of John Doe’s Hudson operations into its Warren Street annex. It seems that, as in the case of his band, with his business Seward has created a model that against all odds has managed to find success in its own way. The Bunnybrains, like Steppenwolf’s Magic Theater, hold up a funhouse mirror and invite us to jump inside and be liberated. To quote the book further, “True humor begins when a man ceases to take himself seriously.” The Bunnybrains will perform at Jason’s Upstairs Bar in Hudson on Easter Sunday, April 12. www.thebunnybrains.com; www.jasonsupstairsbar.com. 4/09 ChronograM music
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nightlife highlights Handpicked by DJ WAVY DAVY for your listening pleasure.
Ribbon of Highway, Endless Skyway
PLUS Q&A W/ MARY STUART MASTERSON
APR/4 8pm
Dancing
on the Air TIFT MERRITT APR/8 8pm
APR/9 8pm
A FOOD FOR THOUGHT FILM:
Robert Gordon / Graham Parker / Jim Weider FEATURING:
KILLER AT LARGE
APR/16 7pm
JUSTIN
TOWNES EARLE APR/24 8pm
April 3. This celebrated Woody Guthrie tribute tour features his granddaughter Sarah Lee Guthrie, her partner, Johnny Irion, Jimmy LaFave, Slaid Cleaves, and Joel Rafael. A traveling road show originated by LaFave, it weaves a common thread for the many Guthrie fans who hear his influence in the music of artists ranging from Bob Seger to Wilco. Here at the Bearsville Theater, the show’s cast of performers interprets Guthrie’s well- and lesser-known words and music for a rich and rewarding American musical experience. The underlying mission is to continue to keep Guthrie’s spirit alive for future generations. (The Subdudes acoustic tour arrives on April 17.) 8pm. $25. Bearsville. (845) 679-4406; www.bearsvilletheater.com.
SARA MILONOVICH
& DAISYCUTTER APR/18 8pm
TERRY ADAMS
ROCK&ROLLQUARTET
MAY/2 8pm
Sgt. Dunbar & The Hobo Banned
PLUS INDUSTRY PANEL
APR/23 7pm
PHIL OCHS JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE SONG NIGHT MAY/9 8pm
The official ticket sponsor of the linda is tech valley communications. media sponsorship for crumbs nite out,TIFT MERRITT,and J.T. EARLE by exit 97.7 wext. food for thought copresented by the honest weight food coop. FILM PROGRAMMING SUPPORTED WITH PUBLIC FUNDS FROM THE NEW YORK STATE COUNCIL ON THE ARTS,A STATE AGENCY
April 4, 11, 18. Legendary rockabilly singer Robert Gordon (April 4) is a personal favorite who can move a crowd by just moving his lips, not to mention his hips. The Towne Crier keeps the bar high this month with another living legend, Graham Parker (April 11), whose cockney-soul songs have influenced hundreds of artists. Rounding things out (April 18) is a fantastic amalgam of local musicians led by former Band guitarist Jim Weider. His Project Percolator band is the perfect blend of country funk, with his considerable slide Telecaster skills far out front. All shows are at 8pm. Pawling. Gordon: $30, 25. Parker: $35, 30. Weider: $25, $20. (845) 854-1300; www.townecrier.com.
RioJAZZ April 7. This year marks the 22nd annual concert at Dutchess Community College for Matt Finley & RioJAZZ, the Hudson Valley’s premier Brazilian jazz band. The group features Finley on flugelhorn, soprano sax, and flute, along with keyboardist Peter Tomlinson, guitarist Jeff Ciampa, bassist Don Miller, drummer Joel Rosenblatt, and percussionist Tomas Martin Lopez. This highly recommended show is a featured event for the Smithsonian’s Jazz Appreciation Month in April, and refreshments will be served. Tudo bem! 7:30pm. Free. Poughkeepsie. (845) 431-8050; www.riojazz.com
Spin Slowly Benefit Party
SUNY ULSTER SPECIAL EVENTS Visiting Artist
LARRY GRENADIER Tuesday, April 14, 7:00 p.m. Vanderlyn Hall, Student Lounge, Stone Ridge Campus A highlight in this semester’s special events. Free to SUNY Ulster students, faculty and staff. Open to the public. Suggested donation $8.
Theater
ALL IN THE TIMING
By David Ives & Directed by Laura Love-Kroll
April 16-18, 23-25 at 8:00 p.m. April 19, 26 at 3:00 p.m. Quimby Theater
April 18. Anyone who hoisted a pint at Chic’s in Kingston during the ’90s was probably served by bartender Tim McCardle, who is also a great musician and nowadays a film impresario who’s written and directed the independent film Spin Slowly, about “the dream, the hallucination, the reality.” McCardle throws open the doors tonight at Backstage Studio Productions (BSP) for the film’s premier alongside a full lineup of live music. The entertainment begins with an acoustic performance by Summer Corrie and the red-hot V’nessa Tzavellas, followed by reunion shows by Me, Him, and a Guy Named Tim and Later Than Never. Food, a cash bar, and cool merch will be on hand. This is one red carpet party not to miss, and proceeds go toward postproduction of the film. 7pm. $15. Kingston. (845) 338-8700; www.myspace.com/timmcardleprojects.
Red Molly April 25. We love the plethora of female talent in the Hudson Valley, and these days lady roots trios seem all the rage, given the multitalented Red Molly and other combos like the Jesse Janes. Red Molly is Abbie Gardner, Laurie MacAllister, and Carolann Solebello on a mix of dobro, banjo, guitar, and bass presenting vocal harmonic music with spice, as demonstrated on the band’s 2008 CD Love and Other Tragedies (Independent), recently listed in the Americana Music Association’s Top 100 Albums for 2008. Here at the Byrdcliffe Guild’s Kleinert/James Arts Center, the group’s combined vocal beauty is like organic butter for your ears. 8pm. $25, $20. Woodstock. 845) 679-2079; www.redmolly.com. FIONN REILLY
SUNY Ulster’s theater department mounts its spring production with a highly amusing comedy full of twists and turns. Free for all students, faculty and staff. Open to the public. Box office information: 845-688-1959. Suggested donation $10.
Ellen Robbins Poetry Forum
CHARLES SIMIC
Thursday, April 30, 10:30 a.m. & 7:00 p.m. Vanderlyn Hall, Student Lounge, Stone Ridge Campus Charles Simic is the author of over 60 books, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and recently recognized as the 15th United States poet laureate. Sponsored by the Student Government Organization and the Ulster Community College Foundation, Inc. For more information call 845-687-5262
All events held on SUNY Ulster’s Stone Ridge Campus
sunyulster.edu 42
music ChronograM 4/09
Start Here. Go Far.
graham parker plays the towne crier in pawling on april 11.
CD REviEwS JEn ClAPP LONESOME SUNBEAM (rUsteD floWer reCorDs, 2009)
According to its liner notes, Jen Clapp’s new CD Lonesome Sunbeam was recorded on solar power. Even if that’s impossible to tell by listening to the music, it’s worth mentioning, as the album is warm, intimate, and inviting. Performing with a full band on this solo debut, Clapp sounds comfortable and confident, equally at ease in moodier numbers, like the album’s tender title track and “Last Ride,” as she is in those that shimmy and shake, such as “Voodoo Baby.” The prevalent sound might be considered as being under the alt.country umbrella; see “Might Have Moved On” and the wistful “Tenderheart,” both of which feature aching violin played by Sara Milonovich. But there’s much more than meets the eye, including what might on paper seem impossible: the blending of the earnestness of the ’70s singer-songwriter with the goosebump-raising atmospherics of Portishead on the drumsfree “Last Ride.” “Icy Windows” might be Lonesome Sunbeam’s artistic tentpole; the lyric’s somber feeling of yearning blends seamlessly with the music, floating in the slow wake of guitars, keyboards, and Clapp’s gentle voice. A former member of New York band Native Tongue, Clapp was a key player in the early ’90’s folk-punk scene in the city, with a steady gig at the legendary Cafe Sin-é, the stomping grounds of a young Jeff Buckley. Representing something of a return, it’s clear Lonesome Sunbeam is right where Clapp belongs. www.jenclapp.com. —Crispin Kott
420 Funk Mob with very Special Guests
tHE PRinCES OF SEREnDiP WHAT SHE SAID
7pm
(JaiYa reCorDs, 2008)
SAngEEtA miCHAEl BERARDi EARTHSHIP (sUnJUMp reCorDs, 2008)
ADAMSPIANO.COM IS MOVING FROM KINGSTON TO NEW PALTZ, NEW YORK. Reconditioned spinets now $695! 10 available! Reconditioned consoles now $995! 10 available! Used Yamaha and Kawai consoles now $1995! 10 available! Used Yamaha and Kawai baby grands now $4000-7000! 10 available! Used Sohmer, Knabe and Baldwin baby grands starting at $3000!
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Although I have never met or heard him live, I admire guitarist Sangeeta Michael Berardi. His dedication to art through music, poetry, prose, and drawing has often been a challenging journey. But the music he makes on Earthship belies the depth of his vision, his truth. Teamed on this album with advanced Woodstock- and NewYork-based players saxophonist/flutist James Finn, pianist John Esposito, bassist Hilliard Green, and drummer Peter O’Brien, Berardi delivers uncompromising expression, melody, energy, and communication. This recording is pure and honest, deeply from of the Coltrane mold, but filled with unique individual thought and original ideas. Berardi’s voice rings most true, he is a seasoned storyteller with invention and wisdom to bestow along the way.Yet there is also plenty of room for the band members to have their say. There is seamless weaving between composition and group improvisation, structure and group invention. This is a tradition that can only be handed down from master to master. Berardi, almost 70 now, was on the free-jazz scenes with his own Manhattan loft in 1980, the East Village in the ’70s, Chicago in the ’60s. In 1996 he took musicians who honored this tradition, produced this masterwork, then sent his sidemen off to continue their own ascensions. Often I question reviewing a CD that was not recently recorded. The moment I pressed Play my questions were set aside and I just listened. What more could you ask of a CD? www.sunjumprecords.com. —Erik Lawrence
ADAM’S
individual lessons • group lessons
Rare is the musical group that can both amuse and frighten you at the same time. Case in point: the Princes of Serendip and their nutty YouTube video, “The 7 Deadly Plastics.” This horrifying tune, which can be found on this, their sophomore CD, is a lengthy ode to those curious little numbers on the bottoms of your plastic food containers. Performing what sounds like a whimsical children’s tune (in their distinctively upbeat folk/Celtic/classical style), the Princes rag on plastics right down to the 90,000th one: “It makes your fat cells its long-term home / And it reaches in your ovary and tweaks a chromosome.” The songs on What She Said span multiple millennia of storytelling, from the burial musings of an ancient Sumerian princess (“My silver comb will succumb to the acid secretions of my decomposing body,” from the title track) to the modern day toxic horrors that will stick around for the next million years (“Plutonium POPS”). Though the cardstock CD case is environmentally friendly, the disc is still made from polycarbonate...oh well, whatcha gonna do? Kudos to Don Yacullo (piano), Julie Parisi Kirby (vocals), and T. G. Vanini (vocals/violin) for informing and entertaining simultaneously. www.princesofserendip.info. —Sharon Nichols
Programs that make people happy making music. Phone: 845-677-5871 4/09 ChronograM MusiC
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Dismantling the Disquietude The Inimitable Charles Simic by Pauline Uchmanowicz
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books ChronograM 4/09
Richard Drew
Books
M
y conscious life started with war,” deadpans renowned poet and translator Charles Simic, recounting formative experiences during the Nazi occupation of his native Belgrade,Yugoslavia (now Serbia). An early memory involves being thrown from bed, hearing glass shatter, and seeing bright flames as a bomb hit and destroyed a building across the street from his home. Just as his poetic voice seems to parody his ironic mind, Simic’s distinctive Eastern European inflections bob cheerfully through the incident’s ashes like snatches in a game of jacks. “But war is not so bad for a kid. The parents are off looking for food or are dead. There’s no school, no parental supervision. As a kid, I was running around; it was fun. But I saw some things that were awful, too. Great poverty. Nobody had anything to eat.” Trademark Simic, this disquieting duality figures in “The Big War” (The Book of Gods and Devils, 1990): “We played war during the war, / Margaret.” Reinforcement arrives with clay toy soldiers (“The lead ones melted into bullets”), ultimately broken or dismembered. After the war came Communism and political oppression under Stalin. When Simic was still a boy, his father emigrated to the United States. But before Charles and his mother could join him, eight years later, they became “displaced persons” in Paris, awaiting American visas. The details of Simic’s recollected youth have shaped much of his “output in life,” spanning a half century and more than 30 volumes of poetry, 20 more of translation, and nearly a dozen of nonfiction. Along with war, he frequently writes about religion and mortality, fit subjects for pondering the presence of absence. Many critics agree that the author’s unique, surreal evocations of the physical and spiritual poverty of modern life coalesce in a singular, inimitable brand. Numerous honors attesting to that fact include his 1990 Pulitzer Prize (for The World Doesn’t End) and a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.” The Serbian transplant writes in his adopted language, despite having arrived in Illinois at age 16 with only a tenuous grasp. “I always wrote in English because I knew I would show my poems to Americans—to a beautiful girl. It wasn’t a big decision,” ho-hums Simic, who wears his reputation lightly. Enrolled at Oak Park High School, he composed “My Brother in the Garden,” a first effort that has since been lost. After graduation, he worked as a proofreader at the Chicago Sun-Times and took night classes at University of Chicago. By age 20, Simic had published two poems in the Chicago Review. Drafted into the army in 1961, he served for two years, in both Germany and France. Settling in Manhattan upon his return in 1963, the fledging poet married fashion designer Helen Dubin, obtained a BA in English from New York University, and did a three-year stint as an editorial assistant at the photography magazine Aperture. Though he was writing and publishing poems, Simic wanted to become a visual artist. “Long before I wanted to be a poet I wanted to be a painter. As a result, I didn’t take poetry very seriously,” he admits. During his 20s, he studied art history and Dada. Along the way, he released his first poetry volume, What the Grass Says, at 29. Though he stopped painting a year later, he has remained a lifelong devotee of the visual arts. He once even abandoned his writing career to pursue his talent for assemblage, a found-objects movement developed by surrealist Joseph Cornell, the subject of Simic’s biography Dime-Store Alchemy (1992). Extrapolating from Cornell’s technique, Simic introduced improbable, collage-like juxtapositions in his now signature everyday-object poems found in Dismantling the Silence (1971) and Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk (1974), including “Fork,” “Spoon,” “Brooms,” “Watermelon,” “The Pillow,” and “Watch Repair.” Illuminating his method, Simic explains, “A poem is like a little box. Something pops into your head. You look across the room and see something else interesting. The poem is a place where one assembles all kinds of aspects of reality.You can’t just work in a linear fashion.You have to be open to chance, to something unexpected popping in. That’s what I like about Cornell; he was always open to accident.” Simic’s work as a translator likewise has influenced his original writing. As he recounts, American poets of the 1950s and 1960s were looking to other countries for inspiration. “Anyone with any knowledge of a foreign language was trying translation. It was almost a competition to find ‘new’ poetry.” He discovered Vasko Popa at the New York Public Library. Characterizing his translating of this fellowYugoslav and a range of other poets as the “closest pos
sible experience of a poem,” Simic claims to have “learned more about poetry from the practice than anything else.” Today a widely translated author himself, his descriptions of Popa’s work likely apply to his own: “It’s very simple, very precise, very concentrated. It’s difficult to translate because there’s no room to stumble.” Meanwhile, the translator’s recently reissued landmark Another Republic (1976), co-edited with Mark Strand, has since successfully introduced scores of English-speaking audiences to South American and European poets. As the 1970s dawned, with Simic on track to release nearly a book a year, including five in the iconic George Braziller series, he simultaneously embarked on a teaching career. A professor (now emeritus) at University of New Hampshire since 1973, he also held periodic visiting professorships, including at Boston University and Columbia. Simic also served a term as 15th Poet Laureate of the United States (2007–2008). Simic’s central themes remain as fresh as ever in his newest releases, including the anthologies TheVoice at 3:00 AM (2003), a finalist for the National Book Award, and Sixty Poems (2007). His late-work volumes, My Noiseless Entourage (2005) and That Little Something (2008), visit monuments and cemeteries (“Battling Grays,” “Graveyard on a Hill”), honor veterans (“The Tragic Sense of Life”), and decry “These wars that end / Only to start up again / Somewhere else / Like barber’s clippers,” are traceable “back to Cain” (“December 21”). Metaphysical matters, along with relative insomnia (he’s a sufferer), also reappear. Analyzing his “preoccupation with religion,” Simic chronicles lineage on his mother’s side, which includes two centuries of Eastern Orthodox priests before his grandfather, a military man. “He hated his father,” says Simic. “So I grew up in a family that never talked about religion, but the old relatives had paintings of all these priests. I’ve also read a lot of philosophy and theology. I have always been interested in other people’s beliefs. I like going into churches. Religion is always on my mind. It’s a subject that sooner of later one has to address.” In “The Absentee Landlord,” God withholds “inquiries / as to his whereabouts,” remaining forever “away on business.” Providing commentary, Simic states, “The reason for the conversation with an ‘absent God’ even though [one is] not a believer is paradoxical, both part of my background and a serious subject.” Whether as conjuring trick or immaculate conception, Simic’s poems uncannily invoke inaudible and unseen dimensions—“Wonders of the Invisible World,” as he calls the territory in a fable of witchery and black magic. “I’ve always been fascinated with fortunetellers,” he says. “Especially now, in New York, with the economy bad, they’re all over.” In “Ask Your Astrologer,” the narrator accuses the stars of “benign neglect” and ridicules “our Lord” for “His” inability to solve the world’s riddles. Hobnobbing with clairvoyants and deities, ghosts also haunt Simic’s poems. “I live in New England, in New Hampshire, where the spirit of Hawthorne’s stories is still in these old houses like invisible forces,” the poet explains. “There are ghosts in closets, the notion that the devil really exists in Grandmother Jones’s attic, locked up for three centuries.” Such specters make the world more curious, more out-of-the-ordinary. “We cannot explain reality just by considering the visible, what we can see and measure,” Simic insists. “You have to shut your eyes and see the invisible. It’s a religious problem, what is hidden in the visible. It’s a philosophical world—the world beyond appearances. You think about history, about our dead relatives. They are invisible now but we can still talk to them. [Metaphysical conversation] becomes material in my poems.” Simic’s sparse, elegant poems can seem divinely made. But in describing the creative process, he’s unequivocal: “There’s no muse. I don’t take dictation. It’s really a slow process of making the poem—of endless tinkering and revising to make it sound inspired.” Comparing himself to a standup comedian pausing between lines, Simic is pointedly aware of his audience. “When writing a poem, I always feel, in my mind, I’m addressing someone out there. I don’t know who it is, what they look like. But I’m always speaking to someone, trying to imagine the reaction. I would say to my readers: ‘Remember that.’ Even if I’m not coming across clearly, my intention is still to communicate to you.” Charles Simic will be reading his poetry and signing books at SUNY Ulster’s Vanderlyn Hall in Stone Ridge on Thursday,April 30, at 10:30am and 7pm. (845) 687-5262; www.sunyulster.edu. Both events are free and open to the public. 4/09 ChronograM books
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ShORt takES april is the cruelest month, fraught with tax returns and marshmallow Peeps. what better time to celebrate the lives of the not-so-saintly?
BRigHt DARk mADOnnA eliZaBetH CUnningHaM MONKFISH BOOKS, 2009, $26
the third installment in Cunningham’s boldly irreverent Maeve Chronicles, reimagining Mary Magdalen as a feisty Celtic redhead. raised by feminist witches, she’s now the single mother of a strong-willed daughter (yes, his) with serious daddy issues. Reading at oblong Rhinebeck, 4/3 at 7:30pm; Merritt Millbrook, 4/4 at 10:30am; Merritt Red Hook, 5/2 at 2pm.
Feed Me! Writers Dish About Food, Eating, Weight, and Body Image
Two Weeks Under
Edited by Harriet Brown
Author House, 2008, $14.99
Rivka Tadjer
Ballantine Books, 2009, $15
living in tHE wOODS in A tREE: REmEmBERing BlAZE FOlEy sYBil rosen UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TExAS PRESS, 2008, $24.95
anyone who’s ever loved someone with a largerthan-life talent and troubles to match will devour this perceptive memoir. reliving her hippie treehouse idyll with legendary singer/songwriter Blaze foley and tracing the complex paths walked by poet and muse, rosen writes with the tenderness and heartache of a great country song. Reading at Inquiring Minds in New Paltz, 4/5 at 5pm.
FliPPing OUt MarsHall Karp ST. MARTIN’S PRESS, 2009, $24.95
The Rabbit Factory team is back, sorting out another only-in-California series of screwball killings. Murdering cops’ wives is no joke, but in karp’s hands, there’s bound to be humor. “it’s a homicide investigation,” lomax observes. “where is it written that we get to have fun?” “and yet, we so often do,” replies Biggs. so will you. Reading at the Kleinert/James in Woodstock, 4/5 at 4pm, sponsored by The Golden Notebook; Kingston Barnes & Noble, 4/17 at 7pm.
SPAlDing gRAy’S AmERiCA WilliaM W. DeMastes, foreWorD BY riCHarD sCHeCHner LIMELIGHT EDITIONS, 2009, $19.95
genre-bending actor and writer spalding gray’s confessional monologues made high art of frenetic selfinterrogation. this first biography of the late performance artist, who sought solace in Phoenicia and krumville, asserts that gray’s meandering psyche, with its excesses of frivolity and guilt, provides a paradigm for our national conscience.
tHE gURU lOOkED gOOD Marta sZaBo TINKER STREET PRESS, 2009, $19.95
Eat Pray Love from the opposite side of the sticky mat. authentic writing and woodstock Memoir festival cofounder szabo launched this intimate account of her decade on staff at gurumayi’s siddha yoga ashram online, drawing hundreds of passionate fans. her justpublished book, clear-sighted and true to the bone, should attract many more.
FORmUlARy georganna MillMan ASTOUNDING BEAUTY RUFFIAN PRESS, 2009, $12
Millman’s 2008 ruffian Prize-winning manuscript showcases a plainspoken eloquence. in “evolution,” the forest reclaims Catskills farmland, tumbling stone walls and levitating a long-abandoned plow, “telling something about / how we start out as one thing / and over time become another.” Millman will be featured with elo-Mall Toomat at the Woodstock Poetry society, 4/11 at 2pm.
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Books ChronograM 4/09
F
ood, glorious food. There is nothing more basic and yet nothing more controversial: The first communiqué issued by every newborn life, regardless of demographic or even of species, usually translates to “Feed me!” Be you vegan or carnivore, serial dieter or unrepentant Frito freak, there is much mental nourishment to be found within the pages of Feed Me!, wherein Harriet Brown has gathered the musings of 23 gifted writers. As she points out in the introduction, “fat” is a loaded word with hugely negative connotations, and one of the last distinguishing characteristics people are allowed to joke about. From the breathless gossip-rag monitoring of every ounce celebrities gain, to warnings about a childhood obesity epidemic, we are a culture confused about nourishment. The essays in this book are pleasingly free of political cant, even when focused on the politics of body image. The “dish” in the title promises intimacy. The book delivers, with honest and fascinating memories of the ways in which food acquires its connotations. As we chew, swallow, and digest, we are dancing with layer upon layer of cultural messages and barely visible emotional baggage, and the surrounding issues can become matters of life and death. Food has become nearly as fraught as sex—reading these generous helpings of self-reflection, one can see through layers of illusion and perhaps come one step closer to understanding one’s own relationship with plate and fork. Body issues are most defi nitely a matter of life and death in Woodstock author Rivka Tadjer’s Two Weeks Under, a novel which postulates the Next Big Thing in getting smaller: two weeks in a “vanity coma.” That this whole concept sounds plausible is, in itself, a measure of how desperately important thinness has become to so many. In chapter one, we meet Pam, a bright and funny young woman who’s struggling with love and career, living in a shiny corporate world that demands she be at her “best.” To achieve that best, she’s enlisted an antianxiety med called Normal and a procedure called The Metamorphosis. Tadjer’s take on the Lifestyle Industry is viciously funny: We meet Pam on the day her employers have installed clear, soundproof cubes to forestall inefficient little human interactions once and for all. In a brave new world smelling of Scotchguard and crackling with claustrophobia, she suffers the indignity of seeing her latest idea pirated by an unethical, stick-skinny wench. Pam’s convinced that after her coma, all will be better—thinness will make her an unstoppable magnet for men and success. But she never gets to find out whether that’s true, becoming one more of what, in Tadjer’s cold, glittering world, has become a Trend: apparent suicides of thirty-something women, charged off to “Exhaustion Syndrome.” Even in the post-postmodern world she inhabited, Pam wasn’t entirely unconnected—a man was developing feelings for her; a half sister who hadn’t known of her existence dares to take an interest in her fate. They fi nd themselves embroiled in a dangerous struggle with a sociopath as scary as any in modern fiction, endangered still more by the confusion between appearances and reality that makes trust a rare commodity. Two Weeks Under works both as a gripping thriller and a reflection on the age of televised liposuction and the 24-hour news cycle. Rivka Tadjer and Feed Me! contributors Sari Botton, Dana Kinstler, and Lisa Romeo will read at Inquiring Mind/Muddy Cup in Saugerties, Sunday, April 26, at 4pm. —Anne Pyburn
7BMVBCMF Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners
What will you find at Mirabai? Treasures of lasting value, because what you’ll take home will change your life — forever. Books, music and talismans that inspire, transform and heal. Since 1987, seekers of wisdom and serenity have journeyed to Mirabai in search of what eludes them elsewhere.
Laura Claridge
Random House, 2008, $30
B
eyond the ambition that made her one of the most famous and respected women of the 20th century, Emily Post was concerned with keeping things pleasant. Though her name would come to evoke stiff formality and sharp reproof, this is a misapprehension quite at odds with her message. Which fork for the truffles and which for the terrapin made little difference to her, and as we learn in Laura Claridge’s biography, Post’s elbows were apt to rest on the table. First published in 1922, Post’s book Etiquette fixed its gaze on the upper reaches of the class war. The rhetorical conflict between old and new money is allegorized by characters with names such as Bobo Gelding and Richan Vulgar—dramatis personae that charmed F. Scott Fitzgerald and tutored multitudes. Curiously, the book is second to the Bible as the one most stolen from public libraries. At 50, Post had already published five novels when the editor of Vanity Fair suggested she write a how-to of social correctness. Although, as Claridge demonstrates, the role of manners guru was one she had long coveted, Post cultivated the myth of her reluctance, as if to imply the project were a perfect instance of noblesse oblige. Post’s competitor for the mantle, Lillian Eichler, who was only 19 and the daughter of immigrants, marketed her own bestseller with ads that showed humiliating gaffes bringing doom on upward strivers. To Post’s mind, making people feel ashamed of their lack of grace was in itself rude enough to disqualify Eichler from any claim of expertise. Post’s father was the architect Bruce Price, who designed the first steelframed skyscraper as well as the elite Hudson Valley enclave Tuxedo Park, where his daughter spent her formative years in a whirl of high society partying that would inform her life’s work. Although Claridge does not indicate much in the way of spiritual proclivities, one of Post’s novels was based on Rhinebeck’s Victorian-era occult scene, and it is interesting that years later, during a radio talk on hospitality, she would digress on Gurdjieff’s enneagram, an esoteric graphing of personality types. As a precocious teen, she was a valued assistant to her father, and though not degreed, was herself practically an architect. She produced a serious volume on interior design and even debated Edward Steichen, championing personal eclecticism in response to the vogue of modernist austerity. For Post, who designed her own clothes, the understanding that we have it in our own hands to beautify our lives was axiomatic; in her do-it-yourself ethic she anticipated our other great polymath of domesticity, Martha Stewart. Post was married to a duck-hunting, yacht-obsessed broker—a man with whom she shared no interests—and then rather scandalously divorced in a typical Gilded Age scenario involving a blackmailer and a showgirl. Claridge is thorough on the moral complexities and sifts through Post’s oeuvre to deduce her sentiments. Post was stoically, though perhaps not bitterly, silent on the matter; even to her children she would never mention Mr. Post again. Claridge vividly renders her subject’s milieu and credibly offers up some of Post’s biggest self-realizations. It was at Mark Twain’s 75th birthday party, Claridge suggests, that as a young novelist among other sisters in the art, Post had a liberating glimpse of her would-be path. Her friend Juliet Morgan (daughter of J.P.) had already warned her, “Please be careful, won’t you? It would be a great pity if you became a Bohemian.� Claridge slices through the subtleties with the same ease as Post herself. —Marx Dorrity
But perhaps the real value of Mirabai lies not in what you’ll find here‌ it’s what will find you. That’s value beyond measure.
