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time ’s still ring e r e h T p ly for s to app 021! 2
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2 CHRONOGRAM 11/20
11 20
november
Skateboarders in front of van den Berg Hall on the SUNY New Paltz campus. Photo by Fionn Reilly COMMUNITY PAGES, PAGE 34
DEPARTMENTS
COMMUNITY PAGES
8 On the Cover: Kevin Frank 10 Big Idea: Hudson Carbon 10 Esteemed Reader 11 Editor’s Note
34 We, Not Me: New Paltz Pulls Together
FOOD & DRINK 14 Winter Is Coming
Since the pandemic arrived on US soil in March, one in six restaurants nationwide has permanently closed. While the picture is not that dire in the Hudson Valley, winter will present real challenges for restaurateurs.
19 Sips & Bites
Our monthly round-up of food and drink news returns.
HOME 30 Gone to the Dogs
Writers Alexandra Horowitz and Ammon Shea have created a domestic sanctuary for animals and humans in the Taghkanic woods.
HEALTH & WELLNESS 30 Telemedicine Comes of Age
It’s plain to see that telemedicine is having an explosive moment. While virtual healthcare is not new, we’ve seen a 13,000 percent increase in telehealth since the pandemic started, and the model is likely here to stay.
To the familiar list of New Paltz assets—glorious surroundings, university campus, recreational opportunities, rich and eagerly explored history, bangin’ good restaurants—we can now add another that seems to be, sadly, in short supply these days: common sense and collaboration.
ON THE FARM 44 Liberation on the Land
We talk with Naima Penniman, program director director at Soul Fire Farm, about the BIPOC-centered community farm’s efforts to end racism and injustice in the food system through trainng and creating equitable food distribution networks.
EXCERPT 46 Repair Revolution
Since the world’s first Repair Cafe was held in Amsterdam in 2009, the fix-it movement has swept across the globe. One early adopting community was New Paltz. Its founder, John Wackman, teams up Elizabeth Knight to document the culture of thrift and resilience in Repair Revolution (New World Library).
SKETCHBOOK 50 John Cuneo
Drawings ripped from the sketchbooks of Woodstock-based illustrator John Cuneo. Cuneo’s latest book of illustrations, Coping Skills, will be released by Fantagraphics later this year.
11/20 CHRONOGRAM 3
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partner ChronogramMedia 2020
Celebrate Local Business Now more than ever, we need to celebrate the diversity of our locally owned business community. Chronogram Media is supporting BIPOC-and-women owned organizations by donating services and advertising. We plan to donate $250,000 in 2020. Each month, we’ll be highlighting some of our partners in our pages and we invite you to join us in supporting them.
BELGROVE APPLIANCE, INC A minority woman-owned appliance sales and service business that specializes in vintage and antique stove restoration with a mission to preserve yesteryear by safely and beautifully restoring American-made stoves that will continue to last for decades. Belgroveappliance.com
BEYOND FLOWERS AND FOOD, INC. Beyond Flowers and Food offers thoughtful and encouraging gift packages that aren’t the same old floral arrangement or tired fruit basket, and has a mission to change the way people support each other through life’s toughest times. Beyondflowersandfood.com
HUDSON VALLEY WOMEN IN BUSINESS The largest community of women business owners north of NYC, HVWiB offers vibrant online connection, monthly speakers, quarterly Weekday Retreats, and weekly informal Coffees that allow growth-oriented owners to lean on and learn from one another. Hudsonvalleywomeninbusiness.com
ORGANIZATION INK From operations and talent management to full charge bookkeeping, Organization Ink provides the tools and resources that local businesses need to enhance their bottom line and that enables them to be responsible and successful. Organizationink.com
S.A. ART CONSERVATION LLC Specialists in the conservation of paintings and sculptures that offer services like collection care, preventive conservation, and restoration for a wide range of artworks and collectors, from museums to galleries, private collections, and more. Westchester-art-conservation.com
SAGE ACADEMY OF SOUND A healing center and sound school that teaches the art of healing through vibration-as-medicine and offers retreat-style trainings and workshops for the skills needed to induce relaxed states and activate deep cellular and soul healing. Sageacademyofsound.com
FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA FOR UPDATES ABOUT OUR COMMUNITY GRANT PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS. 4 CHRONOGRAM 11/20
11 20
november
Amy Helm, Abeena-Koomson Davis, Emily King, and Norah Jones perfroming at the Hudson Valley Votes concert at Hutton Brickyard on September 27. Photo by Phil Mansfield THE GUIDE, PAGE 58
ARTS
THE GUIDE
54 Music
58
Album reviews of The Reservoir by Kenny Roby; Ken Fox & Knock Yourself Out by Ken Fox & Knock Yourself Out; Groovy by Geezer; and History Gets Ahead of the Story by Jeff Cosgrove/John Medeski/Jeff Lederer.
55 Books
Jane Kinney Denning reviews Mark Matousek’s Sex Death Enlightenment: A True Story, a memoir of life inside the glittering world of Warhol’s Factory in the 1980s and the spiritual search that followed an emotional collapse. Plus short reviews of Jennifer Donnelly’s Poisoned; Jenny Michman’s The Second Mother; Milton Glaser’s final book, Sketch & Finish: The Journey From Here to There; Rabbi Hanoch Hecht’s A Kabbalah of Food: Stories, Teachings, Recipes; and an anthology on women’s suffrage, Suffrage and Its Limits: The New York Story.
56 Poetry
Poems by James Christopher Carroll, Wortley Clutterbuck, Jason S. Davis, James DelViscio, Paula Dutcher, Bob Grawi, Clifford Henderson, Anna Keville Joyce, James Lichtenberg, Sophia V Paffenroth, JR Solonche, Adriana Stimola, and Josh Sweet. Edited by Philip X Levine.
An all-star cast of local musicians including Kate Pierson, Natalie Merchant, and Corey Glover performed a get-out-the-vote virtual concert at Hutton Brickyard last month.
59 Sky Hopinka, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, has his first solo museum exhibition at CCS Bard. 60 63
This year’s Hudson Jazz Festival honors the music of Alice and John Coltrane.
64
Gallery listings plus highlights from our favorite exhibitions this month.
Jean-Marc Superville-Sovak curates “We Wear the Mask,” an exhibition exploring race and representation in the permanent collection of the Dorsky Museum.
HOROSCOPES 68 Mental Whiplash, Social Rot, and Revolution
Lorelai Kude scans the skies and plots our horoscopes for October.
72 Parting Shot
In honor of Veterans Day, a tribute to the Beacon 8, a group of naval airmen who died in two separate plane crashes on Mt. Beacon in the 1930s and `40s.
11/20 CHRONOGRAM 5
on the cover
Kevin Frank, Birth of the New Man, after Salvador Dali, oil on linen, 20” x 24”, 2020
G
eopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man was painted by the Spanish surrealist master Salvador Dali not long after he’d emigrated to the United States. Its theme of the “new man” emerging from the North American continent can be said to represent Dali’s creative and personal rebirth in the US after escaping fascist-occupied France, and spoke to America’s status as the planet’s “new” nation and growing world power. Birth of the New Man, Kingston artist Kevin Frank’s ode to the Dali work, adds new layers of meaning. “[Dali’s original] really hit a note with me,” Frank says. “It was done during the depths of World War II, when the world was in a really dark place. I feel like that makes it relate to now.” Birth of the New Man is part of Frank’s Figurine Series, a collection of realist paintings depicting porcelain figurines he’s collected, several of which are themselves miniature, 3-D representations of likewise iconic works; others include masterpieces by Rene Magritte and Norman Rockwell. Many of the pictures in the series are perhaps merely whimsical or nostalgic to many viewers at first glance— specifically, the ones that reference Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers of idyllic MidCentury Americana or depict recognizable Hummel statuettes. But on deeper reflection, they suggest a level of profound, perhaps previously unconsidered significance. “I paint representational work,” says Frank about the Figurine Series. “At the same time, I am committed to concept, which is in part 6 CHRONOGRAM 11/20
defined by the technical precision that I work toward achieving. In my most current series, I am repurposing found objects that have human form as models for still life. These readymade models are at once personal, culturally specific, and contemporary. As three-dimensional objects, they are familiar knickknacks, but as two-dimensional images recreated in Neo-Baroque style, they allow the viewer to connect and to project meaning and identity. I am interested in exploring this connection as well as the perception of time, place, memory, and culture that the contrast between treatment and subject evokes.” Frank was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1961 and received his BFA in drawing and painting from Carnegie Mellon University. He has exhibited his pieces locally in the Hudson Valley and in group and solo shows in New York, Boston, San Francisco, and galleries elsewhere on the east and west coasts. His work has been seen and written about in the Washington Post, Fine Art Connoisseur, ProWax Journal, The Complete Painter’s Handbook, and numerous other publications. “Painting your view of something done by another artist forces you to try to work in the shoes of someone else, to think about what they wanted to say [with the work],” Frank says. “Doing this one was definitely cathartic, and I felt like I could feel the frustration with the world that Dali was communicating. But it was liberating, too. It’s sort of a grotesque image, but, ultimately, it’s a hopeful one.” Portfolio: Kevinfrankpaintings.com. —Peter Aaron
From top: Magrite, Red Flowers, The Golden Rule
EDITORIAL EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Brian K. Mahoney bmahoney@chronogram.com CREATIVE DIRECTOR David C. Perry dperry@chronogram.com DIGITAL EDITOR Marie Doyon mdoyon@chronogram.com ARTS EDITOR Peter Aaron music@chronogram.com HEALTH & WELLNESS EDITOR Wendy Kagan health@chronogram.com HOME EDITOR Mary Angeles Armstrong home@chronogram.com POETRY EDITOR Phillip X Levine poetry@chronogram.com CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Anne Pyburn Craig apcraig@chronogram.com CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Phillip Pantuso ppantuso@chronogram.com
contributors Lee Anne Albritton, Winona Barton-Ballentine, Jason Broome, Jane Kinney Denning, Sabrina Eberhard, Melissa Esposito, Morgan Y. Evans, Dan
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The Hudson Valley’s best selection of fine cutlery, professional cookware, appliances, serving pieces and kitchen tools.
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All contents © Chronogram Media 2020. 11/20 CHRONOGRAM 7 wk&c_chron_zwilling-holiday_2020HPV_r2.indd 1
10/5/20 2:48 PM
BIG IDEA
Hudson Carbon
Matt Sheffer, managing director of Hudson Carbon, and former lab manager Lily Timpane install a water quality sensor in Old Mud Creek, a stream flowing through the farm. Below: Mike Howard, using the static chamber method to measure greenhouse flux at one of Hudson Carbon’s long-term research sites.
