A hot yoga class at Meltdown Yoga on Chambers Street in Newburgh.
Photo by David McIntyre
COMMUNITY PAGES, PAGE 38
DEPARTMENTS
6 On the Cover: Kirkland Bray
Kirkland Bray’s Gathering series transforms found materials into surreal landscapes, blending abstraction and nostalgia.
8 Esteemed Reader
Jason Stern goes to the desert to reconnect with cosmic time.
9 Editor’s Note
Brian K. Mahoney wonders whether skywriting is worth a try.
OUTDOORS
10 Holding On, Letting Go
After cancer, climbing helped Anyssa Lucena rebuild strength and confidence. Now, through Genuine Climbing, she offers free retreats for women affected by cancer, fostering healing and empowerment on the rock.
FOOD & DRINK
18 Bowl New World: The Porridge Project
Andrew Ellis has launched The Porridge Project in Catskill, a pop-up exploring global flavors through porridge-based dishes, blending creativity, and culinary tradition.
21 2025 Hudson Valley CSA Farm Finder
Community Supported Agriculture farms connect consumers with local farms, offering fresh, seasonal food.
22 Sips and Bites
Recent restaurant openings include Bistrot le Chat Barbu in Rosendale and The Ridge by Mill House in Highland.
HOME & GARDEN
24 A Studio, Finally, Set in Stone
After years of impermanent studios, artist Joseph Stabilito finally has a dedicated workspace in Hillsdale, a light-filled retreat inspiring his vibrant, evolving paintings alongside his thoughtfully designed stone home.
HEALTH & WELLNESS
34 First Love, Lasting Lessons
Journalist Lisa Phillips explores how young love shapes mental health in First Love, examining relationships as a foundation for growth, resilience, and self-discovery.
COMMUNITY PAGES
38 Newburgh: Rising Tide on the Hudson Newburgh is on the rise, reclaiming its waterfront, boosting local businesses, and fostering community resilience. With new developments, cultural hubs, and a thriving dining scene, the city’s future looks bright.
46 Newburgh Portraits by David McIntyre
RURAL INTELLIGENCE
52 Fowl Play: Hy’s Fried in South Egremont
Hy’s Fried, a moody, retro roadhouse in South Egremont, serves up gluten-free fried chicken and raucous dance parties. Now, owner Jack Luber plans to take his vision nationwide with outlets in Burlington, Austin, and beyond.
Performance artist Adrienne Truscott brings her newest theatrical provocation, “Masterclass,” to Bard’s Fisher Center this month.
THE GUIDE, PAGE 58
ARTS
54 Music
Seth Rogovoy reviews Radios & Rainbows by Kate Pierson. Tristan Geary reviews Should Sound Loose by Rinde Eckert, Art Labriola, Jay Nicholas, and David Rothenberg
Jason Broome reviews Wallkill River Blues by Jake Toth. Plus listening recommendations from Scott Pasch, who runs DCxPC Live, a DIY punk, hardcore, ska, and metal record label that releases live albums on vinyl.
55 Books
Susan Yung reviews The Parts of Him I Kept by Natasha Williams, a memoir about growing up the daughter of a paranoid schizophrenic. Plus short reviews of Pretty Nearly All Natural by Genie Abrams; Fear No Pharoah: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery by Richard Kreitner; Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America by Russell Shorto; I Know She Was There by Jennifer Sadera; and The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers.
56 Poetry
Poems by Ryan Brennan, Isabelle Feffer, Robyn Hager, Joseph Klarl, Sage Higgins, Jean Liew, Jim Metzner, Alexondra O’Connell, Diane Peterson, Michelle Rodriguez, Harry Schiller, Claire Scott, Matthew J. Spireng. Edited by Phillip X Levine.
THE GUIDE
58 Adrienne Truscott’s “Masterclass” at Bard’s Fisher Center (April 3-6) deconstructs performance, power, and artistic authority with humor, challenging audience expectations in a bold, boundary-pushing production.
61 Lovers of the written word return to the Catskills the first weekend in April for the Woodstock Bookfest
63 Singer/songwriter Bill Callahan plays two shows on April 20 at Assembly in Kingston.
64 Learning meets laughter at Nerd Nite Hudson Valley at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon on April 18.
66 Work by Erik Daniel White, Matt Bede Murphy, Kevin Mosca, and Sue Muskat at Bill Arning Exhibitions.
68 Andrew Yang’s Hudson Valley Ideas Fest returns to the Rosendale Theater on April 26.
69 Live Music: Explosions in the Sky, Spottiswoode and His Enemies, Dawes, Kaushiki Chakraborty, and more.
70 Short List: “Ancient Aliens Live!” “Spring Fever Sirens” burlesque, Cornell Cooperative Garden Day, and more.
72 Highlights of museum and gallery shows across the Hudson Valley, Catskills, and Berkshires.
HOROSCOPES
76 Third Time’s the Charm?
Cory Nakasue reveals what the stars have in store for us.
PARTING SHOT
80 All Cued Up
Bill Patrick’s photography book In Between captures the unseen (and unglamorous) moments of DJ life on the road. april 4 25
Photo by Richard Hardcastle
Highways and Hitchhikers
Kirkland Bray’s Surrealist Journeys
By Mike Cobb
Kirkland Bray is a painter and collage artist whose work is deeply rooted in the use of found materials. Whether using worn-out texts or abandoned canvases, his creative process embraces discovery and transformation. “I have an affinity for finding a great old book with oxidized pages that I use as backgrounds for collages or a pile of discarded canvases. I also like repurposing paper and frames. I think they give my work an interesting starting point and a ‘vintage’ feel,” he says.
At the heart of Bray’s practice is a desire to push beyond his comfort zone, creating beauty from the decrepit, reinterpreting familiar spaces, and continuously evolving his approach. He has been painting on found surfaces for more than 20 years and began incorporating collage into his work in 2012.
Bray is as inspired by the hunt to find new materials as the challenge of executing and editing his work. He considers a piece finished when the combination of shapes, colors, and ideas come together like a puzzle and when the positive and negative space have equal say. “Many of my paintings expand upon my ‘Gathering’ series— works of surrealistic landscapes with peculiar
masses of people. Many of these pieces evolve from recent travels and outdoor escapes where I find myself searching for sparks of inspiration in landscapes and quirkiness in nature. Some scenes become backdrops and some I sculpt and alter to fit an obnoxious number of humans,” he says.
Bray’s painting Hitchhiker Gathering is a continuation of the Gathering series. The setting is inspired by Route 66, one of the oldest numbered highways in the US, which runs through Arizona and New Mexico.
“It’s painted on found canvas, so the composition was somewhat informed by the markings on the canvas itself. The canvas had the shape of what looked like a distant mountain range already vaguely there, and I loosely painted it in and added a long road. Then the idea came to me to add an overwhelming number of hitchhikers on both sides without a car in sight,” he says.
His work conjures memories and evokes feelings that he hopes get viewers asking questions. Upon closer inspection, Hitchhiker Gathering shows two large groups hitchhiking in different directions on opposite sides of the road.
What are the hitchhikers doing out in the high desert and where are they going en masse? Are they headed toward a pleasant destination, such as an outdoor concert, or are they immigrants fleeing troubles? Answers are left up to the imagination of the viewer. “I make art to see how far from my comfort zone I can go, to make something beautiful from something discarded, and to discover new directions in both process and subject,” he says.
Bray’s work is featured in “Alta Vista,” a twoperson exhibition with Todd Koelmel that will be shown through April 27 at Upstairs at Small Talk in Woodstock. Koelmel’s Reservoir Sunset appeared on the cover of the January 2020 issue. Both painters push boundaries by infusing landscapes with abstraction, surrealism, and alternate perspectives. Offering both a reflection of reality and a window into imagination, their works playfully reconsider the history of painting. “It’s a striking show, with our works creating contrast while sharing underlying connections— both explore landscapes and employ similar color palettes despite our otherwise divergent approaches,” Bray says.
Hitchhiking Gathering, Kirkland Bray, oil on canvas, 2024
EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Brian K. Mahoney brian.mahoney@chronogram.com
CREATIVE DIRECTOR David C. Perry david.perry@chronogram.com
DIGITAL EDITOR Marie Doyon marie.doyon@chronogram.com
ARTS EDITOR Peter Aaron music@chronogram.com
HOME EDITOR Mary Angeles Armstrong home@chronogram.com
POETRY EDITOR Phillip X Levine poetry@chronogram.com
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Anne Pyburn Craig apcraig@chronogram.com
Come as you are. eOmega.org/pride Pride at Omega Ten workshops. One weekend. June 13-15.
esteemed reader by
Jason Stern
Just like fresh, vital food, I need fresh impressions to feel healthy. After a few days following the same patterns, working inside and traveling regular routes along familiar roads, I become peckish. It’s similar to the sensation of gnawing hunger in the belly, just an octave or two up the scale of vibrations.
Failing to heed the call to take in fresh impressions, I begin to feel a malaise setting in. Planning ahead is needed. Inevitably this means going into a forest for a few hours without any technology.
Setting out into the forest, the first thing I notice is the smell of the air, alive with the fresh exhalations of trees. Sooner or later a sensitivity opens and I begin to feel the forest. With a degree of relaxation my morphic field* becomes porous and begins to connect with the greater living field of the forest. I begin to feel fed.
When my atmosphere shifts from opaque to translucent, from contracted to permeable, it is as though I am breathing a different air with a different body. Though my own field is separate I experience that it is interrelated with the larger subtle body of life.
There are times when more drastic measures are needed in the hygienic cycle. It is something like the need to periodically go on a cleansing diet, a metabolic reset. This calls for an extended period either in nature, or in retreat.
On the cusp of this spring, coincident with a son’s early spring break and uncharacteristically cheap airline tickets, we made a journey to the high desert of Joshua Tree Park in Southern California. The weather was not pleasant. Snow blanketed the tent on the first morning of camping in the wilderness. I washed my face and hands with snow and melted some on the camp stove so I could brush my teeth and have tea as the sun rose over the mountains on the horizon.
After some days of wandering in the desert amidst the forest of otherworldly Joshua Trees, the relative discomfort of the conditions began to feel normal. I noticed that I was no longer huddling in the sleeping bag but willingly got up and unzipped the tent to emerge into the sub-freezing night air under the bright canopy of stars. The acceptance of discomfort opened another level of porousness and sensitivity to the larger body of nature.
Days were spent walking through groves of Joshua Trees, spiky yucca, stiff bushes, and cacti with venom-tipped needles. We learned to step carefully, even as we tromped through deep ravines and along exposed granite ridges. Mostly we were making our way to and from the striking desert-granite cliffs to rock climb.
Joshua Tree climbs are as threatening as the landscape, with long runouts between protection, though not deadly in most cases. Having climbed here almost 40 years earlier, I was eager to see my teenage son taste the unique rock and climbing style.
Arriving at the base of a cliff, we pulled out our ropes and hardware and ventured onto the vertical dimension, entering that other domain in which the force of gravity has new and profound implications. We were there to climb “Breakfast of Champions,” a route of about 300 feet. To my deep satisfaction he ventured out onto an exposed face, keeping his wits about him as he made delicate moves with the potential of a 50-foot fall.
The immediacy of climbing can provide conditions for a slowing or cessation of associations, for the gossamer membrane of perception between inner and outer to become still more porous. Here the vital food of impressions becomes pungent with unmitigated reality.
Little by little the impression of the natural world became clearer, and with it a corresponding impression of my own nature. The shape of the granite outcrops, occasional birds, coyotes, and hearty flora came into focus and we felt we were immersed in and a part of a harmonious, living body transforming energies—a masterpiece of creation both in its parts and as a whole, both in form and substance.
Rising and retiring with the sun, the moon growing from half to full night by night, preparing food on a campfire had the palpable effect of resetting the rhythms of my inner clock to cosmic and elemental time. I understood why ancient civilizations synchronized the patterns of their collective lives with natural and celestial cycles.
Arriving home my son was worried that he wouldn’t be able to sustain the harmonious disposition we developed together in the wilderness. It was clear that such a state cannot be sustained without corresponding conditions. Nevertheless, we can strive to provide these conditions for ourselves, not to feel better, but because it is necessary.
* “Morphic field” is a term coined by the progressive scientist Rupert Sheldrake and refers to the measurable and arguably intelligent bioelectric atmosphere surrounding every living body.
It’s been a busy month here at Chronogram headquarters. March, the fickle beast, came in like a lion and, if we’re being honest, went out like a lion with its tail on fire, tearing through the underbrush and roaring with the kind of unhinged energy usually reserved for a napdeprived toddler. And honestly? That’s just how we like it. If you think what’s in the pages of this issue is the full extent of our coverage—oh, dear reader, let me disabuse you of that quaint notion.
Because in the vast, ever-churning engine room of Chronogram’s digital presence, we are cranking out stories at a serious clip. We’re talking about an uninterrupted stream of profiles, investigations, reviews, previews, interviews, and deep-dive local storytelling.
Like so: A tour of the once-grand, nowcrumbling $65 million Gilded Age estate in Millbrook. That’s right, the famed Hitchcock Estate—the one where Timothy Leary and his psychedelic brethren once set up shop—is on the market, just waiting for some well-heeled mystic to take up residence and get their transcendental groove on.
We also spent some time this month with two titans of comedy: Patton Oswalt and Colin Quinn. Patton, ever the bard of the bemused and beleaguered, talked about his “Effervescent” tour, the art of crafting the perfect joke, and why we could all stand to laugh a little more. Meanwhile, Colin Quinn waxed sarcastic about America’s inability to get out of its own way.
But it’s not all mansions and chuckles. Some stories hit you in the gut and leave you breathless. Like the one out of Hillsdale, where a grieving family is fighting for justice after the tragic, preventable death of their three-year-old son, Micah. Their battle with state bureaucracy is a reminder that the systems designed to protect us often fail in ways that are both cruel and infuriating. These are the stories we tell not because they’re easy, but because they matter.
And then, of course, there’s art—always art. We highlighted 10 must-see gallery shows, dove into Z Behl’s luminous and provocative exhibition “Stand in My Danger” at Pamela Salisbury Gallery in Hudson, and previewed the stacked summer seasons at Opus 40 and Caramoor, which turns 80 this year.
We got an inside look at the world of master mentalist Vinny DePonto, where sleight of hand meets storytelling and nothing is quite as it seems. DePonto, who honed his craft in the Hudson Valley before taking his mesmerizing performances to the national stage, invites audiences into a realm where reality bends and
the impossible feels within reach. It’s magic, but not as you know it—more intimate, more psychological, more a conversation between artist and observer. His work is a reminder that what we perceive is often just a fraction of the truth— much like how a magazine only scratches the surface of the stories we tell.
And let’s not forget the most-clicked story on our website in March: a deep dive into the Hudson Valley restaurants serving up underrepresented cuisines. From Filipino adobo to Ghanaian jollof rice, these culinary gems prove that our region’s food scene is as diverse as it is delicious. While some restaurants lean into tradition, others bring a modern spin to long-standing flavors, but all share one thing in common—they’re introducing locals to something they may have never tried before.
All of this—all of this—happened in just one month. And here’s the kicker: None of it ever made it into print.
Chronogram in 2025 is more than just a magazine. The pages you hold in your hands (or see stacked neatly in your favorite cafe) are only the tip of the storytelling iceberg. Every day, we’re covering the people, places, and pulse of the Hudson Valley in ways that don’t wait for the next print deadline. Our digital-first reporting brings you the latest in arts, culture, food, politics, and the unexpected corners of life in this region that make it endlessly fascinating.
Yet, despite all this, our email newsletters—our direct line to you, dear reader—are still reaching only a fraction of the people who call this place home. Which raises the question: How do I fix this? My first thought was to hire a skywriting plane to draw a massive QR code over the Hudson, but the wind. Alternatively, I could just say: sign up. It’s free, it’s easy, and you won’t have to interpret any smoke signals to get the latest Hudson Valley happenings straight to your inbox. (Subscribe: Chronogram.com/newsletter.)
Consider this your invitation to join the inner circle. Five days a week, we deliver the best of what’s happening in the Hudson Valley directly to your inbox. No algorithms, no guesswork—just the latest and greatest from our newsroom to you. It’s free, it’s easy, and it’s the best way to stay in the loop on everything from the region’s best new restaurants to the biggest stories unfolding in our backyard.
Sign up, stay informed, and get the full picture of what we do. Because March was a lion, and April’s shaping up to be a beast of its own. Oh, I forgot to mention all the stories in this print issue. Take a look for yourself!
by Brian K. Mahoney
Inbox or Bust
Department of Corrections
As part of our profile of Poughkeepsie in the February issue (“Main Street Momentum”), we wrote about The Art Effect. We incorrectly stated that the longstanding children’s arts education nonprofit runs a summer camp in Wappingers. It does not, but it does run camps in New Paltz and Poughkeepsie. We also noted that The Art Effect was moving out of the Trolley Barn, its art education outpost on Main Street for the last four years. In our initial reporting, we wrote that money could not be found to transform the space long term. Nicole Fenichel-Hewitt, executive director of The Art Effect, wrote to clarify that the decision to sell the building was made by its landlord, Hudson River Housing, after being unable to secure funds to complete necessary structural work.
In the March issue, we highlighted regional nonprofit movie theaters (“Hudson Valley Nonprofit Movie Theaters Swim Against the Stream”). We erroneously labeled The Moviehouse in Millerton, which converted to a 501(c)(3) in 2022, as a for-profit. The Moviehouse is a storied cultural institution and eminently worthy of support. We encourage readers to seek out its programming and attend an upcoming fundraiser for the theater, Reel Genius: A Night of Movie Trivia, which will take place at the White Hart Inn in Salisbury, Connecticut, on May 3.
Our apologies for the errors—we strive for accuracy, but sometimes we trip over our own pencils. We’ll always own up to our mistakes, and we appreciate the chance to set the record straight (and to remind ourselves that fact-checking is a lifelong journey). And for pete’s sake: If you haven’t subscribed to our newsletter yet, the QR code below will take you there. Pretty please.
Anyssa Lucena, a climbing guide and cancer surivor, pivoted her guide business, Genuine Climbing, into a nonprofit in 2022 and now leads free climbing retreats for women affected by cancer.
Holding on, Letting Go
Climbing as a Path to Healing After Cancer
By Abigail Gierke
In 2022, just months after Anyssa Lucena had received a clean mammogram, she felt a lump during a self-exam. Shortly after, she was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma, one of the most common forms of breast cancer, and underwent a lumpectomy, radiation, and hormone therapy. At the time, Lucena had been working as a rock climbing guide in the Gunks for 12 years, both working for others and through her own guiding service, Genuine Climbing. The shock and physical toll of surgery, treatment and recovery was immense. But it was the emotional weight that surprised her the most. “I really struggled with the fact that people might treat me differently,” says Lucena. “People really just don’t know what to say and as much as I wanted to share what I was going through, I also didn’t want people to think they couldn’t climb with me.”
Knowing how transformative climbing can be, Lucena started offering that same healing power to other women affected by cancer through free rock climbing experiences. “There’s something
about being on the rock that shows you what you’re capable of,” she says. “It reminds you that you’re strong.” This year, Lucena is expanding her offerings to include free multi-day retreats specifically for women impacted by cancer.
From Wall Street to the Climbing Wall
Lucena’s path to climbing started around the same time she met her former husband and life pulled her in another direction—toward marriage, motherhood, and a career on Wall Street. “The same weekend I tried climbing for the first time, I went on a first date with my then-husband,” says Lucena. “I sold my climbing gear when I had kids. I thought that part of my life was over,” the 50-year-old says. After having three children and navigating the heavy fog of ending her marriage, Lucena realized something was missing.
Suddenly, she was a single mom with three kids under the age of five. During that difficult time, Lucena found her way back to climbing. And in doing so, she began to rebuild her own strength,
community, confidence, and independence with her kids by her side. “Climbing was a way to do something physical and feel in control when everything around me felt like it was falling apart,” she says.
Although she’d been a guide working with Mountain Skills for years, Lucena decided to pivot on her own and launched Genuine Climbing in 2020. At that time, the business was a for-profit guiding service focused on serving women. Then in 2022, just 10 days after her surgery, Lucena received clearance from her doctor and immediately drove herself to the Gunks. “I needed to prove to myself that I could still do it,” she says, “That my body was still capable.”
It wasn’t until last year, with some help and encouragement from the climbing community, that Lucena transformed her business to a nonprofit dedicated to offering climbing opportunities for women affected by any type of cancer. “When you’re going through something
HEADS UP, HIKERS!
BREAKNECK RIDGE TRAILHEADS ARE CLOSED FOR IMPROVEMENTS
STARTING APRIL 21, 2025
SOMETHING EXCITING IS HAPPENING...
If you’ve spent any time in the area, you know that the Breakneck/Route 9D corridor is currently hazardous for both hikers and motorists, and downright untenable on busy hiking weekends.
But, coming in 2027, the Fjord Trail’s Breakneck Connector will make the area safer, improve accessibility, add public restrooms, organize parking, include renovation of the Metro-North Breakneck Ridge train station, and much more!
Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail Inc. is working with the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation; Metro-North Railroad; and the NY-NJ Trail Conference to bring you these critical improvements.