.JSBCBJ of Woodstock #PPLT t .VTJD t (JGUT t Workshops Tarot Decks t Eastern Philosophy t Integrative Healing t Feng Shui t Reiki Essential Oils t Yoga & Bodywork t Channeled Materials t Energy Medicine Esoteric Christianity t Sufism t Nutrition t Meditation Cushions t Ayurveda Healing Music t Personal Growth t Crystals t Sacred Statuary t Celtic t Incense Kundalini t Astrology t Kabbalah t Consiousness t Shamanism t Mysticism
Nourishment for Mind & Spirit ÂŽ
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WE USED TO OWN THE BRONX Memoirs of a Former Debutante Eve Pell â€œâ€Śa literary treat ‌ Pell gives us a kind of cultural anthropology of the closest thing in America to a landed gentry.â€? — Wall Street Journal “Eve Pell gives us a fascinating glimpse into a secret world of unfathomable wealth and privilege. Hers is an unexpected and ultimately hopeful journey of rebellion and reconciliation.â€? — Jane Fonda $23.00 cloth 1
A FAMILY PLACE Leila Phili p
A FAMILY PLACE
Centuries, A Hudson Valley Farm, Three Five Wars, One Family
A Hudson Valley Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family Leila Philip “An exquisite rendering of a Hudson Valley family farm, as detailed and colored as a Persian miniature. Philip’s family history is alarmingly transporting, and her sense of place so rich you can taste it.� — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) $14.95 paper
to order, visit your local bookstore or www.sunypress.edu 4/09 ChronograM books
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KIM SCAFURO
Fiction
Garden City
By Mimi Moriarty
M
eredith opened her eyes, rolled onto her side, and stared out the window of her mother’s Winnebago. Trees whizzed by, followed by the peaks of unfamiliar homes, and telephone poles carrying messages from friends, friends who knew each other well, since third grade, and who shared secrets and boyfriends, gossip and makeup, reliving the lives of their mothers and grandmothers in the same town, the same village, the same county as all of their ancestors. Permanent residents, lucky to be living in such stability. “Wake up, sleepyhead, rise and shine!” “I’m up, Mother.” “The early bird catches the worm.” “I no longer eat worms for breakfast, Mother.” “It’s easier to catch a fly with sugar than with vinegar.” Meredith cringed at the constant barrage of platitudes flung from the front seat by the always cheerful Kathleen Lynda Sullivan. Stretching, she placed her feet on the rocking floor and balanced herself as she made her way into the phone booth of a bathroom she and her mother had been sharing for several days. A quick shower refreshed her, enabling her to take over driving duties while her mother lay down for a short nap. “I only need 20 minutes, and I’ll be good as new.” Meredith knew her mother’s fictitious 20 minutes lasted hours, but she did not challenge her optimism. No one challenged Kathleen’s optimism. They just left her in her delusional world as she made her way from town to town looking for work, for a home, for a life worth living. “Bloom where you are planted,” she would say whenever they hit a new town.Within months, they were uprooting, disconnecting, killing the shoots of hope for a reasonable and stable existence for which Meredith longed. She turned on the wipers as a light rain began to fall. She checked the rearview mirror. “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves” hung from its arm. She glanced in the mirror at the junk her mother lovingly called her inheritance. It was difficult to miss the distractions of posters, placards, and signs plastered
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on every available space. “God Doesn’t Make Junk,” proclaimed one poster. “Yeah,” thought Meredith, “then where the hell did all this shit come from?” “Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life.” She cringed, wondering whatever happened to the first part of her life. “Children Learn What They Live.” Her favorite. She’s learned that people who run away from their lives can spend a lifetime on the road, and she, for one was tired of running. Watching the flat, desolate landscape whiz by, she thought that even this most inhospitable place was preferable to nowhere. But they were going somewhere. Alabama. Mobile. A job with a second cousin who owned a munitions plant. Secretarial, they both qualified; only one could use a computer, but the other would learn. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Eighteen hours later they arrived at their destination, a small apartment complex two miles from the plant. Meredith climbed down from the motor home, looked around and smiled. A swimming pool glistened in the middle of the complex, and behind it a lush garden filled with magnificent flowers and shrubs. That is what she missed the most. Her garden. When she was little, her father had taught her how to grow beautiful vegetables. He also taught her the secrets of pruning and fertilizing, planting and grafting, and she knew just about every flowering tree and shrub in the southern half of the United States. While her mother filled out paperwork, Meredith toured the grounds. “Someone here loves dirt as much as I do,” she thought. She bent down to smell the sweet earth, lifting a large clump in her hands. “Better not eat that stuff,” drawled a deep voice. “It ain’t supper time yet.” Standing behind her was a slender man, about 22, in a T-shirt and blue jeans, with a bandanna tied around his head. His long brown hair hung behind his ears in a ponytail, and he had a tattoo of a rose on his arm. “Oh-h, I . . .I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I hope I didn’t frighten you none.” “No, no, I just was admiring your garden.” “T’aint mine. I’m the gardener. Mr. Frank, the owner, he says that a garden
and landscaping increases the value of property. He owns a lot of property in Mobile, and I make sure all of it looks like an English tea garden.” Meredith smiled at the thought of this young handsome man’s knowledge of English tea gardens. “I’m here every Tuesday and Friday, watering, weeding, pruning. Sometimes I stop by on Sundays, too, to check on my gardenias. They are very delicate. I don’t mind working weekends, not much else to do in Mobile but work.” “My mother and I will be working in the office of Moran Munitions.” “Oh, I know Mr. Moran. Nice wife. I think her name is Maureen. Can’t say much for him. Doesn’t have a blade of grass on his property. Poured concrete over everything. ‘Too much to keep up,’—I’m quoting now—‘working 80 hours a week.’ Anybody working 80 hours a week is crazy, and anybody pouring concrete over perfectly good grass is really crazy, don’t you agree?” “I hope not. He’s not only my boss, he’s my mother’s second cousin. I pray it’s not hereditary, even though it would explain a lot,” she chuckled. He chuckled back. “Well, nice meeting you.” She hesitated: “Umm, could I ask a favor? I’m a bit of a gardener myself. Could I borrow a few tools on the weekend? I’d love to plant some vegetables, just enough for Mother and myself. Shouldn’t take up much room. Maybe 12x12?” “Sure, help yourself. I leave everything here on Friday evenings in the shed. The door is always open. Not much to steal.” “Thank you so much. You don’t know what this means to me. A patch of ground to call my own. By the way, my name is Meredith Sullivan.” “Nice t’meet you. I’m Andrew Nuttall. Round here everybody calls me Dewey.” “Which do you prefer?” “Well, actually, nobody ever asked me that before, but I truly do prefer Andrew.” “Well, Andrew, I thank you again. I’ll start tomorrow.” Saturday was hot, humid, and oppressive to the regular citizens of the county. Meredith was up before the humidity took a nasty turn from oppressive to crippling, and began digging her garden. She pushed her weight against the spade to turn the earth, then hoed and raked to loosen and prepare the soil. She fertilized it, then staked and strung the rows. When the temperature hit 95 degrees, she went inside, showered, then took a ride into town. She found a seed store, bought packets of carrots, broccoli, squash, cherry tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce. She also bought several packs of marigolds to surround her garden as bug repellent. The lettuce should have been planted weeks ago, but she didn’t care. She wanted to reproduce the garden of her childhood, all of her favorite vegetables picked ripe, eaten sweet and tender. This would be a summer to bless. “Bless This Mess” was being hammered over the kitchen window. “About time you came in, girl.You will die in this heat.” “I’ll plant the seeds after sundown, Mother. Found a store in a real nice commercial section. Looks like a couple nice restaurants, a shoe store, hardware store, library. Let’s go out to dinner so I can show you.” “Is there a church nearby?” “Yes, Mother, I think it’s a Methodist.” “Methodist? Where’s the Baptist?” “Didn’t see one, but I’m sure there’s one somewhere close by.” “Sure hope so. ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee’” reverberated, shrill and past her range, throughout the kitchen. “What about the restaurant?” “Waste not, want not, child.” We’d better get that first paycheck before we treat ourselves to dinner. Wash up, now. Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” Meredith gritted her teeth as she wound through the apartment, trying to remember where the bathroom door was. Bowing down to the yellowed sink, she washed her hands and prayed to the only god she trusted. “Daddy, if you have any clout up there in heaven, please call her home. I’m so tired of trying.” Fatigue and regret sat heavily on her five-foot frame, causing tears to flow. “Give me strength, oh Lord, give me strength.” She remained in her penitential bow for several minutes while the salty pearls ran across her hands. They started the job on Monday. Mundane, trivial work, but two paychecks would cover the rent and essentials. Andrew was right. Mr. Moran—Jimmy, her mother called him—was a bit of a tyrant to the rest of the employees but
had a soft spot in his heart for his cousin. The day dragged until five o’clock, they were home by five fifteen, supper by six, and gardening until so late she couldn’t see. Her vegetables needed little tending other than watering, so she spent time with the beautiful roses, azaleas, and magnolias. She sprayed for pests and watered on the days Andrew was not there. On Tuesdays and Fridays, he hung around past his work time so they could talk, mostly about the garden, but eventually about other things that young men and women find compelling. Their garden visits evolved into an occasional walk for an ice cream cone, and a few weeks later, suppers at the Cozy Cotton Diner. “Dating a man you hardly know. What’s wrong with you, child? I remember what my mama told me before I married your daddy: ‘Look before you leap,’ she warned. Wish I had heeded her advice.” The slur angered Meredith further, but she controlled her voice. “He’s the only friend I have in this town, Mother.” “What about our coworkers?” “There’s no one my age. Some of them have one leg in the grave.” “Meredith Frances Sullivan! They are all sweet, lovely ladies. They’ve taken quite a liking to you, but you hardly say a word.” “I’m not in the mood, Mother. I have to get ready. Andrew and I are going to the movies.” “On a work night! What’s gotten into you?” “We’ll be home by nine thirty. I promise.” She regretted that promise. The movie sparked a lively but friendly debate about the Civil War, and their walk from the theater took much longer than expected. As they approached her apartment, she sat on a stone wall to tie her sneaker. He sat beside her, put his arm around her, and gently nudged her ear. “I think I’m falling for the prettiest rose in my garden,” he whispered. Meredith looked into his eyes, and saw not the color or the shape but the affection emanating from them. She didn’t know how to respond. She had never been this close to a man in her life. Nineteen, never been kissed, never in one spot long enough to be kissed. Once, in sixth grade, a boy named Tommy Sibbald kissed her on the cheek in the schoolyard after recess, but they moved from Arkansas that summer. “Bloom where you are planted,” so she had wiped out the memory of that first innocent peck. “Bloom where you are planted,” after they relocated to North Carolina, hundreds of miles from Danny Pierce and his flirting eyes. “Bloom where you are planted,” after their trek to the Panhandle of Florida and her overwhelming crush on a blond classmate, whose name she never knew. Five months here, eight months there, never long enough for a man this sweet or gentle to approach her and nudge her for a kiss. Her eyes sparkled in anticipation. He just smiled down at her beaming face. “Well, aren’t you going to kiss me, Andrew Nuttall?” “I was kinda hoping you would kiss me. You look like a very decisive woman.” Her hands gently reached up to his neck, just like the redheaded actress in the movies that very night, and directed him to her lips. Standing in the breeze, they shared their first of many delightful kisses. It was eleven before she walked into the darkened apartment. “Thou shalt not fornicate, saith the Lord!” “Mother, you frightened me to death.” She turned just in time to avoid the flyswatter, the only available weapon in their sparsely equipped apartment. “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” Swat, swat. “Repent, for you know not the day nor the hour.” Swat, swat. “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” Swat, swat. “He who is without sin, cast the first stone,” Meredith retorted. Her mother, stung by her own device, was speechless. Unable to formulate an original thought, she sat down. It took several minutes for her next barrage. “Meredith, you are so young. Don’t let this dirty, uncouth man win your heart. Love you and leave you, that’s what he’ll do!” “Mother, he’s not dirty or uncouth. He is kind and hardworking. I am very, very fond of him. Please let me have this one thing, this one friend to call my own.” “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” “Yes, Mother, I know, I know.” What she knew was that her mother would never relent, never release her from this tiresome bondage. 4/09 ChronograM fiction
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For the next few months Meredith’s life took on a sense of order. Her vegetables grew in rich soil, were harvested and consumed with much pleasure. She often brought them to Andrew’s cabin and together they fixed dinner. He would barbecue while she sautĂŠed vegetables and made a salad. There were always fresh flowers on his homemade table, mostly roses, but sometimes wild flowers he picked by the stream that bubbled on the edge of his property. “My great-granddaddy built this cabin,â€? he related one evening. “The family almost forgot about it until about 10 years ago, when my uncle stumbled on it while hunting. My cousin John and I fixed it up real nice, put in electricity and plumbing—took us three years. Then John moved to D.C. and my daddy and uncle told me it was mine as long as I wanted it. I’ve been living in it ever since.â€? “The only thing missing is a garden.â€? “I just seem too busy tending Mr. Frank’s gardens to dig my own.â€? “Let me do it, Andrew. Not much to do in my own with everything almost harvested. Please, I’d love to work the soil before winter. One last time to get my hands in the dirt.â€? “Okay.â€? He smiled and kissed her lightly. “If I can’t keep my precious rose clean, might as well reap the benefits and eat the beans.â€? She laughed at his ludicrous remark. That is what she loved more than anything about him. Original thought, appropriate sentences, direct communication, similes, alliteration, poetic license. By November, she had turned the earth on a huge patch of backyard. He had to take down a willow and two maples so she would have enough sun. He also erected a fence to protect the garden from woodland creatures. She planted bulbs along the front so spring would be heralded by daffodils and tulips. She planned a patch for roses, a larger square for vegetables, and a corner for herbs. She drew an exact model so they would know how many rose bushes to buy in the spring, and where to plant the combined vegetables, those she loved and Andrew’s favorites: peas, string beans, and beets. Just before Thanksgiving, Mr. Moran dropped a bomb in the munitions plant. He was closing the plant, moving it to Mexico where the labor was cheap. “Kathleen,â€? he proposed, “I am offering you and Meredith a raise to come with us.You have worked hard, learned quickly, and, well, being family and all, I trust you. I’ll pay for moving expenses, but you’ll have to be there by January first.â€? Meredith’s hands froze above the keyboard. She could not react while her mother’s effusive response gave consent for both. Later that night, after a terrible argument that Meredith had no chance of winning, she sat in the barren garden and wept. She knew she didn’t have to go—she was 19. She also knew it was time to approach Andrew about their future, a future lost by January 1 if she did not speak now. Andrew worked late the next day pruning the rose bushes. Meredith snuck up to him from behind, put her hands around his waist, and hugged him tightly. He turned and hugged her tighter still, lifting her a few inches off the ground. He snuggled his face in her neck and gave her a little nip on her ear. “You smell like honeysuckle. Is that a new perfume?â€? “I bought it special for tonight.â€? “And why is tonight special?â€? “I have a proposal for you.â€? “And what proposal is that?â€? “The proposal, Andrew. The only one that really matters.â€? He pulled back slightly, looked her straight in the eyes, then smiled. “Well, you kissed me first, I guess you should do the proposing.â€? “Will you?â€? “Will I what?â€? he teased. “Will you, Andrew Nuttall, marry me very soon, before January first?â€? “Before January first? Why before January first?â€? “Will you or won’t you?â€? She was half pouting, but very serious. “Sweet pea, I’d marry you tonight if the State of Alabama would let me.â€? “That’s all I needed to know. Thank you, my darling Andrew. I do love you so.â€? She danced up and down, elated, relieved, joyous. She broke the news to her mother the next morning at breakfast.They never made it to work. “Mother, please calm down, don’t you understand? I’m 19. I can make my own decisions. I’m not going to Mexico. I want a home, a permanent place to stay put, raise children, have friends.You can’t change my decision.We are being married next week.You can come if you want. We’re planning Saturday at the
courthouse, if the judge is available.� “You have to go to Mexico. I won’t know a soul there, don’t know the language, don’t know the money. Meredith, don’t desert me now, when I need you the most. Don’t you remember your Bible lessons? ‘Honor thy father and thy mother.’� She paused when Meredith crossed her arms in front of her chest, then glared at her disobedient daughter. In a flat monotone she sneered, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.� Meredith most of all hated the double whammy. She despised two in a row, not only because they rarely flowed from one to another fluidly, making some sense, but also because she knew her mother’s thought process was no longer functioning. “Bloom where you are planted, baby. You’ll see, we’ll be fine. You’ll meet somebody new, somebody better than that dirt digger who’s stealing your heart. It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.� Meredith, panicked at the thought of her precious Andrew lost, reached for the flyswatter. She was ready to swat her way out of the house and into the arms of her beloved husband-to-be.The flyswatter was not on its hook, so she grabbed the nearest thing, a cast iron skillet, and swung as hard as she dared. Kathleen Lynda Sullivan dropped to the floor, her skull dented slightly at the temple. Stunned, Meredith stood over her mother’s body; she’s wasn’t sure for how long. Numb, feeling no remorse nor shame, she sat down pensively at the table and drank a cup of coffee.This could ruin her plans completely. Jail time instead of a honeymoon. She needed a foolproof plan of disposing the body, and could only think of one really safe place. She called the office and told them that both she and her mother had come down with food poisoning. The rest of the day was spent packing Meredith’s things, disposing of her mother’s, and cleaning the apartment thoroughly. By midnight, everything was finished. Dead weight is difficult to manage, especially for one as petite as Meredith. She solved the problem by using a sheet to slide the body down the steps and into the Winnebago. She slammed the heavy metal door, climbed into the driver’s seat, and ripped “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves� off the rearview mirror. She drove to Andrew’s house and parked on the road.Two hundred feet of driveway exhausted her, but there was no turning back. Meredith continued along the side of his house to the backyard and their garden.The soil, still loose, was easy to dig, and she had a shallow grave before two o’clock in the morning. She dumped her mother’s body in the grave, and stared down at her disheveled hair and dirty apron. Some rite would be appropriate, but what? In the back of her mind this next part made sense, but it wasn’t until the summer that she really appreciated her actions. As she stood in the cold night air, she remembered a purchase earlier in the week. It was still in the car. Seeds for next year. Forget-me-nots on sale. She tiptoed quietly to the car, retrieved the slender packets, and opened them. Holding them above the grave, she sprinkled the seeds reverently over her mother, covering her from dented skull to platform shoes. “All’s fair in love and war, Mother. All’s fair.� The next day, she walked into the plant and resigned, explaining that she was going to be married and that her mother had already left for Garden City, New Jersey, for another position, this time a job in retail. “She got bored with the computer. Said she needed people. She sends her deepest regrets and apologizes for her abrupt departure, but the job starts next week. Just mail me her last paycheck and W2 forms, and I’ll forward them to her when she gets a permanent address. Thank you for your kindness, cousin Jimmy, and good luck in Mexico.� Simple, clean, no complications. Well, you can’t really call what happened in June a complication. Some might even call it poetic justice. “My, your garden is beautiful, sweet pea.� “It is, isn’t it. Look how nice the beets are coming up.� “Your roses are as beautiful as you are, real prizewinners. I sure am puzzled, though. How did those forget-me-nots get in the rose beds? Did you plant them?� “Yes, ah-h, they’re Mother’s favorite.� “Too bad she isn’t here to see them. Have you heard from her lately?� “Yes, got a letter from her yesterday. She loves Garden City. I guess you could say she’s blooming where she’s planted.�
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4/09 ChronograM fiction
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POETRY
Edited by Phillip Levine. Deadline for our May issue is April 5. Send up to three poems or three pages (whichever comes first). Full submission guidelines: www.chronogram.com\submissions.
When I grow up I don’t want to dress like you.
he’d come to think
I want to wear pretty things.
life was bent out of shape but he was mistaken it was his bicycle wheel
—Katie Litteral (4 years old, to her mother)
—p
On February 21, 2009, Richard Boes, author (Last Train Out, Last Dead Soldier Left Alive), actor, veteran, friend, and counsel, passed away. I will miss him. —Phillip
The Fallen Soldier In Memory of Richard Boes (October 8, 1949 – February 21, 2009) If dreams can become reality, Why can’t reality become a dream? All of this could be blinked away, But things aren’t what they seem. Memories remain forever, Nostalgia spreading like disease. No one deserves to watch innocent people Fall dead straight to their knees. But somehow he endured it all, The pain of a meaningless war. He’s up there with the angels now, He can spread his wings and soar. Because the stranglehold of cancer, Gripped itself too tight. Even God himself witnessed This soldier’s courageous fight. He’s risen above all the pain, He’s left behind the suffering. I’ll always miss his sense of humor, And the inspiration he would bring. I lost a best friend as well as an uncle, But forever he’ll remain in my heart. He may be gone from this unfair world, But our bond will never part. But finally now, he can take his walk, Down the heroic path he paved. The story of a fallen soldier, The hero of the free and the brave. —Written with love, by his nephew, Brett Boes
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Stone Song “He who does not join the dance, mistakes the dance... “ —Jesus, the Christ, fr. The Apocryphal Acts of St. John ...Strange, to be a static fixture in a rotating world, as if moored to a rigging without sails...this meadowland, perhaps? To watch as all the small things scar the earth with their sutures—To wait, minus face or hands, for a patch of grass to grow around me, as if I could defend myself against the rain. It is the sun, I know, who laughs from her perch as she heeds me, guarded by her clouds & constellations; &., without so much as a tongue to wag at her, I rest in my unrest here below, gathering nothing more than my own consternation; Lichen could be a friend, but she blocks my pores and makes them blind; & the spider, many-legged, mocks me with movement, flaunting the knees that beg for, too much time spent wishing that they were mine. But, shower or sunshine, I must be content to remain here as I am— a thing cold & stony, without so much as a leg to stand on, or even enough sense to be lonely. —Marlene Tartaglione
Those Shoes? They kicked butt, whoever put them on, really, I definitely mean whoever, but Luis he looked the best in them ‘cause he had that melon ass and those tidy compact legs. He wore those shoes with his short shorts, strutting on their platform soles until they almost were the death of him when one day the right one refused to follow the left one off a curb on Sheridan Square. Down he went on those precious knees, leaving skin on the sputumous street. Well, he said to the citizen who levered him back to his feet, Good thing I don’t have my pearls on, I would have strangled myself. Luis, he left the shoes —a stain or two by then confusing their zebra print— to Steve, who left them to Larry, who never got to wear them. Those shoes? —Elaine Mills
Tappan Zee Bridge Cars slide on and off the bridge (distant, sun-struck steel) bright beads on a wire —Judith Saunders
Ask Me How I Am
Trope Having to do with Time
The bulldozers are back and the rain. It’s the neighbor’s dog who howls and rubs herself against the fence. A protestor killed by a bulldozer locked her knees like wires splitting a field. I saw it on TV. At night I dream oil and lug nut shining across the interstate. Tufts of hair lie wet in the yard.
Time is no arrow. It swirls, even when it stops, and loop de loops and doubles back, even when you think you have arrived. Smoke rises in such swirls, and in India, along the Ganges, the bodies of the dead are burned with the prayers of the living, so that the smoke rising upward carries both, and they are bound together always, and there is no death because there is no time. Once I saw a wallpaper pattern that looked like time, baroque curlicues coiling and twisting, and for a while I was lost in it and thought it must be memory that draws such intricate designs, and I wondered about the complexity that I could only see up close.
—Maria Williams-Russell
Back Again Back for the night. Just for the night. Nowhere to go, I’ll stay here tonight. Things weren’t right. Will summon the might, once and again, to fight the good fight. So lay me down kiddo, head on the pillow. I’ll tell u the story, just wait till tomorrow. A man’s got to follow what dreams he ain’t borrowed. Just wish the damn road was a little less narrow.
The stuff we are made of twines like this, but much more perfectly, and the complexity is hidden in the coils, itself coiled finer and finer to infinity it seems, holding memory, the gestures and tics and blemishes of our grandmothers, the blue or brown or grey of the eye. Do such swirls move the stones in a riverbed, or do they tumble haphazardly? Or is there a place where all the stones are the same tumbling the same way? If you look at the water too hard and too long, following the whorls and eddies, maybe you feel a wave of vertigo, and you must wonder if the wave is caused by those same swirls, the fluid in the cochlea, that delicate spiral, swirling like water in a seashell, swirling like time. Is it the stopping and looking that causes the rush, and is it better to stand back and watch the stones all move together, with the water, the fish, the clouds, and you, breathing and thinking and speaking the same swirls? In order to remember what may or may not have happened before or after you stopped and looked and stared at the tumbling rocks, the swirling water, and thought you forgot yourself. Would you return to that place if you could, of forgetting, where it is only the swirling water or the rising smoke? Or would words always call you back and remind you, amid a swirl of images, who, or is it when, you really are? —Paula Orlando
—Emmy Mac
Hardware
When the Last Wind Moves Down the Pines
Triolet: Significant Other
In Reynold’s back room, around the work bench’s 4-inch slab of wood, men gather and exchange specs and gossip, hardware bins stacked behind them like the backdrop to a bar.
I’ll go, but not before.
With the first I paid full price This time I’ll be renting No more jumping in, no throwing dice With the first I paid full price.
Secure in bodies that announce a man, they don’t wear baseball caps backwards, don’t bother about Nike gear, and they don’t appreciate city people. When I enter, heading for the back door, in my L.L.Beans, 34” khakis, metal rimmed glasses, arms askew like bent spokes, the room falls quiet. The men look at me, then at each other as though an alien or odd sister has just walked through.
The bird in February knows what this is, so he makes an ellipse of longing in the sky. We don’t want to be what we are, so we mimic the voices of love-starved dogs. We square our shoulders into abandoned factories. You don’t have to be a man anymore, says the tree that hasn’t a single leaf left; the old possum, so good at dying in the road, knows what I mean.
Untied and with no more lamenting I shall enjoy experimenting With the first I paid full price This time I’ll be renting. —Anthony G. Herles
The Closing Statement —Richard Loveland and remember everything’ll be alright kids life happens tomorrow —Patrick Carroll
—Allen C. Fischer
4/09 ChronograM poetry
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Food & Drink
Grains of Change Don Lewis and Wild Hive Farm by Peter Barrett photographs by Jennifer May
C
ivilization began with the domestication of grain. Bread is a central image of home and prosperity in many cultures, and remains an enduring archetype of sustenance. Yet as industrial farming has come to dominate, most of us have lost all connection with the cereals that form such a fundamental part of our diet. After three decades as a beekeeper, baker, early organic adopter, and now cafe and store owner, Don Lewis has arrived at a place where he feels all of that is about to change. “We’re at a tipping point; awareness and demand are increasing dramatically” Lewis says, and he is on a mission to help the Hudson Valley produce as much organic grain as possible. Wild Hive Farm began as an apiary. Seeking to expand, after a few years he took inspiration from his grandmother—who baked, cooked, and preserved a wide variety of food for his family—and began baking bread to sell alongside his honey at the Union Square Farmers’ Market. About 10 years later, Lewis met a farmer who had started growing some of his wheat for human consumption. “He said, ‘Here, try this flour,’ and I stuck my hand in. In that moment, 54
food & drink ChronograM 4/09
I saw that there was a whole other world in there.” Lewis began using as much local flour as he could in his breads, and began contracting with growers to get more grain that he could grind himself. Over the following years, he gradually had enough to make his bread 100 percent local, and about five years ago he began producing extra grain and flour to sell to retailers. Lewis also donates some to Dutchess Outreach, which he says “closes the circle”; by making his grains available to the less fortunate, Lewis hopes to return the mill to its historic place at the center of a community. In November 2008, Lewis opened the Wild Hive Farm store in Clinton Corners, combining the bakery with a cafe and store selling local, organic products in the very building where the general store used to be. The cafe features home-style cooking, and the store carries an increasing variety of exclusively local beans, maple syrup, jams, dairy, and produce, as well as all of the Wild Hive Farm grains and baked goods. This summer they will also offer a large variety of local produce, make picnic baskets to order, and begin teaching classes on baking and pasta making. A glance at the cafe menu reveals the commitment to local products; most of the ingredients—meat, cheese, produce, beans—list their local source right in the description of the dish. The line of baked goods includes a variety of whole-grain breads and sweets. The cinnamon rolls, made with whole-wheat
ABOVE: The Wild Hive Farm Store is part cafe, part bakery, and part purveyor of locally made foodstuffs and products. opposite: Baker Don Lewis, center, of Wild Hive Farm. Jeanine Connolly (left), and Alton Earnhart (right) of Lightning Tree Farm grow the wheat milled by Lewis.
flour, have an actual flavor of wheat with just the right sweetness—a pleasant departure from the cloying norm. For the home cook, though, the grains and flours are the stars. Ric Orlando, chef-owner of New World Home Cooking in Saugerties, says, “We use the polenta to make yellow grits with shrimp, and the wheat berries to make a wild mushroom farro-style risotto. Don’s grains are so good, and so fresh. Because commodity grains are overproduced and stored for so long, they often have some of the fats removed to keep them from going rancid. [Wild Hive] grains remind me of the grains I had recently in Puglia [Italy]: complete, and full of flavor.” In the coming months, Lewis has plans to move the mill to a location nearby that will increase capacity and finally allow for visitors to come see the operation in action. There will also be room for him to begin raising chickens so the cafe can serve its own birds and eggs. “The new facility will be able to mill a tremendous amount of flour,” Lewis says, anticipating a doubling of capacity by next year. This will allow him to offer flour to more local retailers and businesses, which he expects will spur more local farmers to begin growing grain for the mill. Lewis will also make his de-huller available to those who either grow organically or who are moving in that direction and meet Lewis’s personal standards. De-hulling is what turns grain from animal feed to human food, and the machines are scarce as a result of centralized commodity agriculture. By removing this bottleneck, Lewis hopes to allow our region to become much more self-sufficient in grain, and serve as an example to the
rest of the country, though he acknowledges that some regulations will need to be changed to allow for more local processing. Lewis’ most recent epiphany came on a trip to Turin, Italy, last October, where he attended the Terra Madre (a global food community organized by Slow Food International) conference. Lewis says that the introductory speech alone was worth the whole trip. “I was so energized that I could have turned around and come right home afterwards,” he says. In the speech (viewable on YouTube, in Italian) Slow Food International President Carlo Petrini lays out the progress, challenges, and goals of the local food movement, describing the central role he sees it playing in bringing lasting change to the world: “Starting with food, we will succeed in bringing together agriculture, the environment, climate change, sustainability, and the new clean energy.” He goes on to summarize the movement’s purpose: “Quality is not a luxury; quality is a right!” to thunderous applause. Lewis, with decades of hands-on expertise and the zeal of a convert, sees the time as right for the transformation to a new paradigm of food production, saying, “We’re finally moving back in the direction that our ancestors took for granted, where all their ingredients were local, but we’re doing it deliberately, because we have to. New knowledge is going to change the food supply forever. We’re going in a sustainable direction, and hoping to bring you with us.” Since civilization began with grain, it seems appropriate that civilization 2.0 might also spring in part from these powerful seeds. 4/09 ChronograM food & drink
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TITUTE O INS F
Graduate Education for Mind, Body, and Spirit
SPERSON AL AN TR
OLOGY YCH PS
Institute of Transpersonal Psychology 650.493.4430
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www.itp.edu
Global Seminar:
Epistemologies of
1975
Heart and Intellect August 21 - August 27, 2009
Presentation Center, Los Gatis, CA Students attending the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology’s Global Programs are given the opportunity to study from any location in the world by participating in a unique online learning environment supplemented by seminars held in various locations around the world. Seminars are an exciting way to get to know this dynamic learning community. To download a seminar brochure go to: http://www.itp.edu. Contact: Carla Hines, chines@itp.edu [ph] 650.493.4430 ext. 268.
D L D P: Ph.D. Psychology t Master of Transpersonal Psychology Certificate in Transpersonal Studies Transformational Life Coaching Professional Training
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1817 SOUTH ROAD, RTE. 9 (ACROSS FROM KOHLʼS) WAPPINGERS FALLS, NY (845) 298-9869 • 298-9872
www.thenekosushi.com
Sushi & Restaurant 49 MAIN STREET NEW PALTZ, NY (845) 255-0162
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Hudson Valley Risotto Take advantage of our local bounty to make a luxurious, healthy dish that all but eliminates the need for imported ingredients. As written, it requires only salt and pepper from afar, but substitutions can easily be made as diet and availability dictate. This recipe features things we can find locally in April. If you can’t get ramps or fresh peas, try using leeks and parsnips; just add them all at the beginning so they cook along with the grain. If you have some nettles, add them when you would the ramp greens. At other times of year use whatever produce is at its best. To increase the yield, simply increase the amounts; the only important ratio is 3-to-1 broth to pre-soaking grain. This recipe makes a first course for four or a main dish for two. All other measurements are approximate—feel free to mix it up a little. Risotto is infinitely malleable. 1 pat local butter 1⁄4 cup finely minced onion 1 cup Wild Hive Farm 10-grain mix 3 cups homemade vegetable or chicken broth (canned or boxed are inferior; make it yourself in quantity and freeze it ahead of time, and use local, organic birds and vegetables for better flavor) 6 ramps, chopped, with bulbs and leaves separated 1⁄2 cup fresh peas 1⁄2 cup local goat yogurt, chevre, or fromage blanc (like Nettle Meadow) Finely chopped fresh Italian parsley or other fresh herbs (chives, chervil, etc.) Soak the grain mixture in enough water to cover for at least one to three hours, then drain. Mince the onion and sweat it in the butter on medium-low until translucent. Add the ramp bulbs and let them soften for a minute, then add the grains and stir to coat them with butter. If you have some local white wine, add a good glug of it and stir. Then, add broth a ladleful at a time, stirring to free anything stuck to the bottom of the pan. Once the broth is almost all absorbed, stir in another ladle. Continue for about 18 to 20 minutes, until the hardest grains are becoming al dente. Then stir in the peas, ramp greens, and a bit more broth. When the toughest of the grains have an appealingly toothsome bite, quickly stir in the yogurt or cheese and the parsley, along with enough broth (if needed) to bring it all to the desired consistency, and season with salt and pepper. Serve with a good Hudson Valley chardonnay and a salad of early spring greens.
4/09 ChronograM food & drink
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tastings directory ChronograM 4/09
tastings directory Cafés Bistro-to-Go 948 Route 28, Kingston, NY (845) 340-9800 www.bluemountainbistro.com Gourmet take-out store serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week. Featuring local and imported organic foods, delicious homemade desserts, sophisticated four star food by Chefs Richard Erickson and Jonathan Sheridan. Off-premise full-service catering and event planning for parties of all sizes.
Bread Alone Café East Market Street, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-3108 Bread Alone Café offers fresh breads, pastries, soups, and sandwiches at three mid-Hudson locations. Also located in Route 28, Boiceville, NY, (845) 657-3328 (headquarters) and Mill Hill Road, Woodstock, NY, (845) 679-2108.
Catering Lagusta’s Luscious
Terrapin Catering Staatsburg, NY (845) 889-8831 hugh@terrapincatering.com Escape from the ordinary to celebrate the extraordinary. Let us attend to every detail of your wedding, bar/bat mitzvah, corporate event or any special occasion. On-site we can accommodate 150 guests seated, and 250 for cocktail events. Off-site services available. Terrapin’s custom menus always include local, fresh, and organic ingredients.
Delis Jack’s Meats and Deli 79 Main Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-2244
Restaurants (p.m.) wine bar 119 Warren Street, Hudson, NY (518) 828-2833 www.pmwinebar.com contact@pmwinebar.com Ernest Hemingway once said, “Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.” (p.m.) thinks Ernest was right and wants to share a wonderful selection of wines with you. Focusing on Spanish wines and the food that compliments them, this wine bar breaks the mold of the “pour and snore.”
Aroi Thai Restaurant 55 East Market Street, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-1114 www.aroirestaurant.com Aroi means ‘delicious’ in Thai, and delicious it is. David Thompson writes in ‘Thai Food,’ “Thai food creates a locus of flavor within each dish through its components, producing a complexity that can be dazzling.” And
Barnaby’s Route 32 North Chestnut and Academy Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-2433
Catalano’s Pasta Garden 985 Route 376 Brookmeade Plaza Wappingers Falls, NY www.CatalanosPastaGarden.com (845) 227-7770 CatalanosPasta@aol.com The Catalano Family has been serving the dining needs of Dutchess County since 1991. Offering a variety of traditional Italian favorites among our homemade pastas. Offering fullservice catering for your special occasion at any venue or our banquet room accommodates Up to 50 guests for any occasion.
tastings directory
(845) 255-8VEG www.lagustasluscious.com Lagusta’s Luscious brings heartbreakingly delicious, sophisticated weekly meal deliveries of handmade vegetarian food that meat-andpotatoes people love too to the Hudson Valley and NYC. We are passionate about creating political food—locally grown organic produce, fair wages, environmentally sustainable business practices—that tastes just as good as that served at the finest restaurants. Let us end weeknight meal boredom forever.
Aroi illustrates his description faithfully. The wine list is spare and perfectly paired to the flavors of Thai cuisine. Some selections are familiar and some are off the beaten track; all compliment the food. Enter a little clapboard house with a treed, outdoor patio, and be in an oasis of muted green walls, fabric lamps, birch chairs, and coral table runners; a perfect backdrop to the colors of the food. Thai artifacts and fabrics hang as the works of art they are. Each room is flooded with light and, for chilly evenings, has a working fireplace. Aroi is open seven days a week for dinner from 5pm-9pm; and Thursday through Monday for lunch from 11:30am-3pm.
Charlotte’s Route 44, Millbrook, NY (845) 677-5888 www.charlottesny.com “Cozy in winter, glorious garden dining in summer...wonderful food, delightful ambiance...a treasure!” “You’ll really get away from it all while feeling right at home at Charlotte’s...” “Cozy, fire-placed restaurant with tremendous food from a varied and original menu that ranges from devilish to devine.” —Some of our reviews.
Egg’s Nest Route 213, High Falls, NY (845) 687-7255 www.theeggsnest.com Where good friends meet. Located on Route 213 in the center of High Falls, NY, The Egg’s Nest is noted for its eclectic décor, unusual menu, and friendly, casual atmosphere. The Egg’s Nest offers creative cuisine with a southwestern flair, unique overstuffed sandwiches, vegetarian dishes, burgers, homemade desserts, and “Nest” Breads. Dinner specials start every night at 5pm and a cocktail lounge is also offered. The Egg’s Nest is open 7 days a week for lunch and dinner, 11:30am-11pm SundayThursday and 11:30am to midnight on Friday and Saturday. We accept cash and personal checks, with an ATM on premises.
Authentic Fresh Cuisine
Beautiful, Calm Atmosphere
“I’ve lived in London for many years, and this is the best Indian food I’ve ever eaten.” — at Suruchi, 3/14, Lisa Sternlieb, State College www.suruchiindian.com | 5 Church St., New Paltz NY | 845.255.2772 Hours: Wed/Th 5-9, Fri 5-10, Sat 3-10, Sun 4-9
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Gilded Otter 3 Main Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 256-1700 A warm and inviting dining room and pub overlooking beautiful sunsets over the Wallkill River and Shawangunk Cliffs. Mouth-watering dinners prepared by Executive Chef Larry Chu, and handcrafted beers brewed by GABF Gold Medal Winning Brewmaster Darren Currier. Chef driven and brewed locally!
Gino’s Restaurant Route 9, Lafayette Plaza, Wappingers Falls, NY (845) 297-8061 www.ginoswappingers.com
269 Main Street, Beacon (845) 831-8240 1054 Main Street, Fishkill (845) 896-8080
The Hudson Valley’s Chocolatier since 1922. 4/09 ChronograM tastings directory
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The Egg’s Nest where good friends meet
good
good
food
value
good
good
art
cheer
Gomen Kudasai—Japanese Noodles and Home Style Cooking 215 Main Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-8811 Come and experience Japanese Home style Cooking served fresh daily at Gomen Kudasai. Our menu features homemade Gyoza dumplings, hot noodle soups and stir-fried noodles made with either Soba or Udon. All of our food is MSG free, GMO free, vegan friendly, organic when possible, and locally produced when available.
Kindred Spirits Steakhouse & Pub at Catskill Mountain Lodge 334 Route 32A, Palenville, NY (518) 678-3101 www.catskillmtlodge.com Kindred Spirits Steakhouse & Pub offers fine food and drink at reasonable prices. Open 7 days for breakfast and lunch and on weekends for dinner. The fireplace pub boasts13 taps and a great wine list. Visit www.catskillmtlodge.com to see our menus and call (518) 678-3101 for reservations.
Kyoto Sushi 337 Washington Avenue, Kingston, NY (845) 339-1128 THE best place for Sushi, Teriyaki or Tempura in the Hudson Valley. Delectable specialty rolls; filet mignon, seafood, and chicken teriyaki. Japanese beers. Imported and domestic wines. Elegant atmosphere and attentive service. The finest sushi this side of Manhattan! Open every night for dinner and every day but Sunday for lunch. Takeout always available.
tastings directory
La Puerta Azul
Rte 213 | Village of High Falls | 845.687.7255 Open 7 days...11:30 to 10:00
(p.m.) wine bar
Wine Flights $20.00 buys you samples of three wines and a complimentary cheese. A great way to find the new wines you’ll love.
Route 44 (East of the Millbrook Taconic Exit) Salt Point, NY (845) 677-AZUL (2985) www.lapuertaazul.com BEST Mexican / Latino Cuisine 2008. BEST Margarita 2008. BEST Restaurant Interior 2007.—Hudson Valley Magazine, **** Poughkeepsie Journal. Live Music Friday and Saturday Nights. Check our web site for our menu and special events schedule.
Main Course 232 Main Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-2600 www.maincourserestaurant.com Four-star, award-winning, contemporary American cuisine serving organic, natural, and freerange Hudson Valley products. Wednesday and Thursday nights, food and wine pairing menu available. Voted Best Caterer in the Hudson Valley.