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n innovative carbon capture effort has just launched in the Hudson Valley. Housed on 2,000 acres at Stone House Farm in Columbia County, the nonprofit Hudson Carbon is the first direct-to-consumer e-commerce carbon offset market that allows users to buy carbon from local farms. Founder Ben Dobson and the team at Hudson Carbon hope their pilot project at Stone House Farm can be a model for both helping farmers transition to regenerative agriculture (raising the price per ton of carbon along the way for regional farmers) and allow consumers to actually see the plot of land where they are paying for carbon sequestration. Conceived in 2015 as Stone House Farm was beginning to make the transition from conventional, chemical-dependent farming to a more a diverse, organic farming practice, Hudson Carbon has sequestered 15 tons of carbon in the soil through its regenerative farming efforts. And now it’s ready for sale. Here’s how it works: Visitors to Hudsoncarbon.com will view a satellite map of the fields at Stone House Farm and be able to choose a field and then watch a drone video of the selected piece of land and become immersed in the story of the soil. Then users can input their personal carbon emissions into a carbon calculator to find out how much carbon they produce. Then they decide how much carbon they want to buy, from a few buck’s worth to a few hundred-dollars’ worth, to offset some of their own emissions. The price Hudson Carbon is setting per ton is $100, which is about 10 times higher than the current traded price of carbon. Hudson Carbon has ambitious goals for its processbased model, and plans on onboarding several organic farms and reforestry initiatives on five continents by 2022. “All of us are polluters at the base level,” says Dobson. “And polluters should pay for their pollution.” —Brian K. Mahoney 8 CHRONOGRAM 11/20
Clockwise from top left: Soil core profile; soil particle size analysis using the elutriation method in Hudson Carbon’s soil lab; Stone House farmhand Oneil Mason loading wheat into a seed mixer to plant with clover and grasses as a cover crop.
11/20 CHRONOGRAM 9
LEARNING BY DOING
chronogram conversations
Life Skills – Self-Motivation – Exploration – Achievement
Martin Bernstein of Abandoned Hard Cider
Summertime and the Drinkin’ Is Easy
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On Thursday, September 17, Chronogram held a virtual conversation with select Hudson Valley craft beverage producers. Panelists included Stephen Theiss of Hudson Valley Distillers; Emily Watson of Plan Bee Brewery in Poughkeepsie; Martin Bernstein of Abandoned Hard Cider; and Tristan Migliore of Whitecliff Vineyard & Winery. Chronogram editor Brian K. Mahoney moderated the conversation. The conversation ranged widely, with the makers on hand discussing COVID pivots, ingredient shortages, and increased demand during the pandemic. One theme that emerged across the cider/beer/wine/spirits spectrum was that all the makers’ products were intimately tied to their terroir. Here’s more information on the event’s panelists: Hudson Valley Distillers is a farm distillery in Germantown that produces spirits as well as bottled cocktails on its 14-acre farm. Its products include Three Cedars vodka, made from New York corn; Fellows gin, which starts with Hudson Valley grapes; Bourbon Whiskey made from New York wheat; and Applejack distilled from local apples. Hudson Valley Distillers also just launched a bottled cocktail line, available exclusively at the distillery. Bottled cocktails include the Vodka Pomegranate Pucker, the bourbon-based North of Manhattan, the Jacked-Up Sidecar (with Applejack), and the Gin Basil Crush. On the ground floor of a quaint 1830s barn amidst 25 acres of farmland in Poughkeepsie, the taproom of Plan Bee Farm Brewery sat dark from mid-March until early June, when the Mid-Hudson Valley entered Phase 2 of the four-part reopening process, heralding a return to outdoor dining and drinking. “We’re lucky that our business model was always to be small, to never grow past producing 500 barrels a year,” says Emily Watson, who co-owns Plan Bee with her husband Evan Watson. Along with opportunities for expanded local sales, new doors for distribution opened during the pandemic. “We actually started exporting our beer internationally to China, Japan, and Korea,” Watson says. One of the Hudson Valley’s most celebrated wineries, Whitecliff began in the late ‘70s when Michael Migliore, then a chemical engineer at IBM, began growing grapes on his property in Gardiner. Twenty years later, Whitecliff started offering its wines to the general public and currently produces a dozen varieties each year. Today, Migliore works closely with Cornell Cooperative Extension testing new grape varieties, and pushing the envelope on the quality of grape growing in the region. Abandoned Hard Cider, which was founded by hobby cider-maker Martin Bernstein and kombucha doyen Eric Childs, has more than doubled its brewing capacity annually since its founding in 2017, developing a following across New York State for its dry, crisp ciders of place. The Hudson Valley-based micro-cidery has taken over the onetime cafe, one-time souvenir shop in the lower parking lot of Hotel Dylan, rubbing shoulders with Santa Fe on the outskirts of Woodstock. A full video of the entire conversation can be found online at Chronogram.com/summertimedrinking. This event was sponsored by Hudson Valley Distillers.
10 CHRONOGRAM 11/20
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esteemed reader by Jason Stern
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12 CHRONOGRAM 11/20
FAMILY
We must accept the evidence that the means so far employed to induce people to “love one another” have failed and will always fail. Something new is needed that will capture the imagination before it satisfies the intellect, and this “something new” must enter unobtrusively on a small scale and prove itself before it seeks wider acceptance. —John Bennett, Witness It was a perfect autumn day and I was sitting on the porch of an acquaintance. He had many stories to tell, projects to discuss. I could see he was one of those who have been in such extreme isolation in recent months that he had an intense inner pressure to speak to another human being, in the flesh, and not through a computer screen. Meanwhile, I felt my own pressure, impelled by a list of a dozen tasks that needed attention and work. As I listened to the man speak, the to-do list flashed in my mind. I saw my head nodding in response but my body was tense, as though poised to leap from the chair, to move on to more important business. It was at that moment that I was brought back to myself. I noticed my breath and beheld the tension in my shoulders, chest, and hips. I stayed with it for a moment and then a word came into my mind, like a sign at an intersection: YIELD. I saw what was required. Regardless of my agenda and whatever I thought I needed to do, the true, present need was to listen to and speak with the person in front of me. This was the task my life presented, and I was obligated to put aside my preferences and give full attention. The pull of the to-do list resurfaced during the couple of hours we spent together, but the grace of the initial insight continued to give the help and energy I needed to stay with the moment. Since that time, the sign has often flashed before my mind’s eye: YIELD. It pops up when I feel myself bristle or smart, when I become irritated or outraged by something in the news, when the car in front of me is too slow, when I’m anxious or impatient or disgruntled. Then I notice the tension in my body, a contraction away from what is taking place here and now, and I begin to relax and follow. The experience of yielding to what is, not submitting but staying present and engaged, has led to the conviction that this is a singularly important effort. I see that the imposition of preferences, opinions, knee-jerk reactions leads to a vicious perpetuation of Curbsideand Pickup | Takeout: negativity. Thursday, Friday & Saturday Whatever arises,Available whatever eventuality unfolds, I have to be able Offsite Catering to accept it as it is. This doesn’t mean that I don’t act to improve or refine a situation, but if I am able to yield to what is, then I can freely respond in a way that opens a new direction that is free of reactive dyads. If I can yield, even for a moment, I open a door through which a new possibility can pass. It is perhaps counterintuitive, but to yield is to evolve. True evolution comes in response to what is, and is impelled by a full and deep encounter with what appears as an obstacle. I am given energy to strive and discover by precisely that which I find most difficult to bear. The Muslim tradition offers 99 names for Allah, each expressing a quality or facet of the totality. One is al-sabur, The Patient. This patience is not the opposite of impatience. It is a steadfast commitment to be with, and stay with, what is, as it presents in each new moment. From yielding comes acceptance, and from acceptance comes love. To yield is to love.
editor’s note
by Brian K. Mahoney
45 Billionaire bullyboy. Malignant narcissist. Pussy grabber. Buffoon. Racist. Destroyer of norms. Internet troll. Reality TV star. Arrogant. Benito Cheeto1. Spoiled child. Voted most likely to wipe his genitals on the curtains. Ignorant. Possessor of small-hands. Aggressively incurious. Unpredictable. Venal. Draft dodger. Obnoxious. Snake oil salesman. Bloviator. Incompetent (thankfully). Misogynist. Egotistical. Master of interruption. Amoral. Anti-science. Liar. Fascist with training wheels. Adolf Twitler. Disrespecter of all he surveys. Flirter with white supremacists. Traitor. Vote suppressor. Census terminator. Orange Julius. TV zombie. Extortionist. The nation’s most pressing problem. Climate change denier. Veteran hater. Fourthborn. Kisser of dictator’s butts. Seventy-four-year-old baby. Angry Creamsicle2. Serial adulterer. Bad businessman. Hair Furor. Bigot. Imprisoner of children. Fomenter of chaos. The death knell of the Republican Party. Abuser of power. Emolument
accumulator. Catnip to dimwits. Xenophobe. Believer that there are good people on both sides. Lover of military parades. Gutter of institutions. Misanthrope. Trade warrior without a strategy. Sower of discord. Underminer of faith in government. Clown. America’s Burst Appendix3. Prevaricator. Nihilist. Megalomaniac. Illegitimate. Nero by another name. Greedy. Court packer. Failed tyrant. Fake populist. Insane. Nincompoop. Violator of the presidential oath. Vandalizer of the post-war security consensus. Sheltering sky for hate groups. Tangerine Tornado4. Hater of experts and expertise. Vile. Mercurial. Insecure. Unfit leader. Wannabe dictator. Poster child of American decline5. Superspreader. Deployer of National Guard. Threat to democracy. Illiterate. Barbarian at the Debate6. America’s Boris Johnson, but worse. Paranoiac. Carnival barker who wandered away from the circus. Corrupt. Conspiracy monger. The Fraud of Fifth Avenue.
Pathetic. Impeached. Disseminator of lies. Hypocrite. Egomaniac. Putin lover. Bundle of unchecked desires masquerading as a human. Trumplethinskin7. Demagogue. Mask skeptic. Russian disinformation machine. Defier of court orders. Orange Anus8. Obstructer of investigations. Rage Tweeter. Voter fraud hoaxer. A man of no integrity. Wrecker of all things not directly useful to him. Ignoramus. Lickspittle to autocrats. Schmuck. A character stranger than fiction. Pander Hair9. Charlatan. Wolf in orange clothing. Oval office Dumpster fire. Actor against the public interest. Sufferer of Empathy Deficit Disorder. Benedict Donald. Petulant man-child. Cognitively impaired. Birther. Frightened old man at the end of his tenure. Worst president of all time. Going. Going. Gone. Greg Proops1, Stephen Colbert2, Samantha Bee3, Dana Carvey4, Robert Spencer5, Charles M. Blow6, Murfster357, Rosie O’Donnell8, Elizabeth Harris Burch9
11/20 CHRONOGRAM 13
food & drink
Michael Kelly serving diners outside at Liberty Street Bistro in Newburgh. Photo by Mary Kelly
WINTER IS COMING
Restaurants Prep for a Cold, Cold Season By Melissa Dempsey and Marie Doyon
A
s outdoor dining comes to a close for us, we are at the mercy of the public and their willingness to follow guidelines for safety in our dining room this winter,” says Michael Kelly, proprietor of Newburgh’s beloved Liberty Street Bistro, striking a grim tone to match the ominous uncertainty of this winter’s dining scene in the Hudson Valley. Opened 2016, the restaurant draws on Kelly’s experience working in some of Manhattan’s finest kitchens to dish up masterfully executed, memorable, French-influenced fare in an elegant but laid-back environment. Before COVID, takeout was never in the plans for Kelly’s elevated establishment, which subsisted on a bustling stream of Sunday brunchers, happy hour regulars, dinner date duos, and festive groups. But over the past six months, he’s had to find ways to evolve his business model while staying true to the bistro’s brand. “The financial strains of this moment are unparalleled; we have never been well-geared toward takeout dining, and making that pivot continues to be a new and challenging frontier for us,” Kelly says. “We have completely revamped our menu to be more approachable to as many guests as possible.” He has also ventured into catering, once a far-off possibility that was fast-tracked thanks to the pandemic’s financial pressure.