CLOSURE IMPACTS
• BREAKNECK RIDGE TRAIL closed from trailhead to Nimham Trail
WILKINSON MEMORIAL TRAIL closed from trailhead to Nimham Trail
BROOK TRAIL closed from trailhead to Cornish Connector
• METRO-NORTH RAILROAD BREAKNECK RIDGE TRAIN
STATION closed — no train service at Breakneck.
• NO PARKING ON ROUTE 9D in the area north of Breakneck Tunnel
like cancer, you are still taking care of everyone else and everything else that’s still a part of life.”
Lucena explains. “I wanted to create a weekend where women didn’t have to think about anything except themselves—you just show up and you’re taken care of.”
The Power of Community
Although Lucena admits that people are really surprised that their bodies are strong enough to take them to the top of a climb and even just attempt to get on the rock, the experiences are about more than just learning how to climb. They serve as a sanctuary for women seeking connection, confidence, and a renewed sense of self. “Cancer can be an isolating experience, but these weekends offer a space where participants can challenge themselves alongside others who understand their journey,” says Lucena.
“Allowing people to feel whatever they want to feel. Giving people that space for anything to come up.”
The shared experience of climbing—facing fears, tackling difficult routes, and celebrating
victories—builds an unspoken bond among participants. “Climbing is about problem-solving, persistence, and trust,” Lucena explains. “It teaches us that we’re stronger than we think, and that strength is something we can carry into every part of our lives.” Lucena also recognizes that there is healing in simply being outdoors. “There’s something about being outside in nature, moving your body, and having space to process,” she says.
“It changes your perspective.”
Retreat Details
Genuine Climbing retreats will take place over four days in May (May 29-June 1, deadline April 1), August (7-10, deadline June 1), and October (2-5, deadline August 1). Each program includes two full days of guided rock climbing, acupuncture, massage therapy, sound baths, healthy meals, and community. Each retreat is capped at 10 participants, with three climbing guides and two volunteers. Participants don’t need prior climbing experience but should feel comfortable going for a short walk or hike and a willingness to step outside of their comfort zones.
More than anything, they provide a space for women to feel cared for—physically, emotionally, and mentally.
Applications for the three upcoming retreats are now open to women over the age of 21 who have been affected by any form of cancer. Women are encouraged to apply regardless of whether they are currently in treatment, have any evidence of diagnosis, or are years beyond their diagnosis. The retreats are free, removing financial barriers so that every woman has the chance to participate. Genuine Climbing also offers one-day retreats for women who live closer or have time constraints impacting longer weekends.
“Cancer takes so much from you,” Lucena reflects. “But climbing can give something back. It reminds you that you’re still strong. You’re still capable. And you’re definitely not alone.”
“I encourage everyone to surprise themselves,” she says. “You don’t have to be a climber. You just have to show up—and we’ll take care of you.”
To learn more about Genuine Climbing or apply for one of the upcoming retreats, visit Genuineclimbing.org.
Genuine Climbing serves as a sanctuary for women seeking connection, confidence, and a renewed sense of self. Lucena is pictured, right, in orange harness.
Looking for open spaces, fresh air, and adventure? Discover the picturesque region of the Sullivan Catskills. This scenic area is a haven for outdoor enthusiasts seeking to immerse themselves in the wonders of nature.
The vast expanse of forests provides countless opportunities for hiking, camping, and wildlife observation. Trails wind through dense woodlands, leading hikers to hidden waterfalls, tranquil lakes, and breathtaking viewpoints.
It will be summer soon enough, when visitors can take an excursion down the Delaware River, whether on a raft, canoe, or kayak while searching for bald eagles flying high above.
Dotted throughout the region are charming towns and villages where visitors can explore historic sites, browse local art galleries, and sample delicious farm-to-table cuisine made with fresh, locally sourced ingredients.
After a day of adventure, relax and recharge at a charming inn, bed and breakfast, resort, or lodge and experience the Sullivan Catskills’ historic hospitality.
Hudson River Maritime Museum, 50 Rondout Landing, Kingston, NY 12401
Lost City by Kate Schoonmaker
Finding truly all-natural meat means shopping small and local. Hudson Valley consumers seeking to avoid factory-farmed food have a field-to-table ally at Northaven Pastures in Red Hook. For the past two years, the 95-acre farm has been producing sustainably, compassionately raised beef, pork and eggs, and is building facilities to add fresh raw milk to their farm store.
Grass-fed beef and pasture-raised pork are packed with nutrients, but not all supermarket labels tell the full story. Some producers use these terms loosely, selling meat from animals that grazed briefly but were later fattened on commercial feed—diminishing both the flavor and health benefits that justify the higher price.
The Red Hook family farm goes “beyond organic” with regenerative, chemical-free farming and nose-to-tail butchery. Farmer Cameron Pedigo emphasizes giving animals a healthy, natural life, allowing them to roam and behave instinctively from birth to harvest.
At the farm, cows are moved to fresh pasture at least once a day, sometimes twice, and pigs get fresh new ground to forage every seven to 10
A Green Haven for Regenerative Farming in Red Hook
Northaven Pastures is revitalizing what it means to be a sustainable farm
days. Northaven practices ecological regenerative farming, a holistic way of replenishing the Earth instead of working against it.
“Pigs have little shovel-shaped ends to their noses, so they’re constantly aerating the soil and releasing the dormant seed bank into the topsoil, which means more grass for the cows. The chickens spread out the residue the cows leave behind. All three species help each other; they’re integrated into an ecologically beneficial system,” Pedigo says.
Customers can fill their freezers with bulk pork or beef, sold by the whole, half, quarter, or, in the case of beef, an eighth of an animal—or purchase individually packaged cuts online to pick up in person at the farm store, where visitors are welcome to see what’s on hand.
“Either make an appointment on our website or stop by and ring the bell, and one of us will appear in a few minutes,” says farm co-founder Eric Marchwinski. “We are not only focused on the quality of our products but the quality of the customer experience. Offering a convenient online store including current inventory, modern payment methods, and an integrated scheduling platform
are just a few of the improvements we have implemented to ensure the customer experience is as wonderful as the meat on your table.”
“We’ve built our current customer base with bulk sales, and people are responding with enthusiasm,” Marchwinski says. “We are working hard this year to connect with our community of customers more interested in smaller and more frequent products, such as weekend visitors and visitors from New York City. Offering a diverse range of products in addition to diverse purchasing options is vital to make our offerings accessible to a wider portion of the local community.”
This spring, Northaven is building infrastructure to augment their dairy product line—they are working hard to obtain state licensing for raw milk by fall.
More information about Northaven Pastures can be found at Northavenpastures.com, where one can view and purchase the current inventory and subscribe to their thoughtful monthly newsletter. The farm also welcomes calls at (845) 982-2101, or drop-bys at the farm store, located at 358 Milan Hill Road in Red Hook.
In the verdant epicenter of the Shawangunk Ridge, Mohonk Mountain House is a historic resort renowned for its breathtaking surroundings, Victorian-era mystique, and worldclass outdoor experiences. For adrenaline seekers, hikers in search of awe-inspiring views, or families hoping to imbue a young mind with the wonder of nature, Mohonk offers expansive outings for everyone across its forests, cliffs, and trails.
Via Ferrata: A Climb to the Sky
For those looking to fuse sky with earth, Mohonk’s via ferrata provides a thrilling guided climbing adventure. Italian for “iron path,” a via ferrata is a system of iron rungs, cables, and ladders affixed to a rock face that allows participants to ascend steep cliffs safely. Mohonk’s is the first and only via ferrata in the Shawangunk Mountains.
Unlike traditional rock climbing, which requires technical skills and equipment, the Via Ferrata Experience is designed for a wide range of adventurers, from beginners to experienced climbers. The route takes up to three hours. Led by experienced guides, climbers are equipped with helmets, harnesses, and instruction to ensure a safe and exhilarating experience.
“This activity is perfect for those who want
to challenge themselves, build confidence, and take in unparalleled scenery from inspiring new heights,” explains Alex Sherwood, director of recreation at Mohonk.
Pinnacle Ledge:
What Hiker’s Dreams Are Made Of
If climbing isn’t an adventurer’s style but they still crave sweeping views from an aerial bridge walkway, Pinnacle Ledge is a must-try excursion. This scenic outcrop offers panoramic vistas of the Hudson Valley. The hike to Pinnacle Ledge is moderate in difficulty, featuring a mix of rugged terrain, well-maintained paths, and rock scrambles that add an element of adventure without being too strenuous.
“The tour begins with a rock scramble through historic footpaths along Sky Top Ridge. Guests are attached via safety cables, waist harnesses, and lanyard systems as they travel through exposed trail sections,” says Sherwood.
Along the way, hikers can expect to encounter diverse flora and fauna, rock formations, and the peaceful solitude of the forest. The final stretch leads to a breathtaking overlook, where visitors can pause, inhale the expansive landscape, and savor the serenity of nature. Whether for an experienced hiker or a casual explorer, the journey to Pinnacle Ledge is an unforgettable and
accessible outdoor experience, taking up to two hours to complete.
Junior Naturalist Program: A Hands-On Adventure for Kids
For families staying at Mohonk Mountain House, the Junior Naturalist Program is a fantastic way for children to connect with nature. Designed for young explorers ages five to 12, this program offers hands-on, educational activities that inspire a love for the outdoors.
Led by Mohonk naturalist Michael Ridolfo, this program immerses kids in guided nature walks, pond studies, animal tracking, birdwatching, and hands-on crafts. As they explore local wildlife and ecosystems, they sharpen observational skills and gain a deeper appreciation for conservation. A perfect blend of learning and adventure, it’s an engaging highlight of any Mohonk stay.
With its commitment to helping visitors relish the great outdoors, Mohonk Mountain House is an ideal destination for anyone seeking to hit the trails, relax, and forge a deeper connection with nature—all offerings are open to overnight guests, who can make reservations by calling (845) 2562186 or emailing recreation@mohonk.com.
No matter the adventure, Mohonk Mountain House offers experiences that cater to all ages and thrill-seeking levels.
Bowl New World THE PORRIDGE PROJECT
By Marie Doyon
When a tech layoff pushed him into a career crossroads, selftaught chef and globetrotter Andrew Ellis found himself back in the kitchen. The Porridge Project, his pop-up in Catskill, is an experiment in seasonal, slow-cooked meals, blending personal history, culinary tradition, and a desire to bring something different to the local food scene.
Ellis started his career in film in early 2000s New York, working on-set in various roles while studying photography and cinematography. As the industry transitioned to digital, making a living in independent film became harder. “I’d work on a film, make a little bit of money, and just go travel,” he says. “One of the first places I went was Russia. I was in Germany for a month. I always kind of looked at it as these culinary adventures.”
Inspired by Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour, Ellis embarked on a culinary adventure that led him from Thailand to Cambodia. Along the way, he set up a volunteer kitchen, taught for six months, and even worked on a documentary film with a friend. When he finally returned to the US, he pursued a design degree and spent over a decade in the Bay Area tech world. In 2015, recognizing a sea change in the local food scene, he published the cookbook Oakland: New Urban Eating, a compilation of recipes from local restaurants and interviews with area chefs as well as an homage to the growing food justice and urban farming movements. Almost all the restaurants mentioned in the book have since shuttered due to the pandemic, but Ellis remembers the project fondly as a personal point of reconnection to the food world.
In August 2023, Ellis was laid off from his tech job—a turn of events that made him “fairly ecstatic.” With time to reflect, he found himself drawn back to cooking, which he had fallen in love with as a teenager. “Oxtail congee was one of the first dishes I learned to make from a friend’s mother when I was about 15,” says Ellis, who was born in Newburgh and grew up in the Greater Boston area. “It’s my comfort food—it’s what I make when I’m sick.” With two Cantonese best friends, whose parents were, respectively, an advanced home cook and the chef at a restaurant in Boston’s Chinatown, Ellis grew up surrounded by Chinese flavors and watching cooking shows like “Yan Can Cook.”
Following his layoff, Ellis moved to Catskill in June 2024 to be closer to his girlfriend. He began guiding fly-fishing trips and working as a personal trainer but felt a pull toward something more nourishing. Enter the EAT Cooperative Kitchen and the idea of a pop-up. “Soups, salads, and sandwiches made sense for a pop-up in terms of food costs,” he says. “I wanted to do something warming because it’s the middle of winter. Porridge is something similar to soup, but it allows me to play and be creative.”
The penchant for Asian flavors developed in his youth and travels still permeates Ellis’s cooking today. Under the umbrella of porridge, he explores dishes from various global culinary traditions using varying grains for the base. “You can choose polenta, rice, or you can go with oats and do something savory or sweet,” he says. “I wanted to go back to that nostalgic, warming meal.”
The pop-up, which launched February 9, operates on Sundays and Mondays from 12 to 6pm out of the EAT commissary kitchen, offering a rotating menu of hearty, porridge-based meals with a meat and a veggie
Above left: Andrew Ellis, Porridge Project chief cook and bottle washer.
Above: Shiitake rice porridge, braised oxtail and bok choy, and crispy shallots with house made Szechuan chili oil.
option. The opening weekend’s menu included shiitake and rice congee with bok choy and oxtail, alongside a vegetarian option, as well as a basmati and mung bean khichari with garam masala pulled pork and curried okra. For the second weekend, Ellis debuted a polenta porridge with braised short rib, Swiss chard, and red cabbage in a shakshuka-like sauce.
It’s a delicate balance—figuring out how much food to make, whether people will return after the initial novelty, and adapting to seasonal demand. So far, the response has been promising, even during a holiday weekend snowstorm. Meals range from $14 for a vegetarian portion to $18 for meat, with optional add-ons like eggs. Ellis also serves a milk tea with black tea, oat milk, cardamom, and brown sugar ($3).
On a recent weekend, Ellis dished out a turmeric and ginger rice porridge with roasted kale, cabbage, and parsnip, topped with a peri-peri sauce, cilantro, mint, and parsley, and crispy shallots (the optional egg add-on is $1). The carnivore version will be served with the addition of an Ethiopian berbere-braised chicken thigh.
With a three-month kitchen rental through April, Ellis sees this as an evolving project. He is likely to renew the lease and pivot toward selling soups, stocks, and sauces for the warmer months, though he remains open to other ideas. For now, he relishes the challenge, enjoying the rhythm of planning, sourcing, and cooking—a return to his roots, guided by the flavors and memories that shaped him.
Top right: Rosemary-braised beef cheek with Swiss chard and porcini polenta. Below right: Brown rice porridge with fried egg, dandelion greens, and chervil.
2025 Farm Finder Find Your Hudson Valley CSA
In collaboration with Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a system that connects farmers and consumers through a direct relationship, offering a model for seasonal food production and distribution. By purchasing a “share” of a farm’s harvest at the start of the season, CSA members provide farms with essential financial support before planting begins. In return, they receive regular deliveries of fresh, locally grown food throughout the season, which may include vegetables, fruit, meat, mushrooms, flowers, herbs, grains, eggs, dairy, or a mix of these products. With options available in various sizes and styles, CSA programs accommodate a range of households, income levels, and dietary preferences, all while strengthening local agriculture. The list below is published in collaboration with the Hudson Valley CSA Colation.
Opened at the end of February on Main Street in Beacon, Estilo y Vino Wine Bar offers over two dozen globetrotting wines by the glass and bottle plus a small, tasty list of tapas like papas bravas al chorizo, pastelitos de pollo, and seared scallops. Founded by New Windsor resident Elizabeth Rodriguez, the space itself, with its dark ceiling and exposed brick, is comfortable yet moody, offering an atmosphere that encourages both quiet sips and social chatter. On weekends, you can expect live music from local acts.
Estiloyvinowinebar.com
The Ridge by Mill House
387 South Street, Highland
In 2024, when former German restaurant Gunk Haus in Highland hit the market, owners of Poughkeepsie’s beloved Mill House Brewing Company jumped at the chance to take over the historic hospitality spot with its iconic views of the Gunks. The Ridge, which opened March 26, differentiates itself from the industrial-chic brewery across the river by focusing more on its dining options and an elevated-woodsy charm. The menu of playful, American fare includes options like a 22-ounce New York strip steak for two, dry-aged in house; swordfish Veracruzana served over a bed of stewed tomatoes, olives, capers, artichokes, herbs, with a saffron rice cake and aioli; and a classic dry-aged beef burger, as well as various vegetarian, gluten-free, and kids options. Inventive small plates include braised oxtail crepes, honey-laquered pork belly with Chinese five-spice, and lobster deviled eggs, while the raw bar offerings include Maine lobster, oysters, little neck clams, and other surf delicacies. At the bar, there are 12 of Mill House’s core brews on tap, plus half a dozen craft cocktails. Millhousebrewing.com/the-ridge
Bistrot Le Chat Barbu
434 Main Street, Rosendale
After a decade of private cheffing in New York City, Devin Delgado realized he was ready for something different. Recognizing an urge to cook “grandma food”—hearty, classic dishes but with the best ingredients available, he ended up renting the former Rosendale Cafe space. After an intensive reno, his bistro Le Chat Barbu opened in mid-March, serving seasonal, locally sourced French cuisine and fare from former French colonies. Aside from some staples like coq au vin and French onion soup that will always be available, expect a rotating menu. An early favorite is the tender beef short ribs served with mashed potatoes, pearl onions, bacon, roasted mushrooms, and red wine jus ($38). Baked in a clay pot, the hearty plant-based vegan pot pie has been a surprise hit, with a filling that includes potato, Brussels sprouts, spinach, and root veggies in a coconut curry gravy ($28). The menu also includes canapes like stuffed button mushrooms ($7) and escargots in a garlic-parsley butter served in a puff pastry ($18). A $45 prix fixe menu and a liquor license to come later this spring. Lechatbarbu.com
Tannersville BBQ
27 Lake Road, Tannersville
With smoked meats, a $4 PBR, and a roaring fireplace, Tannersville BBQ rapidly became the go-to spot to hang up your skates after a go around Rip Van Winkle Lake this winter. In December, the erstwhile Tannersville Boathouse lobster shack reopened as a barbecue joint serving up smoked meats with laid-back dive bar charm. And as cozy as it was in the dead of winter, the good thing about barbecue is its year-round appeal. The food menu is delightfully concise. Pulled pork and brisket on a sandwich or a plate. Chicken fried or barbecued. And there’s also a meatloaf sandwich and a turkey chili. Sides are what you’d expect. On the beverage front, 16-ounce cans of beer are all $7. All wines are $10 a glass, and spirits range from $10 to $14. @tannersvillebbq
Momo Garden
51 Burnett Boulevard, Poughkeepsie
Nepali restaurant and bar Momo Garden opened in December 2024. Though named for the famous Himalayan dumplings, the new spot offers a whole range of Nepali dishes from curries and stews to thaali platters and sides. Given its landlocked position between Tibet and India, it is no surprise that flavors, spices, and dishes from these neighboring countries have mingled in Nepal. The menu includes plenty of dishes you probably associate with the Indian subcontinent—biryani, palak paneer, chana masala, and pakoras—to name a few. For a crash course on authentic Nepali flavors, order the Thaali platter, which comes with a mix of chicken, seafood, and vegetables or goat and lamb. Momo Garden’s menu even features modern Nepalese favorite American-Chinese classic chow mein. The bar offers craft cocktails like Himalayan Spice and Nepali Winter. Momogardenhudsonvalley.com
—Marie Doyon
A Studio, Finally, Set in Stone
By Mary Angeles Armstrong
by Winona Barton-Ballentine
JJoseph Stabilito in his studio. After achieving early success selling his paintings, Stabilito spent a decade creating and showing his work. Like his interior designs, his abstract works layer textures, shapes, and color. Poured acrylics merge with inks hinting at biomorphic shapes and anatomical references. Two of his completed works—Drip Pink (top left) and Look into My Eyes (top right)—are displayed with other works in progress.
oseph Stabilito has spent his life creating art in ad-hoc spaces. Fresh out of college, his first “studio” was the kitchen corner of his Philadelphia studio apartment. By day, Stabilito assisted interior designers by sketching, shopping, and doing busy work. In his free time, he’d maneuver around the kitchen, pouring acrylic onto flat canvases and watching carefully as the bright colors pooled together in kinetic, freeform shapes.
Early creative success led Stabilito to the East Village, where he planted himself in the blossoming ‘80s art scene, painting in a series of lofts. Responding to the frenetic energy around him, Stabilito guided splashes of color into shapes and experimented with tools to influence the outcome. “I had studios on the Lower East Side, Chelsea, and Chinatown before they became
hotbeds,” he says. “I loved the artistic community but I was always inevitably pushed out as prices soared.”
After moving to the Hudson Valley, Stabilito painted in the windowless basement of the home he shares with husband, Toby Butterfield. He often layered his painted compositions with new shapes and colors and even marked up the canvases with pens. “It was cold and far from ideal, but functional.”
Last year, Stabilito’s run of painting in impermanent studios ended after he and Butterfield finally completed a forever studio on their eight-acre property outside Hillsdale. Designed to accommodate Stabilito’s creative process, the shed-style structure is washed with light and spacious enough to house multiple canvases in various stages of completion—a far cry from his early days painting in the corner of studio apartments.