Neko Sushi & Restaurant 49 Main Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-0162 Voted Best Sushi Restaurant by Chronogram readers and rated four stars by Poughkeepsie Journal. Serving lunch and dinner daily. Eat in or take out. We offer many selections of Sushi
and Sashimi, an extensive variety of special rolls, and kitchen dishes. Live Lobster prepared daily. Parking in rear available. Major credit cards accepted.
Osaka Restaurant 18 Garden Street, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-7338 or (845) 876-7278 Want to taste the best Sushi in the Hudson Valley? Osaka Restaurant is the place. Vegetarian dishes available. Given four stars by the Daily Freeman. Visit our second location at 74 Broadway, Tivoli, NY, (845) 757-5055.
Sukhothai 516-518 Main Street, Beacon, NY (845) 790-5375 Sukhothai Restaurant, located in Beacon, NY, offers a delicious menu full of authentic Thai cuisine. From traditional dishes, such as Pad Thai and Som Tam, to custom dishes created exclusively by our master chef, our menu is sure to please any palate. Takeout is also available.
Suruchi—A Fine Taste of India 5 Church Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-2772 www.suruchiindian.com Suruchi offers delectable Indian food in a beautiful, calm atmosphere. All dishes are homemade from fresh ingredients including free-range chicken, vegetarian and organic choices. Menu is 95% gluten free. Dine with soothing music in your choice of regular seating or Indian style cushioned platform booths. Wednesday through Sunday dinner.
Terrapin Red Bistro 6426 Montgomery Street, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-3330 www.terrapinrestaurant.com Sometimes, you just want a really Great Hamburger! Terrapin Red Bistro serves all sorts of comfort foods like macaroni and cheese, quesadillas, nachos, fish ‘n’ chips and hamburgers. Enjoy the build your own sandwich menu, or find some favorites from the restaurant in a hip, relaxed, casual bistro-style atmosphere.
Terrapin Restaurant 6426 Montgomery Street, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-3330 www.terrapinrestaurant.com Voted “Best of the Hudson Valley” by Chronogram Magazine. From far-flung origins, the world’s most diverse flavors meet and mingle here, in this room, at your table. From elements both historic and eclectic comes something surprising, fresh and dynamic: dishes to delight both body and soul. Serving lunch and dinner seven days a week.
Wasabi Japanese Restaurant 807 Warren Street, Hudson , NY (518) 822-1128
“Tickle the Ivories” 119 Warren St.
Come and play our new Piano or sing along with friends.
www.pmwinebar.com (518) 828-2833
Watch the Big Events, with friends and neighbors on our huge flatscreen television.
119 Warren St. Hudson, NY
Monday thru Thursday 5 to 10 Friday and Saturday 5 to midnight Closed Sundays
r e s t a u r a n t
We are currently booking Holiday Parties, so let us help make your party memorable at (p.m.) www.ginoswappingers.com
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tastings directory ChronograM 4/09
OPEN 7 DAYS
BARNABYS
LUNCH DINNER SUNDAY BRUNCH LATE NITE SNACKS RT. 32 N. CHESTNUT & ACADEMY STREET DOWNTOWN NEW PALTZ
3 845.255.2433
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Hawthorne Valley Farm Store Celebrate Earth Day with creamy Bianca cheese spread over a warm crusty baguette or sharp cheddar atop sweet raisin bread. All organic & made on our Biodynamic farm. 327 County Route 21C, Ghent (Harlemville) NY (Just 1.5 miles off Taconic State Parkway - Harlemville exit) Mon to Sat 7:30am â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 7pm, Sun 9am-5pm
(518) 672-7500 ext. 1
Buttermilk Falls Inn & Spa
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tastings directory
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7ITH THE GROWING AWARENESS OF THE EFFECT THAT FOOD HAS ON HEALTH AND WELL BEING THERE IS A GREAT DEMAND FOR CULINARY PROFESSIONALS WHO CAN PREPARE FOOD THAT IS NOT ONLY BEAUTIFUL AND DELICIOUS BUT HEALTH SUPPORTIVE AS WELL /UR COMPREHENSIVE #HEF S 4RAINING 0ROGRAM THE ONLY ONE OF ITS KIND IN THE WORLD OFFERS PREPARATION FOR CAREERS IN HEALTH SPAS AND RESTAURANTS BAKERIES PRIVATE COOKING CATERING TEACHING CONSULTING FOOD WRITING AND A VARIETY OF ENTREPRENEURIAL PURSUITS 0LEASE BROWSE OUR WEBSITE TO SEE HOW MUCH WE CAN OFFER YOU
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4/09 ChronograM tastings directory
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CHRONOGRAM 2009 home & garden
a garden built and maintained by carol washington’s serenity gardens blending shrubs, perennials, grasses, bulbs, and annuals.
Garden of Earthly Delights
Going Native and Organic in the Backyard
By Crispin Kott
A
s winter finally gives way to spring across the Hudson Valley, thoughts once focused squarely on snow shovels and salting sidewalks may invariably turn to warmer outdoor activities, such as gardening and landscaping. For the neophyte, enhancing one’s home by landscaping with shrubberies might seem like a simple endeavor. But before you begin digging up your yard, some local experts want to ensure your hard work isn’t done in vain. Diane Greenberg, co-owner of Catskill Native Nursery in Kerhonkson, says the region has so many different variables that the first step should be to figure out what the best options for your own neck of the woods might be. “You really want to find out what kind of conditions you have,” Greenberg says. “People just buy what they like, stick it in the ground, and think it’s going to be okay. But plants have evolved over thousands of years. If you give them what they want, they thrive. If you don’t, they die.” 62
home & garden ChronograM 4/09
Lay of the land Giving the area you’re most interested in working on a thorough once-over is an integral step in ensuring the lasting success of your landscaping project. What are the basic soil conditions? According to Greenberg, the area is covered by wet, dry, acidic, rocky, clay, and sandy soil. In addition, it’s important to know how much light the area gets before deciding which shrubs might have the greatest chance of working out. According to Greenberg, taking a look at other trees and shrubs in the area is often a good indicator of what shrubs might thrive as part of a landscaping project. Are the existing trees deep or shallow rooted? Are they healthy? And what kind of conditions do they like? Do they create dry or damp shade? In addition, Greenberg said it’s important to know whether what’s already growing nearby is an acid creator, like pine or hemlock, as very few plants want to grow near those types. Also, black walnuts put a substance called ju-
Think it through Mark Adams, president of Mark Adams Greenhouses, says that regardless of what the size of your project is, it’s best to think things through. “Plan your property in stages, so that you can execute it over several years,” Adams says. “Draw up the whole plan. For example, you’d want to do the front the first year, the back the second year. The front would include walks and so forth.” Adams says part of that plan should include making sensible choices when it comes to location. “One of the most common mistakes homeowners make is, they plant too close to the house,” Adams says. “They don’t give enough room for the plant to grow.You have to take into account what will happen when these shrubs grow to maturity.” Once you’ve done the groundwork—both literally and figuratively—you can begin planting your shrubberies. But with so many varieties available to you, which plants should you choose? “There’s a lot out there, and for the most part people need to not shoot from the hip, and decide what’s really important to them,” Lazar says. “Some people believe you should only use natives to the Northeast, but it restricts your palate quite a bit. If all I sold was natives, I wouldn’t stay in business. There’s so much out there.” Another consideration suggested by Greenberg is to consider the environment as a whole, rather than focusing solely on beautifying your property. “Try and add to the biodiversity of your area,” Greenberg says. “We have more than enough forsythia and burning bush. Be daring, try something new. If you see it growing in front of a gas station, you might want to skip it.” Among the natives Lazar recommends for decorative purposes are the Itea virginica, a versatile deciduous shrub with fragrant flowers. The Clethra alnifolia, or summersweet, is a deciduous blooming shrub commonly found in the Catskills, and the inkberry, which can grow up to eight feet high, is also popular in the region. The fothergilla is also an option Lazar says might be considered locally, as it has fragrant flowers in the spring and vivid color in the fall. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Lazar says it might be wise to resist the temptation to plant wild honeysuckle or burning bush because of their invasive tendencies. “The birds spread it, it grows in dry shade, and it chokes out a lot of the native plants,” says Lazar, referring to the invasives. “You’re restricting what the native flora and fauna can feed on. It turns into a problem down the road.” When planting shrubberies, it’s also important to take into consideration
PLANT A TREE
glone into the soil that can kill many types of plants. Norbert Lazar, better known as the Phantom Gardener, has long been a champion of organic gardening. He agrees with Greenberg that it’s vital to give plants what they need. And what Lazar suggests is the use of organic matter. “There are ways of getting organic matter cheaply if you don’t want to buy it,” Lazar says. “Compost is probably the best, as it takes care of most of your soil needs. We garden organically, so we use complete organic fertilizer. And you can get some really well-rotted manure for free sometimes if you have a truck.” According to Lazar, organic matter will help with a wide range of specific environmental needs, from assisting with aeration in clay to giving sandy soil a better chance at holding water. Which actually leads back to the very first step one should consider taking before any other. Lazar suggests taking a pH test of the soil, either through an inexpensive home kit or by bringing a sample to the Ulster County Cornell University Cooperative Extension. Regardless of the results, the next step is likely going to be the same for anyone looking for success. “The first thing that is often overlooked in any kind of gardening is soil preparation,” says Lazar. “It’s like preparing for painting. If you skimp on soil preparation, your end product is not going to be satisfying.” One of the key components of soil preparation is also one of gardening’s legendary bugaboos: weeding. But as much of a hassle as it might seem, the best option is to get a thorough weeding out of the way sooner rather than later. “Remove whatever weeds you can ahead of time,” says Lazar. “It can come back to haunt you when it’s much harder to weed than at the beginning.”
845-255-6634
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this installation by catskill native nursery includes Rhododendron, Dutchman’s Pipe,Trumpet Honeysuckle, and Woodland Phlox.
Stonecrop Gardens a plant enthusiast’s garden...
81 Stonecrop Lane Cold Spring, NY (845) 265-2000 www.stonecrop.org
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home & garden ChronograM 4/09
Open April - October Monday - Friday, as well as the 1st & 3rd Saturdays, 10am - 5pm (Fridays until dusk, starting May 1st) Admission $5
how attractive the plants might be to deer, who are notorious for turning a beautification project into a all-you-can-eat buffet. “That’s a huge concern when you’re planning your landscape,” Adams says, adding that the Pieris, a broad-leaved evergreen shrub often used in ornamental planting, is one of the few he knows of that is completely deer-resistant. Lazar says other evergreens are more attractive to deer, as are native rhododendrons and mountain laurels. The viburnum is a popular choice in the area, whether you’re landscaping for privacy or hoping to attract wildlife, like birds. According to Lazar, the doublefile viburnum is a fairly deer-resistant three-season shrub that doesn’t hold its leaves through the winter, but which has thick enough branches to still provide screening. Viburnums, as well as the gray dogwood, the red dogwood, and blueberry bushes, are attractive to birds, and beautiful as well. Force of nature Carol Washington, president of Serenity Gardens, says gardening can provide benefits of a more spiritual nature as well. “When one is working with the Earth, and out in their garden, they’re becoming more in touch with nature and the sort of vital life force,” Washington says. “I feel like a lot of the benefits that people get from doing yoga, they also get from working with the Earth. They learn about balance, they learn about alignment, they learn about obstacles and learning with the ways of nature.” Washington, a certified yoga instructor as well as a gardener with over 20 years of experience, says being more in touch with nature will also help any gardening project thrive. “When one is given a wetland, they shouldn’t try to make a sunny, perennial garden out of it,” she says. “You can fight nature, but it will be a continuing battle. Instead of trying to put roses in this area, you have to be observant of what is around you. Take the guidance from nature instead of imposing yourself.” Mark Adams Greenhouses
The Phantom Gardener
Mark Adams Poughkeepsie (845) 471-8655 www.adamsfarms.com
Norbert Lazar Rhinebeck (845) 876-8606 www.thephantomgardener.com
Catskill Native Nursery
Serenity Gardens
Diane Greenberg Kerhonkson (845) 626-2758 www.catskillnativenursery.com
Carol Washington Saugerties (845) 246-5421 www.serenitygardensdesign.com
business directory Accommodations Catskill Mountain Lodge 334 Route 32A, Palenville, NY (518) 678-3101 www.catskillmtlodge.com The Catskill Mountain Lodge, celebrating forty years of hospitality, is set on the banks of the historic Kaaterskill Creek in Palenville, Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first art colony. Accommodations include fireplace rooms, cabins, cottages and a three bedroom house.
Frost Valley YMCA 2000 Frost Valley Road, Claryville, NY (845) 985-2291 ext. 205 www.FrostValley.org info@frostvalley.org Frost Valley YMCA Camp and Conference Center in Claryville, is just 2.5 hours drive from metro NY/NJ and about 1 hour from Kingston. Established in 1901 as one of the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first summer camps, Frost Valley provides four seasons of outdoor, experiential and educational opportunities including summer camps for children, environmental education, year-round activities for families and conference and retreat facilities for groups and businesses.
Inn at Stone Ridge
Alternative Energy Hudson Valley Clean Energy, Inc. (845) 876-3767 www.hvce.com
55 Noxon Street, Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 471-2550 www.barrettartcenter.org info@barrettartcenter.org
Barrett Clay Works 485 Main Street, Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 471-0407 www.barrettartcenter.org info@barrettartcenter.org
Bethel Woods Center for the Arts Route 17, exit 104, Bethel, NY 1 (800) 745-3000 www.bethelwoodscenter.org
Brill Gallery 243 Union Street, North Adams, MA 1 (800) 294-2811 www.brillgallery109.com
Center for Photography at Woodstock
A hand-picked selection of wine and spirits for everyday or once in a lifetime. Superior customer service with wine tastings every Saturday. Find what your palateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been searching for.
59 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY (845) 679-9957 www.cpw.org Info@cpw.org
JW ArtWorks, LLC: Gazen Gallery 6423 Montgomery Street, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-4ART (4278) www.gazengallery.com
Wine tastings every Saturday starting at noon.
Windham Fine Arts
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5380 Main Street, Windham, NY (518) 734-6850 www.windhamfinearts.com info@windhamfinearts.com
Art Instruction Barrett School of Art
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55 Noxon Street, Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 471-2550 www.barrettartcenter.org info@barrettartcenter.org
business directory
3805 Main Street, Stone Ridge, NY (845) 687-0736 info@innatstoneridge.com Let us take you back to an era of comfort unparalleled in the Catskill Region of New York. Enjoy our 18th century historic mansion in peaceful Stone Ridge set on 150 acres of lawn including gardens, a working apple orchard and untouched woods. Daily, weekly, and monthly rates available.
Barrett Art Center
Mill Street Loft
Oil-Free Energy Solutions (845) 255-4436
Solar Generation (845) 679-6997 www.solargeneration.net
Antiques Fairground Shows NY P.O. Box 3938, Albany, NY (518) 331-5004 www.fairgroudshows.com fairgroundshows@aol.com
Architecture Louis Fiorese A.I.A. 10 Reservoir Road, Staatsburg, NY (845) 889-8900 lfiorese@optonline.net As principal of ADGâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Architecture and Design Groupâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;he has for over twenty years provided solutions for residential, commercial, historic preservation, site plans, additions, restaurants, building codes, and other special projects. N.C.A.R.B. certified. References available upon request.
Art Galleries & Centers Ann Street Gallery 104 Ann Street, Newburgh, NY (845) 562-6940, ext. 119 www.safe-harbors.org Art Brut: Group Exhibition. Outsider art, which refers to works by those outside of mainstream society. February 21-April 18.
45 Pershing Avenue, Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 471-7477 millstreetloft.org
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Tunstull Studio P.O. Box 264, Claverack, NY (518) 851-9437 www.tunstullstudio.com
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Art Supplies Catskill Art & Office Supply Kingston, NY (845) 331-7780 Celebrating 30 years! Art Materials, studio furnishings, custom picture framing, blueprint copies, graphic design services, large format color output, custom printing, personal stationery, legal forms, cards, maps, and novelty gifts. Three locations dedicated to enhancing your creative adventureâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;voted â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Best in the Valleyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; year after year. Also located in Woodstock, NY: (845) 679-2251 and Poughkeepsie, NY: (845) 452-1250
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Mannyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Art Supply 83 Main Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-9902
R & F Handmade Paints 84 Ten Broeck Avenue, Kingston, NY (845) 331-3112 www.rfpaints.com Internationally known manufacturer of Pigment Sticks and Encaustic paint right here in the Hudson Valley. Stop in for a tour of our factory, get paints at discounted prices, sign up for an Encaustic or Pigment Stick workshop, or check out bi-monthly exhibits in the Gallery.
4/09 ChronograM business directory
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Artisans DC Studios 21 Winston Drive, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-3200 www.dcstudiosllc.com
Auto Sales & Services Ruge’s Subaru Route 9, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-1057
Banks Mid-Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union (845) 336-4444 www.MHVFCU.com
Rhinebeck Savings Bank 2 Jefferson Plaza, Poughkeepsie, NY
Sawyer Savings 87 Market Street, Saugerties, NY (845) 246-7000 www.sawyersavings.com
Ulster Savings Bank 1 (866) 440-0391 www.ulstersavings.com sbemz@ulstersavings.com
Beverages
business directory
Esotec (845) 246-2411 www.esotecltd.com Choose Esotec to be your wholesale beverage provider. For 23 years, we carry a complete line of natural, organic, and unusual juices, spritzers, waters, sodas, iced teas, and iced coffees. If you are a store owner, call for details or a catalog of our full line. We’re back in Saugerties now!
Book Publishers SUNY Press
www.sunypress.edu
Bookkeeping Riverview Office Services (914) 912-1202 info@riverviewbookkeeping.com Financial stress can be relieved. With my 20 years plus experience, I may be able to handle your bookkeeping needs in just a few hours each month. Your information can be organized, ready to give to your accounting professional for Tax preparation.
Bookstores Mirabai of Woodstock 23 Mill Hill Road, Woodstock, NY (845) 679-2100 www.mirabai.com The Hudson Valley’s oldest and most comprehensive spiritual/metaphysical bookstore, providing a vast array of books, music, and gifts for inspiration, transformation and healing. Exquisite jewelry, crystals, statuary and other treasures from Bali, India, Brazil, Nepal, Tibet. Expert Tarot reading.
Coffee System of the Hudson Valley
Green Courage, LLC
1 (800) 660-3175 www.homecoffeesystem.com
10 Main Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-8731 www.greencourage.com
N & S Supply www.nssupply.com info@nssupply.com N&S Supply is a third-generation family run business for over 60 years. We take pride in offering the highest quality plumbing and heating products at competitive prices, with service that makes us the best and easiest supply house to deal with. Come see why our service is “Second to None.”
Ne Jame Pools, Ltd. (845) 677-7665 h2onejame@aol.com
Cinemas Upstate Films 26 Montgomery Street, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-2515 www.upstatefilms.org
Cleaning Services—Nontoxic Bless Your Hearth—Truly Natural Cleaning Services (845) 706-8447 Soundofspheres@aol.com Experienced, professional, non-toxic cleaning and organizing service. Pet sitting. Home/business blessings. Excellent references.
Clothing & Accessories First Street Dancewear Saugerties, NY (845) 247-4517 www.firststreetdancewear.com First Street dancewear in Saugerties, NY, offers quality dancewear for adults and children. We have dancewear, knit warm-ups, ballet, jazz, tap shoes, gymnastics wear, skatewear, accessories, and gift items. We also feature a line of women’s active wear clothing suitable for Yoga and Pilates.
KOSA 502 Warren Street, Hudson, NY (518) 828-6620 corahales@kosaco.ne Kosa is a unique indie store specializing in organic, recycled, green, independent clothing and jewelry designers. Our designers work with eco consciousness and style. We carry Stewart and Brown, Prairie Underground, Filly, Preloved, Beebop and Wally, Loveheals, Philippa Kunisch, Claudia Kussano, Individual Icons, Supermaggie, and many many more...
Pegasus Comfort Footwear
www.wpbm929.com
WDST 100.1 radio Woodstock
Utility Canvas
Star 93.3 www.star933fm.com
WBPM Classic Hits 92.9
P.O. Box 367, Woodstock, NY www.wdst.com
Building Services & Supplies Atlantic Custom Homes 2785 Route 9, Cold Spring, NY 1 (888) 558-2636 www.lindalny.com www.hudsonvalleycedarhomes.com
business directory ChronograM 4/09
Coffee & Tea
483 Route 217, Hudson, NY (518) 672-7021 www.meltzlumber.com
27 North Chestnut Street, New Paltz, NY, and, 10 Mill Hill Road, Woodstock, NY (845) 256-0788 and (845) 679-2373 www.PegasusShoes.com Offering innovative comfort footwear by all your favorite brands. Merrell, Dansko, Keen, Clarks, Ecco Uggs, and lots more. Open 7 days a week—or shop online at PegasusShoes.com.
Broadcasting
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Ghent Wood Products
2686 Route 44/55, Gardiner, NY www.utilitycanvas.com/about:ourStore/
White Rice 531 Warren Street, Hudson, NY (518) 697-3500 Clothing and accessories for women and children. Furniture and home furnishings. With an Asian sensibility. Open 7 days.
Cup and Saucer Tea Room 165 Main Street, Beacon, NY (845) 831-6287 www.cupandsaucertearoom.com
Consignment Shops Past ‘n’ Perfect Resale & Retail Boutique 1629 Main Street (Route 44) Pleasant Valley, NY (845) 635-3115 www.pastnperfect.com A quaint consignment boutique that offers distinctive clothing, jewelry, and accessories, and a unique collection of high-quality furs and leathers. Always a generous supply of merchandise in sizes from Petite to Plus. Featuring a diverse & illuminating collection of 14 Kt. Gold, Sterling Silver and Vintage jewelry. Enjoy the pleasures of resale shopping and the benefits of living basically while living beautifully. Conveniently located in Pleasant Valley, only 9 miles east of the Mid-Hudson Bridge.
The Present Perfect 23G Village Plaza, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-2939 Designer consignments of the utmost quality for men, women, and children. Current styles, jewelry, accessories, and knicknacks. Featuring beautiful furs and leathers.
Cooking Classes Natural Gourmet Cookery School 48 West 21st Street, New York, NY (212) 645-5170, Fax (212) 989-1493 www.naturalgourmetschool.com info@naturalgourmetschool.com For more than 20 years people around the world have turned to Natural Gourmet’s avocational public classes to learn the basics of healthy cooking. They come to the Chef’s Training Program to prepare for careers in the burgeoning Natural Foods Industry.
Events EMPAC at Rensselaer Troy, NY (518) 276-3921 www.empac.rpi.edu
Hudson Valley Green Fair
Mother Earth Store House 440 Kings Mall Court, Route 9W Kingston, NY www.motherearthstorehouse.com Founded in 1978, Mother Earth is committed to providing you with the best possible customer service as well as a grand selection of high quality organic and natural products. Visit one of our convenient locations and find out for yourself! We can also be found at 804 South Road Square, Poughkeepsie, NY, (845) 296-1069, and 249 Main Street, Saugerties, NY, (845) 246-9614.
Sunflower Natural Food Market 75 Mill Hill Road, Woodstock, NY (845) 679-5361 natural@hvc.rr.com
Financial Advisors Third Eye Associates, Ltd 38 Spring Lake Road, Red hook, NY (845) 752-2216 thirdeyeassociates.com
French Lessons Emily Upham—French Lessons (518) 537-6048 uplandvl@valstar.net Learn to speak French—not scary! Private lessons; groups, toddlers to adults. Tutoring available. All levels, weekenders welcome. Emily Upham: French Interpreter, U.S. State Department and AP French teacher, The Millbrook School.
Gardening & Garden Supplies Catskill Native Nursery 607 Samsonville Road, Kerhonkson, NY (845) 626-2758 www.catskillnativenursery.com
Northern Dutchess Botanical Gardens 389 Salisbury Turnpike, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-2953 NDBGonline.com sales@ndbgonline.com A retail nursery nestled in the back woods of Rhinebeck, where local growers produce an extraordinary variety of annuals, perennials, wildflowers, herbs, vegetables and organic edibles. Servicing the horticultural needs of gardeners throughout the Hudson Valley for nearly thirty years. Open from the end of April through September.
Phantom Gardener Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-8606 www.thephantomgardener.com
(845) 471-8404
Stonecrop Gardens
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival
81 Stonecrop Lane, Cold Spring, NY (845) 265-2000 www.stonecrop.org
(413) 243-0745 www.jacobspillow.org
Rosendale Earthfest and Expo Rosendale Recreation Center, Route 32, Rosendale, NY (845) 658-7477 rosendaleearthfest@yahoo.com
Womens Health & Fitness Expo (845) 802-7025 www.womenshealthexpo.com
Farm Markets & Natural Food Stores Adam’s Fairacre Farms Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 454-4330 www.adamsfarms.com
Hawthorne Valley Farm Store 327 Route 21C, Ghent, NY (518) 672-7500, ext. 1 www.hawthornevalleyfarm.org
The Garden Conservancy P.O. Box 219, Cold Spring, NY (845) 265-5384 www.gardenconservancy.org info@gardenconservancy.org The Garden Conservancy is a national organization with a mission to preserve exceptional American gardens for public education and enjoyment. The Open Days Program’s private garden tours serve as the primary educational outreach for the Conservancy and includes several self-guided tours in the Hudson Valley each year.
Graphic Design 11:11 Studio—Kelli Bickman (646) 436-8663 www.kellibickman.net Full service design studio including murals, fine art, illustration, and graphic design by award winning artist. Graphic design includes advertising, editorial, book/magazine covers,
sign painting, all aspects of print design/layout. Fine art/murals are tailored to your needs bringing art that will make your life rich with vivid color. Extensive client list.
Annie Internicola, Illustrator www.aydeeyai.com
Hair Salons Androgyny 5 Mulberry Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 256-0620 Located in the Historic Huguenot Street.
Dennis Fox Salon 6400 Montgomery Street 2nd Floor Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-1777 dennisfoxsalon@yahoo.com Dennis Fox Salon is an upscale salon, located in the heart of Rhinebeck. We offer all hair and nail services in a warm and inviting atmosphere.
Home Furnishings & Decor Anatolia Tribal Rugs & Weavings 54G Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY (845) 679-5311 www.anatoliarugs.com anatoliarugs@verizon.net Winner: Hudson Valley Magazine “Best Carpets.” Direct importers since 1981. Newly expanded store. Natural-dyed Afghan carpets, Balouchi tribal kilims, Russian sumaks, antique Caucasian carpets, silk Persian sumaks, Turkish kilims. Hundreds to choose from, 2’x3’ to 9’x12’. Kilim pillows, $20-$55. We encourage customers to try our rugs in their homes, without obligation. MC/Visa/AmEx.
College Bed Lofts
Lounge & Linger High Falls , NY (845) 687-9463
Insurance
Italian Lessons Gabrielle Euvino—Private or Small Group Lessons (845) 339-0023 www.labellalingua.net gabrielle.euvino@gmail.com Unleash your passion for language and learn Italian with author and professor Gabrielle Euvino (The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Learning Italian, and other titles). Customized to fit your needs in a dynamic and nurturing setting. All ages and levels. Tutoring and translation also available.
Italian Specialty Products La Bella Pasta (845) 331-9130 www.labellapasta.com Fresh pasta made locally. Large variety of ravioli, tortellini, pastas, and sauces at the factory outlet. We manufacture and deliver our excellent selection of pastas to fine restaurants, gourmet shops, and caterers throughout the Hudson Valley. Call for our full product list and samples. Located on Route 28W between Kingston and Woodstock.
Roccoroma Food Products 99 Railroad Avenue, Goshen, NY (845) 294-1884 www.roccoroma.com roccoromafoods@frontiernet.net Wholesale Grocers of fine Italian food products, fresh meat and fish to the restaurant, pizzeria, and home. Our wholesale facility is open to the public, no membership is required.
Jewelry, Fine Art & Gifts Bop to Tottom 799 Wall Street, Kingston, NY (845) 338-8100
Allstate
Dreaming Goddess
2591 South Avenue Route 9D Wappingers Falls, NY (845) 297-8803 nancyschneider@allstate.com
9 Collegeview Avenue, Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 473-2206 www.DreamingGoddess.com
Interior Design Faux Intentions (845) 532-3067 Cat Quinn, professional decorative artist, setting the standard for excellence in Custom Faux Finishes for your home and business. With infinite possibilities, your walls, floors, ceilings, fireplaces, and furniture can be transformed using my faux finishing techniques. A full spectrum of decorative finishes using plasters, glazes, and many other mediums, help to fill your home full of your unique personality and spirit. Don’t miss the beauty and exhilaration of transforming the rooms you live and work in every day into spaces that reflect your sense of style. Portfolio showing a phone call away.
Internet Services Webjogger (845) 757-4000 www.webjogger.net Webjogger is a local company with offices in Tivoli and Kingston. We have a great solution for small businesses IT including symmetrical High Speed Internet, Offsite On-line Data Backup and Storage, Collaborative Archived Email, Web Hosting and Domain Registration, Server Collocation and Management, and IT support by phone or on site, with nice discounts for bundled services. We’re big enough to have what you need and small enough to make it work for your individual needs. Many local companies swear by us, not at us! We
business directory
(86) 739-2331 www.youthbedlofts.com www.collegebedlofts.com
also do high end routing and switching and Gigabit Wireless connectivity for local hospitals and radiology labs.
Hummingbird Jewelers 20 West Market Street, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-4585 hummingbirdjewelers.com
Kitchenwares Warren Kitchen & Cutlery 6934 Route 9, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-6208 www.warrenkitchentools.com
Landscaping Coral Acres (845) 255-6634
Nancy’s Natural Habitats Landscape Design 44 Pine Cove Road, Stone Ridge, NY (845) 706-5567 nancysnaturalhabitats@gmail.com Design, Consultation, Installation, Maintenance. Annual Plantings and Planters. Serving the Hudson Valley, Connecticut, Westchester, and NYC.
Ninebark, LLC (845) 758-4184 info@ninebarkllc.com
Tutiano Burgante (845) 797-9634 www.weluvdirt.com
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Lawyers & Mediators Law Office of Laura G. Shulman, PC
Center for Personal Development Through Music, LLC
369 Washington Avenue, Kingston, NY (845) 338-7970 lgshulman@hotmail.com I am a divorce lawyer and mediator. I am trained and skilled in divorce mediation, and I also practice Collaborative Law. In Collaborative Separation or Collaborative Divorce, parties agree not to go to court. Lawyers facilitate the negotiation of a separation agreement or divorce stipulation through informal meetings. Clients talk directly about their needs and those of their family.
(845) 677-5871 www.cpdmusic.com Peter and Judith Muir. Lessons in piano, voice, clarinet, trumpet, and saxophone. Groups for young children 2 - 8. Also special needs children and adults.
Pathways Mediation Center (845) 331-0100 www.PathwaysMediationCenter.com A unique mediation practice for couples divorcing or family strife. Josh Koplovitz, 30 years practicing Matrimonial and Family Law, Myra Schwartz, 30 years Guidance Counselor working with families and children. Male/female, counselor-attorney team, effectively addresses all legal and family issues. Schedule a one-hour free consultation or visit the web.
Wellspring (845) 534-7668 www.mediated-divorce
Moving & Storage
business directory
Arnoff Moving & Storage 1282 Dutchess Turnpike, Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 471-1504 or 1 (800) 633-6683 www.arnoff.com Agent for North American Van Lines. Since 1924, locally-owned and operated by the Arnoff family, providing exceptional services to families and businesses, moving the ordinary and the extraordinary. Household and business relocations, international shipments, record storage, fine art handling, rigging/industrial services, storage solutions—portable, selfstorage, household, commercial/industrial. Secure, experienced, professional.
Music Raymond Albrecht (914) 213-2395 www.myspace.com/touchofray blueyeray@yahoo.com Acoustic Artist Raymond Albrecht entertains Hudson Valley audiences by performing wellknown classic rock music by legendary artists. Known for his signature sing-along style or enjoyable background music, he will work closely with clients to customize a song list to suit every occasion. Specializing in private parties, events and festivals.
Burt’s Electronics 549 Albany Avenue, Kingston, NY (845) 331-5011 Good music deserves quality sound! Avoid the malls and shop where quality and personal service are valued above all else. Bring Burt and his staff your favorite album and let them teach you how to choose the right audio equipment for your listening needs.
David Temple, Classical Guitar (845) 758-0174 www.davidtemple.com Classical guitarist and private instructor. Music for concerts, weddings and occasions. Solo performances have included Mohonk Mountain House’s Festival of the Arts, the Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck and the Ulster Chamber Music Series. A graduate of the music school at Eastern Michigan University.
Deep Listening Institute, Ltd (845) 338-5984 www.deeplistening.org
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Musical Instruments Adam’s Piano 592 Route 299, Highland, NY (845) 255-5295 www.adamspiano.com ADAMSPIANO.com. WE HAVE MOVED! By appointment only. 75 Pianos on display! Kawai and other fine brands. Inventory and prices at adamspiano.com.
Networking Go Green Energy Fair 20 Mountain View Avenue, Woodstock, NY (845) 679-0901 kngfu2003@yahoo.com
Hudson Valley Green Drinks (845) 454-6410 hvgreendrinks.org
Rhinebeck Area Chamber of Commerce P.O. Box 42, 23F East Market Street, Rhinebeck, NY www.rhinebeckchamber.com (845) 876-5904 info@rhinebeckchamber.com We are a professional business membership organization which represents approximately 400 businesses, large and small, primarily in northern and central Dutchess County. We provide a variety of services, including health insurance; provide opportunities for businesses to promote themselves; and interact with government representatives on behalf of the business community.
Performing Arts
WAMC—Linda 339 Central Ave, Albany, NY (518) 465-5233 ext. 4 thelinda.org
Pet Services & Supplies Dog Love, LLC 240 North Ohioville Road, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-8254 www.dogloveplaygroups.com Personal hands-on boarding and daycare tailored to your dog’s individual needs. Your dog’s happiness is our goal. Indoor 5x10 matted kennels with classical music and windows overlooking our pond. Supervised play groups in 40x40 fenced area. Homemade food and healthy treats.
Pussyfoot Lodge B&B (845) 687-0330 www.pussyfootlodge.com The Pioneer in Professional Pet Care! Full house-pet-plant sitting service, proudly serving 3 counties in the Hudson Valley. Experienced, dependable, thorough, and reasonable house sitting for your pets. Thank you Hudson Valley for entrusting ALL your pets and homes to us for 37 years.
Photography 400 Square, LLC 149 Main Street, Beacon, NY (914) 522-4736 info@400square.com 400 Square offers photographic services that include fine art printing, digital retouching, RAW processing and scanning of b/w and color film. We also specialize in portrait, fine art, event and advertising photography. Call for information on pricing of photographic services, session fees or assignment work.
Barbara Strnadova Photography Kingston, NY (917) 232-3623 www.dova-imagery.com
Dan Stein Photography + Imaging
35 Market Street, Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 473-2072 www.bardavon.org
303 Main Street, Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 206-4303 http://danstein.info info@danstein.info NYC industry quality and experience in the heart of the Hudson Valley. Photographic solutions individually tailored to meet your needs. Portraiture. Product Photography. Events. Editorial Assignments. Commercial studio and on-location services available.