14 FOOD & DRINK CHRONOGRAM 11/20
Last year, Kelly expanded into the nextdoor space (formerly Cafe Macchiato) to up the restaurant’s capacity from 44 to 70—an increase that proved crucial in this era of socially distanced dining. Assuming Kelly is statesanctioned to do so, he is planning to keep the indoor dining room open through winter at reduced capacity. While he can enforce PPE, cleaning, and safety protocols with his staff, the customers are the big question mark. “I’ve learned quite quickly not to have expectations,” he says. “But our ability to operate—even in this small capacity—correlates directly with the dining public’s adherence to rules and safety guidelines.” Kelly’s hope-and-a-prayer mentality is about the only option available to restaurants planning to host indoor diners this winter—that and temperature checks and sign-ins sheets for contact tracing. Right now, chefs and restaurateurs across the Hudson Valley like Kelly are wrapping up the end of their busy season while trying to prepare for the expected cold-weather downturn. Winter is always a slow season for upstate restaurants, but with COVID uncertainties, the next few months are a total crapshoot. Stretching the Outdoor Season Other area restaurants, like Essie’s, are focusing their short-term efforts on extending their outdoor
dining season as long as possible. Essie’s chef/ owner Brandon Walker just recently started to get back into the swing of his typical service, and he’s not about to give it up. Located in Poughkeepsie’s Little Italy district, this eatery falls squarely in the farm-to-table, New American tradition with a nod to Walker’s Caribbean and Southern heritage. “In the beginning, we modified our menu to more of a quick-serve model, such as dinner combos and sandwiches—it went well and it got us through,” Walker says. “Since we’ve been allowed to have both outdoor and indoor dining, we’ve been able to slowly revert back to a more a la carte menu. We’re currently consulting with our local fire professionals as to what outside heaters are suitable for our setup, and with city officials about what additional structures we could use as the weather changes.” Similarly, in Hudson, Kat Dunn is busy buying space heaters for the patio of her pop-up restaurant Buttercup. The veteran mixologist, who designed the cocktail program for Fish & Game, Backbar, and Rivertown Lodge had been planning to open her own “fast-casual cocktail bar” in a former factory building in Hudson’s Prison Alley this summer, when lockdown foiled her plans. In early June, Dunn decided to pivot to a pop-up with a crowd-pleasing menu of summer’s quintessential guilty pleasures, from lobster rolls to loaded hot dogs to cocktails.
The owners of Lunch Nightly in Kingston
When Buttercup opened in July, they were exclusively offering takeout. As the infection rates dropped, they allowed people to eat on their patio. On weekends, the outdoor dining area filled with couples, posses, and families. But now, as it gets colder, Dunn has returned to a primarily delivery and take-out model, though Buttercup will remain open to diners on the weekends through the end of the year, with heat lamps on the patio. Dunn envisions an Aspen vibe. “You go out still dressed in a ski coat and have a delicious cocktail,” she says. It’s not ideal, she admits, but she thinks of these chillier get-togethers as a much-needed last hurrah before the isolation of another stay-at-home order. “People think we’re going to go under lockdown again this winter, whether self-imposed or government-mandated,” she says. “So before that, in November and December, people will still go out to meet some friends, knowing they’re staying outside, wearing a hat and gloves and drinking warm cocktails.” Land of a Thousand Pivots Since the pandemic arrived on US soil in March, one in six restaurants nationwide has permanently closed, according to a survey released in September by the National Restaurant Association. By national averages, the Hudson Valley seems to have been spared from the worst of this whiplash, with only a few dozen out of thousands of restaurants closing for good. In fact, in the past six months, much more common
than news of closures has been the against-allodds opening of new eateries. Since March, in Kingston alone, six new eateries have opened: Masa Midtown, Buns Burgers, Lunch Nightly, Tortilla Taco Bar, Seasoned Delicious, and Tilda’s. Although the challenges are obvious for restaurants that have had to quickly change after years of routine, the brave newcomers that opened in the midst of the pandemic—who haven’t established a firm way of doing business in a pre-COVID world—have had to make massive adjustments since opening. Lunch Nightly in Kingston, for instance, was intended to be a community-centric butcher shop and a smallplates, big-appetite sort of eatery in the heart of Midtown. They opened May 1 with equal parts hope and uncertainty. “Our biggest challenge has been the fact that we’ve had to focus on being a new baby restaurant that hustles hard to make ends meet during COVID, and we haven’t gotten to dive deep into the community relationships, collaborations, and thoughtful parties we set out to foster,” says co-owner Sam Strand. Between the bar and deli setup and the booth opposite, the long, narrow interior space (formerly Peace Nation Cafe) doesn’t have a lot of room for socially distanced dining. “This winter, we’re probably not going to be able to do regular indoor dining,” Strand says. “The COVID numbers suck right now, and we need to remain vigilant. We’ll have to focus on being a takeout joint and we’ll continue to do nicely plated,
packaged dinners; lots of sandwiches, salads, and soups during the day; and some sandwiches at night, as well.” Strand says that Lunch Nightly still plans to maintain its retail and butcher operation, too, which has slowly expanded to include some packaged products, natural wines and ciders, and housemade pantry items like Bolognese, soups and stocks, short rib ragu, and spice mixes. Lunch Nightly has also begun rolling out a CSA-style Meat Box, which includes a grab bag of housebutchered cuts and prepared items, along with cooking suggestions. “We’ve all been in the restaurant industry for a while here and have never seen so many regulars on such a consistent basis; we hope to continue to see those faces, but we expect the numbers of people eating our food to shrink,” Strand says, matter-of-factly. “We hope that people will continue to get takeout from us, sort of like they’re buying into our longevity as a restaurant: Get takeout now, be our forever friend till the end of times because you made our restaurant survive a COVID winter.” Although much will depend on the case numbers as the year comes to an end, the collaboration of restaurant and customer is crucial to surviving the winter—businesses must set certain standards, but it’s up to guests to uphold them. That also means it’s time for restaurants to get creative once again. In Hudson, cult classic tropical diner Lil Deb’s 11/20 CHRONOGRAM FOOD & DRINK 15
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Alex Wilcox (with bullhorn) and Adrienne Hamil dish it up at Fuego 69, a Lil’ Deb’s pop-up behind Rivertown Lodge in Hudson.
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Oasis has been closed since early pandemic months due to its small interior and a lack out outdoor space. “We miss doing what we do best: making our guests feel like they just walked into the best party, full of people,” says Carla Perez-Gallardo, who co-owns Lil’ Debs with Hannah Black. “We’ve been in our space for almost five years and have put a lot of work into it; we mostly just feel homesick.” In place of Lil’ Deb’s, the team created Fuego 69—a popup in the backyard of nearby Rivertown Lodge dishing up “zing-zangy frisky-fresh pescatarian hippie food hot off the grill.” At Fuego 69, 69 cents from each menu item is donated to racial justice organizations and community causes each week. As a way to incorporate an alternate stream of revenue, Lil Deb’s has also expanded into the world of catering, specifically for holiday parties and the growing trend of pod parties—small, isolated groups quarantining together. “We want to provide our amazing customers as many opportunities as possible to bring home some of our flavors, wines, and vibes this holiday season,” she says. “This year has clarified for us what it means to be a small business; although it’s been challenging, it’s also been inspiring, heartening, and illuminating. Yet again, we are reminded of how blessed we are to have such a generous, present, and collaborative community around us.” While Fuego 69 allowed the team to continue serving food safely outdoors throughout the summer and provided a welcome source of income, as the weather cools off abruptly, it’s time to move on. “Although we will not be opening for traditional indoor table service this winter, we do have some top-secret plans in the works for the indoors that we will reveal soon,” Perez-Gallardo says mysteriously. “Stay tuned to our Instagram.”’ Stay tuned—a fitting motto as we all enter another holding pattern, waiting to see what happens next, what direction the case numbers trend in a pandemic that is so much the product of each of our individual actions and yet seems to always find a way to make us feel helpless at the mercy of everyone else.
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sips & bites
Kitty’s dishes up a cheap and cheerful menu of comfort foods like chicken, potatoes, sticky rice, and an ever-changing chopped salad.