Artist Joseph Stabilito’s home and studio in Hillsdale
Photos
Top: In 2014, inspired by the stone cottages in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Stabilito and his husband, Toby Butterfield, built their Colonial-style retreat along a small lake near Hillsdale. Clad with Pennsylvania fieldstone, the 3000-square-foot home includes bespoke detailing—such as a formal entryway for guests and a side mudroom hidden by sliding barn doors—designed for the couple’s lifestyle. However, “it’s the lake that really makes this place feel like home,” explains Stabilito. “It’s always changing and always beautiful.”
Bottom: Butterfield and Stabilito enjoy their lakeside backyard in the early spring weather. Stabilito designed the covered back porch connecting the home’s interior with the pastoral setting. “The porch is really an extension of the house,” he says. “It’s a transitional space, so I utilized wood and stone to blend with the setting, but also to feel solid and lasting. It’s a wonderful space to sit and drink in the evening.”
Running along the back of the home, the dining and living areas face the lake.
To contrast the rough stone fireplace, Stabilito added a collection of soft seating and a modern metal bookcase. “I was going for a mix of American Colonialism and old artifacts, but with a modern spirit,” he explains. Stabilito created the fireside silhouette portraits from original 18th-century prints. After enlarging the portraits, he traced them onto black paper, then framed the enlarged cutouts.
The raw, freeform energy of the studio is a stark contrast to the stately, Colonial-inspired house Stabilito and Butterfield built in 2014. Finished in muted neutral tones, the 3000-square-foot home is layered with sumptuous textures—a cozy fortress ensconced in stone. With a mosaic of windows and soaring 14-foot-tall ceilings, the 480-square-foot studio feels flung open to the lakeside setting. Every corner of the two-story home is carefully composed, balancing sculpture, art, and contrasting furniture arrangements. In the studio, the white-washed walls are punctuated with a rotating display of vibrant, colorful canvases—a constant work in progress.
However, despite their outward differences, the home and studio share the same imaginative DNA. “In any creative process, whether creating art or designing interiors, you are dealing with the same basic components: texture, space, composition, color, light and shape,” says Stabilito.
Function Follows Form
A native of Philadelphia, Stabilito saw his creative instincts take root early. “I was an only child and the only thing I could do to entertain myself was draw and paint,” he explains. His talent for interiors also emerged early. “I remember sitting on the stoop outside our home and playing with a neighbor’s dollhouse,” he says. “I had a knack for arranging the furniture and realized how much I loved the process.”
Stabilito primarily studied fine art in college but took design courses as a fallback option. After graduation, he jumped into the interior design world, which unexpectedly led him back into painting. “ The designer I was working for began selling my paintings to clients,” he says. “ Then he got me an exhibit with a furniture showcase in New York City. I really felt like I’d made it.” His success inspired him to move to Manhattan and pursue painting full time. “It was the beginning of the East Village art scene and I just fell into it,” he says. “I started painting like crazy. I had a run of selling my work, getting into galleries, having a gallery show in Chicago, having a show in Florida.” At one point his paintings even caught the attention of Bloomingdale’s, which featured his work in their window display.
The Fallback Career
His commercial success as a painter lasted a decade. “ Then the AIDS crisis began to really hit New York and the East Village just closed up,” he remembers. “A lot of the artists I knew died—a lot of my friends died—and it became a somber place.” As the economy shifted downward and sales dwindled, Stabilito pivoted back to interiors, restarting his career by assisting at Ethan Allen and working with designer Samuel Botero. “I always loved houses and objects, so it felt natural,” he says. “It was something I could do while keeping my connection to art.”
Stabilito’s sophisticated interior designs built on many of the creative techniques he developed through painting— layering tactile materials, balancing elements, and adding occasional pops of color. However, his art practice was about form and process, whereas his designs were about function. “ When I paint I strive for surrender. I believe the best work is fluid and unconstrained—I allow myself to make mistakes,” he explains. “Designing a house, there are more rules to follow. It ’s an expensive undertaking and you want to get it right. “
Stone by Stone
In 2000 Stabilito and Butterfield set out to buy a weekend house in the Hamptons, but months of lost bidding wars left them empty-handed. Then, on a Sunday train ride back to the city, a listing for a stone cottage in Columbia County caught Stabilito’s eye. “I had no idea where Columbia County was,” he remembers. “But I’d always loved stone houses. When I saw the listing, I knew it was exactly what I wanted.” Though they lost that house, their quest led them to another home in Canaan, where they spent over a decade.
The decision to move to Hillsdale was both practical and social. “It seemed like everyone we were meeting was in this area,” he says. “And it was an easier commute back to the city.” Inspired by the fieldstone farmhouses of Bucks County, Stabilito was intent on building a stone house. “I wanted something that had that character, but with modern elements—higher ceilings, more windows,” he says. When they discovered land adjacent to a small private lake they decided to build the home they ’d always wanted. Stabilito drew from the region’s period farmhouses for the basic design, adding modern touches for comfort. “I planned the design and laid out the rooms, baths, windows, lighting, materials—all of it,” he says. “I thought very carefully about the size and flow and how we’d move from one space to another.”
Designing the home’s interior was much like creating one of his paintings—with a careful balance of composition, texture, and contrast. Facing the lake, the step-down living room is the heart of the home. Anchored by a rough stone fireplace, the room features a plush sofa and tactile patterned chairs, then adds in modernist touches. Flanking the fireplace, an industrial style, built-
The home’s den doubles as an office for Butterfield and showcases Stabilito’s fondness for layering texture into his designs as well as mixing modern and rustic elements. The brick floor contrasts with the ceiling boards salvaged from a barn in Pennsylvania.
The gray Poliform lounge chairs match accent tables from Baker and Restoration Hardware. The modern chandelier is from David Weeks Lighting.
A Forest Of Choice.
Forest
A Forest Of Choice.
A Forest Of Choice.
Forest Of Choice.
A Forest Of Choice.
A Forest Of Choice.
A Forest Of Choice.
A Forest Of Choice.
The broadest selection of the biggest trees and plants in the Hudson Valley.
The broadest selection of the biggest trees and plants in the Hudson Valley.
The broadest selection of the biggest trees and plants in the Hudson Valley.
The broadest selection of
The broadest selection of the biggest trees and plants in the Hudson Valley.
The broadest selection of the biggest trees and plants in the Hudson Valley.
The broadest selection of the biggest trees and plants in the Hudson Valley.
The broadest selection of the biggest trees and plants in the Hudson Valley.
A Forest Of Choice.
9W & Van Kleecks Lane,
9W & Van Kleecks Lane, Kingston, NY (845)
9W & Van Kleecks Lane, Kingston, NY (845) 338-4936 AugustineNursery.com
9W & Van Kleecks Lane, Kingston, NY (845) 338-4936 AugustineNursery.com
9W & Van Kleecks Lane, Kingston, NY (845) 338-4936 AugustineNursery.com
Spring Hours: Monday–Saturday, 8am–5pm and Sunday, 10am–4pm
9W & Van Kleecks Lane, Kingston, NY (845) 338-4936 AugustineNursery.com
8am–5pm and Sunday, 10am–4pm
9W & Van Kleecks Lane, Kingston, NY (845) 338-4936 AugustineNursery.com
Spring Hours: Monday–Saturday, 8am–5pm and Sunday, 10am–4pm
Spring Hours: Monday–Saturday, 8am–5pm and Sunday, 10am–4pm
9W & Van Kleecks Lane, Kingston, NY (845) 338-4936 AugustineNursery.com
Spring Hours: Monday–Saturday, 8am–5pm and Sunday, 10am–4pm
9W & Van Kleecks Lane, Kingston, NY (845) 338-4936 AugustineNursery.com
Spring Hours: Monday–Saturday, 8am–5pm and Sunday, 10am–4pm
FULL-SERVICE NURSERY • CUSTOM LANDSCAPE DESIGN & INSTALLATION • STONE YARD & HARDSCAPING WATER FEATURES • IRRIGATION
Spring Hours: Monday–Saturday, 8am–5pm and Sunday, 10am–4pm
FULL-SERVICE NURSERY • CUSTOM LANDSCAPE DESIGN & INSTALLATION • STONE YARD & HARDSCAPING WATER FEATURES • IRRIGATION • LIGHTING • RETAIL SHOP & MORE
9W & Van Kleecks Lane, Kingston, NY (845) 338-4936 AugustineNursery.com
Spring Hours: Monday–Saturday, 8am–5pm and Sunday, 10am–4pm
FULL-SERVICE NURSERY • CUSTOM LANDSCAPE DESIGN & INSTALLATION • STONE YARD & HARDSCAPING WATER FEATURES • IRRIGATION • LIGHTING • RETAIL SHOP & MORE
Spring Hours: Monday–Saturday, 8am–5pm and Sunday, 10am–4pm FULL-SERVICE NURSERY • CUSTOM LANDSCAPE DESIGN & INSTALLATION
NURSERY
CUSTOM LANDSCAPE
Top: The primary bedroom “is all about calmness,” says Stabilito. “There’s nothing too fussy or over designed. I just wanted a space to unwind.” He utilized antique furniture and art—including a sandpaper drawing depicting the Hudson Valley over the dresser—to give the room a bit of history.
Bottom: The primary bathroom is an extension of the bedroom and maximizes the lake view. “The whole second floor was about creating private spaces,” says Stabilito. “I wanted it to feel separate from the rest of the house, like its own retreat.”
For the floor, Stabilito used white porcelain tile to resemble marble and accented it a black mosaic tile border. The freestanding tub faces the lake. Stabilito added Duravit and Toto fixtures throughout the space.
in metal bookcase displays a collection of religious statuary. “I was blending an odd mix of themes—country, modernist, monastic, but with modern art and spirit.”
The adjacent corner kitchen maintains an open, streamlined feel with sleek, black cabinetry, white counters, and white-tiled walls. “I didn’t want to break this area up with lots of textures,” says Stabilito. However, at the opposite end of the house, the den offers more layered design work. “I salvaged old barn wood from Pennsylvania to line the vaulted ceilings,” he explains. Brick walls and flooring add another textured layer to the design, further showcasing Stabilito’s love of raw, natural materials.
Throughout the second floor, Stabilito’s designs emphasize privacy. The home’s enclosed stairwell leads to three bedrooms and two baths where elements of natural wood, linen, and stone appear throughout. Two guest rooms share a carefully considered Jack-andJill bathroom. In the primary bedroom suite, antique furniture and art are softened with sumptuous textiles.
The primary bathroom features a step-in shower and a freestanding tub maximizing the lake view.
A Room of His Own
Last year, Stabilito the artist was finally able to hire Stabilito the designer to create a dedicated workspace. It was a project he’d envisioned for a long time. “I spent years trying to paint in spaces that weren’t meant for painting,” he says. “ Toby and I managed the process ourselves, which was an experience.”
The couple worked with an Amish shed-building company in Pennsylvania to construct a wood framed shell with a metal roof. The vaulted ceilings and oversized windows flood the space with natural light, and one floor-to-ceiling window frames the lake view, adding an open, airy atmosphere. Finally having a dedicated workspace has given Stabilito’s painting a jolt. “ The creative juices are flowing and I’m making large paintings again,” he says. “It ’s already breathed new energy into my work. I can’t wait to see where this will go.”
“I wanted the kitchen to flow into the rest of the house but still feel contained,” says Stabilito. Black, satin-stained cabinets from Lowes are topped with white quartz countertops. White subway tiles line the walls. The antique kitchen table is central to the kitchen’s design. “It’s our sort of casual, lovely table and meeting place and craft area,” says Stabilito.
First Love, Lasting Lessons
Author Lisa Phillips
on how every young relationship story is also a mental health story
By Maggie Baribault
by Gabrielle Gagliano
Photo
Aaron thought leaning on his girlfriend would help him cope, but instead, it pushed her away. Struggling with his mental health, he turned to her for constant reassurance, sending frantic messages whenever he felt overwhelmed. At first, she tried to be there for him, but the weight of his needs became too much. When she finally pulled back, he felt abandoned while she wrestled with guilt, caught between caring for him and protecting her own well-being.
Aaron’s story is one of many that journalist and SUNY New Paltz professor Lisa Phillips encountered while researching for First Love: Guiding Teens Through Relationships and Heartbreak (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers), her exploration of how young relationships shape mental health, which was released in February.
“Every teen relationship story is also a mental health story,” the Woodstock-based author writes.
“I was struck by how many of my subjects either went through significant mental health problems while in relationships or tried to take care of partners in crisis.” Love, especially young love, profoundly impacts well-being, for better or worse.
Phillips describes her own love life before meeting her now-husband as “messy, characterized by boom-bust cycles of passionate beginnings followed by disappointment that left me, as I wrote in my book Unrequited, obsessed and desperate.” The emotional toll of dating, she writes, deeply affected her well-being. These experiences ultimately shaped her career, leading her to explore love and relationships in her SUNY New Paltz course, Love and Heartbreak, and resulting book project, First Love
But “this is what we do as a species,” Phillips writes. “Romantic love, attachment, and lust form the triad of mating drives that evolved to sustain the human race. Relationships are fundamental to what makes us human” and central to health. And it goes beyond self-experience.
“They become a part of what knits the world together,” she says. Love can be a source of deep connection or emotional turmoil. In this complex
experience of love and heartbreak, Phillips asks an essential question in First Love: How can young relationships become a foundation for selfgrowth, resilience, and lasting well-being?
Love as a Verb
Phillips emphasizes that love isn’t just something that happens—it’s something people actively do. This concept, thinking of love as a verb rather than a noun, aligns with the idea presented in her book of “love-life literacy”—the ability to navigate relationships with awareness and intention.
“Learning about healthy relationships and what makes relationships unhealthy is liberating,” Phillips says. “It makes love less daunting and more hopeful.” Viewing love as an active practice to develop, she argues, gives people tools to thrive. “You can express care, take responsibility, and advocate for yourself. You actively cultivate your relationship.”
Heather Bissett, a SUNY New Paltz student, has been with her partner, Mars Weigley, for over two years. The couple took Phillips’s Love and Heartbreak course together and say it made them reexamine how they approach their relationship. “Practicing love as a verb means actively listening when one of us needs to vent, showing appreciation through little acts of care, and making time for honest conversations,” the Student Art Alliance president says. “It’s about being willing to apologize, forgive, and grow together. It’s a work in progress, but it’s progress that feels meaningful.”
Phillips admits that researching and interviewing for First Love taught her valuable lessons about her own marriage. “Listening to young people talk about how they worked together and saw love as a verb was really inspiring,” she says. After spending four years talking to people about love, she felt she needed to practice what she preaches. It reminded her to keep putting in the effort—to show up in her own relationship.
Identity and First Love
First love is rarely just about two people—it’s about the worlds they come from. For Bissett and Weigley, love means navigating very different upbringings: one in a conservative Christian household, the other in a queeraffirming family. “Mars being nonbinary and from such an affirming family has given them a lot of confidence in who they are, which I admire,” Bissett says. “For me, growing up as a lesbian in a conservative Christian family made me feel like I had to hide parts of myself. It’s been a journey of unlearning shame and embracing who I am, and my partner’s support has been huge in that process.”
Phillips highlights how gender, sexuality, race, and culture shape relationships. Minority stress—the strain of navigating societal biases— can put additional pressure on relationships. “It creates an island effect,” she says. “They may feel pressure to hang on to the relationship longer or suffer more when it ends because they lost their shelter in the storm.”
But identity can also enrich relationships. While researching First Love, Phillips noticed some queer-identifying survey respondents only shared experiences with opposite-gender partners. Curious, she asked one young woman, “Why did you say you were queer?” The reply: “Well, that’s what I am.”
“That was a real epiphany for me,” Phillips says. “I found that surprising and then incredibly liberating. I’d been carrying this sense of loss about my bisexuality because I’m married to a man, and most of my partners have been male. But I realized I didn’t lose anything—this is just how my life went, and there’s nothing wrong with it.” Just because she hadn’t been in a long-term relationship with someone who wasn’t male didn’t make her any less bisexual. It was an opportunity to reclaim her identity.
The Role of Community
Love may feel intensely personal, but it’s shaped by community. Friends, family, and mentors act as a kind of relationship scaffolding, reinforcing—or sometimes warping—how individuals understand and experience relationships. “Our friends have been such a solid support system. They offer advice, comfort, and a listening ear when things get tough,” Bissett says. “Our community has helped us grow and heal in ways we probably couldn’t have managed on our own.”
For some, like Bissett, who credits her mom with teaching her how to love, family offers a model of love. For others, it complicates it. “Growing up in a toxic household, I find it hard to fall in love,” says Shay Revenew, a digital media production student at SUNY New Paltz who bought Phillips’s book after a meet-the-author discussion at the university. “I was drawn to First Love in the hope it could give me some insight into how to get over that feeling.”
Phillips encourages parents to foster open conversations about love early on. “You can’t interrogate your kids about their relationships, but you can normalize discussions about love,” she says. “If you start when they’re young— commenting on relationships in movies or books—it signals that love is important and worth talking about.”
Phillips opens First Love with a story about her daughter, reflecting on how she tried to prepare them both for her daughter’s future love life. When her daughter was a toddler, Phillips read her The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch (1980), the story of a princess who rescues her prince from a dragon, only for him to scold her for wearing a paper bag after the dragon burned her dress. She dumps him and dances off alone. “My daughter memorized the princess’s kiss-off line, gleefully shouting along as I read, ‘You look like a real prince, but you are a bum!’” Phillips writes. The message was clear: Be brave and devoted in love, but if your sweetheart isn’t deserving, walk away. “I made getting ready for romantic love a priority because I knew it mattered,” she writes.
Still, when her daughter actually started dating, Phillips found herself flustered. She worried about whether her daughter was spending too
much or too little time with her new boyfriend, coordinated with his mother to set consistent expectations for both families, and enforced a strict “bedroom-door-stays-open” policy. Despite all her preparation, she realized love—even as a parent—is always a bit unpredictable and a meaningful rite of passage.
How Dating Has Changed
“Every major marker of adulthood is getting pushed later—getting a driver’s license, first job, moving out, having sex, dating seriously,” Phillips says. “For most young people, it’s trial and error, and the fact that it’s happening less means we are in a culture of cower” rather than exploration. This includes relationships and love.
Phillips points to the rise in social media, dating apps, and the always-on nature of digital connection as rewiring how modern relationships begin, develop, and fall apart. She says many date less seriously, delay major milestones, and prioritize personal growth over romance. “Some young people feel relationships are optional rather than essential to well-being,” she says. “But while self-growth outside a relationship is valuable, a lot of personal development happens within relationships, too.”
The Value in Heartbreak
Heartbreak, while painful, is also a powerful teacher, Phillips says. She suggests that experiencing and processing relationship loss is essential for emotional growth. “Making mistakes is everything,” she says. Even if you make mistakes— or, more likely, when you do—you can learn from them. And learning, in love, means growing.
Revenew sees this in her own experience. “One moment you’re so in love, and the next, it feels like the world is ending,” she says. By reading First Love, she was able to reframe loss and begin to see that pain, no matter how overwhelming, is temporary, and this strengthened her skills of perseverance, selfdiscovery, and the ability to sit in discomfort.
What We Can Learn from Young Love
Young love isn’t just a personal milestone—it’s a microcosm for how people understand intimacy, trust, and self-worth that sets the stage for every relationship that follows. “First Love validated the struggles of young love, especially when you’re dealing with things like identity, family dynamics, and mental health,” Bissett says. “The book made me feel less alone in my experiences and more hopeful about actively building something strong and genuine.”
Love, as First Love explores, is fundamental to the human experience. Understanding it as a skill, rather than just an emotion, allows for healthier, more intentional relationships—whether they last a lifetime or just long enough to teach an important lesson. “That gives people a sense of their own efficacy in the world,” Phillips says, “and that’s got to be good for our well-being.”
Phillips leaves us with this thought: Love, at any age, is a process of becoming. First love, with all its highs and heartbreaks, is just the beginning.
Take Back Your Health with Acupuncture, Detox, Nutrition, Herbal Medicine, Biofeedback, Bioenergetics, Frequency Healing
Specializing in Nervous System Balancing, Gut/Digestive Disorders, Hormone Balancing, Migraines, Pain/Injury, Neurological Disorders, Skin Issues
Dr. Erika S. Gabriello DACM L. A c www.holisticnaturalmedicine.com 347.988.0178 | 169 Main Street, New Paltz
Alexandria Gianakos, LMT
Treatments
to
and more. Call for a free consultation.
LBW.WORLD 845-377-0975 | Stone Ridge, NY
Rising Tide on the Hudson Newburgh
By Anne Pyburn Craig
Photos by David McIntyre
In the 1950s, Newburgh’s Water Street was one of the finest shopping thoroughfares north of Manhattan.
New York Central Railroad’s West Shore line stopped here on its route from Weehawken to Albany; travelers could hop on an electric trolley up the hill to the city center or board the ferry to Beacon. Posh Day Liner steamers and countless other water craft came and went at several piers. The city was on top of the world, living up to the “All-American City” title bestowed by the National Municipal League in 1952.
A complicated mix of factors would knock the city to its knees in the decade that followed, including but not limited to urban renewal, which bit a chunk out of the city’s East End like a rabid grizzly. Fifty acres and seven entire streets—over 1,100 homes and businesses—were flattened, thousands displaced, and generational wealth decimated at the stroke of a pen and the swing of a wrecking ball.