Bearsville Theater
David Morris Cunningham
291 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY (845) 679-4406 www.bearsvilletheater.com
Woodstock, NY (914) 489-1991 www.davidmorriscunningham.com info@davidmorriscunningham.com
Bard College Public Relations Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (845) 758-7900 www.fischercenter.bard.edu
Bardavon Opera House
Hudson River Performing Arts 29 Elm Street, Suite 205, Fishkill, NY (845) 896-1888 www.hudsonriverperformingarts.com Hudson River Performing Arts, located in Fishkill, NY, offers instruction in Ballet, Tap, Jazz, Lyrical, Modern, Acting, Voice, Guitar and Piano. Our goal is to cultivate and nurture a love and knowledge of the performing Arts at both the pre-professional and recreational levels. Our programs are designed to provide students with a solid foundation of technique in a nurturing and affirming atmosphere.
Lehman-Loeb Art Center/ Powerhouse Theater Vassar College Box 225, Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 437-5902 befargislanc@pop.vassar.edu
SUNY Ulster - Office Of Community Relations SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge, NY (845) 687-5262 www.sunyulster.edu
Fionn Reilly Photography fionnreilly.com
Lorna Tychostup (845) 489-8038 www.lornatychostup.com
Michael Gold The Corporate Image Photo Studio, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-5255 www.mgphotoman.com
Photosensualis 15 Rock City Road, Woodstock, NY (845) 679-5333 www.photosensualis.com
Upstate Light 3 Water Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-3155 www.upstatelight.com Art reproduction, large-format exhibition printing, film and flatbed scanning. We photograph 2D or 3D artwork in our studio or on location.
Quality and expertise you would expect in the city, dedicated personal service you’ll find upstate. By Appointment.
Picture Framing Atelier Renee Fine Framing The Chocolate Factory, 54 Elizabeth Street, Suite 3, Red Hook, NY (845) 758-1004 www.atelierreneefineframing.com renee@atelierreneefineframing.com Formerly One Art Row, this unique workshop combines a beautiful selection of moulding styles and mats with conservation quality materials, expert design advice and skilled workmanship. Renee Burgevin CPF; 20 years experience. Special services include shadow-box and oversize framing as well as fabric-wrapped and French matting. Also offering mirrors.
Printing Services Fast Signs 1830 Route 9; Suite 101 Wappingers Falls, NY (845) 298-5600 www.fastsigns.com/455
Resorts & Spas Buttermilk Falls Inn & Spa 220 North Road, Milton, NY (877) 7-INN-SPA (845) 795-1310 www.buttermilkfallsinn.com; www.buttermilkspa.com Located on 75 acres overlooking the Hudson River. Brand new full service geothermal and solar spa. Organic products, pool, sauna and steam room. Hiking trails, gardens, waterfalls, peacock aviary.
Haven Spa 6464 Montgomery Street, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-7369 www.havenrhinebeck.com
Schools Bard College Center for Environmental Policy Bard College, Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 758-7073 www.bard.edu/cep cep@bard.edu
Beacon Institute For Rivers and Estuaries 199 Main Street, Beacon, NY (845) 838-1600 www.bire.org info@bire.org
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies 2801 Sharon Turnpike, Millbrook, NY (845) 677-5343 www.caryinstitute.org www.ecostudies.org/events.html
Columbia-Greene Community College 4400 Route 23, Hudson, NY (518) 828-1481 ext.3344 www.mycommunitycollege.com
Energy Healing School—One Light Healing Touch (845) 876-0239 www.onelighthealingtouch.com pricemedia@aol.com International Energy Healing and Mystery School. Learn 33 Holistic, Shamanic and Esoteric techniques to heal yourself and others. Increase health, intuition, creativity, joy and spiritual connection. NYSNA & NCBTMB CEUs. Meets 18 days over six months. Instructor Penny Lavin. Fishkill school begins June 12th and Oct. 16th.
Frog Hollow Farm Esopus, NY (845) 384-6424 www.dressageatfroghollowfarm.com
Mid-Hudson Health and Safety Institute Ulster Community College, Stone Ridge, NY (845) 339-2025 www.sunyulster.edu reerb@sunyulster.edu
Mountain Laurel Waldorf School 16 South Chestnut Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-0033 www.mountainlaurel.org
Skidmore College Saratoga Springs, NY www.skidmore.edu
SUNY New Paltz School of Fine and Performing Arts New Paltz, NY (845) 257-3872 www.newpaltz.edu/artnews
Snacks Mister Snacks, Inc. (845) 206-7256 www.mistersnacks.com Call Vinny Sciullo for distribution of the finest snacks in the Hudson Valley. Visit our Gift Shop at www.sunbirdsnacks.com.
Specialty Food Shops Alps Sweet Shop alpssweetshop@verizon.net www.alpssweetshop.com
The Big Cheese 402 Main Street, Rosendale, NY (845) 658-7175 or (845) 626-0105
Four Seasons Sunrooms Route 9W, Beacon, NY (845) 838-1235 www.hvsk.fourseasonssunrooms.com
Tourism Historic Hyde Park The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, NY www.HistoricHydePark.org
Web Design ICU Publish www.icupublish.com info@icupublish.com ICU Publish specializes in intensive care graphic design. On-site personalized consultation and training for both Mac and PC’s, web design, and publishing with customized data base driven websites created with the artist and/or collection in mind.
Weddings ASO Limousine Service, Inc. 1032 Main Street, Fishkill, NY (845) 896-1696 www.asolimo,com
Hudson Valley Weddings (845) 336-4705 www.HudsonValleyWeddings.com www.HudsonValleyBaby.com www.HudsonValleyBabies.com www.HudsonValleyChildren.com judy@hudsonvalleyweddings.com The only resource you need to plan a Hudson Valley wedding. Offering a free, extensive, and online Wedding Guide. Hundreds of wedding-related professionals. Regional Bridal Show schedule, links, wed shop, vendor promotions, specials, and more. Call or E-mail for information about adding your weddingrelated business.
P.O. Box 1081, New Paltz, NY www.rootsnwings.com/ceremonies.html (845) 255-2278 puja@rootsnwings.com Rev. Puja A. J. Thomson will help you create a heartfelt ceremony that uniquely expresses your commitment, whether you are blending different spiritual, religious, or ethnic traditions, are forging your own or share a common heritage. Puja’s calm presence and lovely Scottish voice add a special touch. “Positive, professional, loving, focused and experienced.”
Woodstock Weddings www.woodstockwedding.com nancybaysinger@gmail.com
Wine & Liquor In Good Taste 45 Main Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-0110 ingoodtaste@verizon.net Full service wine and spirit shop with knowledgeable staff. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, 10am-9pm. Thursday, Friday, Saturday 10am-10pm. Sunday 12pm-6pm. Wine tastings every Saturday. We deliver and consult when planning a party, wedding or any other special occasion. See our display ad in this issue for specials.
Village Wine & Spirits 45 Front Street, Millbrook, NY (845) 677-3311 www.villagewinemillbrook.com Open every day.
Workshops Celeste Graves Fitness
business directory
Sunrooms
ROOTS & WINGS
(845) 679-0901 kngfu2003@yahoo.com
Jnana Yoga Study Group Nondualvedanta@aol.com Jnana Yoga, the Path of Knowledge, is the subject of this ongoing study group in the Nondual tradition of Sankaracharya. The facilitator, Michael Chandra Cohen is a former swami & adjunct professor of religion at Hunter College. Open to all level aspirants. TEXT: Ramana Maharishi, Self-Enquiry. Details: WWW.ANJALISPACE.COM.
Lightyears Inc. www.PerfumeProjects.com/workshop/2009
Wallkill Valley Writers (845) 255-7090 www.wallkillvalleywriters.com khamherstwriters@aol.com Creative writing workshops in New Paltz led by Kate Hymes, poet and educator. Aspiring and experienced writers are welcome. WVW provides structured time, a supportive community and a safe place for you to fulfill the dream of writing your stories, real or imagined. Many writers find the community of a workshop benefits their work and keeps them motivated.
Every day, enjoy 5% off any 6 bottles of wine, 10% off any 12 bottles of wine On Tuesdays receive 8% off any purchase, 13% off any 6 bottles of wine, 18% off any 12 bottles of wine
Open 7 days For information on our upcoming wine school, e-mail us at ingoodtaste@verizon.net
Writing Services CENTER TO PAGE: moving writers from the center to the page (845) 679-9441 www.centertopage.com Our small team works with writers nationwide— memoirists, scholars, novelists, and people seeking to develop an authentic writing practice. We mentor, edit, ghostwrite, and more. Director Jeffrey Davis is author of The Journey from the Center to the Page and teaches in WCSU’s MFA program and at conferences nationwide.
Peter Aaron Paaron64@hotmail.com
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whole living guide
cooking up a well-balanced life
Integrative nutrition Are sweets and caffeine your preferred fuels for the day? Have you become a fast-food aficionado?
by lorrie klosterman
illustration by annie internicola
W
hat if that craving for Mint Milano cookies with afternoon java were something to take seriously, instead of trying to will power it away? “Seriously” doesn’t mean letting a craving always have its way with you, but if you listen to your longings for foods, they carry valuable clues about what your body really needs. It might be a nutrition issue, yes—but often there’s more to it than that. Foods have their place in serving our bodies, but they are only one part of a holistic health formula. The perspective of integrative nutrition, a philosophy and a practical approach to well-being, is that food is a secondary source of nourishment, while relationships, career, spirituality, and exercise are primary nourishments that sustain us most deeply. “You can eat all the broccoli in the world and still be unhappy and unhealthy because other aspects of your life aren’t balanced,” says Joshua Rosenthal, founder and director of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York. “When you are satisfied with your career, in a loving relationship, have a spiritual practice, and exercise on a regular basis, you will be more likely to make better decisions about the foods you eat.” The institute is the largest nutrition school in the world, offering programs of study with leading health and nutrition experts, and spanning topics from traditional philosophies about food to modern physiological and even ethical aspects of food. Graduates of the program are nutrition counselors, trained to address each client’s individual, holistic needs. “One of our unique theories is bioindividuality,” says Rosenthal. “There is not one diet that works for everyone. Integrative nutrition teaches over 100 dietary theories to give our students the knowledge they need to decide what works best for each person.” Holly Anne Shelowitz is a certified nutrition counselor based in Rosendale and director of Nourishing Wisdom, which offers workshops, classes, and individual counseling on nutrition and food preparation. Many of Shelowitz’s clients are women who are trying to juggle too many things. They may be 70
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having health problems, trouble sleeping, depression, weight gain, relationship issues, fertility issues, or other challenges—many of which are interrelated. “Often the motivating factor that gets them to see me is a high level of stress,” says Shelowitz. “They’re on the go nonstop from the minute they wake up to the minute they fall onto the pillow. Often they are taking care of a lot of other people but not taking care of themselves. These women are eating out a lot, grabbing food on the run, and have no time to cook.” Shelowitz likes how the integrative nutrition approach doesn’t profess confining dietary regimens for everyone, like taking supplements every day or staunchly avoiding bad foods. “Inevitably, with those approaches, people fall of the wagon and eat stuff they know they shouldn’t.”
Cravings As Clues Andrea Ramirez is a holistic health counselor in Beacon who also sees a lot of people under the duress of an overly full and demanding schedule. She can attest to the power of food cravings as a manifestation of something being out of balance. “For 90 percent of people, the craving is for sugar,” she says. “Most people are at such a disconnect from their bodies that they aren’t aware of how much sugar they are having.” The sugar-caffeine team is especially common as a way to endure a stressful, overscheduled day, she says.That combo might give a jolt of energy in the morning or a kick to bridge the afternoon, but the pattern can escalate and become self-perpetuating. “Glucose goes up after eating something sweet,” Ramirez explains, “and insulin release is triggered to get the excess glucose out of your bloodstream.” Then, in response to insulin, blood sugar may drop precipitously, leading to an energetic “crash” that you seek to treat again, often with sugary foods and/or caffeine. Nutritious meals, good sleep, and natural ways of energizing are left in the dust. Sugar cravings can reflect the body’s legitimate need for fuel when reserves are running low—a common issue when meals are skipped, or nutri-
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Paths to Creating What You Want. . . Even in the Most Challenging Times Helping Individuals, Couples & Groups David Brownstein dbrownstein2@gmail.com
julieezweig@gmail.com
www.RosenMethod.com
Longing for Balance
&
Spiritual Counselor Energy Healer Ron Figueroa M.A. CHT Licensed Mental Health Counselor
All credits toward M.A. in School Psychology
Hypnotist, REIKI practitioner, OLHT Healer School graduate, Addictions, Phobias, Life transition issues Healing with Present Moment Focus
845-399-2098
www.centerforwholelifehealing.com Tuesday Evenings New Paltz, New York
Facilitator: Amy Frisch, CSWR some insurances accepted space is limited
(845) 706-0229 for more information
A group designed especially for teenage girls focusing on issues of adolescence: relationships, school, dealing with parents, coping with teen stress, and more. Group sessions include expressive art activities - it‛s not all talk!
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tionally meager. Patricia Charles sought aid from Ramirez after getting some glaring clues from her body that something had to change. “I was working 40 to 60 hours a week and not taking very good care of myself,” Charles says. “I wasn’t eating full meals, and I was eating fast food a lot. In the morning I would have cookies for breakfast, and sometimes wouldn’t even have lunch. I would get so busy that I could go through the day without noticing I was hungry until I got dizzy. So I was having dizzy spells, having pains in my legs, and I even had a seizure, maybe due to not eating properly.” Charles had been having anxiety attacks at work as well. “I had been to counselors for too much anxiety,” she says, “but they would say there was no solution, that it would be a lifelong struggle.” Anti-anxiety medication was suggested, but she didn’t want to resort to that. What Charles learned with Ramirez’s help included nutrition basics— what foods her body really needed, and when. But when Ramirez suggested that Charles cook nutritious meals for herself instead of eating take-out so often, she balked. “I didn’t want to cook anything, to even acknowledge the benefits of it,” Charles recalls. “So we started out mostly focusing on sugar and breakfast. I started eating high protein foods in the morning—nitratefree ham and turkey, with the fat and protein instead of the sugar. I noticed the impacts. When I ate breakfast, I no longer got dizzy at two o’clock.” She eventually was willing to tackle cooking dinner. “Little by little, I gained small confidences, like cooking rice. When I finally did that successfully I got excited—it felt like a big accomplishment. Now, when I eat well, I rarely have anxious attacks. I’ve tested it. If I go back to eating sugary foods, I get more easily stressed and moody again.” Charles gained more than better eating habits: “I learned to have greater appreciation for myself. Before I had specific goals for myself, I would say yes to everything and do whatever anyone asked me to do, like working through dinner. My personal self would take a fall for that. But now, when I know I’m going to make dinner at seven, I’ll say no. Before, I would have said yes and just gotten pizza.” Sugary foods, and the fats that often accompany them in snacks, aren’t just fuels to meet the body’s energy demands. Sugars and fats, as we savor them in the mouth, stimulate the brain’s “pleasure center” and enhance the release of feel-good brain chemicals like dopamine and serotonin. Food cravings can be a signal to stimulate the pleasure center—somehow, some way. “Most people who crave sugar,” says Ramirez, “are really craving sweetness, which can be gotten in many ways.” Exercise, touch, sex, daylight, and personally rewarding activities are among the other pleasures that keep plenty of pleasure chemicals percolating naturally. A day that is lacking in enjoyment through these other avenues may become a day of sugar/fat cravings as one sure way to feel better. “You might crave sugar because you are bored with your job,” says Ramirez, “or because you don’t get sweetness in your relationship. Let’s say you’re single and don’t want to be. You may come home and crave sugar. It’s an immediate way to get sweetness.” Shelowitz concurs: “We have needs that we may be trying to meet by overeating, without realizing how much our food choices are a Band-Aid for something else that’s deeper.” Integrative nutrition takes a yogic view of foods and of life, with the best health drawing on a balance of yin and yang energies. Sugar is yin energy, Ramirez explains. “It’s light, creative, uplifting. The more bitter your life, the more sugar you crave. If your life is too yang—too grounded, or too heavy in animal protein—then you are going to crave sugar as the opposite quality. You want to be somewhere in between.” Over time, addressing problems in relationships and work, and finding enjoyable physical activities and spiritual expression, perhaps with the added help of specialists, strips away layers of confusion about food. Then, eating in a balanced way comes naturally. “Just as a cow knows that she should be chewing on grass,” says Ramirez, “we know what we should be eating if we really listen to what our gut is saying. Someone might say, ‘But if I let my gut tell me what to do, I would end up eating ice cream and burgers all day!’ But that’s not really true. If you reawaken your connection with your gut, you’ll know what to eat.” If you’ve ever had a dastardly craving that won’t desist, you may be hesitant to trust your body’s menu choices. But you can, says Rosenthal. “It’s really that simple, if you look at all areas of your life to find any imbalances before
addressing the foods you eat. When you are happy with the primary foods [career, relationships, spiritual practice, exercise], you will be more likely to feed yourself with whole foods and less chemicalized junk food. I often refer to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;crowding outâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; when it comes to nutrition. You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need to eliminate the foods you love, just be sure to add in more vegetables, whole grains, and fruit.You will find that as you incorporate more whole foods, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll have less room for the junk food.â&#x20AC;? The same goes for the other facets of a healthy, balanced life, Rosenthal adds. â&#x20AC;&#x153;When you start adding in more loving relationships, you will find that you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have as much time or room in your life for the unhealthy relationships.â&#x20AC;?
The Power of Cooking People who love to cook enjoy more than the end product. In addition to gustatory delight, there may be artistry, companionship, sensuality, a sense of pride, self-nurturance, gifting to others, and more. Cooking meals can also provide excellent nutrition at a cost well below that of a fine meal in a restaurantâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;more on par with the cost of buying fast food, but for so much more real value. Shelowitz loves teaching people how to make nutritious meals at home, especially in palatable forms like super-quick meals. â&#x20AC;&#x153;As much as I like restaurants and going out to eat,â&#x20AC;? she says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;the more home-cooked food you eat, the better you will feel. I truly believe that. If you integrate doing that into your schedule, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life-changing.â&#x20AC;? Not surprisingly, Shelowitzâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s clients often blanch at the idea of needing to find yet more time in their day, to shop and prepare and cook. â&#x20AC;&#x153;You can imagine that when someone is really stressed for time, it seems very contradictory to suggest they make more time to cook. So where I often begin is having someone tell me about their lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s working, what are they stressed about, whether time is an issue. We look at how their choicesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;career, family, and so onâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;affect their well-being. But we eventually focus on nutrition and cooking.â&#x20AC;? Shelowitz dispels right away the myth that eating home-cooked meals means hours of slaving at the stove, and assures clients they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to become a chef to eat well. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I might suggest they pull out their Crock-Pot,â&#x20AC;? she says with amusement of that oft-maligned implement that most people have stuck in a cabinet somewhere. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We love the Crock-Pot. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the best friend for a person who has a busy life. I give a very simple recipe that takes 10 minutes to prepare, like a delicious stew, with no intensive dicing and slicing.â&#x20AC;? The stew cooks literally while you sleep, and the nutritious concoction is ready the next morning to take to workâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a very simple replacement for a lunch of fast food, or no lunch at all. Shelowitz teaches how to cook a series of other meals that are delicious, nourishing, ready in 30 minutes or less, and save oodles of money. One of her favorites uses one cup of millet, a chopped yam, a drained can of kidney beans, and four cups of waterâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the whole thing taking about seven minutes to prepareâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;then you bring it to a boil on the stove and simmer for 40 minutes. Seasoned with good-quality, organic olive oil and salt, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a delicious, hearty entree or side dish that serves at least four, for about three dollars. Even with quick-prep meals, clients can feel stretched to make time to shop and commit to cooking at home. But ripples of benefit begin to materialize. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s this beautiful rhythm that happens when youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re preparing food from wholesome ingredients, that starts to bring balance into your life. A stressed-out person who has no time for shopping or cooking will need to take time for that from somewhere else, so they start looking at those long working hours and realize that working overtime every day isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t the healthiest thing. It really starts a whole chain of events that affects all areas of their lives. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not a psychologist, but when someone is really getting into making changes in their diet and seeing how that changes their lives, it can be very satisfying. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a fascinating approach to well-being. It can even enhance the work they are doing with a therapist.â&#x20AC;? Indeed, Ramirez sees self-empowerment as one of the most powerful benefits of integrative nutrition. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We grow up in a culture where weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re used to calling a doctor, popping a pillâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;never feeling responsible for our own health. Integrative nutrition empowers you to make decisions and have power over the way you feel, both physically and emotionally. What I want my clients to take with them is the knowledge that they have control over how they feel, and they can always do something to heal.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;Ż
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Dr. David Ness proudly announces the opening of the
Performance Sports & Wellness Center in New Paltz
Dr. David Ness
Certified Sports Chiropractor Active Release Techniques 3 Cherry Hill Road New Paltz, NY 12561
www.drness.com
kripalu.org
The professionals at Performance Sports & Wellness Center are dedicated to helping the high-level athlete, the active person and the injured achieve maximum performance. Featuring â&#x20AC;˘ Dr. David Ness Chiropractor â&#x20AC;˘ William Weinstein, L.A.c. Acupuncture â&#x20AC;˘ Dorothy Hamburg, M.S. Exercise Physiologist â&#x20AC;˘ Deep Tissue & Sports Massage
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Flowers Fall By Bethany Saltman
Ego, Interrupted Yet, though it is like this, simply, flowers fall amid our longing, and weeds spring up amid our antipathy.
A
— Dogen Zenji, Genjokoan
s I worried my way through winter, grumping at this, feeling bleak and insecure about that, I often wondered, God, what kind of mother am I? What happens to Azalea when my dark side threatens? I have tried to take solace in the descriptions of mothers I have read over the years, and the way their adult children view them, appreciating their imperfections, hoping maybe I could get away with the stuff literary moms seem to. I thought a lot about the mother in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye who was pissed at her daughter for throwing up but cleaned it up anyway, roughly placing a scratchy blanket beneath her to soak it up, all the while cursing under her breath. This woman had bigger fish to fry. But when she left the room, her daughter knew she was loved. That’s what stayed with her. Are my maternal superpowers strong enough to provide security even through my self-absorption? The truth is that I never felt drawn to motherhood, and believed I was way too selfish to look after someone else. Plus, I thought motherhood looked boring. In fact, for many years, as a young writer/waitress living in Park Slope, I felt real disdain for moms—and their kids—looking down my snotty nose at them with their sippy cups and crumbs. Moms and kids were just not very “interesting.” Luckily, I later sensed that motherhood might lead me somewhere I needed to go, and dove in. I would be lying if I said I am never “stimulation-challenged” by the task, and I can still be pretty solipsistic, but I am also in the thick of this parallel universe of mothers and their kids, and it’s fun! And from a Buddhist perspective it’s always good news when we see ourselves embody someone who once seemed so distant (or abhorrent, better yet). Now I’m one of them, one of those women who says things like, “She’ll have the plain noodles, and can you bring them right away?” And as far as Azalea is concerned, I am totally her mom, a grown-up lurking deep within her internal landscape, cleaning or not cleaning, attending or ignoring, cooking grilled cheese or an “I don’t like this” dinner. Nothing mothers do is neutral. Never ignored. Ah, to be ignored. To have the middle-of-the-night screech “Maaaaaaammmmmmaaaaaa!!!!!!!! I NEED you!!!!!!!!!” be for someone else. For my time, space, and even my insanity to be my own. Those days are over, of course, though that reality is something not even Tolstoy could communicate to the uninitiated. The total life commitment of being a parent is impossible to describe. I guess in that sense it is like what the teachers tell us about spiritual awakening—a state of mind we have to taste for ourselves in order to understand. Unfortunately, spiritual awakening doesn’t come with the territory of paying attention when we don’t feel like it, from our egos being interrupted. If it did, the world would be filled with realized people (and lots of them would be women, which would be very cool). But I guess if Buddhism teaches anything, 74
whole living ChronograM 4/09
it’s that our lives are actually never our own, regardless of whether we choose to procreate—the whole We are all one reality thing. That intimacy is delightful when I’m in the mood, when I’m sunk deep in the middle of a meditation retreat with a quiet mind, listening to the mountain awaken after the long winter freeze—those glimmers of no separation. But when I’m shut down and just want to waste my life on Facebook, I don’t want anyone to even notice, let alone be affected. Can’t I be a separate self, just for a little while? So when the little pat, pat, patter comes a-calling “Mama! Where are you?” sometimes it takes everything I’ve got to return the call, “I’m in the study, honey.” But I have to! So I swivel on my chair and face the person whose little legs, feet, arms, and hands used to be all curled up in my body—a wet knot—eyes closed, filled with the swoosh of my heart, and now, three years later, just wants to keep tabs. On really tough days, I conjure the part of my ego that doesn’t want to read about myself as some withholding old hag in my daughter’s adolescent short stories. Recently I interviewed the writer Kathleen Norris. She talked about our culture’s ego-inflation, how we are so full of ourselves that we expect the VIP treatment wherever we go. If someone has the audacity to cut us off on the freeway, or make us wait at a ticket counter, or, I would add, demand that we re-adjust the barrette for the 50th time, we go ballistic, as in How dare you? Don’t you know who I am? We really want to be somebody with important business here on Earth. I know I do. In the sutras there are descriptions of thousands, even billions, of bodhisattvas—important people gloriously devoted to being nobodies—filling a hall, or a park where the Buddha spoke, every dharma realm bursting with beings. I love to imagine them all sitting next to each other in their topknots, groovy crowns, flowing robes, snacking, gossiping, nodding off, sliding into deep samadhi. And I like to remember that each of these home-leaving, blissbestowing monks (and laypeople!) has a mom. And if the moms weren’t so busy, they might gather, too, for as far as the eye can see: mothers in their faded saris, drinking tea, making an effort even in their sleep. Mothers releasing themselves from their own ego-attachments—consciously or not—by serving their kids, and serving the dharma, by letting their children go. At this point I don’t know which party I would rather attend. Nor do I really know how I am impacting Azalea, though when I pay attention, I can take a good guess: putting myself first, we both feel interrupted. When I don’t feel interrupted, even I don’t know who I am. Bethany Saltman lives with her family in Phoenicia. She has been a student of John Daido Loori, Roshi, Abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery, since 1998. You can read more of her work at www.bethanysaltman.com.
whole living guide
Michele Tomasicchio, LMT Practitioner of the Healing Arts
Vesa Byrnes, LMT
Headaches & Migraines • Neck Shoulder & Back Pain • Stressful Mind Allergies • Lyme Disease Symptoms • Digestive Problems Nutritional Support • Emotional Balance "I was suffering so badly from the symptoms of Lyme, I had to take a leave of absence from work. Working with Michele has been wonderful. My energy is back and I'm able to go to work." —C. Kozma Therapeutic massage is a holistic approach to creating wellness within your body, mind, and spirit. Breathe. Relax. Let go and unwind. Accept an invitation to remember that underneath your illness or discomfort lies your vibrant health. Let’s discover it together.
Hudson Valley Therapeutic Massage 243 Main St., Suite 220, New Paltz, NY
Active Release Techniques Dr. David Ness (845) 255-1200 www.drness.com Active Release Techniques (ART®) is a patented soft tissue treatment system that heals injured muscles, tendons, fascia (covers muscle), ligaments, and nerves. It is used to treat acute or chronic injuries, sports injuries, repetitive strain injuries and nerve entrapments like carpal tunnel syndrome, and sciatica.
Acupuncture Classical Acupuncture & Chinese Herbs
Earthbound Herbs and Acupuncture 504-516 Broadway, Kingston, NY (845) 339-5653 www.earthboundapothecary.com Creating health in partnership with nature. We offer Community Acupuncture at a sliding scale of $20-$40, you decide what you can afford. Apothecary specializes in local, organic herbs in bulk, tincture, teas and more. Founded by Hillary Thing, MS, LAc., Professor (Pacific College of Oriental Medicine) with over 11 years clinical experience.
High Ridge Traditional Healing Arts-Acupuncture, Oriental Medicine—Carolyn Rabiner, L. Ac. 87 East Market Street, Suite 102 Red Hook, NY (845) 758-2424 www.highridgeacupuncture.com Offering all five of the professionally practiced modalities within Oriental Medicine-Acupuncture, Chinese Herbal Medicine, Medical Massage, Dietary Therapy and Exercise Therapy-in order to help patients regain healthy balance. Treatment of neuro-musculo-skeletal pain, women’s health, mood problems, digestive problems, asthma, sinusitis, fatigue, and much more. Since 1992.
Hoon J. Park, MD, PC 1772 Route 9, Wappingers Falls, NY (845) 298-6060 For the past 18 years, Dr. Hoon J. Park has been practicing a natural and gentle approach to pain management for conditions such as arthritis, chronic and acute pain in neck, back, and legs, fibromyalgia, motor vehicle and work-related injuries, musculoskeletal disorders, and more by integrating physical
Mid-Hudson Acupuncture— William Weinstein, L.Ac. New Paltz and Manhattan, NY (845) 255-2070 or (212) 695-3565 www.mhacu.com Announcing MEI ZEN COSMETIC ACUPUNCTURE at Mid-Hudson Acupuncture. Present yourself the way you wish to be. Feel great inside! Look great outside!® Personalized, unhurried treatment tailored to your specific needs. ALSO: Relief from headache, migraine, arthritis, carpal tunnel, TMJ/TMD, repetitive strain, rotator cuff injury, and stress-related syndromes stemming from the modern lifestyle. Support through chronic illness, including relief from the adverse effects of cancer care. NHAI, Oxford, Elderplan. MC/V/D. New Paltz: 218 Main Street. Manhattan: 119 West 23rd Street.
Alexander Technique Judith Muir—The Alexander Technique
845-255-4832
For those avidly pursuing the truth Joel Walzer Spiritual Healer, Channel, Attorney & Pathwork Helper
“The truth will set you free” John 8:32 “The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.” Herbert Agar. What about you? ♦ Classes ♦ Individual & Couple Sessions ♦ Mediation 33 Mill Hill Rd., center of Woodstock 845.679.8989 flowingspirit.com jwalzer@flowingspirit.com
Call or stop by for free consultation Mention ad for 50% discount on 1st session or 33% on 1st class
Judy Swallow
whole living directory
303 Fair Street, Kingston, NY (845) 853-7353 Dylana Accolla offers 17 years of experience in acupuncture, herbal medicine, bodywork, qigong, and emotional release work. Trained in San Francisco, China, and Japan, she is co-author of Back to Balance: a Self-Help Guide to Far East Asian Remedies. “Dylana’s results are dramatic. Her practice brings about life-changing epiphanies.”—A Satisfied Patient.
therapy modalities along with acupuncture. Dr. Hoon Park is a board-certified physician in physical medicine and rehabilitation, pain medicine, and electrodiagnostic studies. His experienced, friendly staff offer the most comprehensive and individualized rehabilitative care available. Please call the office to arrange a consultation. New patients and most insurances are accepted. Half mile south of the Galleria Mall.
MA, LCAT, TEP
(845) 677-5871 www.JudithMuir.com The Alexander Technique is a simple practical skill that when applied to ourselves enhances coordination, promoting mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Improve the quality of your life by learning how to do less to achieve more. Judith Muir, AmSAT.
Apothecaries
14:$)05)&3"1*45 t $0/46-5"/5
Rubenfeld Synergy® Psychodrama Training
~
25 Harrington St, New Paltz NY 12561 (845) 255-5613
Dr. Tom’s Tonics 6384 Mill Street, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-5556 www.drfrancescott.com info@drfrancescott.com The Hudson Valley’s alternative to today’s drug store with a Naturopathic doctor on-site. A natural pharmacy, providing the community with innovative natural medicines with Dr. Tom’s own professional formulations. Specializing in best quality fish oils, probiotics, proteins, detox products, pet remedies. Come let Dr. Tom help you and your pet.
Aromatherapy Joan Apter (845) 679-0512 www.apteraromatherapy.com japter@ulster.net See also Massage Therapy.
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Art Therapy Deep Clay
Consultations by Gail Petronio Internationally Renowned Psychic Over 20 years Experience Sessions In-Person or By Phone
845.626.4895 212.714.8125
www.psychicallyspeaking.com gail@psychicallyspeaking.com
(845) 255-8039 www.deepclay.com deepclay@mac.com Michelle Rhodes, LMSW ATR-BC. Short-term counseling and in-depth psychoanalytic arts-based psychotherapy. Activates creative imagination to enhance healing and problem solving for life transitions, bereavement, trauma, and dissociative disorders. Women’s clay group and individual studio sessions. Children, adults, and teens. Poughkeepsie and Gardiner locations.
Multi-Dimensional Psychotherapy—Blair Glaser, MA, LCAT, RDT
John M. Carroll H EALER, T EACHER, S PIRITUAL COUNSELOR
“ John is an extraordinary healer whom I have been privileged to know all my life and to work with professionally these last eight years. His ability to use energy and imagery have changed as well as saved the lives of many of my patients. Miracles still do happen.” —Richard Brown, MD Author Stop Depression Now
whole living directory
“ John Carroll is a most capable, worthy, and excellent healer of high integrity, compassion, and love.” —Gerald Epstein, MD Author Healing Visualizations
Astrology Planet Waves Kingston, NY (877) 453-8265 www.planetwaves.net
Visit John’s website for more information
Body & Skin Care
or call 845-338-8420
Essence MediSpa, LLC—Stephen Weinman, MD
johnmcarrollhealer.com
High Ridge Traditional Healing Arts Women’s Health: PMS, Infertility, Peri-menopause
針灸 中藥 推拿 氣功 食療 five healing paths
Carolyn Rabiner, L. Ac. Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine 87 East Market St. Suite 102 Red Hook, NY 845-758-2424 www.highridgeacupuncture.com
71 Main St. New Paltz
Newcomer Special
30 days of unlimited classes for only $30
Upcoming Workshop Hands on Adjustments with Michael Stein
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Woodstock, NY www.blairglaser.com (845) 679-4140 Bridge the gap between desire and potential by trying something new: SpiritPlay drama therapy is a powerful and fun-filled group process, and for individuals/couples looking to increase their connection to self and others, Multi-Dimensional Psychotherapy combines traditional counseling with creativity, intuition, spiritual philosophy, and energy work to support empowered living. NY licensed Creative Arts Therapist.
222 Route 299, Highland, NY (845) 691-3773 www.EssenceMediSpa.com Named “Most Affordable Skin Care Hudson Valley,” the Essence MediSpa specializes in skin rejuvenation and anti-aging treatments. Non-surgical treatments for age spots and skin lesions, teeth whitening, Botox Cosmetic, laser hair removal, non-surgical skin tightening using the Thermage System, Varicose and Spider Vein treatment, Microdermabrasion, chemical peels, acne treatments, facials, and massage services.
Medical Aesthetics of the Hudson Valley 166 Albany Avenue, Kingston, NY (845) 339-LASER (5273) www.medicalaestheticshv.com
Body-Centered Therapy Irene Humbach, LCSW, PC— Body of Wisdom Counseling & Healing Services (845) 485-5933 By integrating traditional and alternative therapy/healing approaches, including BodyCentered Psychotherapy, IMAGO Couples’ Counseling, and Kabbalistic Healing, I offer tools for self healing, to assist individuals and couples to open blocks to their softer heart energy. Ten-session psycho-spiritual group for women. Offices in Poughkeepsie and New Paltz.
Chi Gung-Tai Chi Chuan
Saturday, April 18th 2pm-5pm Cost: $35
HAWKS
Learn how to safely assist others with their yoga postures. Gain an understanding of how to modify advanced asanas to make them more approachable and therapeutic.