Buttercup Mixologist Kat Dunn was primed to open her own fast casual cocktail bar in Hudson this summer, but…COVID. Dunn’s pivot: Buttercup, providing the guilty pleasures of summer like lobster rolls and hot dogs, soft-serve ice cream and cocktails in juice pouches. Starting this month, they’ll switch their primary focus to delivery and take-out, though they’ll remain open to diners on weekends with heat lamps on the patio. Signature lobster rolls are fading out to be replaced by a warm “crabster” cake served with tartar sauce and pickled veg on a bun ($12) and a deviled shrimp roll ($18) served with hot sauce aioli, B&G peppers, togarashi, and chives, with a side of slaw and chips. Dunn’s also ladling out cool-weather classics like black bean chili ($9) and a chicken and shrimp gumbo ($13) over rice. 17 North 4th Street, Hudson Buttercuptreats.com Abandoned Hard Cider Outpost In mid-August, the Hudson Valley-based micro-cidery took over the one-time cafe, onetime souvenir shop in the lower parking lot of Hotel Dylan, rubbing shoulders with Santa Fe restaurant on Route 28 outside Woodstock. A charming shoebox garage space, is the first brickand-mortar shop where people can visit the makers, Eric Childs and Martin Bernstein.There are four ciders on tap plus a rotating local beer and a craft kombucha (usually made by Childs, who founded Kombucha Brooklyn), all of which can be served in a flight, a four-ounce pour ($2$5), or a 19.3-ounce growler ($8). You can also pick up four-packs to go for $15-$20. Despite the syrupy-sweet nose, the Classic is a super light, bright, crisp dry cider that recalls champagne. The Abandoned Hard Cider Outpost is open Wednesday to Sunday. Check website for times. 1802 Route 28, Woodstock Abandonedcider.com 18 FOOD & DRINK CHRONOGRAM 11/20
Arrowood Farms Brewery & Distillery Despite this roller coaster of a year, big things are happening at Arrowood Farms in Accord. July 1 marked the opening of onsite restaurant the Apiary. The menu ranges from snacks like the Bavarian pretzels ($6) to heartier bites like the Goose sandwich ($11) and burgers ($11-$12). They also dish up an all-day brunch menu on Sundays, including papas bravas, served with a fried egg ($8); a bacon, egg, and cheese ($8), and a fried chicken sandwich on a locally made milk bun ($11). Food isn’t the only new thing. On October 3, the distillery released its first smallbatch, unrefined New York State spirits for sale on-farm. They launched with vodka and gin, distilled onsite on the grain with local ingredients and no added enzymes. 236 Lower Whitfield Road, Accord Arrowoodfarms.com Harana Market The former Wittenberg Store space in Mount Tremper is set to reopen in mid-November as Harana Market, an Asian market and Filipino deli. Harana is the Tagalog word for serenade, and wooing the small Catskills community in need of more diverse Asian culinary options is exactly what owners Christina Mauricio and Eva Tringali have set out to do. Alongside a suite of staples like tofu, soy sauce, and kimchi, the couple will also be serving up a seasonally rotating menu of Filipino classics handed down to Mauricio from their grandmother. Daily offerings will include dishes like crispy lumpia Shanghai, chicken adobo, and arroz caldo, a chicken and rice congee topped with boiled egg, fried garlic, crushed chicharron, scallion, and a squeeze of lemon. On weekends, the menu will feature treats like pan de sal, a soft breakfast bread typically eaten warm with butter and a coffee that will be stuffed with ube jam, coconut, and more. 603 Wittenberg Road, Mount Tremper Haranamarket.com
Kitty’s Aside from dive bar Half Moon and upscale bar/restaurant/hotel WM Farmer & Sons, food options have been slim down on the Hudson waterfront—until Kitty’s opened in September. Kitty’s is a one-stop shop across from the train station: breakfast sandwiches, yogurt parfaits, hot lunch dishes, fruit cups, coffee, and a market with pantry staples›› from pasta, milk, and olive oil to fresh fruits and veggies from area farms. The food menu is refreshingly minimal. Served till 12pm, the breakfast menu stars an egg-and-cheese on a sesame seed bun for $5. A side of housemade sauerkraut is free, and you can add bacon for $2. Past noon, chicken is the star of the show. Get a whole bird by itself, a quarter or a half chicken with sides, just the sides, or all of it all together for $10 to $34. The sides are worthwhile and include things like perfectly crispy potatoes cooked in chicken fat and sticky rice with a ginger scallion sauce. 60 South Front Street, Hudson Kittyshudson.com First Capital Poke Bar Max Glausen was sous chef at Sushi Makio under sushi master Makio Idesao for 10 years before venturing out on his own last month with First Capital on Wall Street in Uptown Kingston in the former Wildebeest/Elephant storefront. (Poke is a traditional Hawaiian dish made of fresh fish,seaweed, candlenut, and sea salt.) Poke, once thought of as an appetizer, is now commonly eaten as a meal in the form of a poke bowl—fresh poke on a bed of hot steamed rice or on a fresh crisp salad. Options range from a wagyu beef bowl ($33), vegan bowl ($17), shrimp tempura bowl ($28), and tuna bowl ($15). Takeout only. 310 Wall Street, Kingston Firstcapitalpokebar.com —Marie Doyon, Ashleigh Lovelace, Brian K. Mahoney
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ylvan Rock, Aston Martin’s first foray into home design, might leave you both shaken and stirred. The British car designer has partnered up with Rhinebeck and New York City-based S3 Architecture to create the innovative modern estate, which is situated on 55 acres in the Hudson Valley and built upon a rock that bears its name. The $7.7 million compound is listed exclusively through Corcoran Country Living, a leading residential real estate brand for nearly 50 years with brokerages in New York City, the Hamptons, and South Florida. The developers chose Corcoran because of their ability to do outreach both in New York City and globally via their vast network. With Aston Martin behind the wheel, things are bound to get sporty. The property showcases a main house, pool house, and three guest “pods,” whose designs play off of the dramatic landscape, offering a new definition of the modern rural retreat. “At the core of the vision is a strong connection to nature, wellness, flexible-use spaces, and accommodation for extended stay guests,” says S3 Architecture Partner Doug Maxwell. Enrobed in glass walls, the four-bedroom, sixbathroom, 5,983-square-foot main house offers unparalleled access to the property’s bucolic surroundings. With its secluded locale, however, Sylvan Rock’s inhabitants can still live life to the fullest without the neighbors watching.
Any lair worth its salt also needs a subterranean portion, and Sylvan Rock has one specifically for those who collect cars. Park your own Aston in the gallery garage and admire it from the other side of a glass wall in the attached lounge and wine cellar, which showcases Aston Martin’s signature cross-hatched lattice design. Guests of Sylvan Rock can enjoy a stylish visit in one of the compound’s three guest “pods” built to provide complete privacy. For the ultimate in relaxation, the nearly 900-square-foot wellness
pavilion includes a wet bar, dry sauna, and hot tub. The spacious grounds also feature a food garden and walking trails throughout. In total, Sylvan Rock—located just two hours’ drive from New York City—offers nearly 8,500 square feet of interior space, all crafted with the highest level of occupant luxury, comfort, and wellness in mind. In the immortal words of Q: “Do be careful with this one, 007.” Sylvanrock.com
11/20 CHRONOGRAM 19
the house
The couch in Horowitz and Shea’s living room is the center of family life, and a popular spot for both human and canine lounging. On the left, their puppy Quiddity naps, at the center Finnegan relaxes, and the family cat, Edsel Beezlebulb, curls up into a ball at the right. “I think the special thing about dogs is how intimately we can be in each other’s spaces,” says Horowitz. “It’s very strange for me to ever be in a place where I don’t have a dog.”
20 HOME & GARDEN CHRONOGRAM 11/20
GONE TO THE DOGS
WRITERS ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ AND AMMON SHEA IN THE WOODS OF TAGHKANIC By Mary Angeles Armstrong Photos by Winona Barton-Ballentine
11/20 CHRONOGRAM HOME & GARDEN 21
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lexandra Horowitz, her son Ogden, and their black lab Finnegan were walking through the woods near their house last year when they caught a glimpse of something wild. “We were coming down a hill and I saw what I thought was an injured dog under a tree,” she says. Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, shares a forest-adjacent, modernist cabin with her husband, the writer Ammon Shea, their son, the family’s two adult dogs, one puppy, and one cat. “I shouted a lot because I was concerned it was another dog and it might attack,” she explains. “Then it ran away.” Over the past two decades, Horowitz has learned a lot about dogs. Beginning in graduate school, where she researched dog play by observing her then canine companion Pumpernickel, she went on to write a popular series of books based on her research—most recently Our Dogs, Ourselves (Scribner, 2019)—and founded the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College. Part memoir of her life with her dogs, part scientific observation, her books all detail dogs’ experience, perception, and conception of the world. And, while dogs are the main subject of most of her writings, her observations often lead right back to astute commentary on human behavior. That day in the woods, after the strange dog ran, Horowitz and her entourage went to investigate the tree. They found a litter of coyote pups hidden in a cavity at its base. “They were probably one to two weeks old—they didn’t even have their eyes open. I realized the mother was trying to get us to follow her.” Not wanting to
interfere, Horowitz and her band hightailed it out of there and then steered clear of the area for six weeks. When they returned, the den was empty, to Horowitz’s relief. “There were no puppy skeletons. I’m sure she took them all and moved someplace else.” Horowitz’s brush with the wild is an example of how the cognitive scientist’s keen observation skills have led her to a deeper appreciation of the broader environment shared by humans and animals alike. Dogs have become a sort “bridge” species for Horowitz. In her quest to better understand and perceive the world through the eyes (and noses; mostly noses) of domestic canines, she has caught glimpses of the world often completely lost in the hustle of daily human life. “Just observing something for a little bit more than the ordinary amount of time you usually would, you see things that you didn’t see before,” she explains. “My work has given me the opportunity to open my mind and see things in the world that I’d stopped seeing. Dogs have opened up this complete other world for me.”
Horowitz and Shea enjoy the woodstove in the living room. The couple have decorated the home with Midcentury Modern furniture. “Nothing can be too precious, though, when you live with a boy, a cat, and three dogs,” she says. “They are allowed everywhere and on anything.”
The Scent of Home It makes sense that her home, which is just as much a residence to the three canine inhabitants as it is to the three human ones (and the cat), would consist of a modest, 1,300-square-foot sunny and open shelter with spaces that easily flow from one room to the next, a very piquant pepper patch right outside, and 16 forested acres ripe with smells and threaded with paths for the exploring. 11/20 CHRONOGRAM HOME & GARDEN 23
The home features an open deck accessed from the living room, a popular place for the dogs to catch smells on the wind. “It’s not so much that we designed our house with our pets in mind, but we want to use the spaces that we have so that they can have sensory enjoyment as well,” says Horowitz.
The home features a stunning view of the nearby Catskills. Shea has started multiple gardens near the house, but the only gardening that’s been successful is his pepper patch located in the property’s sunniest spot. “I sense a greenhouse is in our future,” says Horowitz. 24 HOME & GARDEN CHRONOGRAM 11/20
Dogs primarily perceive the world through their extraordinary olfactory sense. “A space that’s wrought by smell is a very different shaped space than one perceived visually,” Horowitz explains. “Smells actually exist in a different way than light does, so the scene for dogs is not the same visual scene as it is for us, it’s actually more fluid. Smells only reach their nose if they go exploring for them or if they arrive on the wind. It’s like the fabulous landscape—we look out and think ‘What is there to see?’ They think, ‘How does it smell?’” As a whole, their property is one where each of its inhabitants can bask in their respective sensory enjoyments. A native of Colorado, Horowitz was living in Manhattan with Shea, their young son and their two older dogs, when they first considered a weekend home upstate. In 2011, they began renting a summer share in Pine Plains and completely took to the area. As a girl, Horowitz had spent summers at her grandparents’ home in the Adirondacks and had grown to love the Northeast’s rolling green hills and deciduous forests. “The Adirondacks were just somehow baked into me when I was a child,” she says. Shea and Ammon wanted their son to have that same connection with the land, wildlife, and sky. After renting a home in Hillsdale, they began searching for a place of their own and in 2015 they bought their wooded property. Built in 1972, and once the home to a family of seven humans, the two-story A-frame style cabin was a warren of smaller rooms surrounded by wild
acreage. “We were so pleased it had a forest,” Horowitz explains. “It was really exciting to get to know the seasonal element of it and the resident wildlife. It was something we hadn’t fully experienced before—more than just while visiting.” The property also included a separate writing studio adjacent to the garage for both Horowitz and Shea to work in. Defining a Doghouse However, in order to create a space that was as comfortable and appealing to the human members of the family, as well as the canines, the home needed some updating. Previous owners had added to the structure’s original footprint with a west-facing great room under a two-story vaulted ceiling. A wall of four rectangular windows perfectly captures the view of the Catskills in the distance. “There is a very expansive view,” says Horowitz. “The peak of the mountain is framed nicely.” To open up the interior space even further, Shea and Horowitz worked with contractor Kenneth Young to remove multiple interior walls, including the original front of the house, which was separating the great room from the kitchen and dining area. With Young’s help, they also added multiple windows to the downstairs and completely updated the kitchen with a minimalist aesthetic. “We wanted to invite the outside in, visually,” says Horowitz. They also updated the downstairs bathroom and then decorated the space sparingly. The result
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has been a space that physically flows freely from the open front of the house, through the kitchen and dining area, to their son’s bedroom at the back—and visually flows between the interior space and the surrounding woods. “The design idea was not to get in the way of looking outside,” says Horowitz. Upstairs, the couple took a similar approach. By removing walls from what was once a bedroom, they created a loft space above the great room that serves as a second workspace. They updated the upstairs bathroom as well. At the back of the house, above their son’s room, the master bedroom already featured multiple windows with views to the nearby trees. The only exception to the minimalist, outdoorindoor aesthetic that runs throughout the house is the family’s extensive library—which includes multiple volumes of English language dictionaries. A lexicographic researcher, Shea is the author of Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, among other titles. Both Shea and Horowitz have worked as “definers” and Shea has amassed a large collection of dictionaries. “I think I had a thousand volumes at one point,” he says. Last December, to further enjoy their property’s outdoor space, the couple hired Caleb White of New Leaf Tree Services to design and build a standalone covered wooden porch right between their cabin and the nearby woods. Their new puppy, Quiddity, is another recent addition. Horowitz has known the dog since she was born and has been taking detailed notes on her development for a book detailing young dog development. Next, the family plans to create a meadow of natural plants adjacent to the house. Designed to be an intermediary space between the domestic controlled environment of the house and the woods beyond, the meadow will also provide space for their three dogs to enjoy the outdoors without disturbing the wilder creatures in their midst. It will serve as a kind of bridge between civilization and the forest, which Horowitz and Shea endeavor to leave as untouched as possible—except for their daily dog and human walks. “It is really an honor to be able to live with animals,” says Horowitz. “I think we sometimes forget.”