For decades the waterfront lay largely dormant, cut off from the rest of downtown by a vacant swath of hillside
Opposite, top: Philip Johnson's iconic Mid Mod Wolfhouse, built in 1950 within sight of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge, is on the market for $2.9 million.
Opposite, below: Bill Brovold performing at the recently opened Untouchable Bar & Restaurant on Liberty Street.
Above: The Greater Newburgh Symphony Orchestra rehearsing under the baton of conductor Russell Ger. On April 26, the orchestra will be performing Mahler’s Resurrection: Symphony No. 2 at Mount St. Mary College
between lower Broadway and the river. Starting in the late ‘80s, restaurateurs rediscovered the unparalleled views, and the waterfront district has grown into a dynamic dining destination. (You can get slammin’ tacos at the refurbished West Shore railway terminal, now Hudson Taco.) Ferry service to Beacon, though temporarily closed currently while the MTA repairs the Beacon dock, was revived in 2005.
But the Newburgh Landing, the only deepwater port between New York and Albany, remains an underutilized resource. Kevindaryan Lujan, Newburgh’s representative in the Orange County Legislature, believes it won’t stay that way for long. “Newburgh just completed a major capital project—a big sewer and streetscape upgrade—and the final design phase of our dock, Newburgh Landing Park, is happening this year,” he says. “So within the next two to five years, hopefully, we’ll have a deepwater pier and international cruise lines can add a Hudson Valley stop. And the city is gathering information on what the community wants to do with that vacant stretch of hillside. I’d like to see something there that would bring jobs—we really need tax ratables [revenue-generating businesses] to catapult the city to where it needs to be.”
Building Momentum
Undeniably, things are closer to where they need to be than they’ve been in a long time. In 2024, the city received two budgeting awards from the Government Finance Officers Association of US and Canada, a credit rating upgrade to A1 from influential rater Moody’s, and a top score for municipal fiscal health from the state comptroller’s office.
In the late 20th century, Newburghers striving to rebuild felt that they faced and fought an unresponsive City Hall, but there’s clearly a whole new vibe. “City officials and staff are working really hard to build us up,” says Lujan. “Every department is involved. Those people bleed and breathe Newburgh, and the results are showing. Violent crime is way down; police and fire department staffing is stronger than it’s ever been.” Addressing the city council about the 25 percent year-over-year drop in serious crime from 2023 to 2024, Police Chief Brandon Rola cited a team that’s 52 percent non-white and 22 percent female as a major factor.
“For a long time, Newburgh’s had this narrative told about us, not by us, and it’s never been truly accurate,” says Lujan, who remembers walking to middle school along East Parmenter Street,
then a derelict block that’s now been exquisitely refurbished by Habitat for Humanity, on whose board he serves. “We’re taking it back. I hear hammers ringing out all over town, people fixing up historic properties. All kinds of new businesses are opening: bookstores, yoga studios, tailors, tattoo shops, beauty salons. And the food! I can walk to Jamaican, Haitian, Columbian, Peruvian, Ecuadorian, or Honduran restaurants, and that’s just a partial list.”
A Waterfront for Everyone
Newburgh’s actually bounded by water on two sides: the Quassaick Creek, which runs from Snake Hill to the Hudson along the city’s southern border, is getting some serious love from Scenic Hudson and partners as a future 2.5-mile Greenway with a park and trail network. And the city-owned Crystal Lake, part of a 109-acre greenspace on the West End, has a growing coalition working to establish it as public recreational land.
Vanessa Nisperos loved being part of a canoeing club when she lived in Brooklyn and was thrilled to discover that Newburgh had a rowing club. She promptly got her kids involved—but the longtime coach was retiring and the lease on its
Saxon Hall current owner Jossy Philip with Victor Santiago, who is buying the business from him.
Celebrating 25 Years of Transforming Lives & Building Community in Newburgh
HOUSING VISUAL ARTS
PERFORMING ARTS
COMMUNITY EVENTS
city-owned boathouse expiring. “So a new group started putting their heads together and formed the Newburgh Waterways Center to support rowing and paddling, add more free kayaking and environmental programs, and do more on other bodies of water besides the Hudson.”
There’s a summer rowing camp this year, and Nisperos says free kayaking on Crystal Lake is a huge hit. “There’s the Sanctuary Healing Farm and Garden there, so we do free kayaking during the Community Farm Days. People love it. And the rowing program is thriving. The response from the city has been really exciting—they’re all in, and their ironclad rule is that anyone who holds a license from the city needs to be open and inclusive, accessible to city residents. They’re really thoughtful around the idea that the waterfront is for everyone.”
Ronald Zorrillo, a South Street resident for the past nine years, brought Outdoor Promise north with him after his social entrepreneurship pitch placed in the top five in a Baruch College competition. “Newburgh faces a lot of environmental issues,” he says. “We’ve got lead in the water pipes, we’ve got brownfields. So we do a free hike for the community every
month, with bus transportation to one of the trailheads and hiking gear people can borrow, and we do some environmental education in the process. We usually get around 30 people; we have 70-year-olds and preschoolers, all spending time together without a screen in sight, with a lot of multigenerational bonding going on. We were just out on Snake Hill for February; it was 15 degrees out, but people came and borrowed microspikes and gators, and we all made it up that hill together.”
The
Pulse of the City
A three-person team is hard at work readying
The Ellis, a community space in a refurbished church on Dubois Street that will open in May with custom-crafted nightlife experiences curated by David Kiss, executive producer at Brooklyn’s iconic House of Yes nightclub and performance venue. He’s been a Newburgher since 2021. “There’s really nothing like this, a nightlife space with the capacity for hundreds,” Kiss says. “And there’s really nothing like being enveloped in the warmth and sound of dance music, everyone dancing together, just present for each other with no thought of politics or any of
that, just soaring together. That’s what The Ellis wants to be. Down on the waterfront they have mainstream Top 40, which is fine, but it leaves out so much musical culture.”
Kiss says he watched the House of Yes help transform Bushwick from rough to solid, and believes that The Ellis can help empower Newburgh’s East End. And The Ellis is poised to become much more than a nightclub. “I was looking at this beautiful building and not really sure what to do with it—at one point we thought about apartments,” says developer Michael Mamiye, whose firm Nutopia mainly specializes in ecofriendly co-living for creatives. “But we’re right by the hospital, and the city’s economic development guy, David Kohl, said the employees needed a food court. I went and talked to a bunch of them, and they loved the idea, so we’re getting the licenses to open up a food court next fall.” The liquor license is already in hand.
Besides nightlife and food, The Ellis team (the name is a nod to Ellis Island) has lots of plans in mind—Saturday morning family events, large-group yoga and fitness gatherings, herbal and medicinal gardens in the pretty backyard, workshops, sustainable industries conferences,
Ricardo Fuentes and Michelle Bathos with Jane, Loy, and Charlie at Fabhaus, a design and fabrication studio on Liberty Street.
Ger GNSO Music Director
milestone parties, microweddings and elopements, and whatever else Newburghers dream up. “We want to have the place full of people all the time,” says partner Albert Mizrahi. “We want the doors to never be closed. This city has such stunning, diverse culture—we want to be a venue for it all to come together.”
Sue Sullivan was an administrator at St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital for years prior to buying her East End home in 2018. The Ward 1 residents’ alliance she’s revitalizing is part of being the change she’d like to see, and plans include holiday celebrations, bake sales, advocacy, and fun. “I couldn’t tell you the number of new friends I’ve made just walking my dogs all over the city,” she says. “People here will help you if you’re in a bind, we have each other’s backs. I love it. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”
Sullivan also shares Lujan’s perception that the tax base needs rebuilding to lessen the burden on homeowners. “We need commercial enterprises to come in, and someone in the city government whose top priority is hustling to find those. The city council has done a good job getting our financial house back in order. Now I think it’s time for us to think creatively, inclusively and transparently about bringing in the right tax ratables. We need to get out of the mindset that anything is better than nothing and play the long game.”
The Sound of Resilience
Originally from Australia, Russell Ger has been music director and conductor of the 30-year-old Greater Newburgh Symphony Orchestra for six years now. Holiday concerts regularly pack Aquinas Hall at Mount Saint Mary College; other shows typically draw about 600, and he’s hoping this 30th anniversary year will be a record-breaker.
“People think classical might be stuffy or elitist, but it’s just not,” Ger says, “and my job is to be the conduit from composer to musician to audience, so I strive to do that from the podium. I’m really hoping we sell out for our April 26 show. We’ll be performing Mahler’s Resurrection: Symphony No. 2, which is unusual because it takes 150 singers and 100 musicians; we’re bringing in the West Point Glee Club and the Cappella Festiva Chamber Choir. It’s this incredible journey that starts with a funeral march, tells a life story with ups and downs in musical symbols that people just intuitively recognize, and then there’s this angelic chorus that calls to all of us. It’s all about struggle and triumph. That with which you have wrestled will give you wings. It’s just so germane to this amazing city. It’s about who humans are at the core, the big questions—and we see our orchestra as an emblem of Newburgh rising.”
“What people who don’t live here miss when they tell our narrative for us is how much success we’re having in the face of all the challenges we’ve dealt with,” says Lujan. “Our grit and determination, and most of all, our community’s solidarity. Diversity is our greatest strength. We embrace it. And if somebody’s struggling, we strive to give them a hand up, empower them. I think that’s a very Newburgh trait.”
Top: Jeff Doolittle, museum manager of the Crawford House on Montgomery Street. The museum opens for the season on April 27 with a new exhibit of 1950s photographs of Downing Park.
Middle: Albert Mizrahi inside The Ellis, a former church on Dubois Street that will soon reopen as a cultural center and neighborhood creative hub.
Bottom: Ty Melvin, owner of The Office Sneaker Vault on Broadway.
Newburgh
Portraits
by David McIntyre
Pop-Up
Despite what can only be described as near-Icelandic wind conditions, Newburghers turned up as an elemental force of their own to our pop-up portrait shoot on March 1 at ADS Warehouse. The gallery space was a cozy spot to hang with the city's proud residents. Thanks to Gita Nandan and ADS Warehouse for hosting us and to the Newburghers who showed up to rep their city.
Top row: Davide Blanc, Hudson Valley House Parts; Doria Paci, owner Betty’s, Ryan Padgett, graphic designer with Choco; Edwin Soto, photojournalist; Elizabeth Arnold, artist; Emily Garcia-Otero, publisher, Art & Anthropology Press.
Middle row: Erin Macchiaroli, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater with Dustin Macchiaroli; Felicita Colon-Cordero, Molina Healthcare Community Engagement; Genie Abrams, poet laureate; Gina Guy, proprietor Fabulouso Prize Company, Lariat Gang Boots and Shoes, and Gina’s Bars; Gita Nandan RA, LEED AP, ADS Warehouse.
Bottom row: Hanif Inman and Kayvon Haines, Lodger; Hearn Gadbois, musician; Jacqui Watkins, Newburgh Mercantile; Jeff Wallace, handyman; Jesse Flaitz, The Collektiv.
Inset: Cafe Little Treasure: Erica M. Forneret, Emily Dykeman, and Chris Hajek.
Opposite, top row: Amanda K. Rue, founder, Alaya Rose Healing; Angela Paul-Gaito, owner of APG Pilates Newburgh with instructors Joseph Gaito, Stella Gaito, and Kayden Lang; Beatrix J. Piesh, visual artist and Awesome Newburgh trustee; Bibi Lorenzetti, yoga teacher, owner Newburgh Yoga Shala; Brian Pawelski, onion farmer.
Middle row: Caitlyn St. John, bartender, The Wherehouse Restaurant; Carla Aurich, artist/art educator; Carolina Wheat and Liz Nielsen, Elijah Wheat Showroom and studio of Liz Nielsen; Nadia Tahoun, Flower Shop Collective with Cesar Kastro, artist; Charles Joseph Bivona III, owner/operator Bivona’s Simply Pasta.
Bottom row: Claudia Jacobs, retired decorator, former columnist; Dale Velazquez, retired; Damien Hughes, actor and playwright with Solomon and Minerva Hughes; Dana Campo, head yoga instructor/owner Meltdown Yoga; The Wherehouse Restaurant: Michele Basch and Daniel Brown.
Top row: Jessica Ciancanelli, What’s Up Newburgh? with Steven Ciancanelli; Jessica Lynn Williams, Hendley & Co and RicRac; Jim Savage, artist, and Mary Wong, designer, House of Savage; Jonathan Hamilt, Newburgh Historical Society VP and Newburgh Arts & Cultural commissioner.
Middle row: Julie Lindell and Paulien Lethen, artists; Kevindaryan Lujan, Orange County legislator; Brian Wolfe, artist/photographer and Lesle Wolfe, retired; Zach Pickens, Wynne Pickens, and Manda Martin, director of development and communications at Safe Harbors of the Hudson.
Bottom row: Newburgh Clean Water Project: Jennifer Rawlison, Tamsin Hollo, and Genie Polycarpe; Patrice Butler, art teacher, Tim Butler, marketing executive, with Annabelle Butler; Roy Spells, Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and the Highlands treasurer with Elizabeth Arnold, artist.
Top row: Matthew Lusk, director, Goudy Wildlife Club of Newburgh; Melzina Canigan, Newburgh Kush Factory/Sunday Cannabis; Newburgh Free Library: Ben Gocker, Kristen Thornton-De Stafeno, Patty Sussmann, Christopher Morgan, Elizabeth Vega-Lebron, Kate Clarke, Carol Lopez
Middle row: Mike Mamiye, The Ellis with Grace and Marlena Mamiye; Miss Rebecca, director Little Friends Learning Loft; Newburgh Creates first Lego League Robotics Team (#66977) Unlicensed LIFT team members: Jack Clarke, Rhodes Garcia-Otero, Elliot Gastio, Carter Clarke, and Victoria Barthmaier with coach and Newburgh Creates cofounder Jason C. Otero.
Bottom row: Nancy Colas, Simple Gifts and Goodies; Naomi Hersson-Ringskog, Anoushae Eirabie, Archtober Newburgh, with Emilia Ottenhoff; Newburgh Environmental Justice: Greater Newburgh Parks Conservancy: Kathy Lawrence, John Clarke, Marianne Marichal, Bill Fetter, Kevindaryan Lujan, Carol Lawrence, Jake Jordan, Elisabeth Balachova, Jennifer Rawlison, Tamsin Hollo, Genie Polycarpe, Nancy Colas, Gita Nandan, Sammy Polycarpe, Eileen Corrales, Isobel Johnson, Kris Zapata and Larry King.
Second
Join us for the April issue launch party on Thursday, April 3 at The Wherehouse, 119 Liberty Street from 5:30 to 7:30pm. No cover, just vibes.
Top row: Naomi Miller, Terrain Biennial Newburgh; Steven Majano, case manager; Randall Martin, graphic designer; Anthony Guy; Sonya Grant, GrantForesight, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, and Dennis Grant, GrantForesight.
row: Steve Gerberich, kinetic sculptor (Gerbomatic.com) with Rusty Gerberich, bodyguard and muse.
Third row: Sue Sullivan, entrepreneur and small business owner, iSER Consulting.
Bottom row: Walker Adams, musician; Yani Jimenez, fashion designer, Ashley Brun, real estate manager, with Wesley Brun and Naomi Brun;
Inset: Newburgh Waterways Center: Jacob Jordan, Ashley Harvey, Larry King, Will Fetter, and Marianne Marachal.
New Windsor Country Inn
450 Temple Hill Road, New Windsor (845) 565-8110 Nwcountryinn.net
Celebrating 40 plus years. Providing the best senior care since 1983. Same location, same compassionate care, same reasonable rates, same delicious meals. A full range of services and amenities are all included in the affordable monthly rate. Three delicious home-cooked meals are provided daily, as well as medication management, personal care service, activities, 24-hour supervision, assistance with ADLs, daily housekeeping, weekly laundry service, and emergency call system in each room. Salon services are on site with reasonable rates. Physical therapy can be provided.
Adam Pass Photography (914) 443-8888 Adampass.com
Adam Pass Photography brings over 20 years of experience in commercial photography, video, and drone work. A lifetime Orange County resident, Adam specializes in architecture, lifestyle, and portrait photography, serving clients in the Hudson Valley, Tri-State Area, and worldwide. His work captures stunning spaces, modern headshots, and compelling brand visuals through a creative vision.
Orange County Spotlight
Orange County earns plenty of attention thanks to renowned destinations near the Hudson River such as the West Point Military Academy, Storm King Art Center, and Bear Mountain State Park. It’s the character of small towns and villages like Cornwall, Goshen, New Windsor, and Warwick, however, that have made the county one of the Hudson Valley’s most popular places to live and visit.
Newhard’s
The Home Source
39 Main Street, Warwick (845) 986-4544
Newhard’s—The Home Source has been called the “Emporium of Everything” and is filled with treasures to make one’s home a little bit warmer, more beautiful, gracious, and happy. Take a moment to discover the town and the Village of Warwick, its history, wonderful restaurants, and friendly stores. Find Newhard’s on Facebook and Instagram.
Children’s House
Montessori of Cornwall
265 Main Street, Cornwall (845) 820-5750
Childrenshousecornwall.com
Programs offered for children 18 months through First Grade. A learning community where children are inspired to realize their academic, personal, and social potential to become global citizens. The historically proven Montessori education model supports the whole child in a classroom environment that inspires self-paced, individualized discovery and a love of learning.
Harness Racing Museum & Hall of Fame
240 Main Street, Goshen (845) 294-6330 Harnessmuseum.com
Dedicated to comprehensive, active and authoritative support and promotion of the Standardbred industry through documentation and preservation of the history and traditions of this American-born sport, the Harness Racing Museum continues to augment existing collections and provide extensive research, educational programming and exciting exhibitry to expand harness racing’s interest and appeal.
rural intelligence
Fowl Play
Hy’s Fried in Egremont
By Jamie Larson
Along a wooded stretch of Route 23 in South Egremont, Hy’s Fried appears like a vivid white and red mirage. Inside, more red everywhere, the interior is a stylized throwback to the long-abandoned building’s 20th century roadhouse roots, but now it’s supercharged with style, gluten-free fried chicken, and raucous dance parties. Now, owner Jack Luber is planning to turn Hy’s into a national franchise.
“I wanted to create this wormhole,” Luber says. “Kind of like an Alice in Wonderland thing. The Deer Hunter meets Wes Anderson.” The vision is realized with moody lighting and eclectic design choices. “It’s definitely got an eerie, very bizarre aesthetic, and I manipulated that when I renovated the building.”
Method Behind the Madness
Luber has long had his hands in hospitality. Before Hy’s Fried, he ran Frankie Jackson’s Soul Kitchen, an edgy restaurant and nightclub in New York City, and he hails from a family experienced in food and beverage. But stepping back into the industry after a long hiatus, he wanted a concept that was simple, scalable, and high quality.
The result is a tight, thoughtful menu where signature fried chicken is the star. “The bird is hormone-free, free-range,” Luber explains. “We buy them whole, break them down, brine them for six
hours. Then we toss it in a hot honey sambal—it’s really more sweet than hot. Kind of addictive.” The crisp exterior and juicy interior create a balance that’s reminiscent of both Southern and Korean fried chicken, a happy medium that has quickly earned the restaurant accolades, including the Rural Intelligence Reader’s Choice Best Fried Chicken Award last year, shortly after its opening.
And for those who avoid gluten, Hy’s Fried is becoming a destination. “Everything in our restaurant except the waffles and biscuits [and a desert] is gluten-free,” Luber says. “The fried chicken? Gluten-free. The sides—potato salad, coleslaw, greens, cauliflower, dumpling soup—all gluten-free.” The use of tapioca and rice flour gives the chicken its crispness without sacrificing texture or flavor.
A Community Hub and Club
But it’s not just about the food. Hy’s Fried has cultivated a scene. On weekends, the space transforms into a lively hub with DJ nights, dance parties, and themed events. “I put a really nice sound system in the building for vinyl DJing,” says Luber, who also owns a successful Long Island construction company and moved from Hawaii to the Berkshires three years ago with his wife, model Leilani Bishop and their son. “Since August, every Friday
Hy’s Fried in Egremont serves gluten-free fried chicken with a side of DJ-fueled raucous dance party.
and Saturday night, we’ve programmed dancing. We do bingo once a week. And once a month, we have a really nice community party for the gay community called Hy T.”
The location—seemingly remote but actually central to a number of neighboring communities—has proven to be a strategic advantage. “We’re getting people from Woodstock, Kingston, Hudson, Albany, Troy,” Luber notes. “And then a lot of Brooklyn. It’s the craziest demographic of people coming up to eat our food and party.”
But what’s with the name? “Hy was my grandfather’s prizefighting cock from Brooklyn,” Luber shares. “He [the rooster] died the year I was born, in ’64. There’s a beautiful homage to him over the fireplace—a portrait in a gold-leaf frame.”
The playful, layered meaning of the name extends to the overall ethos of the restaurant. “Everyone comes in and asks, ‘Are you high?’” Luber laughs, since he may very well be. “And I just point to the portrait and say, ‘That’s Hy right up there.’”