(845) 750-6488 oldredland@gmail.com CHI GUNG, Physical, meditative energy practices for dexterity and fending off degenerative diseases. TAI CHI CHUAN: founded on a combination of Shaolin martial body mechanics
whole living directory ChronograM 4/09
and Taoist spiritual alchemy. These practices have brought health, vitality, and youthfulness to my students, some in their 70s and 80s. Requirements: determined practice and the will to persevere.
Chiropractic Dr. David Ness (845) 255-1200 www.drness.com Dr. David Ness is a Certified Active Release Techniques (ART®) Provider and Certified Chiropractic Sports Practitioner who helps athletes and active people relieve their pain and heal their injuries. Dr. Ness utilizes ART® to remove scar tissue and adhesions in order to restore mobility, flexibility, and strength.
Colon Health Care/Colonics Connie Schneider—Certified Colon Therapist New Paltz, NY (845) 256-1516 www.hudsonvalleycolonics.com Colon hydrotherapy or colonics is a gentle approach to colon health. A healthy digestive tract helps support a healthy immune system, improving overall health, basics for a healthy lifestyle. Herbal Detox Programs available. See display ad.
Counseling David Brownstein dbrownstein2@gmail.com
IONE—Healing Psyche (845) 339-5776 www.ionedreams.org IONE is psycho-spiritual counselor, qi healer and minister. She is director of the Ministry of Maåt, Inc. Specializing in dream phenomena and women’s issues, she facilitates Creative Circles and Women’s Mysteries Retreats throughout the world. Kingston and NYC offices. Appointments sign up at: https://instantscheduling.com/sch.php?kn=128796.
Dentistry & Orthodontics Holistic Orthodontics—Dr. Rhoney Stanley, DDS, MPH, LicAcup, RD 107 Fish Creek Road, Saugerties, NY (845) 246-2729 Experience Orthodontics in a magical setting using expansion and gentle forces, not extraction and heavy pressure. Member of The Cranial Academy, Dr. Rhoney Stanley considers the bones, teeth, face and smile components of the whole. Offers fixed braces, functional appliances, Invisalign. Insurance accepted. Payment plans available.
Marlin Schwartz (845) 255-2902 www.schwartzqualitydental.com
Healing Centers Rhinebeck Cooperative Health Center 6384 Mill Street, Rhinebeck , NY (845) 876-5556 We are focused on providing the most comprehensive natural health care in the Hudson Valley. Our professional staff includes: Dr. Thomas J. Francescott, ND (Naturopathic Medicine); Chris VanOrt (ONDAMED); Sequoia Neiro, LMT (Therapeutic Massage); Myrna Sadowsky, LCSW (Psychotherapy); Jana Vengrin, RN, NP (Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner).
The Sanctuary: A Place for Healing (845) 255-3337
Holistic Health Cassandra Currie, MS, RYTâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Holistic Health Counselor 41 John Street, Kingston, NY (845) 532-7796 Cassandra is a Kripalu-Certified Yoga Teacher and Certified Ayurvedic Nutritionist with a MS in Counseling Psychology. She offers integrative health counseling to individuals as well as groups, melding Ayurvedic nutritional counseling, yoga, and more traditional therapeutic techniques to guide people toward greater self-awareness, empowering them to find joy, balance, and health in their daily lives. Call for classes, appointments, and consultations.
Crystals & Well-Being Center 116 Sullivan Street, Wurtsboro, NY (845) 888-2547 crystalshealing.googlepages.com crystalswellbeing@gmail.com Dedicated to your body and soul, the center offers a large selection of spectacular and energetically powerful crystals, holistic gifts, books, and jewelry at extremely competitive prices. Also, in this breathtaking space, our licensed massage therapists, acupuncturist, chiropractor, and certified energy healers will move your energy and pain away. Healing per appointment. Contact us for info on upcoming events and Qi-Classes schedule. Gift Certificates available. Located inside the renovated yellow church.
John M. Carroll, Healer
Madhuri Therapeuticsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Bringing Health to Balance Alice Velky LMT, RYT (845) 797-4124 MadhuriTherapeutics.com Mind-body approach for ASDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, attention/ learning differences; anxiety, depression, chronic pain & immune syndromes. Achieve a naturally balanced state of health and harmony with Therapeutic Yoga, Massage Therapy, Reiki and Yoga for the Special ChildÂŽ. Sliding scale REIKI CLINIC starts 4/15/09; call for info.
Omega Institute for Holistic Studies 1 (800) 944-1001 www.eomega.org Omega Instituteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 2009 season is open for registration. Take a workshop, enjoy some R&R, or learn a new skill with one of our professional trainings. Time at Omega is a stimulus package for the spirit. Register today.
Ron Figueroa, MA, CHT (845) 399-2098 www.centerforwholelifehealing.com
Homeopathy Hudson Valley School of Classical Homeopathy (845) 255-6141
Hospitals Benedictine Hospital 105 Maryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Avenue, Kingston, NY (845) 338-2500 www.benedictine.org
Northern Dutchess Hospital Rhinebeck, NY www.health-quest.org
45 Reade Place Joseph Tower Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 454-8500 www.health-quest.org
Holistic Orthodontics in a Magical Setting Practicing holistic orthodontics for 25 years Member of the Cranial Academy Fixed braces â&#x2C6;&#x2122; Functional appliances â&#x2C6;&#x2122; Invisalign Children and adults Insurance accepted â&#x2C6;&#x2122; Payment plans
Hypnosis Dr. Kristen Jemiolo Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 485-7168 http://mysite.verizon.net/resqf9p2
Kary Broffman, RN, CH Hyde Park, NY (845) 876-6753 A registered nurse with a BA in psychology since 1980, Kary is certified in Ericksonian Hypnosis, Hypnobirthing, and Complementary Medical Hypnotism, hypnocoaching with the National Guild. She has also studied interactive imagery for nurses. By weaving her own healing journey and education into her work, she helps to assist others in accessing their inner resources and healing potential.
Sharon Slotnick, MS, CHT New Paltz, NY (845) 389-2302 Increase self-esteem and motivation; break bad habits; manage stress, stress-related illness, and anger; alleviate pain (e.g. childbirth, headaches, chronic pain); overcome fears and despondency; relieve insomnia; improve learning, memory, public speaking, and sports performance; enhance creativity. Other issues. Change your outlook. Gain Control. Make healthier choices. Certified Hypnotist, two years training; broad base in Psychology. Also located in Kingston, NY.
Integrated Kabbalistic Healing
Rhoney Stanley LicAcup, RD, DDS, MPH 107 Fish Creek Road Saugerties, NY 12477 2 miles from NYS87 exit 20 0.5 miles from 212
845-246-2729 | 212-912-1212 (cell) rhoney.stanley@gmail.com
& Give the Gift of Healing Power Beauty!
Crystals Alternative Healing
&
Large selection of beautiful crystals & minerals Geodes, polished, rough, unique jewelry... Healing and meditation materials & tools... Powerful Body Work by LMT Reiki, Reconnective Healing Acupuncture and More... Gift Certificates Available
Crystals & Well-Being Center 116 Sullivan St, Wurtsboro, NY 12790 - Stunning yellow church
Irene Humbach, LCSW, PC (845) 485-5933 Integrated Kabbalistic Healing sessions in person and by phone. Six-session introductory class on Integrated Kabbalistic Healing based on the work of Jason Shulman. See also Body-Centered Therapy Directory.
crystalshealing.googlepages.com - 646.286.9325 / 845.888.2547
Life & Career Coaching Ann Ruecker, MPA, MA, CPCCâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Certified Career Coach AFAK Solutions, LLC (646) 886-2342 www.afaksolutions.com afaksolutions@yahoo.com Come discover your authentic vocation at a deeper level as well as strategizing for your next career or job through resume writing, interviewing skills, and negotiation techniques. Call or e-mail today for a free assessment and report.
Shirley Stone, MBA, Certified Empowerment Life Coach
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Kingston, NY (845) 338-8420 www.johnmcarrollhealer.com John Carroll is an intuitive healer, teacher, and spiritual counselor who integrates mental imagery with the God-given gift of his hands. John has helped individuals suffering from acute and chronic disorders. Visit Johnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website or call for more information.
Vassar Brothers Medical Center
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IRENE HUMBACH, LCSW, PC Offices in New Paltz & Poughkeepsie (845) 485-5933
Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-2194 www.findingthecourage.com Shirley@findingthecourage.com Want to convert fear into courage, stress into power, depression into joy, worry into satisfaction? Consider empowerment life coaching. Get clarity on the life you want plus the tools and techniques to make your dreams a reality. Stop being a problem solver and become a vision creator.
Victoria Lewisâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;My Coach for Creativity (212) 875-7220 www.mycoachforcreativity.com victoria@mycoachforcreativity.com Are you juggling, bungling or struggling with your â&#x20AC;&#x153;Creative Life?â&#x20AC;? Had enough? Want change? Need a hand? Creativity Coaching may be your answer. Schedule a free phone session to find out. Sign up for free tips and monthly newsletters. Take the first step. Give your creativity the support it deserves.
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relax under pressure
C E N T E R F O R THERAPEUTIC MASSAGE Professional Massage and Spa Services by NY Licensed Massage Therapists Salt Scrubs | Sugar Scrubs Mud Wraps | Anti-Aging Facial Parafin Treatment | Sauna Dale Montelione Grust, LMT Director 96 Plains Road | New Paltz, NY
845-255-2188 www.massagenewpaltz.com Tell us you saw this ad in Chronogram and receive a free gift when you book your treatment!
Massage Therapy Bodymind Massage Therapy 7 Prospect Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-3228 www.bodymindmassagetherapy.com
Center for Therapeutic Massage 96 Plains Road, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-2188 www.massagenewpaltz.edu
Conscious Body—Ellen Ronis McCallum, LMT 426 Main Street, Rosendale, NY (845) 658-8400 www.consciousbodyonline.com Ellen@consciousbodyonline.com Offering deep, sensitive and eclectic Massage therapy with over 22 years of experience as a licensed Massage Therapist working with a wide variety of body types and physical/medical/emotional issues. Techniques include: deep tissue, Swedish, Craniosacral, energy balancing, and chi nei tsang (an ancient Chinese abdominal and organ chi massage). Hot Stone Massage and aromatherapy are also offered. Gift certificates available.
Hudson Valley Therapeutic Massage—Michele Tomasicchio, LMT, Katie Hoffstatter, LMT, Gia Polk, LMT
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243 Main Street, Suite 220, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-4832 Are your muscles feeling tight and congested? Are you dealing with stress from emotional, physical or environmental causes? Do you just feel overwhelmed? Our conscientious and skilled NY Licensed Massage Therapists can help you discover a place of ease within your body, mind, and spirit. Let us help you to feel whole! Craniosacral, Energy Healing, Therapeutic Massage and Health Kinesiology. Monday-Friday 8:30am-7pm, Saturday 9am-3pm.
Joan Apter (845) 679-0512 www.apteraromatherapy.com japter@ulster.net Luxurious massage therapy with medicinal grade Essential Oils; Raindrop Technique, Emotional Release, Facials, Stones. Animal care, health consultations, spa consultant, classes and keynotes. Offering full line of Young Living Essential oils, nutritional supplements, personal care, pet care, children’s and non-toxic cleaning products. For information, contact Joan Apter.
OUTLINES
Madhuri Therapeutics—Bringing Health to Balance
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H Y P N O B I RT H I N G K B, R.N., C.H. --
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whole living directory ChronograM 4/09
(518) 678-3154 www.midwifejennahouston.com womanway@aol.com Since the 1970s Jennifer has been actively involved in childbirth and is an expert in preserving natural birth, has attended over 3,000 births in hospitals, high-risk medical centers, birth centers, and homes. She provides informed women with personal, safe, and supportive midwifery care in their homes. NYS licensed.
Naturopathic Medicine Thomas J. Francescott, ND (845) 876-5556 www.drfrancescott.com I seek to inspire and transform people with authentic and personalized natural health care. Identifying the underlying cause, and offering holistic and natural solutions to challenging health issues and alternatives to conventional drugs. I specialize in: sciencebased detoxification; testing and balancing neurotransmitters and hormones; supporting the adrenals and thyroid.
Nutrition Counseling Ilyse Simon RD, CDN Nutrition Therapist 318 Wall Street, Kingston, NY (845) 331-6381 www.ilysesimonrd.com Do you feel fat? Ilyse works with ‘stress eaters’ and those with chronic eating disorders. A Bastyr University of Natural Medicine graduate, her counseling has a holistic approach. Eating disorders are not about food. Eat what you want and feel good about it. “Life is not black and white. Living is the full spectrum in between.”
Osteopathy Stone Ridge Healing Arts Joseph Tieri, DO, & Ari Rosen, DO 3457 Main Street, Stone Ridge 138 East Market Street, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 687-7589 www.stoneridgehealingarts.com Drs. Tieri and Rosen are New York State Licensed Osteopathic Physicians specializing in Cranial Osteopathy. As specialists in Osteopathic manipulation, we are dedicated to the traditional philosophy and hands-on treatment of our predecessors. We treat newborns, children, and adults. By Appointment. Offices in Rhinebeck and Stone Ridge.
Pain Management ONDAMED®, FDA—Approved Device (845) 876-5556 Therapists throughout Europe have been using ONDAMED® for over 10 years with great success. Patients using ONDAMED® frequencies report benefits physically, emotionally, mentally. ONDAMED® is a cutting-edge and FDA-approved device for pain management by reducing inflammation, promoting relaxation, smoking cessation, improving circulation.
Mid-Hudson Rebirthing Center
Roy Capellaro, PT
Meditation Zen Mountain Monastery
®
Jennifer Houston, Midwife
Alice Velky LMT, RYT (845) 797-4124 MadhuriTherapeutics.com Our tranquil healing space in downtown New Paltz offers individualized sessions to nourish and repair body, mind & spirit. Licensed Massage Therapy, master-level Reiki, Therapeutic Yoga, Ayurveda; 16 years experience. Sliding scale REIKI CLINIC starts 4/15/09; call for info.
(845) 255-6482
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Midwifery
871 Plank Road, Mount Tremper, NY (845) 437-5831 Offering year-round retreats geared to all levels of experience: introductions to Zen meditation and practice; programs exploring Zen arts, Buddhist studies, and social action; and intensive meditation retreats.
Physical Therapy 120 Main Street, Gardiner, NY (845) 518-1070 www.roycapellaro.com Listening. Touch. Quiet. The interface of structure and energy. There are optimum ways of working with out of balance states in our body, utilizing the hierarchy of forces within us. I have been a manual physical therapist for over 30 years, specializing in gently unlocking the roots of structural dysfunctions and their associated patterns. Zero Balancing. Craniosacral Therapy. Muscle Energy Technique. Ontology.
Pilates Conscious Body 426 Main Street, Rosendale, NY (845) 658-8400 www.consciousbodyonline.com Ellen@consciousbodyonline.com Husband and Wife team Ellen and Tim Ronis McCallum are dedicated to helping you achieve and maintain a strong healthy body, a dynamic mind, and a vibrant spirit, whatever your age or level of fitness. Private and semi private apparatus, and mat classes available. Visit our studio on Main Street Rosendale.
The Centering Studio 3752 Route 9G @ IXL Fitness (membership not required), Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-5114 www.thecenteringstudio.com Pilates Method in Rhinebeck since 1996. Private and small group classes, non- competitive and non-impact. Working on the apparatus and mats with our caring, creative and certified instructors you will build deep muscle control and proper body mechanics to support you through your day with ease and energy, grace and power.
Psychics Psychically Speaking
Psychologists Anton H. Hart, PhD 39 Collegeview Avenue, Poughkeepsie, NY www.apapo.org/DrAntonHart (845) 454-2477; (212) 595-3704 antonhartphd@alum.vassar.edu Training and Supervising Analyst, William Alanson White Institute. Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Poughkeepsie and Manhattan Offices. Specializing in intensive long- and short-term work with problems of anxiety, depression, relationships, career, illness, gay, straight, lesbian and transgender issues. Consultation by appointment.
Emily L. Fucheck, Psy.D. Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 380-0023 Licensed psychologist. Doctorate in clinical psychology, post-doctoral training focused on adolescents and young adults, post-doctoral candidate for certification in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Offering psychotherapeutic work for adults and adolescents. Additional opportunities available for intensive psychoanalytic treatment at substantial fee reduction. Located across from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie.
Psychotherapy Amy R. Frisch, CSWR New Paltz, NY (845) 706-0229 Psychotherapist. Individual, family, and group sessions for adolescents and adults. Currently accepting registration for Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a Girl Thing: an expressive arts therapy group for adolescent girls, and Something New! The Mother/Daughter Connection: a parenting support group for women with teen daughters. Most
Debra Budnik, CSW-R New Paltz, NY (845) 255-4218 Traditional insight-oriented psychotherapy for long- or short-term work. Aimed at identifying
Dianne Weisselberg, MSW, LMSW (845) 688-7205 dweisselberg@hvc.rr.com Individual Therapy, Grief Work and Personal Mythology. Stuck? Overwhelmed? Frustrated? Depressed? THERE IS ANOTHER WAY! Dianne Weisselberg has over 16 years experience in the field of Counseling and over 8 years of training in Depth Psychology. Sliding Scale fees.
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Irene Humbach, LCSW, PC (845) 485-5933 Body of Wisdom Counseling and Healing Services. See also Body-Centered Therapy directory.
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Janne Dooley, LCSW, Brigidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Well New Paltz, NY (347) 834-5081 JanneDooley@gmail.com Brigidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Well is a psychotherapy and healing practice helping people grow individually and in community. Janne Dooley specializes in healing trauma, relationship issues, recovery, co-dependency, and inner child work. Janne is trained in Gestalt, Family Systems and EMDR. Groups forming: Counscious Parenting,and Guided Imagery, Celtic and Native American Shamanism.
Judy Swallow, MA, LCAT, TEP
OUTLINES
25 Harrington Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-5613
Julie Zweig, MA, NYS Licensed Mental Health Counselor New Paltz, NY (845) 255-3566 julieezweig@gmail.com Verbal Body-Centered Psychotherapy, for individuals, couples and families. Julie has 20 years of experience as a therapist, with many areas of expertise. Although Julie also practices Rosen Method Bodywork, this verbal modality does not involve touch. It is termed â&#x20AC;&#x153;body-centered,â&#x20AC;? as the breath and muscle tension of the client is observed visually to enhance and deepen the work.
Acupuncture by M.D.
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(845) 626-4895 or (212) 714-8125 www.psychicallyspeaking.com gail@psychicallyspeaking.com Psychic Consultations by Gail Petronio, internationally renowned psychic. Over 25 years experience. It is my sincere hope to offer my intuitive abilities and insights as a means to provide awareness of oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life and destiny. Sessions are conducted in person or by telephone.
and changing self-defeating attitudes and behaviors, underlying anxiety, depression, and relationship problems. Sliding scale, most insurances accepted including Medicare/Medicaid. NYS-licensed. Experience working with trauma victims, including physical and sexual abuse. Educator on mental health topics. Located in New Paltz, one mile from SUNY.
Hoon J. Park, MD, P.C. Board Cer tified in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation "VUP BOE +PC *OKVSJFT t "SUISJUJT t 4USPLFT t /FDL #BDL BOE +PJOU 1BJO t $BSQBM 5VOOFM 4ZOESPNF
K. Melissa Waterman, LCSW Dooley Square, 35 Main Street, #333, Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 464-8910 therapist.psychologytoday.com/52566 My goal is to encourage and guide you to find and live from your own place of joy. I have experience helping with depression, anxiety, trauma resolution, negative thinking, spirituality issues, work, and relationship problems.
Kent Babcock, MSW, LMSWâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Counseling & Psychotherapy (845) 679-5511, ext. 304 kentagram@gmail.com Each personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s therapy is an organic process of self-exploration and discovery, unfolding uniquely according to our different personalities. Through conversation and reflection, this process can begin at any point. It can focus upon any life struggle or topic, from practical or relationship issues to existential or spiritual concerns. Short- or long-term; sliding scale.
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298-6060
4PVUI 3PBE 8BQQJOHFST 'BMMT /: ½ mile south of Galleria Mall
MOST INSURANCE ACCEPTED INCLUDING MEDICARE, NO FAULT, AND WORKERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S COMPENSATION
the Sanctuary A Place for Healing
845.255.3337 â&#x2C6;&#x2122; 5 Academy Street, New Paltz â&#x2C6;&#x2122; www.newpaltzsanctuary.com
Counseling & Psychotherapy
Integrated Bodywork/Massage
Ariella Morris, LCSW-R 853-3325 EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, Body-Centered Talk Therapy
Annie Serrante, LMSW, lmt 255-3337 ext. 1 Series Specials & Massage of the Month Club
Laura Coffey, MFA, LMSW Rosendale, NY (845) 399-0319 undefinedreading@gmail.com Family Therapist specializing in Narrative Therapy. Practice includes eclectic interventions tailored to suit individual clientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needs. Healing conversations for the entire family, gerentological services for the elderly and support
Gentle Yoga Classes
Resonance repatterning
Jennifer Hunderfund, RYT, LMT Mon. 5:30-7pm & Fri. 12pm-1pm
donna bruscHi 255-7459 Positive Change *Overcoming Fears
NVC, Spontaneous Theatre, Inner Voice Drawing, &Vocal Visionary Workshops 4/09 ChronograM whole living directory
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for caretakers. Grief counseling, motivational interviewing for substance abuse, couples work, LGBT issues, PTSD and childhood trauma, depression, anxiety and performance anxiety. Fee: $25.00 a clinical hour.
Meg F. Schneider, MA, LCSW Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-8808 www.megfschneiderlcsw.com I work with adolescents and adults struggling with depression, anxiety, anger, eating disordered behaviors, loneliness and life transitions. I’ve helped teens and adults with substance abuse and trauma connected to physical, emotional and sexual abuse. My approach is psychodynamic, linking the painful past with current and cognitive problems which reframes negative beliefs allowing for positive outcomes. I also practice EMDR, a technique for relieving distress by exploring critical memories.
Radiology DRA Imaging (845) 454-4700
Resorts & Spas Honor’s Haven Resort & Spa 1195 Arrowhead Road, Ellenville, NY (845) 210-3119 Natural healing and the modern educational breakthrough of Brain Education, a systemized method that develops brain potentials and enhances brain function, is the foundation of our wellness programs. Offered to you in the luxurious Honor’s Haven Resort & Spa.
whole living directory
Retreat Centers
Patricia Lee Rode, MA, CCC-SLP (646) 729-6633 Speech Language Pathologist with over ten years experience providing diagnostic/therapeutic services for children/adults with speech/ language delays, and neurological disorders. Specializing in Autistic Spectrum Disorders, PDD, ADHD, memory, and language related disorders. Trained in P.R.O.M.P.T., and Hippotherapy. Offer individual therapy and social skills groups. Offices in NYC/Rhinebeck.
Spiritual Flowing Spirit Healing 33 Mill Hill Road, Woodstock, NY (845) 679-8989 flowingspirit.com Jwalzer@flowingspirit.com
Structural Integration Hudson Valley Structural Integration 26 East Market Street, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-4654 www.hudsonvalleysi.com Ryan Flowers and Krisha Showalter are NY State Licensed Massage Therapists with additional Certification in Structural Integration and Visceral Osteopathic Manipulation. We specialize in chronic pain conditions, structural/postural alignment and function. We are committed to providing soft tissue manipulation that is communicative and receptive to the individual. Free Consultations.
Tarot
Breema Center www.breema.com center@breema.com
Rosen Method Bodywork
C LASSICAL A CUPUNCTURE & C HINESE H ERBS dylana accolla
m.s.,l.aC.
Kingston (845) 853-7353 D Y L A N A @ M I N D S P R I N G . COM
Susan DeStefano
Julie Zweig, MA, Certified Rosen Method Bodywork Practitioner and NYS Licensed Mental Health Counselor New Paltz, NY (845) 255-3566 www.RosenMethod.com julieezweig@gmail.com The Rosen practitioner focuses on chronic muscle tension and constricted breathing. With gentle, direct touch; unconscious feelings, attitudes, and memories may emerge, allowing the client to recognize the purpose of unconscious tension. Old patterns may be released, freeing the client to experience more aliveness, well-being, and new choices in life.
Schools Institute for Integrative Nutrition (877) 730-5444 www.integrativenutrition.com admissions@integrativenutrition.com Study at the largest nutrition school featuring live weekend classes in New York City with the world’s leaders in health and wellness.
Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (650) 493-4430 ext. 268 www.itp.edu
Smoking Cessation ONDAMED®
845.255.6482 80
Speech Language Pathology
whole living directory ChronograM 4/09
(845) 876-5556 The ONDAMED® protocol has been used worldwide with remarkable results. In just a few visits, patients stop smoking and free themselves of their nicotine addiction. The ONDAMED® can identify energetic disturbances that occur as a result of nicotine. “In only 1-3 sessions, 95% of our clients stop smoking.”
Tarot-on-the-Hudson—Rachel Pollack Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-5797 rachel@rachelpollack.com Exploratory, experiential play with the Tarot as oracle and sacred tool, in a monthly class, with Certified Tarot Grand Master and international Tarot author Rachel Pollack. All levels welcome. Tarot Readings in person or by phone.
Yoga Ashtanga Yoga of New Paltz 71 Main Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 430-7402 www.ashtangaofnewpaltz.com Offering Ashtanga/Vinyasa style yoga classes for all levels seven days a week. This style of yoga is both therapeutic and dance-like. By first warming up the body naturally we can stretch safely, gaining an understanding of how to move from our core. We also offer “Community Yoga Classes” which are by donation.
Jai Ma Yoga Center 69 Main Street, Suite 20, New Paltz, NY (845) 256-0465 www.jmyoga.com Established in 1999, Jai Ma Yoga Center offers a wide array of Yoga classes, seven days a week. Classes are in the lineages of Anusara, Iyengar, and Sivananda, with certified and experienced instructors. Private consultations and Therapeutics available. Owners Gina Bassinette and Ami Hirschstein have been teaching locally since 1995.
Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health Lenox, MA 1 (800) 741-7353 kripalu.org
The Living Seed 521 Main Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-8212 www.thelivingseed.com
charles harris
the forecast
event listings for april 2009
“Appendages,” an exhibition of sculptures by John Cleater, will be shown at Nicole Fiacco Gallery through April 11.
Down the Drain Bathroom plumbing has been a “fixture” of modern art ever since 1917, when Marcel Duchamp, in a spirit of playful impudence, submitted a urinal on a pedestal to an invitational exhibition of sculpture. With that paradoxically original gesture, he invented the readymade and radically transformed our conception of the art object. From that day forward, art has ceased to be a kind of thing and become, rather, a way of looking at a thing. Of course, many things that are not (necessarily) art can also be beautiful. During a residency at the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, artist John Cleater, a Hudson resident, was seduced by the sheer beauty of the pristine surfaces produced through the industrial manufacture of the bathroom and kitchen fixtures for which the Kohler company is known. Cleater, whose background is in experimental architecture and has worked on projects for such internationally acclaimed figures such as Daniel Liebeskind and Vito Acconci, has an eye for ambiguously provocative forms and sexy curves. Taking cues from Kohler’s product line of sinks, tubs, toilets, and drains, he abstracted these shapes, using a 3-D computer design program, to create the organic forms that would become his sculptures. In his own words, Cleater “was interested in revealing hidden views of these common products by extracting, stretching, and reconfiguring them until they were no longer recognizable as product.” Produced in cast iron at Kohler, the objects are enameled in the pink, brown, and pale green of the typical bathroom fixture. All roughly the size of your average kitchen sink, the colors and surfaces wedded to these shapes produce the effect of a kind of vulgar elegance. This pieces in this series of works titled “Appendages” all hang on the wall like
paintings, but their palpable weight and projection from the wall take them into sculpture’s territory. Many of them also include a literal drain, engraved with the Kohler name, which implies not only the hole down which our quotidian wastes disappear but also, in an abstract way, bodily orifices. The Appendages are fabricated in a handful of unique shapes, and Cleater rings changes on each in terms of surface, color, and orientation, as well as several “options” such as LCD displays and built-in webcams visible through the hole of the drain. The body is evoked explicitly with the aptly titled The Last Giant Squid Sperm, whose biomorphic shape is suggestive of a creature with head and tail. One model, in chrome, includes the video display of an iPod visible in the drain, in which, as one gazes into it, a video image of the artist’s eye can be seen blinking back. The cool, clean interior of the gallery space, itself a big box, provides an ideal foil for the installation of these works, making explicit the repressed nature of the contemporary art gallery as glorified product showroom. Finally, whether or not it was the artist’s intention—and one trusts it was not—these works serve as apt metaphors for the current global economic crisis, as every day we watch trillions of dollars of wealth going “down the drain.” Given the volatility of the stock market, the wisest investment may be to buy the drain. “Appendages,” an exhibition of John Cleater’s sculptures, will be on view through April 11 at Nicole Fiacco Gallery in Hudson. (518) 828-5090; www.nicolefiaccogallery.com. —Jeff Crane
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The DREAMING GODDESS Offering the Most Unique Jewelry, Gift Ideas & Apparel in the Hudson Valley Magical Gifts that Inspire Distinctive Sterling Silver Jewelry Crystals â&#x20AC;˘ Shamanic Tools â&#x20AC;˘ Incense 100â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s of Tarot Decks, Oracles & Talismans
Something dreamy for everyone 9 Collegeview Avenue, Poughkeepsie, NY 845.473.2206 www.DreamingGoddess.com
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WEDNESDAY 1 Body / Mind / Spirit Breast Cancer Options Peer Support Group 1pm-2:30pm. East Fishkill Community Library, Hopewell Junction. 339-4673. Breast Cancer Options Peer Support Group 6pm-7:30pm. Orange Regional Medical Center, Middletown. 339-4673. Breast Cancer Options Peer Support Group 6pm-7:30pm. St. James Church Library, Chatham. 339-4673. Projective Dream Work 6:30pm-8:30pm. $10. Mirabai Books, Woodstock. 679-2100.
Modern Dance Call for times. Classes with the Hudson Valley Modern Dance Cooperative. $15/$12 members. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559. Art and Drawing Class Call for times. $15. Hudson Valley Guild and Book Trader, Saugerties. 246-7205. Printmaking 9:30am-11:30am. Newburgh JCC, Newburgh. 561-6602. Garage Band Lesson 6pm-7pm. Center for Creative Education, Kingston. 338-7664.
Events
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Yoshiko Chuma & The School of Hard Knocks 2pm. Open Rehearsal. Kaatsaaban International Dance Center, Tivoli. 757-5106.
Music Open Mike Call for times. Mezzaluna Cafè, Saugerties. 246-5306. Elly Wininger 6:30pm. High Falls Cafè, High Falls. 687-2699. Stanton Warren 7pm-9pm. Singer/songwriter. Inquiring Mind/Muddy Cup, Saugerties. 246-5775. Keith Prayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Big Soul Ensemble 9pm. Tessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Lark Tavern, Albany. (518) 463-9779.
The Outdoors
Classes
African Drum 7pm-8pm. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
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Dance
Cultural Diversity Day 1pm-2:30pm. Vanderlyn Hall, Stone Ridge. (984) 568-7526.
Kids Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Art Lessons 4:15pm-5:15pm. Newburgh JCC, Newburgh. 561-6602.
Ranger Hike 10am-2pm. Esopus Meadows Point Preserve, Esopus. 473-4440 ext. 270.
Spoken Word Psychology Colloquium 4:30pm-5:30pm. Exchange views on various areas of psychological research. Preston Hall, Annandale-onHudson. 758-7222. Randy Cornelius: The Science of Emotion 5pm. Vassar College Bookstore, Poughkeepsie. 437-5871. Sexual Politics of Meat Slide Show 5:30pm. Feminist and vegetarian activist Carol Adams. Villard Room, Vassar, Poughkeepsie. 437-5370. Video Games and 21st Century Learning 5:30pm. James Gee. Sanders Auditorium, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 437-5370. From the Shawangunks to the Catskills 7pm. Poetry reading by Will Nixon & Matthew J. Spireng. Elting Memorial Library, New Paltz. 255-5030. Lucette Lagnado 7:30pm. Reading and discussion of The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit. $20/$15. Temple Beth-El, Poughkeepsie. 454-0570.
Theater Metamorphoses 8pm. Powerhouse Theater, Poughkeepsie. 437-5599.
Music Noontime Concert Series 12pm. Music department concert while viewing works in the gallery. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie. 437-5632. Open Blues Jam 8:45pm. 12 Grapes Music and Wine Bar, Peekskill. (914) 737-6624.
Workshops Adult Workshop Series: Reducing Energy Consumption 7pm-8:30pm. $12.95. Hudson Highlands Nature Museumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Outdoor Discovery Center, Cornwall-onHudson. 534-5506 ext. 204.
Dr. DJ Mr. Karaoke 9pm. Barking Frog, Beacon. 831-1337.
Spoken Word Beyond Classification 5:30pm. LeDerick Horne discusses living with a learning disability. Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 452-7067.
Workshops How to Avoid Disaster in Uncertain Times 9am-11am. New Paltz Regional Chamber of Commerce. Small Business Development Center, Kingston. 255-0243. Peer Critiquing Group for Writers 4pm-6pm. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331.
THURSDAY 2 Art Clay Shop 4pm-5pm. 8-week class for ages 5-15. $160/$145 members. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559. Late Night at the Lehman Loeb 5pm-9pm. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie. 437-5632.
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forecast ChronograM 4/09
The Road to Scholarships: Parent & Student Preparations 6:30pm-8:30pm. Presented by the Mill Street Loft. $75. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331.
Body / Mind / Spirit
FRIDAY 3 Art Haitian Art Sale and Auction Call for times. Vassar College Centerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Multi-Purpose Room, Poughkeepsie. 437-5370. Paintings by Sara Nelson 5pm-7pm. Unison Gallery, New Paltz. 266-0919. Lucinda Sisniega Abra: Selected Solo Show 6pm-8pm. Lifebridge Sanctuary, Rosendale. 338-6418. Botanicals, Still Life & Land Journeys 2009 6pm-8pm. Annual student watercolor workshop show. Betsy Jacaruso Gallery, Red Hook. 758-9244.
Dance Turn: Return 8pm. Lauren Hale Dance. $15/$12 seniors and students. Philipstown Depot Theater, Garrison. 424-3900.
Events Vegan Wine Dinner Call for times. New World Home Cooking, Saugerties. 246-0900. Rhinebeck Pilates New Studio Opening Party 5pm-7:30pm. Contests, games, massages, kidsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; activities. Rhinebeck Pilates, Rhinebeck. 876-5686.
Film Dirty Harry 7:30pm. Ulster Performing Arts Center, Kingston. 339-6088.
Breast Cancer Options Peer Support Group 6pm-7:30pm. Palenville Branch Library, Palenville. 339-4673.
Music
Classes
Jules & Rick Orchestra 7pm-9pm. Inquiring Mind/Muddy Cup, Saugerties. 246-5775.
Euro Dance for Seniors and Others Call for times. $5/$8 couple. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559. Organic Gardening for Garden and Containers 6pm-9pm. $3. Business Resource Center, Kingston. 339-2025. Ballroom Dancing Class 7pm-8pm. $10. Newburgh JCC, Newburgh. 561-6602.
Tracy Nelson Band Call for times. Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling. 855-1300.