From top: The couple removed a wall between the living room and dining area to open the downstairs and then commissioned their unusually shaped dining table from an artisan in Philadelphia. They also lined the stairs between the two floors to make it easier for their dogs to go up and down. Upton rests in the master bedroom. When Horowitz was in graduate school, she spent six months trying to come up with a research subject—often taking her dog to the dog park to play when she was feeling stuck. Then she realized her subject matter was literally right in front of her. “I realized I should study dogs,” she remembers. “It was hard to see, because dogs are thought to be so familiar—they’re in our houses, they’re in our beds, we feel we already know them.” 11/20 CHRONOGRAM HOME & GARDEN 27
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Hudson Valley Art Market
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Millman’s T-shirt Factory
Rob Hare – Maker of Things
If you’re looking to personalize your holiday gifts, look no further than Millman’s T-Shirt Factory. Since 1978, Millman’s T-Shirt Factory has been screenprinting t-shirts, sweatshirts, jackets, fleece, hats, and bags for our neighbors throughout the Hudson Valley. We even carry promotional items to get your message out loud and clear. For that special holiday gift, visit Millman’s T-Shirt Factory.
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This is the season of thanks and gratitude, a time to enjoy the company of friends and family and the beauty that surrounds us. There is no better time of year to visit the Warwick Valley! Newhard’s The Home Source has been called the” Emporium of Everything” and is filled with treasures to make your home a little bit warmer, more beautiful, gracious and happy. Take a moment to discover our Town and the Village of Warwick, its history, wonderful restaurants and friendly stores. We want to share our romance with you.
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health & wellness
TELEMEDICINE COMES OF AGE THE UPSIDES AND DOWNSIDES OF OUR TELEHEALTH MOMENT By Wendy Kagan
A
t first glance, having a medical crisis at the height of the COVID-19 lockdown would seem like terrible timing. But for Sarah Yanosh, such timing ended up being a strange sort of gift. For the past five years, she’d been suffering from various neurological issues and an undiagnosed sleep disorder, and on the night of March 20, 2020, she had a tonic clonic (aka grand mal) epileptic seizure. The event landed her in the emergency room at Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck, and after a barrage of tests and an all-clear from the attending physician, she was sent home with instructions to follow up with a neurologist within three days. Her providers forbade her to drive, though most medical offices were temporarily shuttered anyway. And all of a sudden, for the first time in years, Yanosh didn’t have to go to the doctor. The doctor would come to her. Through her phone. “This was our first crack at telemedicine and we were all getting the hang of it. They didn’t even have an app yet,” recalls Yanosh, a single mom from Mount Tremper. “But we had this
30 HEALTH & WELLNESS CHRONOGRAM 11/20
very comprehensive video appointment. The doctor told me to hold out my hands like I was carrying a pizza box, and close my eyes and touch my nose, and all the same things that I would normally do [in a neurological exam]. Except this is telemed. So this person, who I’m meeting for the first time, looked at all my reports from the ER and was able to get my records very quickly. He could see my X-rays because everything’s online now, everything’s connected, and he could talk to me about all of it.” Since that first virtual appointment, Yanosh has had more than two dozen televisits with various providers on a range of platforms. She’s been able to coordinate benefits between doctors and release her records immediately with e-signatures, because post-COVID, it’s all electronic now. And she’s made incredible strides medically. “I’ve been able to accomplish so much in so little time—as far as seeing so many of these doctors without having to figure out how to get there, and child care, and whether or not this works around a school or camp schedule or anything else. I’ve had to change medications until they got it right.
I need to have comprehensive visits where I can take time with a provider to talk about very specific symptoms and any changes. And I can do it all from my home. I wouldn’t have made these huge advances without telemedicine. It decreased a wait time that had made me put off taking care of my health for years.” A Pandemic-Powered Transformation It’s plain to see that telemedicine is having an explosive moment. While virtual healthcare is not new, we’ve seen a 13,000 percent increase in telehealth since the pandemic started. Large health systems went from having about 50 televisits a month to tens of thousands of virtual visits a month last spring. And the model is likely here to stay, because attitudes about it have done a 180, says Ian Tong, MD, chief medical officer at the telemedicine company Doctor on Demand. “We are going through a horrible time with COVID and we all feel it. But a silver lining of this, for the American citizen but also for telemedicine, is that we have made a really important discovery, which is that
a huge percentage of your care can actually be handled and resolved virtually,” Tong says. Many doctors have gone from saying, “Telemedicine is a compromise and I’ll never practice that way,” to singing its praises. And many patients have gone from being irritated at the thought of televisits, to being irritated at practices that don’t offer them. “It’s an understatement to call the global pandemic a disruption, but that’s probably the best thing to call it,” adds Tong. “It has acted like one of the most effective innovators of healthcare in my lifetime.” While we are witnessing telemedicine come of age in 2020, we’re watching it work out the kinks, too. Some telehealth platforms are more intuitive and less glitchy than others. And telehealth brings up issues—including privacy concerns, potential screen fatigue, and broadband access and affordability. “The Black community especially, but also Latino and Native American communities, have been the victims of structural racism, and it’s left them with low bandwidth, too,” says Tong. “The big communications companies, and Congress, need to end digital redlining. No person should be denied access to a doctor because of their zip code. Telemedicine allows us to remove that geographic barrier. Those patients, as long as they have a connection, can get a high-quality doctor from a diverse background.” Legal restrictions also need to loosen if we want to reap the full benefits of telehealth, such as the originating site requirement—which states that for a healthcare service to be covered by Medicare, the patient must visit the physical site where treatment is initiated. And naturally, screens can’t replace human touch and face-toface care in every instance. But as an add-on model of care, telehealth is extremely valuable, especially in our pandemic moment. And we’ve only begun to graze the surface of what is possible with it. As people are fast discovering (more than 50 percent of Americans have now tried virtual care, compared with 10 percent pre-COVID), telemedicine offers an interaction that’s in some ways more personal and satisfying than an office visit. That’s because providers don’t need to divide their attention between the patient and the screen for record-keeping. Moreover, the mindset of what doctors can do through telemedicine has expanded significantly in the last few months. “We started out doing urgent care, and now it’s gone over to primary care,” says Tong. “We’ve seen a huge uptick in the interest of doing more chronic care, preventive wellness, behavioral health, the whole spectrum. Even labs. Doctor on Demand is one of the few [telehealth companies] that has an integrated national lab platform. Patients are coming to us for a broad set of conditions. It’s not just urgent care anymore.” The Limits of Touchless Technology Telemedicine has been slowly infiltrating a range of specialties over the years, and after COVID hit, it saturated even the most hands-on forms of care, including physical therapy. “When lockdown started, we had no patients coming in,”
says Meredith Auerbach, a physical therapist at Ivy Rehab in Kingston. “We got our telehealth platform, called Physitrack, up and running by early April, and it lets us give patients the exercises they need over the computer. They can follow an exercise video and I can see them and make sure they’re doing it right. I can make sure their bone looks okay and their strength looks okay. There’s even an option where you can make the screen look like a protractor, so if you put your ankle or wrist on the screen, it can measure your range of motion. People were really happy about [the telehealth], so it was good to offer that to the people who wanted it.” Ivy Rehab plans to continue using it with some patients. Naturally, telemedicine here has its limits—
“We have made a really important discovery, which is that a huge percentage of your care can actually be handled and resolved virtually.” —Ian Tong, MD, chief medical officer at Doctor on Demand
namely, the lack of physical touch. “I became a PT because I really want to be able to use my hands-on skills with people to help them heal, and obviously, we can’t do hands-on through the computer,” says Auerbach. “In every body part, I always do some form of massage or joint mobilization. Generally, I would do that if someone comes in. So that would be lacking with telehealth. But there are certain patients that benefit from telehealth anyway, specifically if they’re post-surgery and couldn’t come in but just needed an exercise program.” It doesn’t work for everyone, though. One patient had very severe shoulder and neck pain from a car accident, and she could barely do the exercises. “I think if she came in, I could have helped her more with hands-on techniques,” says Auerbach. For another patient, who’d recently had ankle surgery, telehealth was a better fit. “We went over all the exercises and he was doing them on his own, with no pain. He just wanted a home program, and he was so grateful that we could do that.”