Taking the Show on the Road
With just six months under its belt, Hy’s Fried has already garnered high praise—including a “Best New Restaurant” win from Tasting Table and mentions in the New York Times. For Luber, the success isn’t just in awards but in the organic energy the space has generated.
Looking ahead, there are plans to expand—both at home, with an outdoor seating addition this spring, and beyond, with new locations being actively planned in cities like Portland, Maine, and Burlington, Vermont, and Austin, Texas. “We’re moving really quickly,” he says. “The idea is to franchise. The markets we’re looking at need something better than fast food.”
But no matter how big Hy’s Fried grows, its first home in South Egremont will remain the original, the experimental ground zero for a concept built on food, music, and an unmistakable sense of place. “It’s a Field of Dreams thing,” Luber says. “Build it, and they’ll come.”
paquito d'rivera quintet
Kate Pierson Radios & Rainbows (Songvest Records)
Kate Pierson’s first solo record in nine years marks a welcome return by the B-52s cofounder and erstwhile Hudson Valley resident. A showcase for Pierson’s distinctive, soaring vocals—still gloriously powerful at age 76—the album is equal parts dance anthems and politically pointed protest songs, few to none of which attempt to recreate the sound of her former band. Rather, Pierson’s songs reference a panoply of adjacent styles and groups. “Take Me Back to the Party” is more Tom Tom Club than B-52s, while “Everyday is Halloween”—a collaboration with Sia—is fueled by some very Strokes-like guitar lines. “Pillow Queen” and “Wings” are bouncy celebrations of lesbian love and sexual transcendence, the former propelled by a reggae-dub beat, the latter by infectious electropop. “Always Till Now” recalls love at the laundromat in a nod to fellow Athens, Georgia-born icons R.E.M.
With the album’s title track, the seventh of 12 numbers, Pierson takes a left turn towards politics; the song—with echoes of John Lennon and Bob Dylan—pointedly inquires, “How do we tell the truth from the lies?” “Dream On” quotes both Edwin Starr’s “War” and Patti Smith’s “People Have the Power” in a Motown-style setting; “Higher Place” addresses LGBTQ+ rights (“Battles that incite a riot in us / Taking the truth denied to us”). If this makes it all sound heavy, it’s not: overall, Pierson has turned out a great, fun pop album suitable for dancing and thinking.
Seth Rogovoy
Rinde Eckert/Art Labriola/Jay
Nicholas/David Rothenberg
Should Sound Loose
(Terra Nova Music)
Should Sound Loose is a mad science experiment by mad scientists Rinde Eckert, Art Labriola, Jay Nicholas, and Beacon clarinetist/composer David Rothenberg. The experiment? It’s on you, the listener, pushing your limits with electronic tinkering, jazztinged improvisation, and found-sound disruption. The 19-track album finds your brain’s factory reset button on “Fading Frenzy,” a, well, frenzied car crash of found sounds, samples, and electronic fiddling akin to frantically tuning through a staticky radio. This track and more are glued together with rounded basslines from Nicholas. Maybe they’re Martian scientists? Tracks like “Night Noises by the Forest’s Edge” sound like an incoming transmission from an alien spaceship into which you have been abducted, probing your ears with eerie warbling. You’re put under with “Amnesiascope” with a memory-wiping bass clarinet monologue from Rothenberg, waking up to tracks like “Ice Cave Laboratory,” where glassy icicles of piano and electronics from Art Labriola examine you further. Pensive clarinet on the title track, more otherworldly sounds on “Mycolect,” and daybreaking harmonies on “From Every Angle” define the second half, which has Eckert on percussion and—as is emblematic of the spirit of the album—“toys.”
Tristan Geary
Jake Toth
Walkill River Blues (Brown Trout Records)
Acoustic guitarist Jake Toth grew up in the Hudson Valley, the inspiration for this sonically dextrous instrumental guitar album reminiscent of John Fahey, Jack Rose, and Robbie Basho. Evoking the river cutting through a pastoral cloak, the compositions swirl with a melodic abandon and harmony synchronous with the flow of water in nature. Talented fingers coax an intricate auditory depth and emotional vulnerability that is accessible and absorbing. The notes are alluringly crisp and warm. Found sound recordings of crickets add to the vibe and occasionally chirp through, becoming more obvious, transitioning from one tune to the next. With deep roots in the American Primitivism movement, Toth’s steel-string, finger-picking prowess is evident, but not overbearing. His creations seem unbound by fear and capture a rawness that is welcoming in such a specific genre. The production is gorgeous and expansively inviting, which is usually a guarantee of exceptional original performances and recordings. Beautiful.
—Jason Broome
SOUND CHECK | Scott Pasch
Each month we ask a member of the community to tell us what music they’ve been digging.
I run DCxPC Live, a DIY punk, hardcore, ska, and metal record label that releases live albums on vinyl. I also book two-to-three shows a month in the Hudson Valley, play in a band called the Marnsters, and write music reviews. With so much music in my life, narrowing down favorites can be tough. Since I moved here two years ago, some New York bands have really stood out to me. Meow Meow from New Paltz is one of them. They fuse classic rock, folk, punk, and emo in a way that defies easy categorization. Their single “Trampled Flowers,” released on the 25th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, hooked me with its poignant lyrics and distinct sax tones—I’ve had it on constant repeat. I’m also consistently blasting Lake Lanier from New York City. An all-Black, female-fronted hardcore band with an unreal stage presence. They played my first Sunday matinee at Snapper Magee’s and absolutely killed it. They have one streaming song, “Resistance,”
and it’s a banger. Even better are the YouTube videos of them playing it live, especially the one where the police shut them down. As I’m writing this, I’m vibing to Ben Basile’s “Mountain Road,” the first single off Benergy, dropping this spring. It’s a rad mix of rocksteady, reggae, and jazz. I’m stoked to catch his album release show at Poughkeepsie’s Reason and Ruckus in June. The Hudson Valley scene is so vibrant. Since relocating here from Florida, I’ve recorded and released titles by several local bands (the Snorts, Shark Noises) with more coming (RBNX, Trouble Bound, Negative Raxx, and more). I’m stoked to keep working with dope bands from this area.
Scott Pasch lives in West Hurley. On April 12 and 13, DCxPC Live will present the Rally in the Valley 1 festival at Snapper Magee’s in Kingston. The two-day event will feature 15 bands. Details and ticket information is at Facebook.com/dcxpcbooking.
Pretty Nearly All Natural
Genie Abrams
FINISHING LINE PRESS, 2024, $17.99
Close observers know that nature isn’t in the least tame or sentimental, and Abrams—a born and raised Newburgher who served as the city’s poet laureate from 2022 to 2024—is a close observer and lifelong lover who’s not afraid of the scars and thorns of any flora or fauna on the planet, human and otherwise. Her poetry is flowing, lucid and often hilarious. (“The river gleams with virgin snow/I can’t appreciate it though:/The cold has bitten through my ears/and left my car in need of tow.” She hangs poems on trees, fences, parking signs and utility poles, and in the bathrooms of gas stations, bars and other spots she deems perfect for vandalizing in this way. We need more like her.
Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery
Richard Kreitner
FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX, 2025, $32
In Fear No Pharaoh, Beacon resident Kreitner delves into the complex history of American Jews confronting the institution of slavery during the Civil War era. Drawing parallels between the ancient Exodus narrative and 19th-century struggles, Kreitner examines how Jewish Americans grappled with ethical dilemmas, national identity, and their roles in the fight against slavery. Through meticulous research and engaging storytelling, Kreitner sheds light on a nuanced chapter of history, offering readers a deeper understanding of the intersections between faith, morality, and the American experience.
Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America
Russell Shorto
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY, 2025, $29.99
In Taking Manhattan Cold Spring resident Shorto offers a compelling narrative of New York City’s transformation from the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam to the English-controlled New York in 1664. Shorto delves into the intricate negotiations between Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch director-general, and Richard Nicolls, the English military officer, highlighting their pivotal roles in this peaceful transition. Through meticulous research, Shorto illuminates how this fusion of Dutch tolerance and English ambition laid the groundwork for New York’s emergence as a center of capitalism and cultural diversity. This insightful account underscores the city’s complex origins, reflecting both its opportunities and the challenges of displacement and subjugation, building off his popular 2005 book The Island at the Center of the World
I Know She Was There
Jennifer Sadera
CANCAT BOOKS, 2024, $28.99
In I Know She Was There, Poughkeepsie resident Sadera crafts a gripping psychological thriller that delves into the fragile mind of new mother Caroline Case. Struggling with her husband’s departure and the demands of a colicky infant, Caroline finds solace in nightly walks through the affluent Deer Crossing neighborhood. Her voyeuristic curiosity leads her to witness a disturbing incident—a woman, bloodied and in distress, glimpsed through a window. As Caroline grapples with her own mental health, she becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth, even as those around her question her sanity. Sadera weaves themes of perception, reality, and the dark undercurrents lurking beneath suburban perfection, delivering a debut that keeps readers questioning what is real until the final page.
The Ten Year Affair
Erin Somers
SIMON & SCHUSTER, 2025, $28
A witty and insightful exploration of marital fidelity and the complexities of human desire, the novel follows Cora and Sam, two contentedly married parents who meet at a baby group in their small town. Despite their initial intentions, an undeniable chemistry develops between them, leading to a decade-long emotional entanglement. Somers masterfully navigates parallel timelines—one where they act on their attraction and another where they resist—offering readers a nuanced portrayal of the choices that define our lives. With sharp humor and keen observation, Somers examines the fantasies we entertain and the realities we inhabit, questioning whether the allure of the road not taken is worth the potential upheaval.
—Anne Pyburn Craig and Brian K. Mahoney
The Parts of Him I Kept
Natasha Williams
APPRENTICE HOUSE PRESS, 2025, $24
If you ever doubt the mental strength and resiliency of humans, read Natasha Williams’s memoir, The Parts of Him I Kept. Her father, Frank, the “him” of the title, is diagnosed early in life as a paranoid schizophrenic with a messiah complex. He meets Judith on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1963, and the two Beatnik artists fall in love and have Natasha (“Tash”). Frank would undergo abrupt mood and character swings throughout his life, once punching Judith’s abdomen while she was pregnant with Natasha.
Tash always felt at a remove from her mother, and adored her father despite his manic episodes. He justified taking Tash, just eight, to see the film The Exorcist, because he thought she was possessed by the devil (it traumatized her); he then took her to church to see if the priest would conduct an exorcism on her. With his second partner and fellow schizophrenic Barbara, Frank would have five children, fulfilling his messianic urge to spread his seed, but unable to provide them with adequate care. Jackie, his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, was with him when he drove their car off a pier—by accident, he said. He surfaced quickly, but Jackie was trapped underwater for 40 minutes, and was eventually rescued and resuscitated, albeit comatose. Jackie would die a month later after being disconnected from life support. Their other children would be adopted by Barbara’s siblings, as both Frank and Barbara’s mental illnesses endangered the children.
Frank moved in and out of institutions, and Tash was his lifeline. He underwent many rounds of electroshock therapy, leaned on drugs, and often lived in squalor. He and Barbara inhabited the frayed edges of society; she sometimes turned tricks to pay the bills. Judith’s second partner, Ted, was mentally unstable as well; they would fight violently, in the nude, and make no effort to keep their lovemaking private from Tash.
It’s a tough read, but Williams impressively sets aside self-pity and victimhood. Due to her parents’ mental states and indifference, she had little choice but to be a tough and self-sufficient kid. When she meets Ken, her future husband, the memoir takes a hopeful turn. They marry and have two girls, who Tash takes to visit their grandfather, troubled as he is, believing that they should know him. The question of inherited markers for schizophrenia looms over the next generation.
Tash spends a good deal of her youth on Staten Island, where her mother lives in a large house and rents out rooms to boarders. In part for her studies in molecular biology, she lives in Manhattan and the Berkshires, in Philadelphia with Ken for his degree work (family practice and dermatology), and, repeatedly, in the Hudson Valley. Toward the end of Frank’s life, she bears the responsibility of his well-being, choosing an assisted-living facility equipped to provide him the care he needs, but Frank also faces the realities of isolation, dehumanization, and exposure to other mentally ill patients. He hates it so much that she moves him to an apartment in Kingston and hires the necessary care. There, he has some peace of mind, at least until requiring hospitalization, and then a nursing home with palliative care.
After his death, Tash tracks down her surviving half-siblings, and organizes video calls with them and some aunts and uncles. It’s never lost on her that her siblings are more likely to be schizophrenic, like her own children. Every situation is different, but Williams, until her father’s death, lived under the shadow of his schizophrenia. She shows us how to handle it with as much grace as possible, and her frankness in the book is a bracing gift.
—Susan Yung
Regeneration
Soon the salmon will bite
The man tighten his grip And all the lake will shake a little
These concentric circles
Would look glorious from above And every one a prelude to another Until the movement is stilled and gives out
These ribbons of time Beat outward
The fish is caught Pink and blue and white
Soon the woman will pause And lower her eyelids and exhale
On this day, the day that rhymes with all the others
Daughter, under her feet
She is the changing word in the rhyme She grows a little now She speaks and mimics. She learns to smile
She moves to walk And stops and falls And is held above the cold, clean Floor, like a woman above an abyss
She greets her father and his salmon She leans against him now, she comes up to his Kneecap. Hand against calf The shapes fit ideally, almost as though…
Her father and mother speak, touch in their own language above. When they look down Her hair is growing In circles, Concentric.
Young —Harry Schiller
East End Market
Sign on the side of the building: “East End Market. Parking Only.” Too Bad. I thought they might sell groceries.
—Matthew J. Spireng
Cognitive Assessment Exam or How Many Missing Marbles
They insist, my nosy children after I left the car running, forgot to pay PG&E and got lost coming home from Lucky, ending up in New Jersey
What’s the problem if I know the names of my four or is it five grandkids, and can follow a football game as long as I remember which team is the Falcons
Why take a stupid memory test when I remember who the current president is, his name starts a T or a P, who cares, and of course I know what year it is but will double check before the exam
Piece of cake to count backwards from 100 by 7’s if I write the answers on the inside of my arm the way I did in high school and got straight A’s 93 86 78 71 65 52 47
I have learned to suddenly cough and nearly fall off the chair, requiring a trip to the ladies’ where I check my phone to see what state Chicago is in
My kids will be shocked when I ace the test but I can’t find my keys I don’t remember the doctor’s name or what time I’m meant to be there and it sure is dark in here
—Claire Scott
Old Friend
Waiting for his old Friend to Soften,
The little Boat
Beside the mountain Lake.
—Ryan Brennan
Delay
I brought my vacation tote: a black patterned Baggallini big enough for everything I carry on a plane or might need at the infusion center.
A light wrap, most recent issue of The Sun a book,
small journal and several pens, ID/insurance cards, phone, glasses, snacks, lip balm
new blue headphones, my mother, father, and brother’s mass cards that live in the zippered compartment inside along with a lucky pressed penny with a Mickey Mouse on it.
Except for the IV poles at every seat we all could have been at the airport waiting for our flights.
Just a delay.
—Diane Peterson
Unbound
Thoughts spun like twine, wound around this heart of mine, rub raw the wasted shrine.
Yet ensnarled knots of mind untwist and slip with breath and time.
Worry wears, bonds shared fray. So too the grip of grief, awaiting, fades away.
—Isabelle Feffer
submission guidelines: Chronogram.com/submissions
Fall-in
The last of the gingko leaves have fallen. They are yellow and pepper the streets. I run right over them.
Bracing my tender knees for the miles ahead.
Out of the corner of my eye I see him walk by.
When I turn he is not there.
Only a figment, part and parcel of my collective memories and intuition.
Submission to sweetness. Everything is better sweet.
I cannot help the way I crave it.
Dip the leaves in laminate and weave them through a typewriter. Scent of burgundy and vetiver. Wax melting on the parts of me that need filling.
I’m still not used to this, I feel undeserving.
Dry like salt-chapped beach lips as I gather intel from stagnant streets shouldering shoelaces and coffee breath.
Nothing is sticking.
Insides like sludge, like bottled glue.
Slip on rain boots and Ray Bans, slide into bookstore, greeted by brown striped Buster leave toting Virginia Woolf.
I am hardly here.
At some lighthouse in Skye waiting to see a sign of your ship in the distance.
—Robyn Hager
Empty
The window. I ask a question to the darkness. Alone, it echoes.
—Michelle Rodriguez
Happy Pills
A deep happiness
Cracked free from under my bones
Modern medicine.
—Sage Higgins
Coming Home from War
I stare into my mother’s eyes
In a dream
Real life is too formal
It is difficult to convey how little I had slept
Before home
And how many steps I had walked
People tell me I am no navalman
Maybe so
How would I know I was just a hobo
Not in Afghanistan
Just lost without a home
Not in some four-door pickup
Just on foot
“Ten hut”
One foot after another
—Joseph Klarl
Dinner and Drinks
Rats don’t pay rent—
We just listen in for entertainment.
Bobby in 2B cheated on Martha from 4F. She threw all his clothes off the fire escape.
The weird kid in 3C likes rats.
He feeds us meals fit for kings when his father isn’t looking.
In the corner suite on the fifth floor, there’s a pet rat named Princess.
Her cage is bedazzled.
We visit her for dinner and drinks every Thursday at 6:30 pm, when her owner is at Pilates.
—Alexondra O’Connell
Hospital Admission Pantoum
Rewrite the lines I just wrote
To help me think through the plan
Close the chart and sign the note
I think I’ve done here what I can
To help me think through the plan
Talk it through with trusted friends
I think I’ve done here what I can
I’ll let them know how this ends
Talk it through with trusted friends
But I get a call, they’re back again I’ll let them know how this ends
Knock on the door, and come on in
But I get a call, they’re back again
I divine a spell, concoct a cure
Knock on the door, and come on in
I’m sorry for what you endure
I divine a spell, concoct a cure
Hold my breath, wish you well
I’m sorry for what you endure
My treatment is only a witch’s spell
Hold my breath, wish you well
Rewrite the lines I just wrote
My treatment is only a witch’s spell
Close the chart and sign the note
—Jean Liew
East of the Sun, West of the Moon
Why is it so hard to find this place
In the middle?
At every moment I’m gone
Washing the silverware
Caught in the web of a smartphone
But then
With a cup of jasmine tea
A glimpse of the Milky Way
I return to the castle
Where the beloveds reunite
Whatever that means
In the real world
Even if there are no Witches, trolls, or talking bears
We are living a story
In between
A beginning and an ending Happily, or not
Ever After
—Jim Metzner
Teachable Moments
Adrienne Truscott and the Subversive Surrealness of “Masterclass”
By Peter Aaron
I’ve just always found it hilarious, getting naked on stage,” says actor, writer, dancer, choreographer, comedian, director, and educator
Adrienne Truscott, who’s well known in the avant-theatrical/cabaret world as one half of the radically risqué feminist burlesque duo the Wau Wau Sisters and for her other nudity-forward performance work. “When I was really little I’d put shows together and put them on in the living room for my parents, and they usually ended with me getting naked. [Laughs.] It was the ’70s and streaking was a big thing, which I just thought was so funny.” Reliably radical and funny—but perhaps defying some expectations about Truscott by not featuring nudity— is “Masterclass,” her uproarious new collaboration with Feidlim Cannon of Irish theater company Brokentalkers that comes to Bard College this month.
Divine Comedy
The child of an American professor whose curriculum focused on the works of Dante, and an English mother, Truscott lived most of her childhood in her mom’s homeland following her parents’ divorce when she was seven. She also spent some of her youth in the Atlantic City area, a locale that further fueled her carny and circus obsessions. “Oh yeah, I loved the boardwalk and that whole atmosphere there,” she recalls. “At home I loved watching ‘Sonny & Cher’ on TV. I loved people like Carol Burnett, Carol Channing, and Lily Tomlin."
by
The unclassifiable performance artist Adrienne Truscott teams up with Irish actor and director Feidlim Cannon of Brokentalkers for "Masterclass" this month at Bard's Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.
Photo
Allison Michael Orenstein
There was a physicality to their kind of comedy, it was very goofy, but it was smart. When we got HBO, I loved Whoopi Goldberg and Eddie Murphy. And for some reason I really loved Alan Alda. [Laughs.] But even though I’d done those little shows at home when I was younger and I’d wanted to be a gymnast, I was still pretty shy about performing outside of that and about the idea of trying to make other people laugh. But I ingested all of this stuff by these comedians I saw on TV, and that made me think, ‘Hey, I could tell a joke!’”
After studying dance at Wesleyan College, Truscott made her way to New York City with the aim of becoming a professional dancer and choreographer.
“When I got out of college, I still had more of a desire to make art rather than perform it,” she recalls. “I was thinking about the new forms that I was encountering and what excited me about them, ways to attack and subvert things.” It was the 1990s and the city was subversion central when it came to edgy art and performance. The buzzing, pre-Brooklyn-shift arts scene that exploded with Warhol’s 1960s work had continued through the ’70s and ’80s and was very much still alive. Nexuses like the venerated, ongoing alternative art center the Kitchen (where Truscott worked as house manager), CBGB’s Gallery, and the Pyramid Club pulsated with music, drag shows, cabaret, and performance art by acts like Blacklips Performance Cult (featuring a young Anhoni of Antony and the Johnsons), Kiki and Herb (with Justin Vivian Bond), and others.