Nona Hendryx 7:30pm. Dangerous Music Series. GE Theater at Proctors, Schenectady. (518) 434-1703. Phoenicia Phirst Phriday 7:30pm. Featuring acoustic folk trio Gathering Time and A.J. Shanti. $3. Arts Upstairs, Phoenicia. 688-2142.
The Six Wealth-Building Principles of Feng Shui 7pm-8pm. Pawling Free Library, Pawling. 855-3444.
Deuces Child 8pm. 2 Alices Coffee Lounge, Cornwall-On-Hudson. 534-4717.
Life Drawing Classes 7:30pm-9:30pm. Studies in life drawing. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
Emerging Artists Series 8pm. Dorian Spencer and Susan Enan. $18/$15. Bodles Opera House, Chester. 469-4595.
spoken word luc sante Peter Mauney/Bard College
On the Down-Low Anyone who’s ever lived in New York—or even spent a mere afternoon there— absolutely must read Low Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Luc Sante’s 1991 debut and best-selling history of the city’s untamed beginnings. In prose as dark and blunt as a Bowery thug’s blackjack, Sante, who will lecture at Vassar College on April 6, starts with the city’s settlement by the Dutch and follows its basest path of physical and social evolution into the early 20th century, acting as the bottom-feeding tour guide to a forgotten world of opium dens, suicide saloons, humanity-stuffed tenements, interchangeable cops and con men, and rat fights as entertainment. Sante has also authored Evidence (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992), an album of the artfully macabre crime scene photographs he unearthed during the research for Low Life; The Factory of Facts (Vintage, 1999), a memoir; and Kill All Your Darlings (Yeti Books, 2007), an anthology of essays and articles. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Grammy for his liner notes to the 1997 reissue of The Anthology of American Folk Music (Smithsonian Folkways Records), Sante, who currently teaches writing and the history of photography at Bard College, has also served as the film critic for Interview, the photography critic for the New Republic, the book critic for New York, and as the historical consultant for Martin Scorcese’s Gangs of New York. On April 6 he will speak at Vassar College’s Spitzer Auditorium in Poughkeepsie as part of the institution’s Public Voices lecture series. (845) 437-5370; www.vassar.edu. —Peter Aaron
At a recent reading you mentioned that you started out as a poet, which, given your succinct and descriptive style, certainly makes sense. Do you still write poems? I stopped writing poetry a long time ago. The road forked, and I went down the branch marked “Prose.” And I don’t ever want to see any of my old poems again.
to do to impose its will, and obviously no previous era built so much so high. And the corporate ethos that drove all that business was also about getting the most from the least, so the gaudiness of the recent past was matched by its shoddiness—whatever the failings of the late 19th-/early 20th-century robber barons, at least they built to last. The '80s/'90s/2000s will leave really lousy ruins.
At the same reading you also explained how you see Low Life and your other history-themed works as being something separate from nostalgia, which they are often branded as. Could you reprise your ideology on this for our readers? Nostalgia is the name people give to the bargain they strike between ignorance of the future, discomfort with the present, and fear of the future. Because of this, it’s very easy for any interest in the past to be slagged off as a manifestation of that fear and discomfort, especially since it lets people off the hook of their ignorance. But the past, despite the best intentions of many, remains alive. Or (as Faulkner famously put it in Requiem for a Nun), “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
In addition to playing drums in bands during your early years in Manhattan, you wrote lyrics for the Del-Byzanteens, a postpunk group that also featured future filmmaker and Hudson Valley resident Jim Jarmusch. Are you still in touch with Jarmusch? Have you thought about collaborating with him on some kind of project? I see Jarmusch all the time—we’ve been friends for more than 35 years. We started collaborating on a movie long ago, but it was fatally interrupted by Wim Wenders giving him a bunch of leftover 35mm stock. He made Stranger Than Paradise instead. Anyway, we’re both control freaks. Any attempt at collaboration would probably result in a bloodbath.
It seems that everyone, myself included, loves to bemoan the fact that New York has had all the soul sucked out of it by gentrification and been smoothed down to a high-gloss, post-Giuliani, Disneyesque nub. One of Low Life’s central themes, however, is that New York is an environment that is constantly reinventing itself, a town literally built on the bones of its past. Still, I wonder if even you could have foreseen the level of change that’s occurred since Low Life was first published in 1991. Time will tell how it all shakes out, but the reshaping of New York, at least Manhattan, over the past 25 years or so is notable for the sheer scale and amount of demolition, as well as construction. No previous era had that much destroying
When did your interest in photography come about? Does it predate your writing career? How does one discipline nurture the other? I’ve had a visceral connection to photography since high school, when I found in the library the Time-Life book called Documentary Photography, which introduced me to Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, etc. I didn’t write about the subject until my book Evidence, an unintended offshoot of Low Life, but it has endured since as a fertile subject. In September, Yeti Books will publish Folk Photography, a study of the American “realphoto” postcards made mostly between 1905 and 1930. The funny thing is that I don’t take pictures, not even snapshots, really, and never have been tempted to.
One of your books, Novels in Three Lines (NYRB Classics, 2007), is a translation of works by the French journalist and anarchist Felix Feneon. How did you come to discover Feneon and what is it about his writings that compelled you to chronicle them? I picked up a small paperback selection of Feneon’s nouvelles in Paris a few years ago and read the whole thing in a single Metro ride. It was perfect for me: my flea-size attention span, my interest in the dark side of daily life, in the early 20th century, in popular journalism, and the pieces definitely have a resemblance to photographs. I understand you’re now working on a book about Paris, which you say isn’t necessarily the Parisian equivalent of Low Life. Could you give us a taste of what to expect? It’s an attempt to reconcile the Paris of story and song and the real Paris. Having said that, of course, I then think: “Which real Paris?” There are dozens if not hundreds, even now, let alone over the course of the centuries. Anyway, it’s about fashion—in that word’s various senses—and revolt, and the theater of the streets, and the friction among classes, as well as crime, vice, ambition, idealism, glamour, etc. It’s a 17-layer cake. There have been some fine books written about the historical obscurities of the Hudson Valley, by the late Alf Evers in particular. But I’d bet your take would be much different. Have you considered sticking your shovel into the rich, bone-laden soil of upstate New York? Well, you never know, but these things take a long time to marinate. I first saw New York City in 1959 and Paris in 1963, whereas I didn’t come up to this area until the mid ’90s. If I’m still around in 2030—and the Mayans were wrong about 2012—maybe I’ll be ready for my Kingston book then.
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Hudson Valley Songwriters Show Case 8pm-10pm. Emily Wininger, Rich Gedney and Michele Rubin. $10/$8 members. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
Body / Mind / Spirit
The Erin Hobson Compact 8pm. Hyde Park Brewing Company, Hyde Park. 229-8277.
SpiritPlay Open Session 10:30am-12:15pm. Woodstock, Woodstock. 679-4140.
Hudson Valley Songwriters Showcase 8pm. Kelly Flint, Kurt Henry and Montgomery Delaney. $10/$8 members. Unison Arts and Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559. Haywire 8:30pm. Gail’s Place, Newburgh. 567-1414. MH2 8:30pm. Rock. Pamela’s on the Hudson, Newburgh. 562-4505. Woody Guthrie Tribute 9pm. Bearsville Theater, Woodstock. 679-4406. No Jack Sunday: Maiden Voyage 10pm. Rock. Big Easy Bistro, Newburgh. 565-3939. Sanctuary - Iron Maiden Tribute 10pm. The Celtic House, Fishkill. 896-1110.
The Outdoors Toddler Stroll 9:30am-11am. Poets’ Walk, Red Hook. 473-4440 ext. 273.
Spoken Word Aging in the New Economy 10:30am-2:30pm. Hudson Hall, Mount Saint Mary, Newburgh. 569-3405. Celebrating Marbletown 6pm. Poetry reading by Matthew J. Spireng. Stone Ridge Library, Stone Ridge. 687-7023.
Theater Act 2 Auditions for The Diary of Anne Frank 3pm-6pm. Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-8731. Metamorphoses 8pm. Powerhouse Theater, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 437-5599. Community Playback Theatre 8pm. Improvisations of audience stories. $8. Boughton Place, Highland. 691-4118. Shorts on the Lake 8pm. New works by area playwrights. Lake Carmel Art Center, Kent. 225-3856. The Tempest 8pm. $20/$18 children and seniors. Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-3080.
Workshops Writing Club 2:45pm-4:45pm. Hudson Valley Guild and Book Trader, Saugerties. 246-7205.
SATURDAY 4 Art Haitian Art Sale and Auction Call for times. College Center’s Multi-Purpose Room, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 437-5370. Visions from the Collective Unconscious 3pm-7pm. A retrospective spanning 65 years: artwork of Lydia Strawbridge. John’s Custom Framing, New Windsor. 534-3349. The River 4pm-6pm. Solo show by Michael J. Heinrich, works by Rosalind Robertson. Woodstock Artists Association and Museum, Woodstock. 679-2940. Schuilbunkers 5pm-7pm. Kingston Museum of Contemporary Art, Kingston. www.kmoca.org. Abstract Paintings by Tracy Helgeson. 5pm-7pm. Harrison Gallery, Williamstown, MA. (413) 458-1700. Elements and Inks 5pm-7pm. Works by Dan Burkholder. Galerie BMG, Woodstock. 679-0027.
Freestyle Frolic 8:30pm-1am. Wide range of music spun by eclectic DJ’s. $5/$2 teens and seniors/children free. Knights of Columbus, Kingston.
Events Chocolate, Wine & Music Festival 10am-5pm. Live music, demos, tastings, Easter Bunny, and face painting. $5/children free. John S. Burke Catholic H.S., Goshen. 291-0953. 21st Annual Beaux Arts Ball 6:30pm-12am. Black tie fundraising event for the Greene County Council on the Arts. Copper Tree Restaurant, Hunter. (518) 943-3400.
Film Film Screening of Cake Eaters Call for times. WAMC Linda Norris Auditorium, Albany. (518) 465-5233.
Kids Skyhunters in Flight with Brian Bradley 11am. $6-$9. Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-3080.
Music Kidtopia 11am. House band Ratboy Junior with a special guest each week. Utopia Soundstage, Woodstock. 331-6949. Senior Recital 1:30pm. Jacob St. John, cello and drums, assisted by Anna Polonsky, piano. Martel Theater, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 437-5902. Chrissy 2pm. Acoustic. Taste Budd’s Chocolate and Coffee Cafe, Red Hook. 758-6500. Radio Days 6pm. Steelhouse, Kingston. 338-7847. Danny Paisley and the Southern Grass 7pm. Bluegrass. $15/$10 members. Hyde Park United Methodist Church, Hyde Park. The Jesse Janes 7pm. Acoustic. Inquiring Mind/Muddy Cup, Saugerties. 246-5775. Girls with Glasses in a Bookstore 7:30pm. Elly Wininger and The Jesse Janes, Peggy Atwood, Terri Massardo. Inquiring Mind/Muddy Cup, Saugerties. 246-5775. Judith Tulloch 8pm. 2 Alices Coffee Lounge, Cornwall-On-Hudson. 534-4717. Vassar College Women’s Chorus 8pm. Martel Theater, Poughkeepsie. 437-5902. Prana with Baird Hersey 8pm. Unison Arts and Learning Cent, New Paltz. 255-1559. Shorty King’s Clubhouse 8pm. High Falls Cafe, High Falls. 687-2699. Stayin’ Alive 8pm. A tribute to the Bee Gees & 70’s Disco. $25. Lycian Center, Sugar Loaf. 469-2287. Judith Tulloch 8pm. 2 Alices Coffee Lounge, Cornwall-On-Hudson. 534-4717. Off Hour Rockers 8:30pm. The Harp & Whistle Restaurant and Pub, Newburgh. 565-4277. Last Conspirators 9pm. With Bishop and Blackcat Elliot. $5. Jason’s Upstairs Bar, Hudson. (518) 828-8787. Liquid Ernie 9pm. Rock. Dave’s Coffee House, Saugerties. 246-8424. The Trapps 10pm. The Chance Theater, Poughkeepsie. 486-0223.
The Outdoors Ecology and People of the Shawangunks Call for times. Mohonk Preserve, New Paltz. 255-0919.
Duet Again: Paintings and Photographs by Susan Daly Voss and John Voss 5pm-8pm. Wallkill River School and Art Gallery, Montgomery. 457-ARTS.
History and Practice of Gunks Rock Climbing Call for times. Mohonk Preserve, New Paltz. 255-0919.
Five Artists/Five Media 5pm-8pm. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331. Watercolor by Staats Fasoldt 5pm-8pm. Duck Pond Gallery, Port Ewen. 338-5580 Fran O’Neill 6pm-8pm. John Davis Gallery, Hudson. (518) 828-5907. Sacred Ground 6pm-8pm. Marlene Wiedenbaum, Thomas Locker and Jeff Briggs. Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson. (518) 828-1915.
forecast ChronograM 4/09
Dance
Mimi Czajka Graminski: The Spaces Between 5pm-7pm. The Gallery at R & F, Kingston. 331-3112.
Audrey Steinhorn Photography: Natural Beauty Revealed 5pm-8pm. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331.
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Divine Light Infusion Call for times. Private consultations. Sage Center for the Healing Arts, Woodstock. 679-5650.
Mohonk Preserve Singles and Sociables Hike: Rhododendron Bridge 10am-3pm. Mohonk Preserve, New Paltz. 255-0919.
Spoken Word Magnetizing Downtowns and Historic Areas Click for times. $40. Hudson Valley Smart Growth Alliance, Kingston. www.sustainhv.org Elizabeth Cunningham 10:30am. Author of Bright Dark Madonna. Merritt Bookstore, Millbrook. 677-5857. Mid-Hudson Psychology Research Conference 12pm-4pm. $5. Hudson Hall, Newburgh. 569-3161. Poetry on the Loose Reading/Performance Series 4pm. Featuring Sharon Butler. Baby Grand Bookstore, Warwick. 294-8085.
Kati Garcia-Renart 8pm-9pm. Lecture and flamenco demonstration. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331.
The Tempest 3pm. $20/$18 children and seniors. Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-3080.
Theater
Workshops
The Rehearsal 6:30pm. $60. Colden Manor, Montgomery. (914) 475-5184.
Life Drawing 10am-1pm. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438.
Metamorphoses 8pm. Powerhouse Theater, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 437-5599.
Pleasures of Pregnancy Workshop 2pm-4pm. $10. Waddle n Swaddle, Poughkeepsie. 473-5952.
Capitol Steps 8pm. American political satire group. $20-$35. Main Stage at Proctors, Schenectady. (518) 434-1703. Shorts on the Lake 8pm. New works by area playwrights. Lake Carmel Art Center, Kent. 225-3856. The Tempest 8pm. $20/$18 children and seniors. Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-3080.
Workshops Empowering Your Soul 2pm-4pm. $15/$20. Mirabai Books, Woodstock. 679-2100.
SUNDAY 5 Art Haitian Art Sale and Auction Call for times. Vassar College Center’s Multi-Purpose Room, Poughkeepsie. 437-5370. Community Art Show 2pm-4pm. Newburgh Free Library, Newburgh. 563-3619. Sam Spanier (1925-2008) 2pm-4pm. Unison Arts and Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-0919.
MONDAY 6 Body / Mind / Spirit Reiki Circle 6:30pm-8pm. $10. Mirabai Books, Woodstock. 679-2100.
Events Railroad Street Youth Project Call for times. Dinner program. $50. Pearl’s Restaurant, Great Barrington, MA. (413) 528-7767.
Music Special Guest Recital and Master Class 12pm. Kelli O’Hara. Martel Theater, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 437-5902. Celtic Session 7:30pm. Traditional Irish music. New World Home Cooking, Saugerties. 246-0900.
Spoken Word Lecture by Luc Sante 6pm. Sanders Auditorium, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 437-5370. Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks 6pm. Students’ Building, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 437-5370.
Body / Mind / Spirit The Journey From the Center to the Page Call for times. Yoga As Muse for authentic writing retreat. $300. Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, Lenox, MA. (800) 741-7353. Public Meditation 10:30am-12:30pm. Sky Lake Lodge, Rosendale. 658-8556. Reiki I Training 1pm-5pm. The Dreaming Goddess, Poughkeepsie. 473-2206. Dream Circle 2pm-5pm. Explore these messages from our unconscious, for deep growth & wholeness. Miriam’s Well, Saugerties. 246-5805.
Dance Swing Dance Jam 6:30pm-9pm. Lesson at 6pm. $5. Arlington Reformed Church, Poughkeepsie. 339-3032.
Music Marina Day & Adam La Motte 12pm. Acoustic. Taste Budd’s Chocolate and Coffee Cafe, Red Hook. 758-6500. Chrissy Budzinksi 1pm-3pm. Folk. Inquiring Mind/Muddy Cup, Saugerties. 246-5775. Vassar College and Community Wind Ensemble 3pm. Martel Theater, Poughkeepsie. 437-5902. VOICE VI—An Evening of A Cappella 3pm. Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA. (413) 528-0100. Pacifica String Quartet 4pm. Mendelssohn program. $30/$10. Howland Cultural Center, Beacon. 831-4988. Erik Lawrence 7pm-9pm. Jazz. Inquiring Mind/Muddy Cup, Saugerties. 246-5775. The Lee Shaw Trio with John Medeski 7:30pm. $24. The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845.
The Outdoors Mohonk Preserve Singles and Sociables Hike: Compass Rock 10am-3pm. 6-mile hike. Meet at the Coxing Trailhead, New Paltz. 255-0919.
Spoken Word Gallery Talk by Artist Michael J. Heinrich 2pm. Woodstock Artists Association and Museum, Woodstock. 679-2940. The Natural Divinity of the Hudson River 2pm. $6. Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill. (518) 943-7465. Reading and Book Signing by Sybil Rosen 5pm. Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze Foley. Inquiring Mind Bookstore, New Paltz. 255-8300.
TUESDAY 7 Body / Mind / Spirit Spirit Readings with Psychic Medium Adam Bernstein Call for times. $40/$75. Mirabai Books, Woodstock. 679-2100. Drop-In Meditation 5:30pm-7:30pm. Sage Center for the Healing Arts, Woodstock. 679-5650. Public Meditation and Dharma Talk 6pm-8:30pm. Sun, Moon, Heart: The Teachings of Chinese Pictograms. $5. Sky Lake Lodge, Rosendale. 658-8556. Breast Cancer Options Peer Support Group 6:30pm-8pm. Ellenville Public Library, Ellenville. 339-4673.
Kids Crafts for Tots 10:30am-11:30am. Hudson Valley Guild and Book Trader, Saugerties. 246-7205. Children’s Springtime Tea 12pm-2pm. $15/$12 children. Mount Gulian Historic Site, Beacon. 831-8172.
Music Conservatory Noon Concert Series 12pm. Conservatory students in concert. Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7216. Community Music Night 8pm-9:45pm. Six local singer-songwriters. Rosendale Cafe, Rosendale. 658-9048.
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Student Honors Recital 8pm. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-3880.
The Outdoors Nature on the Run 5:30pm-6pm. Three-mile runs along the preserve’s scenic trails. Shaupeneak Ridge, Esopus. 473-4440 ext. 273.
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Spoken Word Almost Forgotten U.S. Female Playwrights, 1770-1860 4pm. Villa Library, Mt. St. Mary, Newburgh. 569-3179.
Workshops Unleash Your Comedy Power Stuff 10am-12pm. Workshop for de-stressing. Olympic Diner, Kingston. 246-5348. Playwrights Lab 6:30pm. Hear readings of your work performed by actors. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331.
WEDNESDAY 8
Theater
Body / Mind / Spirit
Shorts on the Lake 3pm. New works by area playwrights. Lake Carmel Art Center, Kent. 225-3856.
Reiki Healing Circle for Practitioners 9:30am-10:30am. The Dreaming Goddess, Poughkeepsie. 473-2206.
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ASO L I M O U S I N E S E RV I C E
Classes
Workshops
Modern Dance Call for times. Classes with the Hudson Valley Modern Dance Cooperative. $15/$12 members. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
Senior Writing Workshop 2pm. Woodstock Community Center, Woodstock. 679-2880.
Art and Drawing Class Call for times. $15. Hudson Valley Guild and Book Trader, Saugerties. 246-7205.
Adult Workshop: Global Warming 7pm-8:30pm. Hudson Highlands Nature Museum’s Outdoor Discovery Center, Cornwall-on-Hudson. 534-5506 ext. 204.
Printmaking 9:30am-11:30am. Newburgh JCC, Newburgh. 561-6602. African Drum 7pm-8pm. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
Events Green Drinks One-Year Anniversary Party 6:30pm-9pm. Networking session for environmental fields, sustainably-minded and eco-curious. Il Continori Restaurante, Wappingers Falls. 454-6410.
Film The Rich Have Their Own Photographers 1pm-2pm. Lunch Time Shorts film viewing. Vanderlyn Hall, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge. 687-5262.
Weddings, Bachelor/ette Parties, Anniversaries, Proms, Nights on the Town,Wine Tours, Casinos, Theaters, Birthdays, Graduations, AirportTransportation, Concerts/Sporting Events, Corporate Transportation...
Kids Spring Warm Up: Nature Games and Fun 10am-11:15pm. Ages 7 and up. Mohonk Preserve, New Paltz. 255-0919. Children’s Art Lessons 4:15pm-5:15pm. Newburgh JCC, Newburgh. 561-6602.
Music
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Noontime Concert Series 12pm. Music department concert while viewing works in the gallery. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 437-5632. Open Blues Jam 8:45pm. 12 Grapes Music and Wine Bar, Peekskill. (914) 737-6624.
FRIDAY 10 dance Russian National Ballet Theatre: Swan Lake 8pm. Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA. (413) 528-0100.
Events Earth Day Street Fair 11am-4pm. Environmental groups from around the HV as well as info on green living. United Methodist Church, Kingston. 331-6858.
Music The Kurt Henry Band 6pm. Steelhouse, Kingston. 338-7847. Faculty Recital 8pm. Richard Wilson and Blanca Uribe, pianos. Martel Theater, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 437-5902. Kenny Ferenda and Bobby MacDougal 8pm. Hyde Park Brewing Company, Hyde Park. 229-8277. Phil Minissale 8pm. 2 Alices Coffee Lounge, Cornwall-On-Hudson. 534-4717. Sugarloaf Station 8:30pm. Bodles Opera House, Chester. 469-4595. The Blue Rays 9:30pm. Blues. 12 Grapes Music and Wine Bar, Peekskill. (914) 737-6624.
Open Mike 10pm. Oasis Cafe, New Paltz. 255-2400.
Big Kahuna 10pm. Dance music. Cafe International, Newburgh. 567-9429.
Spoken Word
Reality Check 9pm. Rock. La Puerta Azul, Millbrook. 677-2985.
Rx Dollars and Sense 6:30pm. Northern Dutchess Hospital Cafeteria Conference Ro, Rhinebeck. (877) 729-2444.
Theater
On Fateful Waters: Where New Worlds Meet Old Ambitions 7pm. NY Council for the Humanities Speaker Dr. Robert Spiegelman. Rosendale Library, Rosendale. 658-9013. Chris Doyle 7:30pm. Artists whose works include temporary and permanent projects in the public sphere. SUNY New Paltz Lecture Center 102, New Paltz. 257-3844.
The Tempest 8pm. $20/$18 children and seniors. Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-3080.
Workshops Writing Club 2:45pm-4:45pm. Hudson Valley Guild and Book Trader, Saugerties. 246-7205.
SATURDAY 11
Workshops Peer Critiquing Group for Writers 4pm-6pm. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331.
THURSDAY 9 Art
Body / Mind / Spirit Manifesting with Group Energy Call for times. Learn the tools to bring into your life the things, people and experiences you truly desire. Sage Center for the Healing Arts, Woodstock. 679-5650.
Body / Mind / Spirit
Events
Breast Cancer Options Peer Support Group 10am-11:30am. Elting Memorial Library, New Paltz. 339-4673.
4-H Spring Fun Festival 10am-4pm. $6 family/$3/$2 children. High Falls Firehouse, High Falls.
Classes
Pamper Party 3pm-7pm. Body Shop Massage Supplies, Hyde Park.
Organic Gardening for Garden and Containers 6pm-9pm. $3. Business Resource Center, Kingston. 339-2025. Introductory Flamenco 6:30pm-8pm. 4-week class. $70/$65 members. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331. Ballroom Dancing Class 7pm-8pm. $10. Newburgh JCC, Newburgh. 561-6602. Life Drawing Classes 7:30pm-9:30pm. Studies in life drawing. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
Music Dan Stokes 7pm. Pop, soft rock. Big Easy Bistro, Newburgh. 565-3939. Jack Bruce 7:30pm. $29.50. The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845. Bluegrass Clubhouse And Miss Angie’s Karaoke 8pm. Bearsville Theater, Woodstock. 679-4406.
Spoken Word Liza Donnelly: Cartoon Marriage 5pm. Vassar College Bookstore, Poughkeepsie. 437-5871.
forecast ChronograM 4/09
Greene County Arts and Crafts Show 2pm-4pm. GCCA Mountaintop Gallery, Windham. (518) 734-3104.
Late Night at the Lehman Loeb 5pm-9pm. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie. 437-5632.
Euro Dance for Seniors and Others Call for times. $5/$8 couple. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
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Art
Film Promises 7pm. Woodstock Library, Woodstock. 679-2213.
Music Songs of the Hudson Call for times. AIR Studio Gallery, Kingston. 331-2662. Graham Parker Call for times. Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling. 855-1300. Kidtopia 11am. House band Ratboy Junior with a special guest each week. Utopia Soundstage, Woodstock. 331-6949. Vassar College Madrigal Singers 3pm. Martel Theater, Vassar, Poughkeepsie. 437-5902. Aaron Berg with Oneway Runway 8pm. 2 Alices Coffee Lounge, Cornwall-On-Hudson. 534-4717. Savion Glover with the Albany Symphony Orchestra 8pm. $38/$34 seniors/$19 children. The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845. The Sweet Clementines 8:30pm. Tin Pan Alley, Red Hook. 758-4545. Sarah Borges CD Release Party 9pm. $15. Club Helsinki, Great Barrington, MA. (413) 528-3394. That Organ Groove 9pm. SkyTop Steak House, Kingston. 340-4277.
rite of spring beltane festival image provided the 17th annual beltane festival will be celebrated at the center for symbolic studies in tillson on april 25.
Frolic by the Fire Heat, light, and fertility are, at the most basic level, inarguably what it’s All About. Without those essentials, none of the myriad fripperies humans have dreamt up to pass the time would exist in the first place. And every year, those of us who live in temperate climates get a taste of cold, dark, and fallow, reminding us to cherish the warming all the more when it comes. Is there anything better than that first day of T-shirt weather? Back in the day, before people thought they had taken control of the production of light and warmth and fertility for themselves—a notion that may be proving to be little more than dangerous hubris anyway—the return of the sun was even more important. It was a time to dance and sing in sheer delighted gratitude, to revel in love and hope. At the Center for Symbolic Studies, which once again hosts its annual Beltane festival on April 25, organizers recognize the primal importance of such core truths. “The mythic imagination is the primary source of intellectual and creative energy,” observes co-founder Robin Larsen. “Without that, you’re just sort of plodding along. With that, everyday crisis and triumph become a mythic journey.” The center offers a variety of therapeutic and educational tools for those who wish to plod less and journey more—and every spring, it prepares a lovely celebration in which all are welcome to join. “It’s a picnic for your mind,” says performance artist Carl Welden, who’s been master of ceremonies for the event in years past. “It’s part Ren faire and part May Day. I have had the most wonderful time just looking out from the stage at a sea of beaming faces.”
It’s really, both agree, two festivals in one day. All afternoon, music and games and friendly foolery will enchant young and old. The gates open at 1pm, and at 4:15 a pageant begins, in which local young people under the tutelage of the Vanaver Caravan will dance you a story, horses and puppets and children all joined in delight. “This year, we may do something special on horseback,” Larsen says. “Last year, the teens enacted an old Balkan folktale of a princess slipping out at night to dance with a dragon.” As the shadows lengthen, the smaller kids thin out and the tone shifts as the teens and young adults ramp up the revelry. Weather permitting, a Beltane blaze is lit, and the drumming, music, dancing, and frolic continue in the spirit of the May Queen and her consort, the Green Man. Participants are encouraged to wear their most fanciful garb and bring along a picnic, a Frisbee to toss, a musical instrument—whatever will enhance their joy, with the exception of pets and alcohol (the latter is neither allowed nor, one supposes, much missed). Past Beltane festivals have drawn as much as 1,200 people—a good thing, because the reasonably priced event is the main fundraiser for this unique community resource. Beltane will be celebrated on April 25 at the Center for Symbolic Studies in Tillson. (845) 658-8540; www.symbolicstudies.org. –Anne Pyburn 4/09 ChronograM forecast
87
The Outdoors
Kids
Spoken Word
Mohonk Preserve Singles and Sociables Hike: Bonticou Crag 9:30am-2pm. Meet at Spring Farm Trailhead, New Paltz. 255-0919.
Crafts for Tots 10:30am-11:30am. Hudson Valley Guild and Book Trader, Saugerties. 246-7205.
Harriet Jacobs: A Life 1:30pm-3:30pm. Women Who Dared book discussion group. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438.
Spoken Word Keith Korman 11am. Author of Banquo’s Ghosts. Merritt Books, Red Hook. 758-2665. Dyslexia 1pm-2:30pm. Signs of dyslexia and resources. Kingston Library, Kingston. 331-0507. Woodstock Poetry Society and Festival 2pm. Featuring poets Elo-Mall Toomet and Georganna Millman. Woodstock Town Hall, Woodstock. Ledig House Writers Residency Reading 5pm-7pm. Marianne Courville Gallery, Hudson. (518) 755-4208. Uncle Floyd 9pm. Comedy. Bodles Opera House, Chester. 469-4595.
Theater The Tempest 8pm. $20/$18 children and seniors. Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-3080.
SUNDAY 12 Body / Mind / Spirit Sacred Chanting 10am-11:30am. $10. Unison Arts and Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559. Public Meditation 10:30am-12:30pm. Sky Lake Lodge, Rosendale. 658-8556. Om For Peace 6pm. Mountain View Studio, Woodstock. 679-0901.
Music The Acoustic Medicine Show 12pm. Acoustic. Taste Budd’s Chocolate and Coffee Cafe, Red Hook. 758-6500. Kairos: A Consort of Singers 4pm. Cantata No. 4, Christ lag in Todesbanden. Holy Cross Monastery, West Park. 384-6660.
The Outdoors Mohonk Preserve Singles and Sociables Hike: Lost City 9:30am-4pm. 8-mile hike. Meet at the West Trapps Trailhead, New Paltz. 255-0919.
Workshops Life Drawing 10am-1pm. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438.
MONDAY 13
Music Larry Grenadier Jazz Concert 7pm. $8. Vanderlyn Hall, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge. 687-5262. Indigo Girls 7:30pm. $40. The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845. Bardavon Gala 2009 8pm. Featuring The Temptations. The Bardavon, Poughkeepsie. 473-2072.
The Outdoors Nature on the Run 5:30pm-6pm. Three-mile runs along the preserve’s scenic trails. Shaupeneak Ridge, Esopus. 473-4440 ext. 273.
Faculty Poets Presents 5pm. Harry Stoneback will read from his work Hurricane Hymn. Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz. 257-3858. The Joy of Hiking 6pm. Kingston Library, Kingston. 331-0507.
Ulster County Science Fair 9:30am-12pm. Ages 6-12. Student Dining Center, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge. 687-5262.
Music Celtic Session 7:30pm. Traditional Irish music. New World Home Cooking, Saugerties. 246-0900. David Kraai 10:30pm. Oasis Cafe, New Paltz. 255-2400.
Spoken Word What is the Enlightenment? Revolution and the Limits of Reason 4:30pm. Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7216.
Gardening Organically & Community Gardens 7pm-8:30pm. Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary, Lenox, MA. (413) 637-0320.
THURSDAY 16 Art Late Night at the Lehman Loeb 5pm-9pm. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie. 437-5632.
Body / Mind / Spirit
Mojo Myles Mancuso 8pm. Hyde Park Brewing Company, Hyde Park. 229-8277. Batik Contemporary Jazz Ensemble 8pm. $10/$9. Lake Carmel Art Center, Kent. 225-3856. The Subdued Acoustic Tour 8pm. Blues. Bearsville Theater, Woodstock. 679-4406. Vassar College Jazz Ensemble 8pm. Martel Theater, Poughkeepsie. 437-5902. Debbie Davies and Ken Bowles 8:30pm. Blues. Bodles Opera House, Chester. 469-4595. The Coverup Band 8:30pm. Pamela’s on The Hudson, Newburgh. 562-4505.
Jane Eyre 7pm-9pm. Spring 2009 Scholar-led Book Discussion Series. Middletown Thrall Library, Middletown. 341-5454.
Reality Check 10pm. Pickwick Pub, Poughkeepsie. 527-8074.
Euro Dance for Seniors and Others Call for times. $5/$8 couple. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
Spoken Word
Theater Watershed Waltz 10am. Musical theater/puppet production about watershed conservation. $6. Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-3080.
Workshops Unleash Your Comedy Power Stuff 10am-12pm. Workshop for de-stressing. Olympic Diner, Kingston. 246-5348. Henry Hudson: The Great Dream Puppetry Workshop by Concrete Temple Theatre 1pm-3pm. Free. Reservations Required. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438. Playwrights Lab 6:30pm. Hear readings of your work performed by actors. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331. Planning and Protection for the Future 6:30pm-9pm. Dutchess BOCES BETA, Poughkeepsie. 486-4840 ext. 3058. How to Read Signs and Omens in Everyday Life 7pm-9pm. $15/$20. Mirabai Books, Woodstock. 679-2100.
Body / Mind / Spirit Breast Cancer Options Peer Support Group 6:30pm-8pm. Wingate at Beacon, Beacon. 339-4673.
Classes Modern Dance Call for times. Classes with the Hudson Valley Modern Dance Cooperative. $15/$12 members. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559. Art and Drawing Class Call for times. $15. Hudson Valley Guild and Book Trader, Saugerties. 246-7205.
Pema Chodron Video Class 7pm-9pm. 6 sessions. $105/$85 members. Sky Lake Lodge, Rosendale. 658-8556. Ballroom Dancing Class 7pm-8pm. $10. Newburgh JCC, Newburgh. 561-6602. Life Drawing Classes 7:30pm-9:30pm. Studies in life drawing. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
Events American Foundation for Suicide Awareness Ulster County Open House 4pm-7pm. Mental Health Association of America, Lake Katrine. 452-3518. New Paltz Chamber of Commerce Mixer 5:30pm-7:30pm. New Paltz Regional Chamber of Commerce. $5 non-members. Aroma Thyme Bistro, Ellenville. 647-3000.
Kids Young Peoples’ Poetry with Charles R. Smith, Jr. 7pm-8pm. Poughkeepsie Library, Poughkeepsie. 454-9301.
Music Open Mike Call for times. Mezzaluna Cafe, Saugerties. 246-5306. The Jesse Janes 7pm. Americana. High Falls Cafe, High Falls. 687-2699.
Bluegrass Clubhouse And Miss Angie’s Karaoke 8pm. Bearsville Theater, Woodstock. 679-4406. Student Composition Recital 8pm. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-3844.