A Virtual-First Healthcare System For Sarah Yanosh, who spent much of lockdown healing from her seizure disorder, telemedicine unexpectedly opened up another window of opportunity. After telling her doctors about her chronic exhaustion, one of them suggested that she enroll in an at-home sleep study. “The equipment had to be picked up and dropped off, which would have been a hurdle for me, but my sister helped me do that,” she says. “And then, the feedback from the study determined that I have moderate sleep apnea, which I never would have thought I had, but it really affects your neurological response to everything. That has been such a healing thing, and none of it would have happened without telemedicine. I wouldn’t have been able to travel back and forth eight million times to the office, or sit in a waiting room for all that time.” These days, she sleeps with a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine to control the sleep apnea, and she’s experiencing another aspect of telemedicine—remote monitoring. “I’m wired into an app now, through Apria, to monitor everything. And if anything changes, if something is not working and my sleep pattern changes, they can adjust that remotely,” says Yanosh. “I understand how some people don’t like to feel monitored or that their space or privacy is invaded. But I really need this in my particular situation, and I trust my doctors.” As more health-monitoring devices and apps come out on the market each year, we’re going to see the next generation of telehealth emerge—which is all about integrating remote monitoring with both virtual and in-person care. Imagine having a pulse oximeter app that could measure your blood oxygen level and catch a case of COVID-19 before you knew you had it. “That’s where we’ll be next, and the technology for that is already here,” says Tong. “It just requires that you buy another device right now [such as an Apple Watch or wearable fitness tracker]. There are a number of really innovative devices coming out for what’s called clinical decision support. But the software or apps that use the smartphone to collect the data are the technologies I’m most excited about. Because people already have a smartphone. Once you add on another device that someone has to buy, then you start to see a lot of drop-off.” We’re going to see a lot more innovation—but ultimately, says Tong, we’re moving toward a virtual-first healthcare system. “All our doctor and nursing visits are going to start remote,” he predicts. “If we only use in-person care for the procedures and technical diagnostics that need to be done, that would be a much more efficient use of our healthcare infrastructure in this country.” But even now, in their more nascent form, telemedicine’s upsides are outweighing its downsides. “It saves so much time for so many people,” says Yanosh. “I’ve had to [go to appointments] when I was really, really sick, and it was a huge burden. Telemedicine just relieves so much anxiety around physical medical care.” 11/20 CHRONOGRAM HEALTH & WELLNESS 31
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n addition to reproductive care, women’s health spans a diverse range of issues. From the complex differences in women’s hormonal and physiological makeup to the cultural factors tied to women’s career paths, mental health, and more, women’s health requires a holistic approach with the interconnected medical resources to match. For Columbia Memorial Health (CMH), the last several years have been devoted to strengthening the network of women’s health services for residents of Columbia and Greene counties. From gynecology and obstetrics to breast and bone health, orthopaedics, urogynecology, and more, the team of providers is composed of specialists who have years of experience treating women in the community. “We serve women throughout their lifecycle,” says Cynthia Friedman, a Certified Nurse Midwife at CMH’s Women’s Health Centers in Hudson and Catskill. Advances in Breast Health Screening and Treatment Regular screening for breast health continues to play a vital role for women at any age. According to Dr. Rakel Astorga, a general surgeon at CMH who specializes in breast surgery, the last few years have seen significant advances in the treatment of breast cancer that allow for higher survivorship and quality of life. In addition to advanced imaging technologies like digital screening mammograms, breast
ultrasound, breast MRI, and breast biopsy, last year CMH acquired several 3D mammography units. The leading-edge technology generates a threedimensional picture of the breast that gives a more complete view of tissue compared to conventional two-dimensional mammogram images. Thanks to CMH’s affiliation with Albany Med, Dr. Astorga can also provide her patients with new reconstruction and plastic surgery options they didn’t have access to before. She can also bring complex cases to Albany Med’s multidisciplinary academic tumor board, which allows physicians of different specialties to create a holistic plan for a patient’s treatment and care. Urogynecology: Where Gynecology and Urology Meet According to Dr. Edward Marici, CMH’s urogynecologist, many urologists specialize in men’s health and most OB-GYNs don’t treat incontinence or bladder issues. As a result, women are often unsure of where to seek help. The answer lies with urogynecology, also known as female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery. Through a blend of treatment options like physical therapy and minimally invasive surgery, Dr. Marici’s practice helps women of all ages navigate issues that might otherwise go unseen. “Our certified physical therapist is the only one in the area certified in pelvic floor physical therapy,” he says. Though many women come to him for bladder incontinence related to aging, he also sees a
significant number of women in their 30s and 40s who struggle with stress incontinence related to coughing, sneezing, and changes related to childbirth. Trends in Women’s Bone and Joint Health Sports injuries, carpal tunnel syndrome, osteoarthritis, and fractures can plague women throughout their lives. According to Dr. Catherine Shin, an orthopaedic surgeon at CMH who specializes in hand surgery, handrelated ailments in particular tend to afflict women more. While she has historically treated mostly middle-aged women for those issues, she’s seeing more women in their late 20s and early 30s come in with carpal tunnel and trigger finger. According to her, the trend is likely related to allday computer and electronic device usage. As women age, bone health is still paramount. According to Dr. Shin, a fall experienced by a woman in her 80s or 90s is “a huge lifechanging event for the whole family.” Surgery can certainly help fix the broken bones, says Dr. Shin, but for many women the key to staying independent late in life is a robust preventative health care plan. It’s important to incorporate bone health screenings and regular in-person and telehealth visits right alongside a realistic plan for long-term care tailored to your family dynamics and individual needs. Columbiamemorialhealth.org/mhm 11/20 CHRONOGRAM HEALTH & WELLNESS 33
Posing for a photo on the River-to-Ridge Trail, a recreational off-road loop that opened in 2018 and connects downtown New Paltz with the many trails of the Mohonk Preserve.
34 COMMUNITY PAGES CHRONOGRAM 11/20
community pages
We, Not Me
New Paltz Pulls Together By Anne Pyburn Craig Photos by Fionn Reilly
E
ver since late summer, one of the subplots of the COVID-19 story has been the heightened risk faced by college towns when students come flooding back. In some places, it’s been an awful mess, but not in New Paltz. “I was wary for a minute, many were,” says New Paltz Town Supervisor Neil Bettez. “We were all 20 once, with no desire whatsoever to stay six feet apart. But the students have done a great job. I see them masking and distancing all the time.” SUNY New Paltz President Donald Christian concurs. “It is hard on people’s nerves, but when I am on campus, I am just astounded at the level of compliance,” he says. “And I hear from members of the community about how impressed they are with the students. It’s been over two weeks [as of mid-October] since we had our last positive test, knock wood. We think it’s partly because a lot of the students are from downstate and Long Island, places that were hit hard in the spring. They’ve seen the impact and they know the drill.” 11/20 CHRONOGRAM COMMUNITY PAGES 35
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The deck of the Parish, a New Orleans-inspired restaurant on the second story of Water Street Market, has commanding views of the Shawangunk Ridge. Below: Parlor is a new bookshop and gathering place on South Chestnut Street.
Here Comes the Party Patrol To the familiar list of New Paltz assets—glorious surroundings, university campus, recreational opportunities, rich and eagerly explored history, bangin’ good restaurants—we can now add another that seems to be, sadly, in short supply these days: common sense and collaboration. “There have been times,” recalls village Deputy Mayor K. T. Tobin, “when the town/gown/ village relationships weren’t great, but it’s much improved, and leading into this pandemic, we were able to swiftly coordinate our messaging: ‘We, Not Me’ was the theme.” When the crisis hit, Tobin—a SUNY New Paltz alum who did her graduate studies in sociology at Albany and brought her talents back to the campus and community—had just been promoted to director at the Benjamin Center for Public Policy upon the retirement of founder Gerald Benjamin. She’d have faced a busy spring and summer anyway. But she hadn’t reckoned on Party Patrol duty. “The town’s actually pretty hoppin’ lately; it’s always a big explosion when the leaves change, and we are definitely still a destination. People still come on a beautiful day to enjoy the commerce and the mountains,” says Tobin. “And we’ve worked hard to bring guests into that ‘we, not me’ paradigm. Back in April and May, [Mayor] Tim [Rogers] and I stood on Main Street weekend after weekend, making sure everybody had a mask.” Village, town, and college leadership were on daily Zoom calls from the start, sussing out logistics, trying to make sure that “we” included everyone. Elected officials and college administrators walked the streets into the wee
hours on weekend nights, advocating safety. “We find that a little education and a short conversation gets compliance,” says Tobin. “We haven’t had to take a punitive approach.” Pandemic vs. Demographic Not every business has survived. Beloved Main Street record store Jack’s Rhythms will be missed. (Though Frank’s Fresh Pickling Company is set to open in its place this month.) Visitors will find most of their favorites carrying on; there’s even a new Dominican place, New
Nelly’s, and a new specialty bakery, Hudson Valley Cheesecake, in the heart of the village. “Grinds and Grains is doing great,” says Tobin happily of the coffee and cereal spot that opened on Church Street just before the pandemic hit. “We made the municipal parking lot at Main and North Chestnut into outdoor dining, and everybody helped keep it nice. And I can’t say enough about Cory Wirthmann, our code officer, and his department. They spent untold amounts of time helping businesses figure out how they could do absolutely everything that 11/20 CHRONOGRAM COMMUNITY PAGES 37
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could be done safely to stay afloat.” Downtown bar owners, responsible for the town’s legendary pub crawl and live music scene, volunteered to curtail their weekend hours and close before midnight. Retailers are doing brisk, socially distanced business down at Water Street Market, says owner Harry Lipstein. “We are talking about powerful locals who are living their dreams and have been here and stable for 20-plus years,” he says. “They’ve demonstrated time and time again that they’re here to stay. They’re a special breed. Has it been tough? Absolutely. But if anyone can survive a pandemic, it’s these folks.” Lipstein credits his Greek mother with instilling in him a passion for the agora, and is happily confident in his curation of Water Street; one of the newest additions, Salix Intimates, has found lingerie sales so well suited to private appointments that its owner plans to continue those even now that she can admit up to five browsers at a time. Lipstein’s related passion, theater, has arguably taken one of COVID’s biggest hits. Broadway shows are suspended until at least the end of May 2021. But Denizen, Lipstein’s nonprofit black box theater, has been paying its people all along and opened for its fourth season in September with the world premiere of Neil LaBute’s “True Love Will Find You In The End.”
Lipstein would never dream of courting danger. “We’ve been mindful and cautious in approaching the question: Taking the given circumstances we face into account and applying creativity, what do we do? So we put together that we could do a two-week run, two shows a day, with eight socially distant seats available for each show. The acting was prerecorded and supported by light and sound. It’s a matter of what is, as opposed to what we wish could be, and the work speaks to that. The show by Neil—a Tony nominee who recently moved to the Hudson Valley—is very poignant and relevant. Theater can speak to the moment, as it always has.” Every one of the performances was sold out almost as soon as the plan was announced. At the other end of town, in New Paltz Plaza, the Mark Gruber Gallery is featuring a group show, “Boats and Barns,” through November 28. The 44-year-old gallery recently relocated four stores closer to Main Street. “I just happen to love barns, boats, and alliteration,” says Gruber. “Of course, we’re not doing opening receptions right now, but people still need art. It’ll be good to come out of the other end of all this; we haven’t eaten out since it started, just takeout. I’m glad I’m not 18 right now, with all this! But if anything, the town seems busier than ever. Traffic’s backed up to the Thruway every weekend. It’ll be interesting to see how the pandemic affects the demographic.” 11/20 CHRONOGRAM COMMUNITY PAGES 39
Above: Mark Gruber opened his New Paltz frame shop and gallery in 1976. Gruber’s careful curation of Hudson Valley landscape artists has nurtured generations of painters. Below: Ramona Malena serves up authentic Dominican fare like pork mofongo at New Nelly’s restaurant on Main Street.