Naked Truth
It was in this milieu that Truscott met circus artist Tanya Gagne. With their shared, irreverent, button-pushing sensibility, the two hit it off instantly and began lighting up neo-burlesque nights in Manhattan and the then-new frontier of Williamsburg as the Wau Wau Sisters. “We were always writing songs to sing and coming up with crazy costumes and routines,” Truscott says. “We both found a lot of bravery in each other with the stuff we’d try. It was, like, ‘Well, if she’ll do it, then I’ll do it!’” Out of the Wau Waus’ boundary-busting symbiosis came their fearless leap into their frequently appearing on stage in the altogether. “[Nude performance] isn’t something I always chose to do, really,” says the artist. “But, like I said, I do think it’s hilarious—it’s cheap, it’s fun, and it sells tickets. [Laughs.] And I think there is a power that comes from being comfortable with being naked on stage. The best times after a performance are when someone from the audience comes up to me and says, ‘I was laughing so hard at what you were doing up there that I forgot you were naked.’ That’s, like, ‘Haha, yes! We did it!’ I’m dedicated to liberating all bodies, and I’ve been happy to do my part for that—while knowing that as a cis white woman, I can get away with more and I have a higher level of safety than a woman from a more marginalized background might.”
The Wau Wau Sisters took their act on the road, becoming the glittery toast of festivals in Europe, Australia, and the UK (in 2013 the pair won the prestigious Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival) with their notoriously bawdy shenanigans, which have frequently involved the participation of unwitting subjects from the audience. Such was the scene when the duo performed for the 2006 inaugural season of the Spiegeltent at Bard College’s SummerScape festival, where their uproarious antics fit right in with the venue’s carny vibe and saw them become returning favorites. But outside of the Wau Wau’s, Truscott was making waves of her own.
Solo Sister
Truscott has authored several collaborative performance works that combine surrealist theater with choreography. These include 2005’s “They Will Use the Highways” and 2007’s “Genesis, No!,” both of which have costarred “Hadestown” choreographer David Neumann and Truscott’s partner, Carmine Covelli, the drummer of dance punk band the Julie Ruin; 2011’s “HA! A Solo”; 2012’s “Too Freedom”; and 2017’s “Wild Bore,” a piece that costarred Zoe Coombs Marr and
Photo by Ste Murray
Ursula Martinez, and in a kind of meta move that’s a bit of a Truscott trademark, poked fun at the theater sphere itself, casting the actors as, literally, ass-headed theater critics.
There have also been her solo shows, like 2015’s stand-up comedy piece “Adrienne Truscott’s A One-Trick Pony (Or Andy Kaufman is A Feminist Performance Artist and I’m A Comedian),” which she performed to raves abroad and in truncated form at the Whitney Museum of Art, and the ongoing, ever-evolving “THIS,” which she debuted in 2017 and still tours. Most confrontational and controversial, though, was “Adrienne Truscott’s Asking for It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else!,” which won multiple awards in the UK when it premiered there in 2013. With Truscott portraying a stylized “blonde bimbo” character and dressed only from the waist up, the provocative, no-holds-barred show took on the taboo topic of rape and the brazen, unapologetic jokes that have been made about it by male comedians. “Truscott lambasted all aspects of misogyny,” wrote Newsweek. “[including] the idea that a gussied-up woman is asking for it, street harassment, and the notion that there’s any such thing as ‘gray area’ when it comes to rape, which if nothing else, is ‘really rude.’” When “Asking for It” premiered in Australia, Truscott met a new collaborator.
Class in Session
“In 2015, amidst the vibrant atmosphere of the Sydney Festival, I had the serendipitous pleasure of meeting Adrienne,” says Feidlim Cannon. “We were both presenting shows there that year, and our mutual admiration for each other’s work led to an impromptu, spirited conversation at the festival bar. We quickly discovered a shared passion for innovative storytelling, collaborative processes, and a similar sense of humor. Adrienne has stood out as such an important artistic
voice today. Her bravery, dynamism, and consistently thought-provoking work not only challenge norms, but also elevate those who collaborate with her. I know that for a fact.”
“Masterclass,” the product of this serendipitous partnership between the self-described “fed-up feminist” and “all-around good guy,” is another skewering of the patriarchal performing world and, in turn, the greater world around it. The play, which opened in Edinburgh in 2022, savages the macho mythology of the male literary figure (think Mailer or Hemingway), with Truscott in the role of a mustachioed, self-important playwright and Feidlim as a sycophantic, myth-fueling interviewer.
“It’s tight and it runs about an hour,” says Truscott when asked to describe the show, which she says is satirical.
“It’s really funny and the costumes are really funny, too, but in a way, it’s similar to the style of something that someone like Mamet or Neil LaBute would write, because it has a real economy of language.”
Away from “Masterclass,” Truscott, who has lived with Covelli in Tivoli since 2009, has and continues to teach class herself. As a visiting artist or adjunct faculty she has been an educator at Wesleyan, Princeton, Sarah Lawrence, Barnard, and Bard, where she currently coordinates an MA program in Human Rights and the Arts and this summer will emcee the events at the Spiegeltent for the second consecutive year.
“I still love it, what can happen between the performer and the audience when you create a really radical space,” says Truscott when asked what keeps her constantly returning to the stage. “In an increasingly flatscreen world, I think that’s something we need now more than ever. I’m still excited by the possibilities.”
“Masterclass” will run April 3-6 at the Luna Theater of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson. Tickets are $40. See website for show times. Fishercenter.bard.edu
Bookstock WOODSTOCK BOOKFEST
April 3-6
Various locations in Woodstock Woodstockbookfest.com
Cityfolk rush around constantly texting each other, but here in the Hudson Valley, we have time to lay on the sofa and read, as snowflakes gather silently on the pine boughs outside. Once a year, local readers rise off their sofas and gather together for the Woodstock Bookfest. This year it begins on April 3.
Over time, the Bookfest has evolved a structure. The first event on April 3 showcases an art form that predates the written word: storytelling. The Story Slam will feature 21 contestants and three judges. Each story must contain the line: “I knew I had to do good.”
“I felt like the world was in a shitty enough place that the Bookfest had to offer some hope,” Martha Frankel, founder and executive director of the festival, explains.
April 5 is a one-on-one interview with a prominent author; this year Griffin Dunne is the guest. Best known as an actor and director, Dunne’s best-selling memoir The Friday Afternoon Club recounts his life growing up in
Beverly Hills in the 1960s, where his first girlfriend was Carrie Fisher. The murder of his sister Dominique in 1982 was a defining crisis for his family. In 2017, Dunne made the documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold about his illustrious aunt.
“I’ve learned that Sunday morning we need to do something that’s fun,” Frankel explains. In this case it will be a “Gilmore Girls” trivia contest.
The finale on April 6 is the Memoir-A-Go-Go! panel, a genre close to Frankel’s heart—she is best known for Hats & Eyeglasses, the story of her gambling addiction. This year the panel includes local author Sophie Strand, whose memoir The Body Is a Doorway explores her chronic illness as a tortuous path to liberation.
Women’s issues are central to this year’s program. “Had Kamala won, I would’ve done an entirely female festival,” Frankel reveals. Jessica Valenti will be on the panel “Women’s Rights in Post-Roe America.” Valenti says about her book Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, And the Truths We Use To Win: “I don’t think of it as preaching to the choir. I think of it as arming the choir.”
Ada Calhoun will discuss her first novel, Crush, about a married woman who becomes infatuated with a friend and ransacks world literature to strategize how to keep both men. Calhoun will be on the panel “Love
and Heartbreak,” along with poet Timothy Liu and Lisa A. Phillips, author of First Love: Guiding Teens Through Relationships and Heartbreak. “All three of us have done a lot of thinking about love and grief and friendship and sex, all from different angles and in different genres,” Calhoun says. “I think when we come together to talk about these things in Woodstock, we will solve them.”
Holly George-Warren, author of the recent Janis Joplin biography Janis: Her Life and Music, will host a panel including Moon Zappa, whose memoir Earth To Moon chronicles her struggles with her famous father, Frank, whom she nursed during his fatal illness. Also on the panel is Lori Tucker-Sullivan, who interviewed 14 widows of rock stars for her book I Can’t Remember If I Cried, including Sandy Helm, wife of Woodstock legend Levon Helm.
The Bookfest began in 2010 to help the Golden Notebook, Woodstock’s beloved bookstore, weather the recession. Originally known as the Woodstock Writers Festival, the name was changed in 2016 to make it more welcoming to nonwriters. Though it skipped three years due to the pandemic, the festival has become a yearly Catskills ritual. “I say this to writers all the time: We are a small festival, but we sell a ton of books,” Frankel remarks.
—Sparrow
Colm Toibin reading John Hersey to musical accompaniment at the 2018 Woodstock Bookfest. Photo by Dion Ogust
LANDMINES:
Take it Slow
BILL CALLAHAN AT ASSEMBLY IN KINGSTON April 20 Assemblykingston.com
Among the music of contemporary indie singersongwriters, there’s no mistaking that of Bill Callahan. His voice and his sparse songs are deep and unhurried, low and slow. They take their time, rolling meditatively along like tumbleweeds under open Western skies, analogous to the lyrical imagery that often weaves through them. Callahan, though, has roots on the East Coast—he was born in Maryland—and the tour for Resuscitate!, the eighth album under his own name (from 1990 to 2005 he recorded as Smog) will blow him back this way for a pair of shows at Assembly in Kingston on April 20 (the evening show is sold out but at the time of this writing, tickets for the 3pm matinee show remained). Ahead of his visit, we caught up with the musician via email to answer the following questions.
—Peter Aaron
Resuscitate! was recorded live midway through the tour for YTILAER [Reality], the studio album you made during the Covid lockdown. What was it like to be able to play these then-new songs with your band in front of an audience and allow them to “breathe” out in the open? How did they change from their initial “cabin” studio recordings? Bringing saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi into the fold changed a lot. There were horns on YTILAER [Reality] but no saxes. Dustin became the whole horn section and occasional bass regional sound maker and lots of other things. I’ve always had improv in my shows—I
can’t live without it— but Dustin pushed that door open wider. Album recordings are like awkward yearbook photos. The songs come into their own when ridden every night. They need the miles on them.
You considered quitting music when you became a parent in 2015. What made you decide to continue? I wrote some songs! I wrote 20 songs. I also felt an obligation to my cherished listeners. I couldn’t just have a kid and then abandon the listeners. Too much of a cliffhanger or an F you. Like those people that have a kid and then stop paying attention to their dog. Having a kid is a huge change in life and I wasn’t sure what it meant or who I was. So I couldn’t write at first. Then I tried to work it out in song. The only way seemed to be complete honesty.
You have such a distinctive songwriting style, which doesn’t adhere much to the traditional verse/chorus/ bridge approach. Are there any other comparable songwriters you feel an affinity with when it comes to your general approach? Who has inspired you as a songwriter over the years?
I appreciate the people who can do verse/chorus/bridge stuff. It’s a timeless formula that can bring you to your knees when done with aplomb. I also like when people write something that makes you say, “Oh? Is that a song? Wait, it IS a song!” Kristofferson, Haggard, Willie, Lou Reed, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Randy Newman, Jimmy Webb. Fiona Apple. I always check what Billie Eilish is doing. The Breeders.
Your parents worked as language analysts for the National Security Agency, which must have made for an interesting upbringing. Would you say that being around elders who worked with words and language
helped to shape your songwriting style? Being a novelist as well, were you interested in literature before you became interested in writing songs? What do you think your father and mother would have to say about the current administration’s cuts to the NSA and other related government agencies? I think they would be stoked! They were in there and saw firsthand how much bullshit and time waste and dick measuring was going on. My parents were very upstanding rule-abiding types who just wanted to do their jobs to their fullest extents, but there were a lot of employees that wanted to do as little as possible. And that would slow them down. This was 30 years ago but I remember them grousing about the freeloaders. Reading fiction definitely spurred my interest in trying out writing for myself. Certain novels made me realize that we’re all wandering in this rocky, rooty canyon together. And any kind of familiar echo is heartening. Made me realize the potential beauty of sharing what’s in our heads. My parents’ influence on my linguistics was probably largely genetic. They would make the occasional pun but by the time I was 12 I realized how lame their puns were. Languages were the only classes that I could do decently in. And just look at my masterful use of their, there, and they’re in this interview! But my dad didn’t read books except the occasional history book and my mom mostly read frothy murder mysteries, probably trying to figure out how she could murder my dad and get away with it.
What do you most hope that people who see you perform get from the experience of attending your concerts?
That they feel they got their money’s worth. Even if they get in free. And that they get some sense of eternity at their fingertips.
Bill Callahan plays two shows at Assembly in Kingston April 20.
Photo by Hanly Banks Callahan
The
Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth NERD NITE HUDSON VALLEY
April 18 at 7:30pm at the Howland Cultural Center Hudsonvalley.nerdnite.com
Beacon’s nerdiest night out is back. On April 18, the Howland Cultural Center once again plays host to Nerd Nite Hudson Valley, where learning meets laughter and PowerPoint presentations pack a punch. Expect an evening of medieval warfare, spelling revolutions, and cinematic mythmaking—along with cold drinks and the camaraderie of fellow knowledge-seekers.
For the uninitiated, Nerd Nite is like a TED Talk with less pretensions and more beer. Since its humble beginnings in 2003, when evolutionary biologist
Chris Balakrishnan started the event in Boston, it has exploded into a global phenomenon spanning more than 100 cities. Nerd Nite’s mission is simple: To bring people together to celebrate the joy of obscure knowledge in an environment that’s both fun and intellectually engaging. Hudson Valley’s chapter, spearheaded by Marjorie Lewit, is building a devoted following of its own.
“Nerd Nite brings together many of my favorite things: learning, laughter, and friends,” says Lewit. “There’s comfort in knowing that there are others like me in my community, eager to absorb knowledge and geek out.”
So what’s in store for this month’s event?
Nancy Bisaha kicks things off with “So You Wanna
Build a Castle?” If you’ve ever molded a sandcastle on the beach and imagined yourself ruling over it, this one’s for you. Castles, it turns out, are the ultimate medieval power flex, and Bisaha will explain how these stone behemoths shaped the course of warfare and feudal society. From the Norman Conquest to the Crusades, castles were the defining military structures of their time—until, quite suddenly, they weren’t. Want to know why? Bring your curiosity (and maybe a toy catapult).
Next up, Gabe Henry presents “Enough is ENUF! A (Brief) History of the Simplified Spelling Movement.” English spelling, as we all know, makes no sense. Why does through have more letters than it needs? Why does laugh have a gh when no one is choking on it? Henry takes us on a journey through history’s many failed attempts to streamline our language—some of which gave us words like tho and nite, while others never made it past the linguistics committee. And yes, he’ll be trying to sell you his book, Enough is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Eezier to Spell—but after this talk, you might actually want to buy it.
Wrapping up the night, Mia Mask tackles the impact of African American Westerns in Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western. If you think Westerns are just about John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, think again. Films like Buck and the Preacher and Posse redefined the genre, bringing long-overdue representation to the big screen and expanding our understanding of the American frontier. Mask, a Vassar professor and
author, will break down how these films challenged the Hollywood status quo and paved the way for modern interpretations like Django Unchained.
For Lewit, Nerd Nite isn’t just about cool facts—it’s about community. “After attending Nerd Nites in New York City and Los Angeles for years, I was inspired to start my own after my friend Najah Muhammad, director of education at Leaders by Choice, had said she would love to have an ‘adult science fair.’ You know, volcanoes, homemade recycled paper, etc. I thought, ‘That would have made an excellent special Nerd Nite!’”
Lewit’s passion for spreading knowledge extends beyond the stage. A dedicated volunteer with the Hudson Highlands Land Trust and DEC’s Amphibian Migration program, she sees Nerd Nite as a way to foster awareness and curiosity. “If people hear ‘lecture,’ they might not get pumped up. But they hear ‘lecture, beers, and laughter’—and suddenly we have magic.”
The Howland Cultural Center, with its rich history as a former library and its commitment to intellectual exchange, is the ideal venue. “It’s a perfect fit,” Lewit says. “Its architectural features, its history of housing 2,200 volumes, and its many nerdy board members make it a dream venue.” She gives a special nod to Craig Wolf, who reliably opens every Nerd Nite with an introduction and a “word of the day.” Expect nothing less than magniloquence (that means “high-flown language” for the non-nerds out there).
—Brian K.
Mahoney
Nadia Azizi and Marjorie Lewit presenting "Real Life Frogger" at a recent Nerd Nite Hudson Valley at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon.
+ Men + Home + Coffee Shop
Garden Street. Poughkeepsie, NY 12601 C+C Home opening April 2025 624 Warren Street. Hudson, NY 12534 more info@canvasandclothier.com
DAILY
Sam Spanier Centenary Celebrations
May 3: Screening, Talk, Refreshments 5:30pm, Woodstock Artists Assoc.& Museum
May 6: 100th Birthday Zoom, 2pm & 8pm Pre-registration required
May 10: Remembrances of Sam, 5pm, Woodstock Library
May 1-June 1: Exhibition of Sam’s Artwork at Matagiri Friday-Sunday, Noon–5pm, and by appt. SamSpanier.com
Indian Classical Concerts
April 5
• 2-5pm: Introduction to Indian Classical Music with Sahana Banerjee
• 5:30-6:30pm: Indian Vegetarian Dinner (Reservation Required)
• 7-9pm: Sahana Banerjee, Sitar with Maulik Mehta, Tabla
April 13
• 4pm: Sitar Concert with Abhisek Mallick, accompanied by Subrata Bhattacharya, Tabla
• 6-7pm: Indian Vegetarian Dinner (Reservation Required)
Weekly Yoga & Pilates Style Mat Classes
Matagiri 1218 Wittenberg Rd, Mt Tremper, NY 12457
Please call to confirm your attendance 845.679.8322 1925-2008
REGISTER AT MATAGIRI.ORG
A
Real Fake Story
“FAMILIAR/UNFAMILIAR” AT BILL ARNING EXHIBITIONS IN KINDERHOOK Through May 17 Billarning.com
Everything is questionable these days, from the content of processed foods (is that real?) to the ulterior intent behind comments flung across various media platforms (is that for real?). On top of this, the AI-driven overload of digital imagery is now pushing our eyeballs into novel realms of the imaginary, forcing us to consider expanded definitions of “realness” within a dissolving aesthetic—Salvador Dali’s melting clocks come to mind as a poignant visual embodiment of the prevailing weirdness.
The four-person exhibition “Familiar/Unfamiliar” at Bill Arning Exhibitions in Kinderhook explores such themes of cultural subversion and the iconography of popular culture through a series of paintings and works on paper that seem to align with the psychological substratum of the four seasons, revealing the curatorial flirtation between the recognizable and the peculiar at once. First, let us revisit winter (currently fading out) as a time of soul searching and the sedate paintings of Erik Daniel White. Working in oil on linen as his medium yet manipulating the paint in such a way as to make it appear like three-dimensional Play-Doh, White focuses
on banal objects and environments to heighten their materiality. In Spectators (2024) we encounter a stoic blue wall and windowpane with two pots of flowers set against an orange-pink curtain that begs the question: What more exists behind this smooth scene? In other lonesome works such as There’s a Rat in the House (2025) and Blue Bird (2025), animals serve as detached spirits existing in nondescript realms.
The existential chill of White’s work gives way to frisky spring energy and Sue Muskat’s playful Disneyesque bunnies and frolicking puppies. In three vibrant works on paper, Muskat employs a monotone backdrop for these lovable cartoon characters and frames them with pointed commentary. In So It Goes (2022), twin doggies smile uncontrollably as the words “you again” anchor the composition from above and below. With Empirical vs Rational (2002), a jolly rabbit lifts one leg in a joyful jig while a cryptic statement swirls about: “i always thought i was me” (at top) “i was you and never knew it” (at bottom).
From bouncy primavera to sultry summer, we behold Kevin Mosca’s cinematically inspired, milk-soaked series of crimson-hued fantasy paintings arranged in a grid. This body of work teases out a nonlinear narrative around a milkman protagonist (we never actually see him) in the fictional town of Maiden Valley (where milky dreams flow). Mosca’s Maiden Valley Cream (2024) sets the stage with a vision of the commercial design for this faux brand, while Lay Me Down (2025) features the
milkman’s worn hat at the end of a workday. Suggestive pieces such as Till the Last Drop (2024) show a woman clutching a slender glass jar poised patiently at her glowing red lips, and Half Full (2024) is a kinky, layered scene with hands around a small pool of spilled milk while evocative shapes and shadows perplex as much as they excite.
Bringing us full circle in a seasonal cycle are four quasi-Cubist gay telenovela-style works by Matt Bede Murphy done in an autumnal color palette. In these bright, dense paintings of men interacting with men, Murphy presents private scenes both rich and randy. In Dandy Man’s Night Out (2024), a finely dressed fellow with a smirk appears to have his hand on the rump of a body builder who leans back aghast (or intrigued?) while a flat-faced figure in a wild hat apprehends the spectacle and another looks away in an odd and compelling moment. With Studio Scene (2024), an artist and his model engage in a comfortable life drawing session, while The Flute Player and the Soldier (2024) features a well-hung red Cyclops with a Roman soldier clad in yellow who appears poised to raise his whip and carry out a beating.