The Outdoors Ranger Hike 10am-1pm. Fishkill Ridge, Fishkill. 473-4440 ext. 273.
Spoken Word Elder Law Program 11am-12pm. Middletown Thrall Library, Middletown. 341-5454.
African Drum 7pm-8pm. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
Conversations in French 11:30am-12:30pm. A gathering for those fluent in French. Pawling Free Library, Pawling. 855-3444.
Children’s Art Lessons 4:15pm-5:15pm. Newburgh JCC, Newburgh. 561-6602.
Psychology Colloquium 4:30pm-5:30pm. Exchange views on various areas of psychological research. Preston Hall, Annandale-onHudson. 758-7222. Lecture by William H. Pritchard 5pm. Author of Updike: America’s Man of Letters. Sanders Auditorium, Vassar, Poughkeepsie. 437-5370. The Real “Skinny” on Weight Loss 6:30pm. Northern Dutchess Hospital Cafeteria Conference Room, Rhinebeck. (877) 729-2444.
Body / Mind / Spirit
Music
Public Meditation and Dharma Talk 6pm-8:30pm. Training with our Whole Being: Bringing Practice into Everyday Life. $5. Sky Lake Lodge, Rosendale. 658-8556.
Noontime Concert Series 12pm. Music department concert while viewing works in the gallery. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie. 437-5632.
Channeling with Master Teachers 6:30pm-7:30pm. Sage Center for the Healing Arts, Woodstock. 679-5650.
Los Lobos 7:30pm. $29.50. The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845.
Blood Wedding 8pm. $16/$14. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-7869.
Open Blues Jam 8:45pm. 12 Grapes Music and Wine Bar, Peekskill. (914) 737-6624.
Workshops
Open Mike 10pm. Oasis Cafe, New Paltz. 255-2400.
100 Poems in 100 Minutes 7:30pm. Open mike with all poems under a minute. $5. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331.
Theater Mad Love 7:30pm. Columbia-Greene Community College, Hudson. (518) 828-4181 ext 5513. Blood Wedding 8pm. $16/$14. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-7869. All in the Timing 8pm. Quimby Theater, Stone Ridge. 687-5263. The Year of Magical Thinking 8pm. Mohonk Mountain Stage Company. $16/$12 members. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
Workshops Henry Hudson: The Great Dream Puppetry Workshop by Concrete Temple Theatre 1pm-3pm. Free. Reservations Required. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438. Writing Club 2:45pm-4:45pm. Hudson Valley Guild and Book Trader, Saugerties. 246-7205. Greening Your Life 7pm-9pm. Learn steps you can take right to live a sustainable life and reduce your impact. $25. Hands of Serenity, Fishkill. 896-1915.
The Callen Sisters 7:30pm. Howland Cultural Center, Beacon. 831-4988.
Printmaking 9:30am-11:30am. Newburgh JCC, Newburgh. 561-6602.
Salamanders 10am. $5/$3 members. Hudson Highlands Nature Museum’s Outdoor Discovery Center, Cornwall-onHudson. 534-5506 ext. 204.
forecast ChronograM 4/09
American Symphony Orchestra 8pm. $20-$35. Fisher Center, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7900.
Classes
Henry Hudson: The Great Dream Puppetry Workshop by Concrete Temple Theatre 1pm-3pm. Free. Reservations Required. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438.
Guided Garden Tour 6pm-7pm. $10/members free. Stonecrop Gardens, Cold Spring. 265-2000.
Music
The Rhodes 9:30pm. Classic rock. Muddy Cup, New Paltz. 338-3881.
Kids
Events
88
Peer Critiquing Group for Writers 4pm-6pm. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331.
Zydeco Dance 8pm. Li’l Anne & Hot Cayenne. $15. White Eagle Hall, Kingston.
Breast Cancer Options Peer Support Group 6pm-7:30pm. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. 339-4673.
Workshops
TUESDAY 14
Henry Hudson: The Great Dream Puppetry Workshop by Concrete Temple Theatre 1pm-3pm. Free. Reservations Required. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438.
Dance
Female Incontinence and Male BPH (Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia) 6:30pm. Northern Dutchess Hospital Cafeteria Conference Room, Rhinebeck. (877) 729-2444.
WEDNESDAY 15
Kids
Workshops
Spoken Word
Film Ben-Hur 7pm. Palace Theater, Albany. (518) 465-3334.
Reading Between the Lines: Rethinking Religion: Recent Women’s Novels and American Identity 4pm. Book discussion group. Stone Ridge Library, Stone Ridge. 687-7023.
FRIDAY 17
Theater All in the Timing 8pm. Quimby Theater, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge. 687-5263.
Henry Hudson: The Great Dream Puppetry Workshop by Concrete Temple Theatre 1pm-3pm. Free. Reservations Required. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438.
SATURDAY 18 Art Children Under Occupation: Art as Healing 4pm-6pm. 26 paintings by Palestinian children. Woodstock Artists Association and Museum, Woodstock. 679-2940. Notart 5pm-7pm. Solo exhibition featuring the late Columbia County artist Arthur Tieger. GCCA Catskill, Gallery. (518) 943-3400. Sculpture on Man 5pm-7pm. GCCA Catskill, Gallery. (518) 943-3400. 10 6pm-9pm. An exhibition of 10 best emerging artists of 2009. G.A.S., Poughkeepsie. 486-4592.
Body / Mind / Spirit Akashic Record Revealed 2:30pm-4:30pm. Sacred time in your personal Akashic field. Sage Center for the Healing Arts, Woodstock. 679-5650.
Dance Freestyle Frolic 8:30pm-1am. Wide range of music spun by eclectic DJ’s. $5/$2 teens and seniors/children free. Knights of Columbus, Kingston.
Events Esopus Lighthouse Restoration Volunteer with the restoration of Esopus Lighthouse. Esopus Lighthouse, Esopus. 3rd Annual April Gathering 5pm-9pm. New Paltz Area Chamber of Commerce cocktail event. $95. Mohonk Mountain House, New Paltz. 255-0243. Margaretville Hospital Dance-a-Thon Benefit 7pm. $35/$30 in advance. Belleayre Mountain, Highmount. 586-2631 ext. 3145.
MUSIC HUDSON VALLEY PHILHARMONIC library of congress
the hudson valley philharmonic performs beethoven’s ninth symphony on april 18 at the ulster performing arts center
Such Sweet Thunder It begins as a gentle murmur, so low you think, “Is the orchestra still tuning up?” Gradually it rises to the first symphonic chorus in history: Seid umschlungen, Millionen! / Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt! [“Be embraced, millions! / This kiss for the whole world!”] Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D Minor will be performed on Saturday, April 18 by the Hudson Valley Philharmonic at the Ulster Performing Arts Center (UPAC) in Kingston. Randall Craig Fleischer will conduct and deliver a pre-concert talk. The “Ode to Joy” is a kind of supersong, and in fact has been rearranged by Herbert von Karajan into what is now called the “Anthem of Europe.” “There are references to democracy in the text of the Ninth Symphony; it was very much a Masonic, anti-theocracy, anti-fascist statement,” Fleischer explains. In other words, Ludwig van Beethoven was the Bob Dylan of the 19th century. “I think the parallels between Beethoven and Dylan actually are many,” observes Fleischer. “When Bob Dylan was transitioning from folk, from being a pure folkie, to a rock ’n’ roll artist—talk about expanding a musical genre! But of course he was taking all the socially relevant, biting lyrics that he was writing as a folkie, into rock ’n’ roll, and instead of a-wop-bop-a-loo-and-a-wop-bam-boom, all of a sudden, these are rock ’n’ roll songs that are criticizing the very heart and soul of our society. Same with Beethoven.” Just as Dylan’s lyrics are propelled by thunderous amplifiers, Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” (revised by Beethoven himself) is powered by massive instrumentation. It’s difficult to imagine the monumental effect the Ninth Symphony had when it premiered on May 7, 1824, at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna. For one thing, concert
halls were smaller then, only holding about 900 people, and their acoustics were much sharper. Perhaps Beethoven composed such a soaring work because he was completely deaf at the time. A chorus is a democracy, and the one at UPAC will be 150 voices strong, combining an array of local choral groups, including the Bachfest Choir, the Camerata Chorale, Kairos, the Vassar College Choir and the Ulster Choral Society. The singers will range from teenagers to octogenarians. “When you’re in a big choral group, you don’t have to sing loud, because it’s an ensemble,” remarks Kevin Seekamp, president of the Ulster Choral Society. “It’s being part of a larger organism. It’s like being on an aircraft carrier, or a submarine.” Four vocal soloists will serve as a kind of solo quartet, and the Hudson Valley Philharmonic will swell to 60 members for this concert, which celebrates the organization’s 50th anniversary. Joseph Haydn’s Sinfonia Concertante, a concerto for four instruments (violin, cello, oboe, and bassoon) will also be performed. Haydn was Beethoven’s teacher, so alert listeners will be able to compare the master and the disciple. This event is in memory of Norm Rafalowsky, one of the three men who saved UPAC in the 1970s. He passed away in February. Fleischer’s preconcert lectures are lively and impassioned. He himself is a composer, which invigorates his knowledge of orchestral music. Fleischer’s multimedia symphonic piece “Echoes” was performed at the Smithsonian Institute last November. The Hudson Valley Philharmonic will perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at UPAC Kingston, on April 18 at 8pm. (845) 473-2072; www.bardavon.org. —Sparrow
4/09 ChronograM forecast
89
Household Hazardous Waste & Electronics Collection Event 8pm-2pm. Free drop-off of hazardous wastes, small fee for electronics. UCRRA, Kingston.
Kids Stellaluna 10am. Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA. (413) 528-0100. Terrific Trout 10am. $5/$3 members. Hudson Highlands Nature Museum’s Outdoor Discovery Center, Cornwall-onHudson. 534-5506 ext. 204. Two By Two Zoo 10:30am. Meet wild animals. Kingston Library, Kingston. 331-0507.
The Tempest 8pm. $20/$18 children and seniors. Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-3080.
Workshops Trough Making Workshop 9am-Sunday, April 19, 1pm. $80/$60 members. Stonecrop Gardens, Cold Spring. 265-2000. In Clown We Trust 10am. Spring clown workshop for adults. $115. Spencertown Academy Arts Center, Spencertown. (518) 392-3693. Chronic Problems, The Wise Woman Way 2pm-4pm. $25/$30. Mirabai Books, Woodstock. 679-2100.
Puss in Boots 11am. $6-$9. Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-3080. Beginning Guitar 10pm-10pm. 6 sessions for 8-12 year olds. $90. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331.
Music Jim Weider’s Project Percolator Call for times. Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling. 855-1300. Light & Shadow: The Phoenix Concerts. 8pm. $15/$12 members. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438. Kidtopia 11am. House band Ratboy Junior with a special guest each week. Utopia Soundstage, Woodstock. 331-6949. Met Opera: Madama Butterfly 1pm. Time and Space Limited, Hudson. (518) 822-8448. Senior Recitals 1:30pm. Student recitals. Martel Theater, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 437-5902. Doug Marcus 2pm. Acoustic. Taste Budd’s Chocolate and Coffee Cafe, Red Hook. 758-6500. Peggy Atwood 7pm. Woodstock Library, Woodstock. 679-2213.
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forecast ChronograM 4/09
Hudson Valley Philharmonic 8pm. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Ulster Performing Arts Center, Kingston. 339-6088. Bernstein Bard Trio 8pm. Jazz. Unison Arts and Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559. Helen Avakian 8pm. Aroma Thyme Bistro, Ellenville. 647-3000.
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Adam Snyder 7pm. Benefit concert for Kingston Natural Foods Buying Club. $30/$25 KNF members. Kingston Natural Foods Buying Club, Kingston.
tues - Sat
Ronan Tynan 8pm. Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA. (413) 528-0100. American Symphony Orchestra 8pm. $20-$35. Fisher Center, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7900. The Kurt Henry Band 8:30pm. High Falls Cafe, High Falls. 687-2699. The Rhodes 10pm. Cabaloosa’s, New Paltz. 255-3400.
The Outdoors Mohonk Preserve Singles and Sociables Hike: Stokes Meditation 9:30am-4pm. Strenuous 8-mile hike. Mohonk Preserve, New Paltz. 255-0919.
Spoken Word Poetry: It’s Natural! Call for times. Workshops and poetry reading. Tivoli Free Library, Tivoli. 757-3771. Flip! for Decorating with Elizabeth Mayhew 11am. Merritt Bookstore, Millbrook. 677-5857. Artists Bob Justin and Bill Yost 2pm. Talk on the present gallery exhibition, “Art Brut” and discuss their work process. Ann Street Gallery, Newburgh. 562-6940 ext. 119. Anne Waldman Poetry Reading 7:30pm. $5. Zen Mountain Monastery, Mount Tremper. 688-2228.
Theater Under the Lights Call for times. Benefit for the New Rose Theater presented by Island of Giants. New Rose Theater, Walden. 778-2478. Yes We Can’t Call for time. An evening with Mikhail Horowitz and Gilles Malkine, benefit for Actors & Writers. Odd Fellows Theater, Olivebridge. 657-9760. Mad Love 7:30pm. Columbia-Greene Community College, Hudson. (518) 828-4181 ext 5513. All in the Timing 8pm. Quimby Theater, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge. 687-5263. Blood Wedding 8pm. $16/$14. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-7869.
SUNDAY 19 Art Through My Eyes 4pm-6pm. Paintings by Gen Tetrault. La Bella Bistro, New Paltz. 255-2633.
Body / Mind / Spirit Public Meditation 10:30am-12:30pm. Sky Lake Lodge, Rosendale. 658-8556. Bless My Bones, Why Calcium Doesn’t Work 3:30pm-5pm. Inquiring Mind/Muddy Cup, Saugerties. 246-5775.
Dance Cinderella 3pm. Russian National Ballet Theatre. $42/$31.50. Lycian Center, Sugar Loaf. 469-2287. WCS/California Mix 6:30pm-9pm. Beginner lesson in West Coast Swing at 6. $5. White Eagle Hall, Kingston. (914) 475-0803. Nederlands Dans Theater II 7pm. $28/$24 seniors/$14 children. The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845.
Events Earth Day Fair 11:30am-3pm. New Paltz Reformed Church, New Paltz. 255-4170.
Kids Bouncing Bunnies 10am. $5/$3 members. Hudson Highlands Nature Museum’s Outdoor Discovery Center, Cornwall-onHudson. 534-5506 ext. 204.
Music Lisa Dudley 12pm. With Ed Kenney and Enrico Scull. Taste Budd’s Chocolate and Coffee Cafe, Red Hook. 758-6500. Ami Hakuno and Pascal Roge 2:30pm. Trail Mix concert. $20. Olive Free Library, West Shokan. 657-2482. Unplugged Acoustic Open Mike 4pm. Unison Arts and Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559. Ariel String Quartet 4pm. Church of the Messiah, Rhinebeck. 876-2870. Ronan Tynan 5pm. $37-$55. Bardavon Opera House, Poughkeepsie. 473-2072.
The Outdoors Mohonk Preserve Singles and Sociables Hike: Spring Farm 10am-3pm. 7-mile hike. Meet at Spring Farm Trailhead, New Paltz. 255-0919. Mohonk Preserve: Early Spring Wildflowers for Earth Day 2pm-4:30pm. 3-mile hike. Mohonk Preserve, New Paltz. 255-0919.
Spoken Word Author: Steven Lewis 2pm-4pm. Hudson Valley Guild and Book Trader, Saugerties. 246-7205. Reading and Signing with Travis Bowman 2:30pm. Author of Bob’s Folly, Fulton, Livingston and the Steamboat. Van Wyck Homestead Museum, Fishkill. 896-5326.
Theater Blood Wedding 2pm. $16/$14. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-7869.
Mad Love 2pm. Columbia-Greene Community College, Hudson. (518) 828-4181 ext 5513. All in the Timing 3pm. Quimby Theater, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge. 687-5263.
Workshops Life Drawing 10am-1pm. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438.
MONDAY 20 Dance The Creative Process in Dance Composition 8pm. Vassar dancers with material derived from the workshop process with the choreographer. Frances Daly Fergusson Dance Theater, Poughkeepsie. 437-7470.
Music Noontime Concert Series 12pm. Music department concert while viewing works in the gallery. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie. 437-5632. The Big Bang Jazz Gang 7pm. Bodles Opera House, Chester. 469-4595.
Music
Dorraine Scofield 8pm. With JB Hunt and Larry Balestra. Aroma Thyme Bistro, Ellenville. 647-3000.
Celtic Session 7:30pm. Traditional Irish music. New World Home Cooking, Saugerties. 246-0900.
Open Blues Jam 8:45pm. 12 Grapes Music and Wine Bar, Peekskill. (914) 737-6624.
Workshops
Open Mike 10pm. Oasis Cafe, New Paltz. 255-2400.
Holistic Eye Care 7:45pm-9:45pm. $15/$10 members. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
TUESDAY 21 Body / Mind / Spirit Breast Cancer Options Peer Support Group 11am-12:30pm. Northern Dutchess Hospital, Rhinebeck. 339-4673. Drop-In Meditation 5:30pm-7:30pm. Sage Center for the Healing Arts, Woodstock. 679-5650. Public Meditation and Dharma Talk 6pm-8:30pm. $5. Sky Lake Lodge, Rosendale. 658-8556. on. 338-7664.
The Outdoors Earth Day Hike 9am-3pm. Mount Beacon, Beacon. 473-4440 ext. 273.
Spoken Word Out of the Catskills 6pm. Poetry reading by Will Nixon & Matthew J. Spireng. Saugerties Library, Saugerties. 246-4317. Migraine Headaches: A Professional and Personal Perspective 6:30pm. Northern Dutchess Hospital Cafeteria Conference Room, Rhinebeck. (877) 729-2444.
Workshops
Crafts for Tots 10:30am-11:30am. Hudson Valley Guild and Book Trader, Saugerties. 246-7205.
Music Colin Hay 7:30pm. $24. Big-voiced singer from Men at Work. The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845. Community Music Night 8pm-9:45pm. Six local singer-songwriters. Rosendale Cafe, Rosendale. 658-9048.
The Outdoors Nature on the Run 5:30pm-6pm. Three-mile runs along the preserve’s scenic trails. Shaupeneak Ridge, Esopus. 473-4440 ext. 273.
Spoken Word Rethinking The Wealth of Nations 5:30pm. Taylor Hall, Vassar, Poughkeepsie. 437-5370.
Workshops Unleash Your Comedy Power Stuff 10am-12pm. Workshop for de-stressing. Olympic Diner, Kingston. 246-5348. Playwrights Lab 6:30pm. Hear readings of your work performed by actors. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331. Going to Work, Going to School 6:30pm-9pm. Dutchess BOCES BETA, Poughkeepsie. 486-4840 ext. 3058.
FREE PUBLIC EVENTS The World is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One Thursday, April 23rd at 4:00 p.m. One of the world’s most distinguished marine scientists, Dr. Sylvia Earle, will discuss the ocean’s rapid decline, what it means to humanity, and the need to protect the blue heart of the planet. An explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, Dr. Earle has lived for weeks at a time on the ocean floor. She is a passionate advocate of the ocean and its inhabitants.
The Ecology of Pizza (Or Why Organic Food is a Bargain)
Peer Critiquing Group for Writers 4pm-6pm. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331.
THURSDAY 23
Kids
The science behind environmental solutions
Art Late Night at the Lehman Loeb 5pm-9pm. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie. 437-5632.
Classes Forest Gardening Immersion Course Call for times. In association with Appleseed Permaculture. Camp Epworth Permaculture Demonstration and Education Center, High Falls. (518) 610-1375. Euro Dance for Seniors and Others Call for times. $5/$8 couple. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559. Intro to Ayurvedic Cooking 3pm-4:30pm. Learn more about the healing cuisine of India. Call for location. 797-4124.
Friday, April 24th at 7:00 p.m. Ecologist, award-winning author, and cancer survivor Dr. Sandra Steingraber will discuss the benefits of organic food and the costs associated with pesticidedependent crops. An expert on how environmental factors influence human health, Dr. Steingraber is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Ithaca College. Both events will be held in our auditorium at 2801 Sharon Tpk. in Millbrook, NY. For more information, visit www.ecostudies.org/events.html or call (845) 677-7600 x121.
www.caryinstitute.org
(845) 677-5343
Music The Doobie Brothers 7:30pm. $39.50-$59.50. Palace Theater, Albany. (518) 465-3334. Bluegrass Clubhouse And Miss Angie’s Karaoke 8pm. Bearsville Theater, Woodstock. 679-4406. Music Therapy Students in Concert 8pm. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-3844.
The Outdoors Kayaking: How to Get Started 6pm. East Fishkill Community Library, Hopewell Junction. 226-2145.
Spoken Word
WEDNESDAY 22 Body / Mind / Spirit Women’s New Moon Circle 7pm. The Dreaming Goddess, Poughkeepsie. 473-2206. A Course in Miracles 7:30pm-9:30pm. Study group with Alice Broner. Unitarian Fellowship, Poughkeepsie. 229-8391.
Classes Modern Dance Call for times. Classes with the Hudson Valley Modern Dance Cooperative. $15/$12 members. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559. Art and Drawing Class Call for times. $15. Hudson Valley Guild and Book Trader, Saugerties. 246-7205. Printmaking 9:30am-11:30am. Newburgh JCC, Newburgh. 561-6602. African Drum 7pm-8pm. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
Events Earth Day Business Luncheon 12pm-1:30pm. New Paltz Area Chamber of Commerce. $25/$18 members. Shadows, Poughkeepsie. 255-0243.
The Golden Age of Television: the 1950s 4pm. Villa Library, Mt. St. Mary, Newburgh. 569-3179. Psychology Colloquium 4:30pm-5:30pm. Exchange views on various areas of psychological research. Preston Hall, Annandale-onHudson. 758-7222. The Family Table: Nutrition for Life 6:30pm. Northern Dutchess Hospital Cafeteria Conference Room, Rhinebeck. (877) 729-2444. Celebrating National Poetry Month 7pm. Poetry reading by Will Nixon & Matthew J. Spireng. Adriance Memorial Library, Poughkeepsie. 485-3445.
Theater All in the Timing 8pm. Quimby Theater, Stone Ridge. 687-5263. Blood Wedding 8pm. $16/$14. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-7869.
Workshops Senior Writing Workshop 2pm. Woodstock Community Center, Woodstock. 679-2880. Adult Workshop: Global Warming 7pm-8:30pm. Hudson Highlands Nature Museum’s Outdoor Discovery Center, Cornwall-on-Hudson. 534-5506 ext. 204.
FRIDAY 24
Kids
Art
Children’s Art Lessons 4:15pm-5:15pm. Newburgh JCC, Newburgh. 561-6602.
Kent Art Association Spring Juried Show 5pm-7pm. Kent Art Association, Kent, CT. (860) 927-3989.
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Northern Dutchess Botanical Gardens 389 Salisbury Turnpike, Rhinebeck, 845-876-2953 One of Dutchess County’s best garden resources! For Directions & Production Lists, visit
YEARS. 29 AND
VEGETABLES
FOR
Stimulate your soul, Grow something
OVER
Tough times require bold actions.
Slide Slam 7pm-9pm. Digital presentation. Artists show and speak about their artwork. Pawling Free Library, Pawling. 855-3444.
HERBS
LOCAL GROWERS OF AN EXTRAORDINARY VARIETY
Simple Observations 5pm-8pm. Photographic works by four high school students. Vita Gallery, Woodstock. 679-2329.
845 • 876 • 2953
www.NDBGonline.com OF ANNUALS,
PERENNIALS,
WILDFLOWERS,
Dance Swing Dance Class Call for times. Teresa Broadwell and Thrivin’ on a Riff. $15/$10 dance, $15 workshop. Poughkeepsie Tennis Club, Poughkeepsie. 454-2571.
Film Duck Soup 7pm. $5. Shandaken Theatrical Society Theater, Phoenicia. 688-2279.
Music Just 3 6pm. Rock. Steelhouse, Kingston. 338-7847. Hot Air/Tight Strings 7pm. Premieres the works of the new generation of NYC composers. Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7216. 4 Guys in Disguise 8pm. Hyde Park Brewing Company, Hyde Park. 229-8277. An Evening of Elizabethan Madrigals 8pm. $18/$16 seniors and students. Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-3080. The Providers 8pm. Motown. La Puerta Azul, Millbrook. 677-2985. Jo Dee Messina 8pm. Country. Ulster Performing Arts Center, Kingston. 339-6088. Hurley Mountain Highway 8:30pm. Pamela’s on The Hudson, Newburgh. 562-4505. Tempest 8:30pm. Celtic. Bodles Opera House, Chester. 469-4595. The Rhodes 9pm. Snapper Magee’s, Kingston. 339-3888.
Theater The Year of Magical Thinking 8pm. Mohonk Mountain Stage Company. $16/$12 members. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559. All in the Timing 8pm. Quimby Theater, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge. 687-5263. Blood Wedding 8pm. $16/$14. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-7869. Rufus Wianwright 8pm. $45-$75. Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA. (413) 528-0100. Vassar College Opera Workshop 8pm. Scenes from L’Italiana in Algieri, “Il Turco in Italia,” and “Il Barbiere di Siviglia.” Martel Theater, Poughkeepsie. 437-5902.
Workshops The Tibetan Book of the Dead with Robert Thurman Call for times. $290/$261 members. Menla Mountain Retreat, Phoenicia. 688-6897.
Reduce, Reuse and Recycle Community Yard Sale 10am-2pm. Hudson Highlands Nature Museum’s Outdoor Discovery Center, Cornwall-on-Hudson. 534-5506 ext. 204. Earth Day Expo & Family Fun Fair 10am-2pm. Hudson Highlands Nature Museum’s Outdoor Discovery Center, Cornwall-on-Hudson. 534-5506 ext. 204. Kimlin Cider Mill Celebration: Preserving the Legacy 6pm-9pm. First anniversary celebration. Vassar Alumni House, Poughkeepsie.
Kids Recess! 11am. $6-$9. Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-3080. Sky Hunters in Flight 2pm. $10/$7 members. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
Music The Bobs Call for times. Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling. 855-1300. A Perfect Gift: All that is Jazz 10am. Unison Arts and Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559. Kidtopia 11am. House band Ratboy Junior with a special guest each week. Utopia Soundstage, Woodstock. 331-6949. Beethoven and Shostakovich 6pm. Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA. (413) 528-0100. Mark O’Connor American String Celebration 7:30pm. American Roots and Branches music series. $28. The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845. The Princes of Serendip 7:30pm. Acoustic. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331. Split the Bill 8pm. 2 Alices Coffee Lounge, Cornwall-On-Hudson. 534-4717. K.D. Lang 8pm. $51-$86. Ulster Performing Arts Center, Kingston. 339-6088. Red Molly 8:30pm. Americana. $25/$20. Kleinert/James Arts Center, Woodstock. 679-2079. SONiA & Disappear Fear 8:30pm. Bodles Opera House, Chester. 469-4595. Hurley Mountain Highway 9pm. Pop, soft rock. The Harp & Whistle Restaurant and Pub, Newburgh. 565-4277. John Schrader Band 9:30pm. Rock. Keegan Ales, Kingston. 331-2739. The Last Rights 10pm. Rock. Seany B’s 101, Millbrook. 677-2282.
Spoken Word Bradford Graves: Selected Works 3pm. Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz. 257-3858. Children of West Bank & Creativity for Peace 7pm. Film & photos by Jane Toby and short film about a peace camp in Santa Fe, NM for Israeli and Palestinian teens. Woodstock Library, Woodstock. 679-2213.
Theater
Living Meditation Weekend with David Harshada Wagner Call for times. $547. Menla Mountain Retreat, Phoenicia. 688-6897.
East Meets West 2pm. $5 per person, $10 family. The Ramayana: A Wayang Kulit Shadow Puppet Play. John L. Edwards Elementary School, Hudson.
Writing Club 2:45pm-4:45pm. Hudson Valley Guild and Book Trader, Saugerties. 246-7205.
All in the Timing 8pm. Quimby Theater, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge. 687-5263.
Astrology for the Common Man Part I 7pm-9pm. $35/$40. Mirabai Books, Woodstock. 679-2100.
Blood Wedding 8pm. $16/$14. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-7869.
SATURDAY 25 Body / Mind / Spirit Native American Healer, Sam Sto: The Dinetah Way Call for times. Sage Center for the Healing Arts, Woodstock. 679-5650.
Dance An Evening of Flamenco Music & Dance with Dennis Koster & Friends 8pm. $25. Ritz Theater, Newburgh. 562-6940 ext. 107.
Vassar College Opera Workshop 8pm. Scenes from L’Italiana in Algieri,” “Il Turco in Italia,” and “Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Martel Theater, Poughkeepsie. 437-5902. The Tempest 8pm. $20/$18 children and seniors. Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-3080.
Workshops 3rd Annual Alpine Plant Sale 10am-4pm. $5/members free. Stonecrop Gardens, Cold Spring. 265-2000.
SUNDAY 26
Events 13th Annual New Paltz Clean Sweep 8:30am-1pm. St. Joseph’s Parish Hall, New Paltz. 255-0243. For the Earth 9:30am-4:30am. $65/$50. Namaste Yoga Studio, Woodstock. 679-5369.
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forecast ChronograM 4/09
Art Fine Art Auction 1pm. Locust Grove Historic Site, Poughkeepsie. 454-4500.
Body / Mind / Spirit
Sloop Clearwater Public Rides 10am-1pm. $50/$15 children. Hudson River Waterfront, Beacon. 454-7673 ext. 112.
Sacred Chanting 10am-11:30am. $10. Unison Arts and Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
Hudson Valley Green Fair 10am-6pm. $8/$6 seniors and students. Dutchess County Fairgrounds, Rhinebeck.
Public Meditation 10:30am-12:30pm. Sky Lake Lodge, Rosendale. 658-8556.
spoken word david hajdu image provided
Comic Book Hero The Communist witch hunts offer a vivid cautionary tale of patriotism and morality run amuck, but few people recall this sorry episode had an equally insidious precursor: In the mid 1940s, politicians and religious leaders—and a savvy, self-promoting psychiatrist named Fredric Wertham—branded comic books as the gravest threat to the American moral fiber, a blight that had to be wiped out. They nearly succeeded. What followed was a round of public book burnings across the nation, promulgated by the same flag-wavers who had denounced Nazi bonfires a decade earlier. More than a hundred municipal laws were enacted against the most violent content in comic books. The result was a round of arrests for newsstand dealers. The greatest censure was reserved for comic book artists, writers, and publishers, most of them the sons and daughters of Jewish immigrants. A series of congressional hearings led to bankrupt businesses and shattered lives. This surreal chapter in 20th-century American life is exhumed vividly and exhaustively by former Saugerties resident David Hajdu in the critically lauded The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008). For six years, Hajdu obsessively chased down legal documents, media evidence and surviving players in what he identifies as “the first battle of the cultural wars.” In exacting, lively prose, cultural historian Hajdu—a professor in the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University—recreates the era and its hysteria, as well as its cast of characters, with the same fetish for detail which distinguished his previous works: Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn and Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina. Hajdu will read and sign The Ten-Cent Plague upstairs at Joshua’s Cafe in Woodstock on April 4 at 4pm. Sponsored by The Golden Notebook. (845) 679-8000. —Jay Blotcher
How did The Ten-Cent Plague tax different journalistic skills than Lush Life and Positively 4th Street? I had to learn how a whole new art form works, because comics are different from prose, and they’re different from drawings, and they’re different from movies. They’re a fourth thing; they work their own way. I really had to try to figure that out and try to do justice to it. That was one of the big reasons why I did the book: that it represented a challenge. It was an opportunity to do something that I didn’t know how to do. So there’s a kind of intellectual selfishness at work: Here’s an opportunity for me to learn something I don’t know. Something has to drive you for five or six years. But this persistence is part and parcel of your character? I don’t have any academic training in history. I apply the journalistic method to history. So I go out and try to find firsthand eyewitnesses of the events I’m writing about. That only works if you’re telling a story in recent history where witnesses are still alive. For instance, for this book, you go a little further north—somewhere between Saugerties and Syracuse—and you land in Binghamton and you find this group of kids burning comic books [in the late ’40s]. I spent quite a bit of time there. I went back and I found the
location where the kids were burning the comics—where the school [once] was. I went to the site of the drugstore where the kids would get together and plot out their campaigns against comics. And I found a half dozen of the kids that took part in the burnings. I did this a number of times. The comic-book burnings are hardly mentioned on the record in previous treatments of the debate over comics. They took place for 10 years, from ’45 to ’55, all over the country. So one of my objectives was to really bring this horrific chapter of American history to life. Why the collective amnesia about this dubious chapter in American life? For a while, the answer was simple: that history belongs to the victors. For a good 10 to 15 years, the full scale of the anti-comics crusade was forgotten because the bluenoses won at the end of the day. The losers’ side of the story was lost. That’s true in every war to a degree. Then the problem became later that the story was hidden in plain sight. There were hundreds of people who were driven out of comics that had never worked in comics again, who felt so stigmatized that they were ashamed to even admit they worked in comics. I open and close the book with this war memorial to people who never did comic books again.
Today’s graphic novels may not have the lurid aspects of Crime Does Not Pay, but they can be extremely violent. Why is there no current hubbub on a par with the protests of the ’40s? Graphic novels are of a piece with the culture today. Last House on the Left is about to be released. So what? They’re a part of a larger climate absorbed with violence and prurience today. Comics were practically alone in the cultural climate of their day. Much of the campaign against comics was couched as a way of protecting young people. It really wasn’t; it was really a way to protect grown-ups from their kids. Comic books, heavy metal music, video games—all have been accused of undermining the moral fortitude of our kids. Why this cyclical demonization of the popular arts, taking them to task for our own social ills? It goes back to Plato. And Socrates was accused of the same thing. What we’re seeing is art doing its job; one of the functions of art is to challenge the status quo, to represent the shifts in moral and aesthetic values and to advance those shifts. That’s why the Athenians were all pissed off at Socrates: There’s always been an awareness on a deep level that art has a unique power. And that’s what’s so scary about it. To read the full transcript of Jay Blotcher’s interview with David Hajdu, visit www.chronogram.com.
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Spirit Essence Portraits 11am-6pm. $195. Mirabai Books, Woodstock. 679-2100. Tarot Playdate with Cait Johnson 1pm-3pm. $20. The Dreaming Goddess, Poughkeepsie. 473-2206.
Dance
TUESDAY 28 Art Fiber Arts Group 6:30pm-8pm. An informal gathering for creative craftspeople. Pawling Free Library, Pawling. 855-3444.
Buckets and Tap Shoes 3pm. Ten Foot Five Dance Company. $20/$16 seniors/$10 children. The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845.
Body / Mind / Spirit
Events
Channeling with Master Teachers 6:30pm-7:30pm. Sage Center for the Healing Arts, Woodstock. 679-5650.
Garden Conservancy Open Day 10am-5pm. Stonecrop Gardens, Cold Spring. 265-2000. Hudson Valley Green Fair 10am-6pm. $8/$6 seniors and students. Dutchess County Fairgrounds, Rhinebeck. Tastemakers of an Era Symposium & Tour 12pm. Self-guided tour. $20-$45. Crawford House, Newburgh. 561-2585.
Public Meditation and Dharma Talk 6pm-8:30pm. Jumping off the train of Thought and Into our Lives. $5. Sky Lake Lodge, Rosendale. 658-8556.