A Place Where People Love to Be New Paltz is nothing if not practiced in welcoming newcomers, whether for an afternoon or a lifetime. “The housing market is on fire,” says Town Supervisor Bettez, “like after 9/11, but bigger. Our building inspectors, both town and village, have been getting a ton of inquiries from property owners: What can I do? Can I subdivide? Can I add a structure or a second story? So I think we’ll be seeing a lot of that. And with smart zoning and preservation, we can make room. We need those, and we need affordable housing legislation—but I welcome new people. New Paltz is what it is, a place where people love to be, because waves of smart people have come here and made it better for generations.” Tobin agrees there is growth on the horizon. “I think we’ll see a lot of infill and mixed-use stuff in the village and the new NBR [Neighborhood Business Residential] zone,” she says. “And we have things that were in the hopper before the pandemic that are coming to fruition. There’s a new firehouse going up, and people will be moving in to Zero Place in early 2021.” The mixed-use project, featuring 46 apartments and 8,400 square feet of retail, has already won a New York State Building of Excellence award for energy efficiency. Five units at Zero Place are earmarked as affordable; both Tobin and Bettez say that protecting affordability is crucial in keeping New Paltz vital. The village is considering banning non-owner-occupied short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods. “We’re not against Airbnb; it brings vitality. We just want people who are connected to the community in charge,” Tobin says. “And housing costs are a problem; we need to get creative about solving it.” Bettez says the town is considering something similar. “We just don’t want is a bunch of corporate mini-hotels,” he says. “We have a Community Preservation Plan on the ballot this November, a 1.5-percent real estate transfer tax on sales over $245,000 to fund open space, working farms, and historic preservation. The out-of-town realtors’ association hates it, but the local realtors get it; it’s just letting people kick in a little to keep the things that drew them here in the first place. It adds value.” Debate, sometimes heated, has been a staple of the community for generations, and Bettez wouldn’t have it any other way. “We’re lucky; we have people who are well informed and passionate, and I would take passion over apathy any day,” he says. “Smart people come here, fall in love and stay, and their dreams bring economic and cultural growth. Our future looks really good right now.” 40 COMMUNITY PAGES CHRONOGRAM 11/20
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HEART OF DEDRICK’S PHARMACY AND GIFT SHOP IN NEW PALTZ
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mall pharmacies run in the Nekos family. In Kingston, you’ll find George Nekos behind the counter of Nekos-Dedrick’s Pharmacy; Peter Nekos is over at the Boiceville Pharmacy in Boiceville; and Jared Nekos, the brothers’ nephew, has been the face behind Dedrick’s Pharmacy and Gifts in New Paltz since he bought it from the Sheeley family in 2018. The Nekos’ foray into the pharmacy business started back in 1952, when Jared’s grandfather added a small pharmacy to the back of Nekos Luncheonette, which his father—a confectioner from Greece—opened in Uptown Kingston in 1901. As Jared says, “Is there anything that feels more Americana than a lunch counter, soda fountain, and pharmacy?” Growing up in Kingston and working in his family’s luncheonette was what inspired Jared to go into the small pharmacy business himself. After graduating from pharmacy school in 2013, he went to work for the Sheeleys at Dedrick’s on Main Street in New Paltz. The pharmacy also has a legacy that stretches back to Kingston in 1857. Today, Dedrick’s has both a pharmacy and gift shop, which carries home goods like candles, tea, and seasonal decor, women’s clothing, and kids’ and babies’ clothing, toys, and books. “I didn’t expect how much I would love being a pharmacist,” Jared says. “But when you recognize that a patient needs a little of your time, advice, and counsel, it’s very moving.” The meaningful personal connections that Jared and his team of four pharmacists
make on a daily basis are part of what makes Dedrick’s tick. “Sometimes a patient has just been discharged from the hospital and their medication has changed dramatically,” he says. “There can be a lot of confusion and a conversation with a pharmacist can help them learn how to get back on their feet and start the healing process at home.” One of the counseling services the pharmacists at Dedrick’s provide is called medication therapy management (MTM), which anyone can walk up to the counter and request. During the session, a pharmacist walks you through all of your medicines, making sure there’s no drug interactions with other medications you’re taking, and that you know when and how to take them correctly. (Notably, Jared says that according to a recent study, approximately 50 percent of people don’t take their medications as prescribed.) “There’s been a huge expansion in what medications are available to patients,” Jared says. “One of our primary focuses in filling a prescription is to give it an absolutely thorough review.” This includes confirming with the prescribing doctor that both they and the patient are aware of any risks and interactions, and adjusting the prescription if necessary. To help their patients streamline their medications, Dedrick’s has also recently invested in a medication adherence technology called PakMyMeds. By using PakMyMeds, the pharmacists at Dedrick’s can provide patients with a 30-day supply of medications synced to
refill on the same day and sorted into individual perforated pouches by dose and time. “As patients age, the simplification process is really important,” says Jared. “We have families that drive hours just to help pack a pill box every week, and still there are complications. This solution can really change people’s lives for the better and we are very excited to offer it.” Throughout the pandemic, it has been important for Jared that Dedrick’s play a role in preventing community transmission, which is why they pivoted to curbside pickup only in late March. “We needed to do all that we could to protect patients’ access, the patients themselves, and our workers,” he says. “There was a period of adjustment, but we saw incredible patience and kindness from the community.” Dedrick’s is now open again to the public and back to providing the level of personal service that Jared believes sets independent pharmacies apart. “If you’re picking up an antibiotic twice a year, maybe you wouldn’t notice the difference, but your parents or grandparents with complicated medication regimes do. People all over the state and country are losing access to quality care because of the external stresses of the big chains and the predatory practices of Pharmacy Benefit Managers that work on behalf of insurance companies,” he says. “When you move into a smaller community, you have to start thinking about where your money is really going and the impact of who you choose to support.” Dedrickspharmacy.com 11/20 CHRONOGRAM COMMUNITY PAGES 41
2. Arrowood Outpost 3 Church Street (845) 419-2185 Arrowoodfarms.com The Outpost features a rotating selection of our Arrowood Farms beer as well as local hard cider on tap and a selection of New York State wines and non-alcoholic beverages plus signature small bites. 3. Barbara Carter Real Estate 203 Main Street (845) 505-3160 Barbaracarter.realtor Five award-winning Realtors working together for all your residential and commercial real estate needs in the Hudson Valley. 4. Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Hudson Valley Properties 134 Main Street (845) 255-9400 Bhhshudsonvalley.com At Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Hudson Valley Properties our real estate professionals are committed to making your experience extraordinary whether you’re buying, selling, renting, or investing. 5. Castillon Lifestyle + Concierge 122 Main Street (845) 616-0505 Castillonlifestyle.com At Castillon Lifestyle + Concierge, our mission is to help families achieve work-life balance by organizing their households and businesses. From appointment scheduling and errand management to closet cleanouts and getaway planning, the Concierge helps make your life easier. 6. Clemson Bros. Brewery 3 Main Street (845) 256-1700 Clemsonbrewing.com Award-winning brewery and restaurant conveniently located on Main Street. Open daily at 11AM with indoor and outdoor dining, delivery, and to-go.
8. Dedrick's Pharmacy and Gift Shop 190 Main Street (845) 255-0310 Dedrickspharmacy.com Dedrick's has been a reliable and trusted, community pharmacy for over 50 years. Refill prescriptions online and browse the selection of jewelry, candles, apparel, decor, and toys in our gift shop. 9. Denizen Theatre New Paltz 10 Main Street Suite 501 (845) 303-4136 Denizentheatre.com Denizen Theatre presents gripping, professional live theater year-round, focusing on provocative new works that explore what it means to be human and inspire often-ignored conversations. 10. Diamond Car Wash 526 Main Street (845) 256-0986 Facebook.com/DiamondCarwashNPZ We are a 24-hour automatic, self-serve dog and car wash. We also offer vacuums, carpet shampooer, and vending. 11. Frank's Fresh Pickling Company 56 Main Street (917) 279-9407 Franksfreshnewpaltz.com Frank's Fresh Pickling Co is coming to life in New Paltz. Soon to be housed at 56 Main Street, we specialize in fresh, homemade items, such as pickles, hot sauce, kimchi, sauerkraut, relish, jams, marinara, and more. Ask us about catering!
15. Imperial Guitar and Soundworks 2A Cherry Hill Road (845) 255-2555 Imperialguitar.com We sell new, used, and vintage musical instruments. We also offer design, sales, and installation of pro audio systems, as well as instrument repairs, restorations, rentals, appraisals, guitar discussions, and fun. 16. Jack's Meats & Deli 79 Main Street (845) 255-2244 Butcher shop and deli on Main Street in New Paltz. 17. La Charla Mexican Restaurant 127 Main Street (845) 633-8276 Lacharlarestaurant.com A place to relax, chat, and lounge with friends while enjoying authentic Mexican cuisine. 18. Mark Gruber Gallery 13 New Paltz Plaza (845) 255-1241 Markgrubergallery.com Since 1976, the gallery has exhibited the finest local artists, bridging traditional Hudson River School themes with Contemporary ones. We also offer museum-quality custom framing. 19. Mohonk Mountain House 1000 Mountain Rest Road (855) 883-3798 Mohonk.com At Mohonk, everything you need for an unforgettable Hudson Valley getaway is at your fingertips. With so much included in your overnight rate, spend more time making memories than planning for them.
20. Mountain Laurel Waldorf School 16 S Chestnut Street (845) 255-0033 Mountainlaurel.org Guided by the philosphy of Rudolph Steiner, 12. Gadaleto's Seafood Market and Restaurant Mountain Laurel offers a developmentally appropriate, experiential approach to education 246 Main Street #1 to inspire life-long learning and enable each (845) 255-1717 student to fully develop their capacities as Gadaletos.com independent and insightful thinkers. Fresh fish market and eatery. Full-service retail counter boasting wild caught and sustainably 21. Pegasus Comfort Footwear farmed seafood, plus quick service kitchen with 27 N Chestnut Street indoor seating area. (845) 256-0788 Pegasusshoes.com 13. Holistic Natural Medicine: Providing expert fitting service and an amazing Integrative Healing Arts selection of comfort footwear from the world’s 169 Main Street most beloved brands. Stop in soon and let (347) 988-0178 the Pegasus staff make all your shoe dreams come true! Holisticnaturalmedicineny.com Holistic Natural Medicine is a distinctive 22. Ridgeline Realty acupuncture center integrating traditional Chinese medicine with a modern clinical 40 Marabac Road, Gardiner approach. (845) 255-8359 Ridgelinerealty.net 14. Hudson Valley Cheesecake Licensed real estate broker with a local office in 56 Main Street Gardiner, providing commercial and residential (845) 375-9266 real estate services for both buyers and sellers in the Shawangunk Ridge and surrounding area. Hvcheesecake.com Established in 2020, this family-owned and 23. Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art operated business specializes in gourmet handcrafted cheesecakes and decadent desserts 1 Hawk Drive made from scratch. Closed Monday-Tuesday. (845) 257-3844 Newpaltz.edu/museum Museum at SUNY New Paltz with works by well-known artists from the Hudson Valley and around the globe.
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24. Schain and Company, CPAs 70 North Putt Corners Road (845) 255-5888 Schainandcompany.com A full-service accounting and tax prep firm, we work with both businesses and individuals and pride ourselves on our longterm relationships with clients. 25. Stevens Property Management 171 Main Street (845) 520-9577 Stevensmanagementgroup.com We are a full-service real estate management company servicing Ulster, Orange, and Dutchess counties. We offer property owners of all sizes the management solutions that fit their needs. 26. SUNY New Paltz 1 Hawk Drive (845) 257-7869 Newpaltz.edu Just 90 minutes from New York City, SUNY New Paltz is a highly selective university of about 8,000 undergraduate and graduate students, offering a large number of majors in Business, Liberal Arts & Sciences, Engineering, Fine and Performing Arts, and Education. 27. Village Grind 139 Main Street (845) 255-7800 Villagegrindnewpaltz.com Recently acquired by New Paltz locals, the cafe serves fresh, locally roasted coffee and baked goods, featuring exquisite made-toorder breakfast daily. 28. Wallkill View Farm Market 15 Route 299 (845) 255-8050 Wallkillviewfarmmarket.com Farm market with fresh produce, delicious baked goods, and seasonal decor. Starting Thanksgiving weekend, we'll have beautiful Christmas trees, wreaths, homegrown poinsettias, and a holiday gift showroom. 29. Wild Earth Programs 2307 Lucas Turnpike (845) 256-9830 Wildearth.org Wild Earth’s programs are designed to remember and return to our natural human blueprint to form strong connections to self, each other, and the Earth.