If these four artists and their familiar yet unfamiliar iconography is any indication of the absurdist eccentricity of our times, then I am buoyed knowing that bunnies, boys, milk, and flowers are the enduring idols in a world gone mad.
—Taliesin Thomas
Above, left: The Flute Player and the Soldier, Matt Bede Murphy, oil on canvas, 2024 Aobe, right: Shell Shocked, Erik Daniel White oil on linen, 2025
Opposite: Empirical vs Rational, Sue Muskat, acrylic on paper, 2022
Beyond the Algorithm
HUDSON VALLEY IDEAS FESTIVAL AT THE ROSENDALE THEATER
April 26, 10am to 5pm Hudsonvalleyideas.org
At this year’s Hudson Valley Ideas Festival, attendees are invited to think “Beyond the Algorithm,” with six speakers, including the festival’s creator, entrepreneur, author, and Forward Party founder Andrew Yang.
Yang and his family had been living in New Paltz for several years when he addressed the Aspen Ideas Festival in 2023 and decided that the Hudson Valley should have one too. “I thought, well, maybe I can make that happen,” he says. “That was the original idea, and I’m happy to say that the response to the first one [in 2024] was so enthusiastic that we knew we had to do it again this year.”
The presenters, a mix of authors, journalists, and entrepreneurs, are “people I’ve met out there with a point of view and something to share,” says Yang. The audience will hear from Atlantic writer Thomas Chatterton Williams on “Unlearning Race,” actor Dane
DeHaan on “Hollywood in the Streaming Age,” digital creator and cultural commentator Jules Terpak on “The Future of TikTok,” journalist and novelist Ross Barkan on “The Great New York Novel,” and speaking coach Michael Hoeppner, who’ll discuss “Speaking Presidentially.” Yang himself will be taking the stage to talk about “The Path to Political Reform.”
Yang’s topic is one he’s been in the trenches working on without ceasing. Though his 2020 run for the Democratic presidential nomination failed to pan out, he rebounded to found the Forward Party (“Not Left. Not Right. FORWARD.”) in 2021. Teams in 34 states (New York included) are continuing to build a platform while recruiting candidates who rep the Forward goals, like rebuilding democracy from the bottom up, putting data ahead of ideology, and promoting old-fashioned ideas like integrity and civic engagement. “I think more and more people are waking up to the fact that the status quo isn’t working,” says Yang. “For example, several years ago if I brought up AI and its impact on the job market, it sounded like science fiction; now it’s current events, so the appetite for making changes is picking up. Some of the changes happening are, in my opinion, negative, but there’s also more room for different ideas and solutions.”
The flagship idea of Yang’s 2020 run, Universal Basic Income, is one that he also sees gaining traction as ultimately inevitable, and he even has an idea of who should foot the bill. “Our data is being sold and resold for several hundred billion a year, and we’re not seeing a dime of that,” he points out. “Instead, it’s reflected in the market cap of several large tech companies. So there’s a lot of value there that could be put to different use.”
Meanwhile, he’s “chiseling away at political opportunities, some of which may come faster than you expect,” and promoting structural reforms such as ranked-choice voting and open primaries. “I’m not going to pretend this is quick or easy, but it’s necessary,” he says. His 2024 TED talk on political reform, he notes, made the top 10. Would he ever run for office again? “Well, I enjoyed it, and [at 50] I’m still young by political standards.”
Yang’s hope for the festival is that people will come away with food for thought, be it in the form of a book or perhaps a thinker they’d like to engage with further. Tickets for the event, which runs from 10 am to 5 pm, are $10 per person for the morning or the afternoon sessions and $15 for an all-day pass.
—Anne Pyburn Craig
New Paltz resident Andrew Yang founded the Hudson Valley Ideas Festival in 2024 after attending the Aspen Ideas Festival. The daylong seminar returns to the Rosendale Theater on April 26.
HTRK/Nona Invie/Mark Trecka
April 2 at Tubby’s in Kingston
Australian duo HTRK (guitarist Nigel Yang and vocalist Jonnine Standish) began in 2003 as a trio inspired by David Lynch films and protopunk and post-industrial music. Marry Me Tonight, the band’s 2009 debut album, was coproduced by the Birthday Party’s Rowland S. Howard; Rhinestones, their sixth album, came out in 2021. Minneapolis singersongwriter Nona Invie has worked with Angel Olsen, Low, and Dark Dark Dark; local Mark Trecka has collaborated with Midwife, Raven Chacon, Cinder, and others. (Leya and Sunk Haven float in April 8; J. Robbins rocks May 1.) 7pm. $15.45.
Dawes
April 9 at the Bearsville Theater in Bearsville
“The spell of The Band is unmistakable on the earnest-but-easygoing records of this West Coast unit,” writes your arts editor in his 2016 book The Band FAQ. “Lead singer Taylor Goldsmith’s voice floats somewhere between that of [Rick] Danko and Jackson Browne.” The group’s 2022 album Misadventures of Doomscroller saw them moving into Steely Dan-esque realms, while 2024’s Oh Brother is the first Dawes effort recorded solely by siblings Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith. Michigander opens. (The Dip drops in April 13; Vieux Farka Toure visits April 23.) 7pm. $70.65.
Explosions in the Sky
April 10 at UPAC in Kingston
Instrumental post-rock quartet Explosions in the Sky have been making wide-screen, cinematic music since 1999, and they’ve created music for dozens of movies (most notably Friday Night Lights), TV shows, and video games. Epic, grandiose, and drenched in crashing crescendos and sweeping swells, the band’s sound is all-consuming and lends itself perfectly to filling the spaces of large venues like the one they’ll be dominating for this rare area appearance. (“The Effects of Gravity” explores science, art, and music April 17; the Met HD streams Mozart’s “Le Nozze de Figaro” April 26.) 8pm. $39.50, $49.50.
Kaushiki Chakraborty
April 11 at the Egg in Albany
Powerful Indian classical and Carnatic vocalist and multiinstrumentalist Kaushiki Chakraborty is a master of the Patilia gharna tradition and the daughter of the legendary singer and composer Ajoy Chakraborty. Titled “A Musical Odyssey: Mother and Son in Harmony” and part of the Egg’s Resonance Series, this concert, which incorporates multimedia elements alongside the performance, pairs her with virtuosic 13-year-old son, Rishith Desikan. Opening the evening is a local mother-and-son Indian music duo, Veena and Devesh Chandra. (Duane Betts and Palmetto Motel play April 9; “Pro Musica on Broadway” takes the stage April 26.) 8pm. $35-$55.
“Giulio Cesare”
April 19-May 2 at Hudson Hall in Hudson Handel’s dramatic opera “Giulio Cesare (Julius Ceasar)” AKA “Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Julius Ceasar in Egypt”) premiered in 1724 and is loosely based on events that occurred during the Roman Civil War of 49-45 BC. Here, the baroque work gets a modern revisitation under the supervision of Hudson resident and rising opera director R.B. Schlather, with live music performed by early music ensemble Ruckus, a unit dubbed “the world’s only period instrument rock band.” (The Hudson Community Choir performs through June 19.) See website for times. $30-$95.
Spottiswoode and His Enemies
April 19 at Spencertown Academy in Spencertown
“Jonathan Spottiswoode, the backbone of this tight group, has a deep, rough-hewn voice that’s evocative of Leonard Cohen’s,” gushes the New York Times about the Gotham-based Spottiswoode and His Enemies, who make this long-overdue return to the region. “He writes astringent ballads and groovy pop songs with equal aplomb.” The English-born singer-songwriter’s literate music has drawn apt comparisons to Leonard Cohen, Ray Davies, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, David Bowie, Randy Newman, and others. (Classical tenor Brian Giebler and pianist Steven McGhee duet May 4.) 8pm. $25-$30. —Peter Aaron
Kaushiki Chakraborty and Rishith Desikan play The Egg in Albany on April 11.
Family Connections: Excavating Teen Angst
April 4 at the Seventh Ward Foundation in Hudson Teen angst: a universal affliction, a literary goldmine. Hudson-based author Jonathan Lerner and his nephew, Pulitzer Prize-nominated novelist Ben Lerner, dig into the trials of adolescence and how they’ve transformed youthful turmoil into literature. Jonathan debuts his latest memoir, Performance Anxiety, while Ben revisits The Topeka School, his acclaimed novel of teenage identity and linguistic warfare. Expect a lively, insightful discussion on memory, storytelling, and the ways our teenage selves never quite leave us. With two generations of literary talent on stage, this conversation promises sharp wit, deep reflection, and maybe even a few cringe-worthy teenage confessions. 6pm.
Translucent Borders Weekend
April 4-6 at the Ashokan Center in Olivebridge Artists from Ghana, Palestine, and the Hudson Valley converge for a weekend of cross-cultural collaboration at the Ashokan Center. Translucent Borders brings together musicians, dancers, and storytellers for performances, workshops, and discussions exploring the intersections of tradition and innovation. Featuring master nyckelharpa player Bronwyn Bird, composer Firas Zreik, dancer/drummer Sully Imoro, and others, the event highlights the power of artistic exchange to foster dialogue and understanding. Movement, rhythm, and storytelling become a shared language, dissolving divisions and creating new creative possibilities. This gathering offers a rare opportunity to witness the artistic process in real-time, shaped by diverse global influences.
Cornell Cooperative Extension Garden Day
April 5 at SUNY Ulster in Stone Ridge
Every spring, the dirt-curious and trowel-wielding descend on SUNY Ulster for Garden Day, a horticultural hootenanny hosted by the Master Gardener Volunteers of Cornell Cooperative Extension. This year’s theme, “Garden with Confidence,” delivers 16 classes covering everything from mushroom cultivation to invasive plant smackdowns. Kicking things off: Michael Hagen, curator at the New York Botanical Garden, waxing poetic (and practical) on the trials of native plant stewardship. 8:30am-4pm.
Chemo Savvy
April 6 at Rosendale Theater in Rosendale Cancer touches nearly everyone, yet it remains a rare subject in the arts. Chemo Savvy aims to change that. Veteran performers Verna Gillis and David Gonzalez—both currently undergoing chemotherapy—bring together a powerhouse lineup of storytellers
(Rebecca Kalin, Bruce & Gail Whistance) and musicians (Joey Eppard, Jay Collins,
and Matt Finck) for an evening of humor, music, and raw honesty. Expect laughter, reflection, and a fresh conversation about the “C word.” With Gillis’s sharp wit and Gonzalez’s poetic presence, Chemo Savvy transforms personal struggle into collective catharsis—because sometimes, the best way through the dark is with a spotlight. 2pm.
“Ancient Aliens Live!”
April 11 at UPAC in Kingston
Cue the ominous synth music and prepare to have your mind blown “Ancient Aliens Live!” lands in Kingston, bringing the History Channel’s most meme-worthy theorists from the screen to the stage. Featuring fan-favorite experts like Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, David Childress, and Nick Pope, this live experience dives deep into extraterrestrial theories, lost civilizations, and the mysteries of the cosmos. Expect high-energy debate, outlandish hypotheses, and enough ancient astronaut speculation to keep your inner conspiracy theorist buzzing. Whether you’re a true believer or a curious skeptic, one question remains: Were we visited by aliens? The answer—probably—awaits. 8pm.
Secret Mall Apartment Screening
April 8 at Upstate Films’ Orpheum Cinema in Saugerties
Imagine living rent-free in a mall for four years—hidden in plain sight, just beyond the food court. That’s exactly what a group of artists pulled off in the early 2000s, and director Jeremy Workman brings their astonishing true story to the screen in Secret Mall Apartment. The film chronicles the covert creation of a fully functional living space inside a Rhode Island mall, a subversive experiment in urban squatting and artistic rebellion. Workman will be on hand for a post-screening discussion, offering behind-thescenes insights into this stranger-than-fiction tale of ingenuity, defiance, and the blurred lines between public and private space. 6:30pm.
The Woods Screening
April 11 at Avalon Lounge in Catskill
Something lurks in The Woods—and it’s not just nostalgia for a childhood adventure gone wrong. Filmed in Catskill and throughout upstate New York, Sarah Lyons’s chilling new horror film follows four friends on a final hike before adulthood takes them in separate directions. What begins as a trip down memory lane warps into a nightmare, leaving one survivor to unravel the truth years later on a true crime podcast. Presented by Sleepover Trading Co. and Avalon Lounge, this special screening includes a Q&A with Lyons and a vintage horror pre-show to set the eerie mood. Reality twists, memories deceive—enter The Woods at your own risk. 7pm.
Charlton Heston stars as Moses in Cecil B. Demille's epic The Ten Commandments, which screens on April 19 at the Rosendale Theater.
VEMilO performs at a street party in Washington, DC, in 2021. They'll be performing at the Moviehouse in Millerton on April 11.
“A Night with VEMilO”
April 11 at the Moviehouse in Millerton
Part pop spectacle, part avant-garde cabaret, “A Night with VEMilO” transforms the stage into a kaleidoscope of music, monologue, and hypnotic visuals. A genreblurring artist with the theatricality of Gaga and the electric pulse of Prince, VEMilO crafts performances that are equal parts self-expression and communal celebration. Expect soaring vocals, cinematic storytelling, and a dazzling fusion of sound and style—all from a hometown icon whose presence commands the room. With a dress code of “classy casual” and a vibe of boundary-breaking inclusivity, this is more than a concert—it’s an experience, an invitation, and a little bit of magic. 6pm.
Kingston Independent Comic Expo
April 12 at the Old Dutch Church in Kingston Indie comics thrive on the fringes, where raw creativity meets DIY determination. The Kingston Independent Comic Expo (KICx) returns to celebrate the underground, the experimental, and the artist-owned. This gathering of cartoonists, zine-makers, and illustrators highlights the dynamic world beyond corporate capes and crossovers. Panels, signings, and artist showcases put the spotlight on the storytellers shaping the medium on their own terms. Whether it’s alternative press icons, rising stars, or self-published rebels, KICx offers a space where comics are personal, political, and deeply independent. For anyone who believes the best stories unfold outside the mainstream, this is the place. 10am-6pm.
The Ten Commandments Screening
April 19 at the Rosendale Theater in Rosendale
Part biblical epic, part fever dream, The Ten Commandments is Hollywood excess in its purest form. Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 spectacle throws everything at the screen—4,000 extras, burning bushes, plagues, stone tablets, and enough melodrama to stretch across its nearly four-hour runtime. Charlton Heston broods as Moses, Yul Brynner smolders as Pharaoh, and Anne Baxter purrs lines like she’s in a different (better) movie. The parting of the Red Sea still stuns, the pageantry still dazzles, and the camp factor remains off the charts. It’s Old Testament by way of old-school Hollywood, and it demands to be witnessed on the big screen.
American Nightmare/American Dream Screening
April 25 at Morton Memorial Library in Rhinecliff
The myth of the American Dream promises upward mobility, but for too many, the road out of poverty is riddled with obstacles. Diana Devlin's American Nightmare/ American Dream follows four New Yorkers who defied staggering odds—navigating homelessness, incarceration, and a welfare system designed to keep them
struggling—to achieve higher education and rewrite their futures. From courtrooms to college classrooms, their stories expose the cracks in the system while proving that change is possible. A vital documentary in an era of widening inequality, the film is both a call to action and a tribute to resilience, determination, and the power of education. Q&A to follow screening. 7pm.
“Spring Fever Sirens”
April 25 at Colony in Woodstock
Burlesque has always been more than feathers and flirtation—it’s an art form that teases, subverts, and seduces. “Spring Fever Sirens” celebrates the season’s awakening with a riot of color, movement, and sensation. Strangehouse brings together a dazzling lineup of burlesque artists, pole dancers, sideshow acts, and sultry songstresses, each act a love letter to renewal, desire, and the art of the slow reveal. Mistress of Ceremonies Tryst La Noir leads a cast including Sizzlin’ Liz, Kellie Skyline, Kate Beyond, and Ginger Maraschino, promising a night that shocks, woos, and blossoms before your very eyes. 9:30pm.
Chancellor’s Sheep and Wool Showcase
April 26 at Clermont State Historic Site in Germantown
A celebration of fiber arts, history, and springtime renewal, the Chancellor’s Sheep and Wool Showcase returns to Clermont for a day of shearing, spinning, and craftsmanship. One of the region’s longest-running traditions, the event brings together artisans, farmers, and historians to showcase the enduring magic of wool. The artisan market offers hand-dyed yarns, fleeces, soaps, and handcrafted goods, while historic reenactments and hands-on activities bring the past to life. Live performances by Tamarack and The Orchestra Now provide the soundtrack as families explore heritage crafts, meet farm animals, and welcome the season with this beloved festival of fiber and folklore. 11am-4pm.
Hudson Valley Mac and Cheese Festival 9
April 26 at Brotherhood Winery in Washingtonville
Mac and cheese isn’t just comfort food—it’s a culinary love language, a gooey, golden hug in a bowl. The Hudson Valley Mac and Cheese Festival returns, bringing together top local chefs and restaurants to battle for the ultimate crown: King of Mac and Cheese. From classic cheddar-laden perfection to wild, chef-driven reinventions, each bite is a testament to the dish’s endless possibilities. Set against the storied backdrop of Brotherhood Winery, this festival offers unlimited samples, endless indulgence, and the chance to declare the region’s reigning mac and cheese champion. Bring an appetite—resistance is futile when cheese is involved. 1-5pm. —Brian K. Mahoney
Right: Family with Cake, Amy Hill, oil on canvas, at Front Room Gallery in Hudson through April 19.
Opposite: Expeller of Erroneous Thought, Cathy Wysocki, acrylic, collage, sand, beads, glitter on canvas, 2022, at LABspace in Hillsdale through April 27.
2 ALICES COFFEE LOUNGE
311 HUDSON STREET, CORNWALL
“Pictures About Words.” Collage and assemblage by India and Bill Braine. Through April 20.
510 WARREN ST GALLERY
510 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“Images d’Eau.” Work by Lionel Delevingne. April 4-27.
68 PRINCE STREET GALLERY
68 PRINCE STREET, KINGSTON
“Symbolic of the Whole.” Paintings by Francine Tint. April 26-June 26.
ALBANY INSTITUTE OF HISTORY & ART
125 WASHINGTON AVENUE, ALBANY
“On the Road to Cragsmoor with Charles Courtney Curran.” Traces the American painter Charles Courtney Curran’s (1861-1942) entire career. Through October 13.
ANN STREET GALLERY
104 ANN STREET, NEWBURGH
“The Destiny.” Work by Destiny Arianna, Vernon Byron, Cy Hinojosa, Lala Montoya, Alisa Sikelianos-Carter, and Tony Washington. Curated by Jaime Ransome. Through May 10.
ART OMI
1405 COUNTY ROUTE 22, GHENT
“Staging Area: A Barn Raising in Two Parts.” Installation by Erin Besler. Through June 8.
AVAILABLE ITEMS
64 BROADWAY, TIVOLI
“Sara Berks: Softening Edges.” Watercolor paintings. Through April 20.
BAU GALLERY
506 MAIN STREET, BEACON
“The Only Way is Through.” Work by Robin Adler. April 12-May 4.
“Nest, BAU Gallery Artists.” Group show. April 12-May 4.
BERNAY FINE ART
296 MAIN STREET, GREAT BARRINGTON, MA
“Visual Verse: When Poetry Meets Paint.” Work by Fern Apfel, Mel Bernstine, FAILE, Warren Isensee, and Sue Muskat Knoll. Through April 27.
BILL ARNING EXHIBITIONS
17 BROAD STREET, KINDERHOOK
“Familiar/Unfamiliar.” Work by Kevin Mosca, Matthew Bede Murphy, Sue Muskat, and Erik Daniel White. Through May 17.
CARRIE HADDAD GALLERY
622 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“If These Walls Could Talk.” Work by Richard Britell, Kathryn Freeman, Brigid Kennedy, Glenn Palmer-Smith, Judith Wyer, and the late Lionel Gilbert. Through April 6.
“Uncanny Perceptions.” Work by India Sachi, Carl Grauer, Dai Ban, and Ann Getsinger. April 11-June 1.
CATSKILL ART SPACE
48 MAIN STREET, LIVINGSTON MANOR
“Lauren Daccache, Elizabeth Orr, and Eleanor White.” Group show. Through April 26.
CONVEY/ER/OR GALLERY
299 MAIN ST, POUGHKEEPSIE
“This Land Ain’t Your Land.” Portraits of migrant workers and First Nation people by Dan Goldman. April 5-June 1.
CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY AT WOODSTOCK
25 DEDERICK STREET, KINGSTON
“Recess.” Photographs by Keisha Scarville. Through May 4.
“Ward 81.” Photographs of an Oregon psychiatric ward in 1976 by Mary Ellen Mark. Through May 4.
CUNNEEN-HACKETT ARTS CENTER
9 & 12 VASSAR STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE
“Paradise.” Photographs by Ian Hutton and paintings by Selva Ozelli. Through April 25.