Kids Crafts for Tots 10:30am-11:30am. Hudson Valley Guild and Book Trader, Saugerties. 246-7205.
Music
Fundraiser for Indie Program 4pm-6pm. Films, music, magic, special guests, appetizers. Bearsville Theater, Woodstock. 679-4406.
Conservatory Noon Concert Series 12pm. Conservatory students in concert. Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7216.
Music
SUNY Ulster Wind Ensemble 7:30pm. Quimby Theater, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge. 687-5263.
1st Annual Rosendale Pet Festival 2009 11am-4pm. Benefit for a new dog shelter. Community Center, Rosendale. 389-2205. Brahms Requiem 3pm. Saint Joseph’s Parish Hall, New Paltz. 257-3844. Saugerties Pro Musica 3pm. Soprano Deborah Raymond. Saugerties United Methodist Church, Saugerties. 246-5021. Zuill Bailey and Robert Koenig 4pm. Mendelssohn, Schubert and Brahms. $30/$10. Howland Cultural Center, Beacon. 831-4988. Bob Malone and The Wiyos 7pm. Bodles Opera House, Chester. 469-4595. SUNY-New Paltz College-Community Chorale 7pm. “German Requiem” of Johannes Brahms. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-2715.
The Outdoors Great Hudson River Sweep 9am. Help clean the beach. Foundry Cove, Cold Spring. 462-0142. Mohonk Preserve: Enderly Mill and Van Leuven Cabin 9:30am-11:30am. 2.5-mile hike. Mohonk Preserve, New Paltz. 255-0919. Mohonk Preserve Singles and Sociables Hike: Lake Awosting 9:30am-3pm. 8-mile hike. Meet at the Minnewaska State Park Preserve Awosting Lot, New Paltz. 255-7059.
Student Chamber Jazz Ensembles 8pm. $6/$5 seniors and staff/$3 students. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-7869. The Smothers Brothers 8pm. Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Troy. (518) 273-0038.
The Outdoors Nature on the Run 5:30pm-6pm. Three-mile runs along the preserve’s scenic trails. Shaupeneak Ridge, Esopus. 473-4440 ext. 273.
Spoken Word The House on Mango Street 7pm-9pm. Spring 2009 Scholar-led Book Discussion Series. Middletown Thrall Library, Middletown. 341-5454.
Workshops Unleash Your Comedy Power Stuff 10am-12pm. Workshop for de-stressing. Olympic Diner, Kingston. 246-5348. Playwrights Lab 6:30pm. Hear readings of your work performed by actors. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331. Writing Poetry, Short Story, Novel, Memoir or Creative Non-fiction (and Getting It Published) 6:30pm-8:30pm. $75 series/$15 session. Call for location. 679-8256.
Spoken Word Dead Poets Reading 2pm-6pm. 2 Bohemian Book Bin, Lake Katrine. 331-6713. Eeny Meeny Miney Mo / Time to Lynch a Negro 2pm. Eddie Bell book announcement/poetry reading. $7/$5 members. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
SUNY Ulster Student Works ‘09 Gallery Exhibit 1pm-2pm. Muroff Kotler Visual Arts Gallery, Stone Ridge. 687-5113.
Classes
Theater
Modern Dance Call for times. Classes with the Hudson Valley Modern Dance Cooperative. $15/$12 members. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
All in the Timing 3pm. Quimby Theater, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge. 687-5263. Cummings and Goings 3pm. Musical theater piece. $10. Senior and Community Center, Montgomery. 457-9867. The Tempest 3pm. $20/$18 children and seniors. Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-3080.
Art and Drawing Class Call for times. $15. Hudson Valley Guild and Book Trader, Saugerties. 246-7205.
Printmaking 9:30am-11:30am. Newburgh JCC, Newburgh. 561-6602. African Drum 7pm-8pm. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559. Pasta Making with Chef Paul Rabin 7pm-8pm. Pawling Free Library, Pawling. 855-3444.
Workshops
Events
Life Drawing 10am-1pm. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438.
2009 Hudson Valley Latino Forum 10am-2pm. Presented by Gateway to Entrepreneurial Tomorrows. Poughkeepsie Grand Hotel, Poughkeepsie. 787-4328.
MONDAY 27 Music Celtic Session 7:30pm. Traditional Irish music. New World Home Cooking, Saugerties. 246-0900.
Spoken Word Translating August Strindberg: Weaving Literature, Language and Theater Together 5pm. Larry Carr and Malin Tybahl. Honors Center SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-3933.
forecast ChronograM 4/09
Art
What is the Enlightenment? Revolution and the Limits of Reason 4:30pm. Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7216.
Blood Wedding 2pm. $16/$14. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-7869.
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WEDNESDAY 29
Kids Children’s Art Lessons 4:15pm-5:15pm. Newburgh JCC, Newburgh. 561-6602.
Music Noontime Concert Series 12pm. Music department concert while viewing works in the gallery. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie. 437-5632. Open Blues Jam 8:45pm. 12 Grapes Music and Wine Bar, Peekskill. (914) 737-6624.
music the chrome cranks ali smith
SALES the chrome cranks get the band back together at BSP in Kingston on May 2.
8am - 8pm Monday - Friday 8am - 5pm Saturdays
SERVICE 8am - 7pm Monday - Friday 8am - 3pm Saturdays
Crank You Very Much What do retired stars do once they're done rocking? It's unclear what type of job years spent jumping around on-stage, staying up all night, and abusing your body with drugs and alcohol prepare you for. (Nightwatchman at a rehab facility for aerobics instructors?) For some, like Bret Michaels of Poison and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy, the advent of reality television has served to ease their transition from megastardom to mere celebrity white noise. For others, like the punk-blues kings the Chrome Cranks, the call to join the cast of "The Surreal Life" never came. When the band broke up in 1998, it was a short, unceremonious trip to the mundane world of back pain, divorce, and varieties of family tragedy for the quartet that had spent the previous decade kicking it squarely in its soft, pain-deserving tuchus. The only solution to a mid-life crisis for an aging rocker: Get the band back together! “I still can’t believe it’s happening,” says Peter Aaron, lead singer (and Chronogram music editor). “The band ended in a bad way because we were all in different places in life and we toured really hard for five years without taking a break. After Diabolical Boogie [the group’s 2007 anthology on Atavistic Records] came out, we all reconnected and became friends again. Jerry’s wife brought up the idea of a reunion, and we thought, ‘Why not?’ So it’s a chance to reopen the book and then close it again—in a good way this time.” (To be clear, it's a mini-tour, brief enough so no one gets fired or is caused undue marital strife in the interim. After three shows in New York—the first of which at Backstage Studio Productions on May 2—the band flies to France for the Nuits Sonores Festival in Lyon on May 22.) The Cranks, launched out of Cincinatti scene in the late 1980s by G. G. Allin sideman William Weber and Aaron, found its raw, visceral sound when it relocated to New York in the early '90s and added former Honeymoon Killers bassist Jerry Teel and ex-Sonic Youth/Pussy Galore drummer Bob Bert. The Cranks picked up where the Honeymoon Killers left off, slapping together their influences—Cramps, Pussy Galore, the Gun Club—in a jagged pastiche that's been called sleaze-rock. Loud as an air-raid siren, noisy as a Chamber of Commerce meeting in a bathroom, shambolic as a Chaucerian pilgrimage, the Cranks three 1990s releases—The Chrome Cranks (1994), Dead Cool (1995) and Love in Exile (1996)—epitomized the trash-rock vibe on overdrive. Known for their unhinged, eardrum-bursting live performances, the Cranks were the underground legends you might have never heard of, but they have been cited as influences by the White Stripes and the Mooney Suzuki. According to Aaron, the Cranks have no plans to continue touring after May. The Chrome Cranks will perform on Saturday, May 2 at Backstage Studio Productions in Kingston. Venture Lift and Frankie & His Fingers will open the show. (845) 338-8700; www.myspace.com/chromecranks. —Brian K. Mahoney
845.876.7074 rugessubaru.com 6444 Montgomery St., Rhinebeck, NY 12572
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Open Mike 10pm. Oasis Cafe, New Paltz. 255-2400.
Spoken Word Victor Faccinto 7:30pm. Painting, digital photography, performance and film. SUNY New Paltz Lecture Center 102, New Paltz. 257-3844.
Theater Lola Cohen Scene Night 7pm. Individual scenes from plays will be presented by the students in the Method Acting class. $8. Quimby Theater, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge. 687-5263. Badass: Fighting from Never/Land 8pm. Martel Theater, Vassar, Poughkeepsie. 437-5902.
Workshops Peer Critiquing Group for Writers 4pm-6pm. ASK Arts Center, Kingston. 338-0331.
THURSDAY 30
No Payments or Interest for 12 Months!
8pm. Improvisations of audience stories. $8. Boughton Place, Highland. 691-4118.
Workshops Astrology for the Common Man Part II 7pm-9pm. $35/$40. Mirabai Books, Woodstock. 679-2100.
SATURDAY 2 MAY Art Still Life 5pm-7pm. Stanley Bielen & Paul Goldberg. Harrison Gallery, Williamstown, MA. (413) 458-1700.
Body / Mind / Spirit SpiritPlay Open Session 10:30am-12:15pm. Woodstock, Woodstock. 679-4140.
Dance Freestyle Frolic
Art
CALL NOW! Get ready for your Spring Installation! BUY NOW... PAY LATER!
Community Playback Theater
Late Night at the Lehman Loeb 5pm-9pm. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie. 437-5632.
8:30pm-1am. Wide range of music spun by eclectic DJ’s. $5/$2 teens and seniors/children free. Knights of Columbus, Kingston.
Classes
Events
Euro Dance for Seniors and Others Call for times. $5/$8 couple. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
Women’s Health Expo
Ballroom Dancing Class 7pm-8pm. $10. Newburgh JCC, Newburgh. 561-6602.
Click for times. Tech City, Kingston. www.womenshealthexpo.com
Kids
Life Drawing Classes 7:30pm-9:30pm. Studies in life drawing. Unison Arts & Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.
Recess!
w w w. h v s k . f o u rs e a s o n s s u n ro o m s . c o m
Music
Music
Come Visit Our Showroom
It’s a Grand Night for Singing 7pm. The voice students of Professor Kent Smith sing arias, art songs and operatic scenes. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-3844.
The Acoustic Medicine Show
Spoken Word
7pm. $18. Columbia-Greene Community College, Hudson. (518) 828-4181 ext 5513.
Straight Eave - Glass Roof
System 8 Wood Interior
Victorian Conservatories
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Selling America: The Voice of America and U.S. Radio 4pm. Villa Library, Newburgh. 569-3179. Brian Farkas: Covering the Campus 5pm. Vassar College Bookstore, Poughkeepsie. 437-5871.
11am. $6-$9. Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-3080.
12pm. Taste Budd’s Chocolate and Coffee Cafe, Red Hook. 758-6500. Bluesman Lonnie Brooks
The Chrome Cranks 9pm. Reunion tour of postpunk powerhouses. BSP, Kingston. www.myspace.com/chromecranks
SUNDAY 3 MAY
The Joy of Hiking 6:30pm. Hyde Park Free Library, Hyde Park. 229-7791. Poet Laureate Charles Simic 7pm. Vanderlyn Hall, Stone Ridge. 687-5262.
Body / Mind / Spirit
The Hudson River School & the Birth of the Environmental Movement 7pm. Lecture with Professor Ted Hilscher. ColumbiaGreene Community College, Hudson. (518) 828-4181 ext 5513.
Call for times. 5-7 day cleansing retreat with Dr. Tom Francescott. Omega Institute, Rhinebeck. (800) 944-1001.
Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago 7:30pm. $23/$20 seniors/$12 children. The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845. Nancy Willard and Eric Lindbloom 7:30pm. Poetry and projected visuals at the Artist’s Salon. Barrett Art Center, Poughkeepsie. 471-2550.
12:30pm-4:30pm. Share & explore the powerful, lifechanging dreams of birth & pregnancy. Miriam’s Well, Saugerties. 246-5805.
Dance Swing Dance Jam 6:30pm-9pm. Beginner lesson at 6pm. $5. Arlington Reformed Church, Poughkeepsie. 339-3032.
Badass: Fighting from Never/Land 8pm. Martel Theater, Vassar, Poughkeepsie. 437-5902.
Events
Adult Workshop Series: Reducing Energy Consumption 7pm-8:30pm. $12.95. Hudson Highlands Nature Museum’s Outdoor Discovery Center, Cornwall-onHudson. 534-5506 ext. 204.
FRIDAY 1 MAY Events
Eleanor Roosevelt Knit-In 1pm-5pm. Henry A. Wallace Educational and Visitors Center, Hyde Park. 229-7711.
Music Rebel Red 1pm. Americana. Peekskill Coffeehouse, Peekskill. (914) 739-1287. Calendar Girls 3pm. Mid Hudson Women’s Chorus spring concert. $7/$6 students and seniors. St. James United Methodist Church, Kingston. 331-3030.
Reddan Brothers Band CD Release Party 9pm. Bodles Opera House, Chester. 469-4595.
Hugh Brodie and Robert Kopec Quartet
Music
Judy Collins
Paul Sachs 8pm. 2 Alices Coffee Lounge, Cornwall-On-Hudson. 534-4717. Steve Schultz 8pm. Acoustic. Hyde Park Brewing Company, Hyde Park. 229-8277. Vassar College Orchestra 8pm. Martel Theater, Poughkeepsie. 437-5902. MH2 8:30pm. Rock. Pamela’s on The Hudson, Newburgh. 562-4505.
forecast ChronograM 4/09
Birth Dreams
Theater
Workshops
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Detox and Change Your Life
7pm. Bodles Opera House, Chester. 469-4595. 7pm. $35-$60. Ulster Performing Arts Center, Kingston. 339-6088.
Spoken Word Carry A. Nation: Retelling a Life 1:30pm-3:30pm. Women Who Dared book discussion group. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438.
Theater Bye Bye Birdie 1pm. $45/$35.75. Lycian Center, Sugar Loaf. 469-2287.
Theater
Workshops
Dr. Dolittle Call for times. $15/$12 children. Lycian Center, Sugar Loaf. 469-2287.
Life Drawing 10am-1pm. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438.
DC Studios Stained Glass
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Planet Waves emil alzamora
by eric francis coppolino
Finding Your Missing Piece
M
ost of us, myself included, have spent much of our lives searching for our missing piece, in the form of a Special Relationship. I’m going to capitalize that term, because it’s a direct reference to a concept introduced by A Course in Miracles. Without giving a wholesale endorsement of that work, I think this is a valuable concept to understand if you’re working toward growth and better relationships; it seems to be the main thing standing in the way. Basically, the Special Relationship is something that is embarked on from a sense of incompletion. It should be no great surprise that it often leads precisely back to that place, because we cannot find completion in another person. Yet nearly all of us remain obsessed with precisely this. This psychic ecosystem is perfect for marketing culture, and I think it’s perpetuated, in part, for that reason. There is so much unfulfillment—emotional, sexual, social, and otherwise—that we live in a sea of spiritual hunger; and that hunger we attempt to fulfill either with products, ranging from stuff to make us more desirable, to stuff for its own sake, to stuff to kill others (our economy is still based on military spending). The constant search for this elusive missing thing creates a society based on attempting to find fulfillment where it is not. Have you ever considered the paradox of why we live on such a lonely planet, when people abound everywhere? How can everyone be looking for love at the
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same time and not finding it? Well, maybe because many people want something they are not willing to give. That would surely create a shortage. Of course, there are relationships that do succeed; that is, the people get together and actually keep growing. They honor one another as individuals and not halves of a whole. Yet the substitute is far more common than the authentic thing, and rarely distinguished from the real thing. The repetitive problems that most people face in their relationships tend to compound over time and create an abiding cynicism about love. You don’t need to look too far to find this attitude. This is not true of everyone, but I can tell you that most people who are in relationships that they find satisfying, and that are based on truth, do not look forward to the day when they might have to find someone else they actually get along with. Most of these qualify as Special Relationships because there are two entirely different standards for how to treat humanity: one for the special partner, and one for the rest of us. In that double standard, we’ve played divide and conquer with ourselves. The special partner gets special treatment, and they often get a special version of the truth that excludes anything that might threaten the relationship. Untold millions of people live in relationships that they cannot really abide because the notion of living without a partner is so terrifying that they feel
they have no other choice. It is astonishing to me how often we sacrifice who we are for the sake of having someone else, who is there allegedly to make us feel complete. Many people are evolving past this game of seek-and-not-find, and as a result they are having a hard time connecting in fulfilling partnerships. Many have given up relationships outright. One problem compounding this situation is that we lack new models of relationship that allow us to conceive of coexisting as individuals in an atmosphere of truth. For many, the old models don’t work. New models exist but for most people they are not developed well enough to understand; or they are still too controversial to be considered socially acceptable, even though many are longing for some new ideas. I know that a lot of people who have those new ideas are afraid to utter a peep, fearing that they will be rendered ineligible for partnership at all; but that’s no way to have a revolution—or a little fun, for that matter. The Ruler of Libra, Retrograde in Aries Any concept of relationship must be based on a corresponding concept of the self that has that relationship, and I do believe the problem begins here, as does the solution. Let’s see what astrology has to offer if we look through it like a lens. Venus is currently retrograde in Aries. This began Friday, March 6 and extends through Friday, April 17. This is a rare event; Venus is retrograde less than any other planet (six weeks out of every 18 months, or about 8 percent of the time). The most recent Venus retrogrades in Aries were in March/April of 1977, 1985, 1993, and 2001 (when the retrograde is in Aries, it’s always in March and April because Venus never strays far from the Sun). Aries is the sign that represents self. Most people give Aries the keywords “I am.” Alice A. Bailey describes it as the sign where the First Ray of Will or Power reaches human consciousness. Most of us don’t get so far as actual will or power; Aries becomes a stand-in for the self-concept. In traditional astrology, Aries is ruled by Mars, the god of war. It is a fire sign, entirely unlike the nature of Venus, which is associated with air, earth, and water (Libra, Taurus, and Pisces). Libra is the sign that is most closely associated with relationships. It’s the sign opposite Aries and often gets the keywords “We Are.” In addition to being about relationships, Libra’s main theme seems to be about aesthetics; that is, beauty. This beauty exists on the mental and the physical levels; a sense of balance, fairness, and symmetry come along with this sign. Rather than conquer, Libra wants to perceive, create and express. When you put Venus into Aries you can get some strange effects. For example, you can get an emphasis on glamour and appearance for its own sake. Much of our culture acts as if it had Venus in Aries owing to this one property. Today I glanced at the cover of Marie Claire and noticed the exciting article about what handbag would make you a big hit at the summer party. Indulging yourself in this kind of thing may be excusable because it’s supposedly fun, but in truth it reveals a deep problem with self-esteem. Relationships are often used the same way. How many people are willing to let on they don’t have a partner? There is so much pressure to be partnered in our culture that not having a wife disqualifies someone from being president. Chogyam Trungpa said in The Way of the Spiritual Warrior that a man must marry in order to have the appearance of decency. So the presence of this other glorifies and validates the existence of the self—but it’s often a cover for some profound insecurity. We’ve all run into the experience of falling in love with oneself through the other, or being in love with being in love. The other is used as a kind of stand-in for the self because the other, at least temporarily, is more acceptable to the ego. The love that could be felt toward oneself is projected onto another person. This works well enough until the misgivings and hatred we feel toward ourselves become projected onto another person. The whole business of how we really feel about ourselves is profoundly taboo territory. Embarking on a journey of conscious self-knowledge, we can go through a lot of layers of misgiving, discomfort, and shame before we reach a level of comfort and equanimity with ourselves; the most basic self-acceptance.
The Tense Relationship With Ourselves But here is a little problem. Our concepts of self-acceptance, self-love, and narcissism are often conflated; that is, we don’t have handy ways of thinking of them as distinct concepts. As a result, we can feel shame and embarrassment when presented with an opportunity to accept or love ourselves, because it comes along with a notion of self-aggrandizement. Working the other way, we can quickly confuse someone who is arrogant with someone who is confident or centered in his or herself. Venus retrograde in Aries takes us into the territory of the relationship we have with ourselves, emphasizing the often-denied point that we have an inner relationship at all. That relationship is often suppressed because there is so much misgiving in there, which we call things like “low selfesteem” or “depression.” Most humans, so far as I can tell, have not come to terms with their own existence, and so our self-relating is fundamentally an exercise in doubt. We could say a lot about where that doubt comes from; there are many sources. One place for sure is from our parents. I think that the real crisis of parental love involves the different agendas that parents and children have for one another. Most children go through a time when the parent or parents are the absolute center of their universe. But adults have more complex lives than kids, and invariably, children are only part of the lives of parents. This creates a power imbalance, and as relationships with parents are the template for relationships later in life, the stage is set for many disappointments. As Libra John Lennon pointed out, we can never hold the central place in anyone’s life that our parents held for us; they don’t love us like we love them. This is particularly true given that so many parents are negligent or abusive. It does not help that many parents have narcissistic relationships with their children, that is, they see them as extensions of themselves rather than as individuals. This problem is so pervasive that it’s nearly invisible. It explains why we live in a society where having a relationship is viewed as a sign of worthiness, a badge of honor, or evidence of being human. To see how this equation turns out, just listen to a few or a few dozen stories of the kinds of things people often do to one another when they’re in the process of getting divorced. Plenty of what we experience in relationships—the adulation, the cruelty, the admiration, the love—is about projection. Venus retrograde in Aries is about taking back those projections, and seeking something within ourselves. That could be a feminine identity within the prevailing masculine concept of “self” that we exist with. That sounds like making a discovery of the inner goddess, a core feminine identity that is entirely different than what we normally think of as ourselves. For both men and women, Venus retrograde in Aries is about seeking the beauty we see outside ourselves, within ourselves; seeking inner beauty. There is also something here about being confronted by how rigid our ideas of sex and relationships are. Aries views nearly everything as a competitive sport, including love, friendship, etc. Venus in Aries is competitive, oh boy, but turn her retrograde and you can turn the Popularity Olympics into a deep, inwardly directed question. Our accepted relationship model leaves no room for experimentation; that is why so many people cheat. Most of us, in defense of this situation, drag around a prudish quality that is more befitting a convent, only we live in a world where we are driven to artificially sexualize ourselves, or are confronted by constant sexual aggression. At the end of the retrograde, after two months in a fire sign, Venus gets wet. This is where we find the missing piece. Venus, the goddess, was born in the ocean and when she stations direct she will be in the last degree of Pisces. We’re suddenly relieved of all of this exploration and obsession over self (Aries) and enter territory that is at once collective, spiritual, and sexual (Pisces). Venus stays in this degree for nearly two weeks (April 11-24) while she slows down, stations direct and begins to cover the territory where she was just retrograde. To me, this is an opening where something new can be born: a new idea about ourselves, a new sense of freedom, and, most of all, the sense of something we actually have to offer others. We do, but I’ll tell you this—it’s not a token. Love is not on the barter system. Like breathing, it’s something we do because we’re alive.
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At a certain point we all learn to stop judging ourselves. It could be sooner; it could be later. But in terms of saving time, emotional energy and conserving opportunities that only come once, the sooner, the better. One thing you might have to get over is the notion that the kind of self-critique you’re accustomed to makes you a better person. I don’t think it does. I would say that the only possibility we have of being better people is awareness, and the gradual, repeated choice to surround ourselves with aware people. In the trapeze act of life, we need to work together and the main thing we need support in is consciousness. What you seem destined to learn over the next few weeks is that having a fixed concept of who you are, or who you’re supposed to be, is the basis of your overly critical opinion of yourself. Judgment requires criteria, and when those are unconscious, unreasonable or unrealistic, then the assessment is more of a mental or emotional trip than it is a growth process. You’re working toward an extraordinarily rare moment of being able to let go of the self-concept that is at the heart of this crisis. With it, you may find yourself letting go of certain ideas of why exactly you deserve so much attention. You do, but it’s for reasons other than you think.
tauruS (April 19-May 20) Visualization is one of the tests of what is possible in the world, or rather, what is possible for you. If you can imagine something, then you can assume it’s possible. One reason we stop ourselves doing this is because we assume that if we fear something, then it may happen; then we shut down the process of imagining, even of the things we want or worse yet, what we actually are. This is a way of letting fear rule your life. I want to propose two exercises that involve the theme of how you see yourself. The first involves observing yourself now: how you move through your day, and how your mind navigates the ocean of consciousness. Notice your moods and what affects them; how you respond to people and how they respond to you. Notice every time you make a decision, and observe the basis of each decision you make; that is, the information you’re working with that leads you to action. This is an exercise in mindfulness; that is, paying attention and staying awake. The second involves envisioning yourself in the future: not what you will look like or what you will be doing, but rather how you want your presence in the world to feel. This is subtle, but not so subtle as you may think.
geMini (May 20-June 21) Every time you tell yourself how open-minded and flexible you are, I suggest that you question this assessment. I’m not saying you’re wrong; but you won’t know if you’re not asking. Every time you discover that you’re actually less progressive than you think is an opportunity to make a choice to open your mind to other influences. Part of the problem is that we currently have exceedingly few examples of what it means to actually be open. Our entire social climate is so guarded right now that the smallest modicum of depth or authenticity feels completely radical. This is a distortion. If you’re on a path of self-development, seeking your freedom and willing to explore, I suggest that you open yourself to the ideas of other cultures and other times in history. What is normal now is not what is or was normal at other points in space and time. We live in a unique moment, most notably because so many people feel so paralyzed and indeed passive, waiting for something to happen. You seem to be among those who have decided that you’ve waited long enough. One thing to look at closely is everything you avoid; check out what you pretend you don’t want; make a little note every time you decide something is impossible. Then, ask yourself how you came to be in this place.
cancer
(June 21-July 22)
The ethics of a professional situation may be weighing on you, but I would propose that’s a waste of your imagination and thus your potential. You seem intent on proving yourself right, or demonstrating who you are; give it up. You’re as right as you need to be, and it’s only a point of emotional confusion, based on the past, that is leading you to believe that you’ve got a problem that you do not have. So what’s really going on? You want more, with urgent, yearning, lustful passion. You may not even know what that passion is pushing you toward. This seems to conflict with a self-image of certainty that you’ve been trying to project. This image, however, is different than the substance of what you actually want. True, you may be thinking in terms of status and social acceptability, but your real quest involves expanding your horizons. I suggest you think less in terms of results and more in terms of your potential. That will mean devoting yourself to new things rather than sticking with the ones you’ve been pushing with such determination. You’re much closer to connecting with one of those fresh experiences than you imagine. The key is this: Give up on whether it’s right or wrong by an external standard. Connect with the calling that only you can articulate to yourself.
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Planet Waves Horoscopes Eric Francis Coppolino www.planetwaves.net
Leo (July 22-August 23) Long ago you decided that the simplest way to deal with lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s complexity, and with the many agendas people have, is simply to be authentic. This has proven to be an excellent policy, though itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s had results you were not expecting, one of which is bringing out the deeper truth that others close to you were not planning to reveal. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve only seen the beginning of this process. Your life has simplified somewhat from the circus of the past few months. This has cleared emotional and mental space to work through a key matter in a relationship, and to put to good use the information that you have spent so much time acquiring. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a point of discussion that has for months seemed non-negotiable. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s as though you or someone else was taking a kind of parental authority over the matter. You may therefore be surprised to discover that soon enough it will be up for discussion. This is an emotional or spiritual matter, which will open common ground that previously seemed impossible to reach. Give it time; let the new environment settle into place, and prepare to proceed in this relationship with an entirely new understanding. If you take the opportunity to get clear, a side benefit of that clarity will be making you aware of shared financial resources that were there all along.
Virgo (August 23-September 22) Yours is one of the signs that puts the most profound emphasis on finding yourself through relationships. I know this is nowhere in the traditional delineations of Virgo. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re wondering why you feel so volatile or unstable at times, this involves the many ways in which your sense of self is invested in what you think other people expect of you, and how you think they define you. As Venus moves retrograde in Aries and many other developments take place, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re starting to see the extent of this situation. The idea is not to divest yourself of deep or risky contact with others. You will always be relationship-oriented and you seem determined as ever to clear the haze and fog where you seek clarity. Venus is suggesting that you stop deciding in advance what other people think, and more to the point, why they think it. You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really know their true thoughts and you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know their motivesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that is, until you find out. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re more sensitive than most to this dimension of existence. The more people express themselves, the more there seems to be the potential for misunderstanding. Therefore I suggest you give yourself the benefit of the doubt in any situation thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bothering you. The chances are when you discover what someone you care about is really thinking, it will be a lot happier than you feared.
Libra (September 22-October 23)
,IFE IS YOUR GREATEST ASSET 3BJTF ZPVS DPOTDJPVTOFTT &YQBOE ZPVS IPSJ[POT
By one measure, the purpose of life is healing. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not the only measure, and healing takes many forms. Not all of them are boring or arduous; many are inadvertent results of exploring honest pleasure. Your current involvement in a relationship is a good example of this. There seems to be an undertow of some kind pulling you toward some destination that you were not expecting and could not have predicted. This is including an inner confrontation that is potentially coming with a sense of loss or sacrifice. You might ask what youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re having to give up, and more significantly, what you want that would have an even greater emotional value. The situation youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in is compelling you to assess what is important to you in a deep way, particularly where a key relationship is concerned. You know you cannot go forward from this point without being absolutely honest with yourself; and the bottom line is that if someone close to you is not willing to be equally honest, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not much of a meeting. You havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seen the end of this particular discussion, so I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t suggest you predict how itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going to goâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;only that you be real with yourself from day to day, and make sure you have some of the beauty and pleasure you seek in the present, not in the future.
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Scorpio (October 23-November 22) You seem to be having a difficult time understanding why someone in your life is being so self-centered. The ongoing result has been an emotional disconnect that for you is the next worst thing to sleeping on a bed of ice. This is particularly true with Mars, the planet that best sums you up, moving through emotional, impassioned Pisces at the moment. The phenomenon of so close and yet so far may be the most difficult part of the situation. Given the astrology, I can offer the following suggestions. First, I would counsel patience, and remember that historically, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve kept plenty of people waiting. Do your best to vent any frustration in a constructive way. You can get all intense, but thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not going to help. This is a significant risk at the moment, but the truth is that all this energy and creativity youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re feeling is a rare resource. If you have to express sexual energy, figure out how to do it in a way that wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t create alienation. Also, you can go cover a lot of territory simply by expressing your basic needs with the understanding that if thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a meeting place, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s excellent and if there is not, you will live. Your situation is moving toward a meeting point, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s closer than you may think; and in fact, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a mutual turning point: a place to have a real conversation about what you both want.
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Planet Waves Horoscopes Eric Francis Coppolino www.planetwaves.net
Sagittarius
(November 22-December 22)
In a word, participate, and keep at it. Involve yourself in your close-to-home community and with the most important people in your life. I suggest you not concern yourself with the rewards for doing so, but rather count the opportunity to share and grow as its own magnificent benefit. You’re learning so much that I cannot imagine a better environment for you to put that knowledge to work. There’s something about your current life journey that has only begun to come into focus, or for that matter, into manifestation. You consider yourself an idealist, a problem-solver and someone who respects a beautiful idea when you have one, or see one. Your role is therefore pivotal. You are able to process information into knowledge; you’re in a central position to many people and have the ability to create a rare nexus point. This will continue to focus through the year, so I suggest you make friends with being in for the long run; that’s how you will get results. The other way that communities and organizations get results is by sticking close to the common values that you share. Close partners are intent on one thing, which is doing what they truly have faith in; and this is a baseline truth that you can depend on, and that will nourish you deeply.
Capricorn (December 22-January 20) You’re under enormous pressure, and you’re turning it into power. There is one simple truth you must face, which is that you are now in a position where you establish or at least observe the basic terms of reality. Give them the space to agree or disagree and you will discover that you have far more in common than you thought. Even disagreements, psychological tension and your own inner emotional struggle can be turned into common ground. Do this and you’ll focus the considerable impact that you can have on the world. We both know that “the world” is involved. You may not be president, a news anchor, or a Supreme Court justice, but your choices have impact that is greater than anything you’ve known, experienced, or imagined. You’re also being influenced by external forces in a way that few people would admit or even notice. There are other influences on you that could cause you to be hotheaded, or leap to false conclusions. If you keep your fear in its place, you will have access to some of the most stunning intuition that a human is capable of. After all is said and done, this will turn out to be the key, and the gift: understanding the role of fear.
Aquarius (January 20- February 19) You need to be careful with your finances, and conscious where debts in any direction are concerned; but I suggest you recognize that your true wealth is not in cash or assets bur rather in ideas, intelligence and your perceptive abilities. You may be thinking that you cannot take ideas to the bank, but some would say that once you graduate from the chicken factory, that’s all you actually can take to the bank. However, at the moment, the most important ideas you’re having are about yourself. The past year has been full of “aha” moments. There have been hundreds of them. You’ve probably filled two notebooks. You keep figuring it out (yourself, that is), then you figure it out again. The look of your charts over the next two months suggest that some perceptive gift is coming into focus for the first time. When you start to notice this shift, you will also notice that it’s been dawning for a long time, but like eyesight itself, the brain takes time to get accustomed to it. I could also describe this evolution in terms of events, which promise to be highly unusual and shift your whole sense of existence. But this is truly one of those moments when you don’t see things as they are; you see them as you are.
Pisces (February 19-March 20) If you think you’re getting no results, have no fear. Not only are you a Pisces, but your sign is the dominant energy in the sky right now, owing to many aspects involving Jupiter and Neptune in Aquarius. What happens in Pisces or involving Pisces planets takes longer than most things, but the outcome is more complete, it goes deeper and it lasts longer. Processes involving water, emotional energy, creativity and turning ideas into tangible form have little in common with pure logic, and if they cooperate with linear time, it’s usually a coincidence. So don’t depend too heavily on time as a metric, though it will be a powerful tool when you need it the most. In recent months you have been seeking something, or working to create something, that seems to be all investment and little in the way of results. You can see the process unfolding, but so far you haven’t been able to put the pieces together. In a sense it’s like you’ve been assembling a puzzle blind. And you have no way to tell if all the pieces are even there. The puzzle you’re assembling has an odd property: the pieces mold to fit one another. The image is fluid, like an animation. But there is a solution, and you’re rapidly approaching the moment when you know you’ve found it. Read Eric Francis Coppolino daily at PlanetWaves.net. 102
planet waves ChronograM 4/09
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Parting Shot
Sala-meander, Kenneth Cooke, 2008
In April of last year, Kenneth Cooke was walking the short distance between his studio and house in Germantown just after dusk when he spied a yellow-spotted salamander. While this species of amphibian is common throughout New York State, they are seldom seen because of their nocturnal schedule and a life spent mostly in the shelter or leaves and rocks. In spring, when the temperature begins to rise, the salamanders migrate to their annual breeding pond. In just one night, hundreds to thousands of salamanders across the region may make the trip to their ponds for mating. Cooke, who had never seen a yellow-spotted salamander though he had lived in Columbia County for 11 years, described his encounter this way. “I scooped it up and called my wife, who was as excited as I was,” he wrote in an e-mail. “We washed it off a bit and I hurriedly grabbed my gear to photograph it. Since it was looking for a mate, I didn’t want to keep it for long, or traumatize it. I only got two shots before we released it to resume its mission.” Portfolio: www.kennethcooke.com. —Brian K. Mahoney
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ChronograM 4/09
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