DIA BEACON
3 BEEKMAN STREET, BEACON
“Mary Heilman: Starry Night.” Long-term view.
“Andy Warhol: Shadows.” An installation that surrounds the viewer with a series of canvases presented edge-to-edge around the perimeter of the room.
DISTORTION SOCIETY
155 MAIN STREET, BEACON
“The Evolution of Mark Making.” Work by Kipton Hinsdale. Through April 8.
ELIJAH WHEAT SHOWROOM
195 FRONT STREET, NEWBURGH
“Compact, Relaxed, & Intact.” Sculptures by Millicent Young and video installation by Virginia L. Montgomery. April 19-June 29.
“Girls at the End of the World.” Site-specific installation by Jessica Hargreaves. April 19-June 29.
FORELAND
111 WATER STREET, CATSKILL
“Fern T. Apfel.” Paintings. Through May 5.
FRANCES LEHMAN LOEB ART CENTER
124 RAYMOND AVENUE, POUGHKEEPSIE
“Great Green Hope for the Urban Blues.” Artists reinterpret and reinstall the Loeb’s collection of Hudson River School Art. Through August 10.
“Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Black Space-Making from Harlem to the Hudson Valley”. Group show retelling of the history of the Hudson Valley. Through August 17. “Water/Bodies.” Work by Sa’dia Rehman. Through August 17.
FRONT ROOM GALLERY
205 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“Light, Shade, and Product Placement.” Paintings by Amy Hill. Through April 19.
GALLERY 495
495 MAIN STREET, CATSKILL
“Janus.” Work by Daniel Sierra and Mike McManus. Through April 26.
GARNER ARTS CENTER
55 WEST RAILROAD AVENUE, GARNERVILLE
“FREE STYLE Idiosyncratic/Eclecticism.” Group exhibition curated by Brett DePalma. Through April 20.
GOSHEN PUBLIC LIBRARY & HISTORICAL SOCIETY
366 MAIN ST, GOSHEN “Focal Points.” Hudson Highlands Photography Club group show. Through April 29.
GREEN KILL
229 GREENKILL AVENUE, KINGSTON
“David Gonzalez and Karen Jensen.” Through April 26.
HAWK + HIVE
61 MAIN STREET, ANDES
“Funny Feeling.” Work by Brian Cirmo. April 12-May 11.
HEADSTONE GALLERY
28 HURLEY AVENUE, KINGSTON
“You, But Only Just.” Work by Marco Crocchianti and Yoojee Kwak. April 5-27.
HOLOCENTER
518 BROADWAY, KINGSTON
“New York Holographic Artists.” Holographic artwork by Doris Vila, Fred Unterseher, Dan Schweitzer, Hart Perry, Ana Maria Nicholson, Ikuo Nakamura, Am Moree, Peter Miller, Aaron Kurzon, Suw Cowls Dimitru, Becky Deem, Rudie Berkhout, and Jake Adams. Through May 4.
The Shower Scene, Brian Cirmo, oil on Canvas, 2022. at Hawk+ Hive in Andes April 12-May 11.
HOWLAND CULTURAL CENTER
477 MAIN STREET, BEACON
“Realism on the Hudson.” Small works show of American Artists Professional League artists. Through April 13.
HUDSON AREA LIBRARY
51 NORTH 5TH ST, HUDSON
“Hudson: A History of Whaling & Maritime Commerce.” Ephemera of Hudson’s whaling history. Through April 30.
HUDSON RIVER MUSEUM
511 WARBURTON AVENUE, YONKERS
“Smoke in Our Hair: Native Memory and Unsettled Time.” Twenty-seven works highlighting some of the most influential Native artists working over the last 60 years. Through August 31.
HUDSON VALLEY MOCA
1701 MAIN STREET, PEEKSKILL
“Psychological Portraiture.” Group photography show. Through June 30.
“So You Think I’m Too Old To...” National juried exhibition looking at how older artists and older citizens excel as the years progress. Through May 3.
JANE ST. ART CENTER
11 JANE STREET, SAUGERTIES
“Super Cute.” Group exhibition. April 5-May 10.
MAGAZZINO ITALIAN ART
2700 ROUTE 9, COLD SPRING
“Maria Lai. A Journey to America.” Comprehensive overview of Maria Lai’s (1919–2013) work. Through July 28.
“Qui Dentro/In Here.” Work by Lucio Pozzi, curated by David Ebony. Through June 9.
MARK GRUBER GALLERY
13 NEW PALTZ PLAZA, NEW PALTZ. “Staats Paints Mohonk.” Paintings by Staats Fasoldt. Through May 10.
MARKET STREET STUDIO
9 MARKET STREET, ELLENVILLE
“Art Stars.” Work by Ellenville High School students Kayla Barbieri, Meadow Concepcion, Emma Dechon, Hanna Horl, Alena Kasumaj, Josalyn Kehlenbeck, and Leily O’Sullivan. April 5-May 5.
MASS MOCA
1040 MASS MOCA WAY, NORTH ADAMS, MA
“Like Magic.” Group show. Through August 31.
MILDRED I. WASHINGTON GALLERY, DUTCHESS COMMUNITY COLLEGE
1 GALLERY CIRCLE, POUGHKEEPSIE
“His Room as He Left It.” Installation by Ariel Kotker. April 7-May 16.
MONUMENT GALLERY
29 WEST STRAND STREET, KINGSTON
“All in Together.” Work by Stephen Niccolls, Clark Derbes, and Sophie Roach. Through April 12.
OLIVE FREE LIBRARY
4033 ROUTE 28A, WEST SHOKAN
“Bowled Over.” Group ceramics show. Through May 3.
ONE MILE GALLERY
475 ABEEL STREET, KINGSTON
“Mark Hogancamp: Renaissance.” Photographs. Through April 19.
PAMELA SALISBURY GALLERY
362 1/2 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“She Opened Her Ear to the Great Below.” Paintings by Elena Sisto.
SAMUEL DORSKY MUSEUM OF ART
1 HAWK DRIVE, SUNY NEW PALTZ.
“Landmines.” Work by Dawoud Bey, Christina Fernandez, Richard Mosse, and Rick Silva. Through July 13.
“Movement.” Thirty-eight artists from the region explore migration, immigration, political displacement, social change, and physical motion. Through April 6.
SEPTEMBER
4 HUDSON STREET, KINDERHOOK
“I was here.” Work by Kesewa Aboah, kg, Emma Safir, Jen Simms, Odessa Straub, Amas Verdatre. Through May 11.
SMALL TALK WOODSTOCK
1 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK
“Alta Vista.” Work by Kirkland Bray and Todd Koelmel. Through April 27.
SPENCERTOWN ACADEMY ARTS CENTER
790 ROUTE 203, SPENCERTOWN
“From Pencil to Brush: Looking at the Artist’s Process.” Drawings and paintings by Julie Love Edmonds, Shawn Fields, Kathryn Freeman, and Ann Getsinger. Curated by Alice McGowan and David Lesako. Through April 29.
SUPER SECRET PROJECTS
484 MAIN STREET, BEACON
“an offering of gravity and grace.” Work by Elizabeth Mihaltse Lindy. April 12-May 4.
SUSAN ELEY FINE ART
433 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“dismantle.” Work by Ana Maria Farina, Susan Lisbin, Maria Manhattan, and Marianne van Lent. Curated by Liz Lorenz. Through April 27.
THE LACE MILL GALLERIES
165 CORNELL STREET, KINGSTON
“Douglas James Maguire.” Paintings. April 5-27.
TREMAINE ART GALLERY AT THE HOTCHKISS SCHOOL
11 INTERLAKEN ROAD, LAKEVILLE, CT
“The Art of Joy Brown.” Sculpture, drawings, and paintings. Through April 5.
WIRED GALLERY
KINOSAITO
115 7TH STREET, VERPLANCK
“Alice Mizrachi: Unifying Threads of Our Evolution.” Mural. Through May 18.
“Kikuo Saito: The Wrong Side of the Brush.” Paintings. Through May 18.
“Reuven Israel: U.F.O. (Untitled Folding Object) 1329.”Site-specific installation. Through May 18.
KLEINERT/JAMES CENTER FOR THE ARTS
36 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK
“Annual Byrdcliffe Members’ Show.” Group exhibtion. Through April 6.
LABSPACE
2642 ROUTE 23, HILLSDALE
“Cathy Wysocki: It has always been the mind.” Mixed media, oil paintings and sculpture. Through April 27.
LIGHTFORMS ART CENTER
743 COLUMBIA STREET, HUDSON
“The Behavior of Sunlight.” Work by David Garland. April 11-27.
MAD ROSE GALLERY
5916 NORTH ELM AVE, MILLERTON
“In Conversation.” Work by Ginny HowsamFriedman, John Lawson, and Mark Harari. Through April 20.
“Weather.” Paintings by Elizabeth Hazan. “At Work.” Photogravures by Lothar Osterburg. “Invitation to Wander.” Paintings by Alex Cohen. “Threads and Cuts.” Collages by Rotem Amizur. All shows April 12-May 11.
QUEEN OF ROGUES
2440 ROUTE 28, GLENFORD
“The Real Ed Berkise.” Paintings. April 11-May 4.
REHER CENTER
99-101 BROADWAY, KINGSTON
“Boundless Creativity.” Work by Anai Shifan, Andrew Lyght, Naoko Shima, Elisa Pritzker, and Nestor Madalengoita. April 5-June 30.
ROBIN RICE GALLERY
234 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“Clouds, from all sides now.” Paintings by Paddy Cohn. Through April 27.
RUTHANN
453 MAIN STREET, CATSKILL
“Winter Garden.” Work by Charlotte Becket, Lisa Corinne Davis, Kerry Downey, Ellen Letcher, Kathryn Lynch, Caitlin MacBride, Keisha Prioleau-Martin, Courtney Puckett, Dana Sherwood, Elisa Soliven, Filiz Soyak, Amy Talluto, Julie Torres, Scott Vander Veen, Andy Van Dinh, Alona Weiss, and Seldon Yuan. Through April 20.
11 MOHONK ROAD, HIGH FALLS
“Serendipity.” Work by Michael Hopkins. “What Was.” Work by Kristin Flynn. Both shows April 12-May 11.
WOMEN’S STUDIO WORKSHOP
722 BINNEWATER LANE, KINGSTON
“Overwintering.” Work by Gil Dickinson, Julia Maisel-Berick, and Celia Shaheen. Through April 7.
WOODSTOCK ARTISTS
ASSOCIATION AND MUSEUM
28 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK
“Active Members’ Spring Exhibition.” Group show.
“SPACE/PLACE.” Abstract collages by Ellen Jouret-Epstein.
“Lasting Impressions.” Thirty-one photographs from the museum’s permanent collection. All shows through May 4.
WOODSTOCK PLAYHOUSE
103 MILL HILL ROAD, WOODSTOCK
“Pictures at an Exhibition.” Group show of works based on Mussorgsky’s symphony. Through May 4.
Photo by David McIntyre
Jim and Anne Bailey,
Rivka Katvan, Pig Man, 2010, photograph, 16” x 20"
Horoscopes
By Cory Nakasue
Third Time’s the Charm?
If April feels eerily familiar, it’s because you have, indeed, been here before. This month we have four planetary revisitations that grant us the opportunity to course-correct after months of trial and error. First, Mercury, planet of communication, reenters decisive Aries on the 16th. The last time it was there (March 3-29), it made two passes, forward and backward over the same swath of sky. During this third pass, you get the chance to boldly articulate your thoughts and possibly have the final say in a matter. In a similar vein, on April 18, Mars reenters show-stopping Leo. The last time it was there, working its back-and-forth motion, was between November 3, 2024 and January 6, 2025. During its third visit to this patch of the zodiac, we have the chance to bravely (or brazenly) proclaim our magnificence. Granted, for some this will be a triumph over self-doubt and for others, an excessive ego explosion.
Soon after Mars enters Leo, it opposes Pluto for a third time on April 26. This is the last showdown in this set of oppositions between Mars, the planet of force, and Pluto, hoarder of power. Think back to the stories of November and December 2024 (their last two meet-ups) to guess how those stories develop. Finally, Venus reenters Aries on the April 30. The planet of love can now lay claim to her heart’s desires. After grappling with her needs for connection and independence during her last visit in February and March, she’s feeling confident.
The two lunations of April, as well as the Sun’s ingress into Taurus on the 19th, are ruled by Venus. Venus is configured to sobering Saturn during both the full Moon in Libra on the 12th and the new moon in Taurus on the 27th. Expect reality checks and tests of maturity in relationships.
ARIES
(March 20–April 19)
If you’ve been feeling like a magnificent beast who’s been trapped in a cage, you’re about to be set free—or bust loose. The opportunities for self expression and enjoyment have been scarce, and you’re just not having it anymore. Don’t expect the world to embrace your impassioned rants and raves at this time, but don’t let anyone bully you back into your cage. Your self worth is at stake. You’re learning that the world does not determine your value. Instead of trying to win a power struggle this month, do your own damn thing and invest in yourself.
TAURUS
(April 19–May 20)
There’s a war brewing between the most personal, authentic parts of you and the world’s expectations of you. You take your roles in society seriously, but for you to function in public life with any amount of comfort, the roles you inhabit need to change dramatically. It is becoming more difficult to compartmentalize your public-facing self and the stripped-down person you are when no one’s watching. Your work this month is less about trying to find a “work-life balance,” and more about you finding roles that allow your singular voice to flourish in a way that benefits the world at large.
Life Happens. Plan.
GEMINI
(May 20–June 21)
A gut reno of your belief systems and worldview is putting pressure on you to develop other ways of knowing. For instance, you might come to rely more on your local environment for anecdotal data and empirical knowledge. You may learn valuable information from casual gossip. Conversely, you can expect to feel a strong pull to retreat into yourself this month and explore the terrain of your own psyche. Either way, it’s time to explore the land of your own body, mind, and heart, and those of your friends and neighbors to rebuild your sense of intellectual order.
CANCER
(June 21–July 22)
Mars has spent an interminable amount of time in your sign. When it finally breaks free and moves into Leo, you might feel like you’re getting your mojo back. It might feel so exhilarating that your sense of self expands too far and fast, giving you an existential case of the bends. The bends, or, decompression sickness happens when a diver ascends too rapidly from deep water, causing the stop of blood flow. You must move stealthily and exercise emotional control in this new space of motivation and excitement. There are old, contentious relational dynamics that could be set off by big, sudden movements.
LEO (July 22–August 23)
Your energy has been playing hide-and-seek with you for the last five months. Well, it’s found you again, and it’s asking you where you want to channel it. You have a renewed impetus to put yourself out there, but for who, and for what? If you don’t direct your passion toward a specific project, relationship, or goal, chances are that this immense amount of fuel will be injected into egoinflating endeavors that eventually meet opposition. You also have an unusual amount of tenacity at the moment. If you can maintain a steady amount of pressure on something worthy of your efforts, it’s yours.
VIRGO (August 23–September 23)
You can get a massive amount of work done right now, but there is a catch: it must happen behind the scenes or be in service to others. Any expectations of glory or credit will be met with resistance. Don’t worry, when Mars enters Virgo you’ll get much more appreciation for your efforts. April is also a highly productive time for tackling any grunt work that has to do with repair, healing, or confrontation with your own psyche. Any work that involves digging into the dark corners of your closet, a research project, or your own inner workings will yield gold.
LIBRA (September 23–October 23)
People are after you. Whether it’s someone pursuing you romantically, trying to lure you away from a job to come work for them, or just plain calling you out, you’ve got something people want. This puts you in a position of needing to know what you want. You may be susceptible to attention and flattery. You may feel pressured to please others or not let anyone down. But if someone is coming on strong, buy yourself some time to muster up the courage to make your own demands. This may be difficult because you’re extra empathetic now. Don’t get steamrolled.
Chronogram
PARTY
SCORPIO (October 23–November 22)
You might crave the feeling of wielding power in very public ways or proclaiming all-out war on individuals, groups, and institutions, but open fire could backfire. Instead of being influential, you could arouse a lot of pushback, even if you deserve a position of authority. Open attack also goes against the part of your nature that deeply understands the power of secrecy and covert operations. Unless you can square these competing drives within yourself—the desire for recognition and the need for self-protection—whatever leadership goals you’re pursuing are subject to mixed reception. Honest self-assessment makes you a formidable opponent.
SAGITTARIUS
(November 22–December 22)
You’ve been finding more and more ego identification with your larger ideas about the world and taking your ethical and philosophical stances very personally. You are, however, a person first and foremost. You can only hold and embody so much. Please remember this if you feel the urge to convince, attack, or forcefully educate others about your many views. The human stomach can only tolerate so much food, even if it’s delicious, before it might want to regurgitate. To avoid this, offer your wisdom in easily digestible, bite-sized chunks. Discipline yourself to offer lessons that are actionable.
CAPRICORN (December 22–January 20)
There’s a subtle experience that you desire, that you may not even be conscious of at the moment. You might even feel uncomfortable admitting that you’d like to redefine something about yourself through a process of capitulation. You may subconsciously invite powerful people and intense situations that force you to surrender the parts of yourself that block your own powerful life force. There’s no shame in surrendering to something more powerful than you if it fosters a deeper connection to life in general. Don’t worry about the trustworthiness of others. Trust your own regenerative abilities.
AQUARIUS (January 20–February 19)
Others may try to dazzle you with charm or intimidate you with displays of certainty and authority. Don’t fall for it. They don’t have the answers you’re looking for. In general, you’re usually not one to be impressed with long lists of credentials or clout, but this month, those types of things are especially irritating. You may feel called to put someone in their place. It would serve you best to ground yourself in the essential matter of life: your body, your home, and your own pace. Nourish yourself. Starve those who want to feed on your attention.
PISCES (February 20–March 19)
Pride is a tricky emotion for Pisces. Usually, it only allows itself to feel special and important if it’s achieving on behalf of others. It’s accustomed to pride in its ability to serve, sacrifice, and help. Deep within the Pisces subconscious, however, is the desire to be noticed as a distinct and special individual—a bright and shining star in its own right. This month, experiment with taking credit for your hard work, or, work hard for yourself. If you suppress these latent desires for recognition, they may rear their heads at undesirable moments and sabotage the excellent work that you do.
Ad Index
68 Prince Street (Art Gallery) 65
Adam Pass Photography 51
Adams Fairacre Farms ............ back cover
The Art Effect ..........................................75
Bill Patrick’s photography book In Between tracks the DJ life
There’s a moment in In Between, the new photography book by Red Hook resident Bill Patrick, where Seth Troxler, international house music luminary, is sprawled out on an airport floor, dead to the world. The glamour of the global DJ circuit— pulsing festivals, euphoric crowds, VIP excess—is nowhere to be found. Instead, there’s exhaustion, liminality, the stark reality of a life spent in transit. And that, more than anything, is what In Between is about. Patrick, a veteran DJ himself, spent most of 2023 traveling with Troxler, capturing moments that live outside the frame of conventional music photography. Yes, there are shots of packed dance floors and intimate behind-the-scenes portraits, but Patrick is more interested in the spaces between: the long-haul flights, the stolen moments of solitude, the texture of unfamiliar cities glimpsed in passing. Shot entirely on film, the images have a grainy, timeless quality—each frame an artifact of a life lived on the move.
The project started as a reaction to what Patrick calls “the arms race of content” in the music industry,
where DJs are expected to constantly flood social media with perfectly curated images of their lives. “We wanted to do something different, something more honest,” Patrick says. The result is a book that feels more like a street photography project than a behind-the-scenes tour diary. In one image, a ballerina adjusts her pointe shoes on a sidewalk in Athens. In another, a couple bickers on a New York street corner while costumed revelers pass by on Halloween. The book captures the strange poetry of travel—the way the world outside keeps spinning, oblivious to the late nights and soundchecks happening just a few blocks away.
Patrick, who spent over a decade in Berlin before relocating to the Hudson Valley in 2020, fell into photography as a way to reclaim a sense of presence while on the road. “DJing is an intense lifestyle,” he says. “I was never a superstar DJ, more like a middle-class DJ, flying economy, doing these brutal schedules. A friend suggested picking up a film camera, and it totally changed my experience
of touring.” What started as a creative outlet evolved into a full-fledged passion, culminating in In Between, which was self-published and has been making its way into independent bookshops via Patrick’s personal, door-to-door sales approach.
As if releasing his first photography book wasn’t enough of a personal milestone, Patrick has also been battling cancer—a fact he only casually drops into conversation, as if it were just another layover in a year full of them. He credits the book with giving him a sense of purpose during treatment. “The timing of everything—getting diagnosed while designing the book—it just felt like a powerful moment,” he says. “Focusing on something creative helped me get through it.”
Now, with In Between officially out in the world and nearly sold out, Patrick is keeping busy with new projects, including shooting for Signal, a new club in New York, and continuing his ever-expanding street photography practice.
—Brian K. Mahoney
DJ Seth Troxler napping between flights, a photograph from Bill Patrick’s In Between, which chronicles the unglamorous side of the globetrotting DJ lifestyle.
The fish are jumping, and the hills are alive again with the sound of music. This is the Sullivan Catskills. Reel in a big one. Sip on award-winning craft beverages.
Savor the fresh farm-to-plate bounty from our inventive chefs. Bring your friends and make memories