Illustration by Kaitlin Van Pelt
1. Androgyny New Paltz 5 Mulberry Street (845) 256-0620 Facebook.com/androgyny.new.paltz.ny Home of the carving tools and System 4 HaiR, Androgyny is a modern, renowned hair salon. We go far above and beyond NYS COVID-19 protocols and offer private sessions, consultations, and outdoor space.
7. Coldwell Banker Village Green Realty 157 Main Street (845) 255-0615 Villagegreenrealty.com A real estate agency of people who live, love, and work in the Catskill/Hudson Valley Region. With offices in Kingston, New Paltz, Stone Ridge, Windham, and Woodstock, our agents will keep you up to date on all the great inventory available.
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11/20 CHRONOGRAM COMMUNITY PAGES 43
on the farm
LIBERATION ON THE LAND Soul Fire Farm Photography by Gilles Uzan Words by Naima Penniman, interviewed by Elodie Tacnet
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oul Fire Farm is a BIPOCcentered community farm committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system. It was launched in 2010 on 72 acres in Petersburg, NY, by Leah Penniman and Jonah Vitale-Wolff. Soul Fire is a sustainable, certified naturally grown farm that addresses disparities in land ownership and access to produce by offering a training program for aspiring Black, Indigenous, and Latinx farmers, activist retreats, youth agriculture classes, and an inner-city CSA, which charges on a sliding scale and accepts SNAP benefits. Naima Penniman, program director at Soul Fire, is a multi-dimensional artist, movement builder, healer, grower and educator committed to planetary health and community resilience.
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Belonging to the Land
Food Solidarity
I like to think that we belong to the land, the land doesn’t belong to us. When we think about ownership, if anything, it goes the other way around. To steward land is that sacred responsibility that comes with that relationship, of how we take care of the land that sustains us. The land is our greatest partner, our greatest collaborator. When we acquired this property to create Soul Fire Farm, a lot of people doubted this was a strategic move because these are very rocky, marginal soils. We’re on a mountain side. But we wanted to farm the way our ancestors did, this is the land we could afford: We couldn’t be picky. And we have these ways of building back and regenerating soil so, in the last decade we’ve tripled our topsoil depth through mulching, composting, building raised beds, integrating animals.
Nobody should go to bed hungry. But in our country, it’s an all-too-common reality, and it is very racially skewed. White neighborhoods are four times more likely to have a supermarket than Black and brown communities. All that we harvest from the land we distribute through our solidarity share program, which is our way of getting the food that we grow to the people in our community that need it most, because they are living in food apartheid conditions, who are survivors of mass incarceration as well as new Americans and refugees.
Interdependence We’ve been able to sequester 50,000 tons of carbon. Every step of the way, we’re not stripping things away from the land but adding back, to generate fertility. All the buildings are made of wood from a 20-mile radius, the walls of the houses are made of straw bales for insulation, they’re all south-facing for optimal light. The hot water is solar-powered. We’re increasing our biodiversity, which has dramatically been affected by industrial agriculture, by bringing back native species and teaching our community those practices. We do a lot of intercropping, which just means many different types of species growing together because they support each other. Some repel pests, other ones provide the nutrients, they make each other more resilient.
A Community-Driven Model Ujamaa is a principle of cooperative economics that we’ve modeled Soul Fire Farm after in order to be a viable enterprise that takes care of its workers and demonstrates fair labor practices; that is generous to its community; and that is able to create a system where those with less financial means who are still deserving are able to eat healthy, nutritious food. And it’s subsidized by members of the community who are able to pay above market rate so that everyone gets to eat. Our programs operate on a sliding scale so people can pay the entry point that they can in order to come and live with us on the land and train with us and that can be covered by bigger institutions that may hire us for a keynote or a presentation. It’s a very community-driven model, so ujamaa is the name that we gave to our CSA program. We box up the food we grow here and do direct doorstep delivery—from our farm to 50
Naima Penniman at Soul Fire Farm
households in Albany and Troy, as well as to partners like the Free Food Fridge Albany, the Refugee Center, Focus Food Pantry, and the Victory Bus Project.
Battling Food Apartheid We reference the system that creates food opulence for some and food scarcity for others as a “food apartheid” as opposed to a “food desert.” A desert is a natural ecosystem. Here, we face a human-constructed system that affords some access to plenty of affordable fresh food options and others very, very little. It basically means that within a five-mile radius, you won’t find any fresh or healthy food options, there only are corner stores and fast food, which lead to diet-related illnesses, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, and many other chronic illnesses because the body is not getting the nutrient it needs. This impacts our Black, brown, and Indigenous communities disproportionately. It’s not that there is not enough food. We’re producing enough, it’s just not getting to all who need it. And, in fact, more than half of the food that is produced ends up in the waste stream, as opposed to on our plates.
The School-to-Prison Pipeline We have been able to partner with a program that redirects young people who’ve been convicted of crimes and who would have otherwise entered the youth detention system
to instead be able to come to the farm and have an empowering learning experience in place of community service hours in retribution for their “crime.” It was a pilot project with the Albany Court, which was one direct way to interrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. We also are thinking a lot about our communities who are affected by incarceration in terms of food access because as we know, the access to food inside of jails and prisons is horrendous. It’s no coincidence that the neighborhoods where people are being over-policed, criminalized, and imprisoned are also the most food insecure. We are also thinking of the families of those who are incarcerated. So we partnered with the Freedom Food Alliance about connecting families of those incarcerated, farms like ours and organizers (or “weavers’’ as they call them) will be able to provide fresh food for people who travel upstate to visit their loved one behind bars.
The Legacy of Jim Crow Access to land is a huge issue and barrier right now. The descendants of European colonizers own 98 percent of the land in this country, so it is more racially skewed than ever before. After the Emancipation Proclamation, Black folx who were formerly enslaved were doing anything in their power to get land, to farm and make a living. There was no form of support but people were working really hard, saving their Sunday money to amass what became at its peak 15 percent of the rural farm land in the late 1800s. This caused a backlash against
self-determined Black people owning land, creating their own business of farming in the form of an enormous amount of racial terror (there were 4,000 documented cases, never mind the undocumented cases), of land being stolen, farms burned down, people murdered. Thousands of Black families eventually fled the rural South for the urban North.
“All Revolution is Based on Land” Malcom X says, “All revolution is based on land.” If we don’t own any land, we are out of the picture, so I cannot stress how important it is that we are able to redistribute land and have more land under the stewardship of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities. Most of our food is being grown by the Latinx community, and very, very few have access to management positions. Most of the ways people build wealth, at least in the United States, is through private property. The reason that a white child, the moment they’re born, is 16 times richer than a Black child is because of inherited wealth, passed down through generations. Slavery was not such a long time ago. Our whole agricultural system is built on stolen land and labor that has not been redistributed and that land is continuing to mass through descendants of colonizers and those who’ve benefited from that system. That’s a reason why land is so important: It gives us the means to our own survival and to not be dependent on a system that exploits us.
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excerpt
Repair
Revolution HOW FIXERS ARE TRANSFORMING OUR THROWAWAY CULTURE by John Wackman and Elizabeth Knight The world’s first Repair Cafe was organized by Dutch journalist Martine Postma in Amsterdam in 2009. The idea crossed the Atlantic in 2012, and New Paltz became the fourth community in the US to open a Repair Cafe in 2013. TV producer and writer John Wackman was the founder of that effort. In Repair Revolution (New World Library), published in late October, Wackman teams up with Elizabeth Knight, an author and sustainability activist based in Warwick. The book is part repair how-to, part roadmap for how to build a grassroots organization, and part manifesto. It outlines a strategy for building resilient communities through a mindset of thrift, shared intelligence, and zero waste.
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Above and following pages: Scenes from Repair Cafes across the country. There are now more than 40 active cafes across the Hudson Valley—in libraries, town halls, churches, community centers, and co-working spaces— where skilled volunteers fix and mend beloved-butbroken items for their neighbors, for free.
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sed to be, every town had its repair shops. Everyone knew where to go when they needed something fixed. That know-how was often close at hand, practiced by parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors, or a local “fix-it man.” We can call this a remnant of the Great Depression, of course, but its roots stretch back to Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard and the tradition of Yankee thrift. How has our society changed? The immediate answer, almost always, is that we no longer get things repaired because ours has become a throwaway culture. The economic explanation for this is that since World War II, the world has embraced the materials economy, that is to say, a wasteful, rather than regenerative, use of precious resources. As the axiom coined by Twitter cofounder Evan Williams puts it, “convenience decides everything.” The argument can’t be made that this is sustainable. But if there is a Repair Cafe or Fixit Clinic or Tool Library in your town, you have a different answer. The place to get something fixed is at the library or a church or your town hall or
community center. The concept couldn’t be simpler: Whatever you call it, wherever it is held, a community repair event invites you to bring a beloved but broken item to be repaired for free, by an expert who is also your neighbor. There’s one catch. This is not a drop-off service. You bring your item and stay with it during the repair process. You sit down and describe what it’s not doing that it’s supposed to be doing, when it stopped working, and where you think the defect might be. This is not a monetary transaction—it’s an interpersonal transaction. The consumer economy is powerful. The growing repair culture is a countervailing force: community initiatives that are creative, socially vibrant platforms for building awareness about the larger challenges facing our planet. There is something about the act of repairing that motivates and satisfies deeply felt parts of our nature. We can trace this insight back to Aristotle: one of the greatest sources of human enjoyment is being able to enact one’s knowledge, to share what you know. The act of repairing involves “troubleshooting,” which to many people is an irresistible proposition.
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Repairing in Community Is Powerful Repair culture is about these things: Extending the life of stuff that you care about or rely on. Feeding your curiosity about the way things work. Using tools and using your hands. Honoring, preserving, and passing on repair know-how. Sitting elbow-to-elbow at a worktable with your neighbor. Sharing skills. Reducing waste. Making friends.
“Repair Cafe is like a cross between ‘Antiques Roadshow’ and the Island of Broken Toys. I’m grateful to be a part of it because it touches a lot of lives. That’s why I do it. —Ken “FixIt” Boscher, Rosendale You might think that the most common comment people offer about their experience at a repair event is something like “I’m so glad they fixed it” or “It was free.” But the words people use more than any other, hands down, to describe their Repair Cafe experience are “It was fun.” Almost every item people bring has meaning to them. Every item comes with a story. Laughter and tears are common. Some of the comments our customers leave are straightforward description: “Pants mended.” “Clock fixed.” “Toddler bike now roadworthy.” “$200 printer back in service after the company said, ‘Buy a new one.’” Others are more effusive: “I can’t begin to tell you what an absolutely lovely and wonderful experience this has been.” 48 FEATURE CHRONOGRAM 11/20
“There is a strong beam of hope and light coming from this space.” Every repair event is locally organized. Partners include libraries, congregations, town boards, environmental and conservation groups, Rotary Clubs, climate activists, and at least one County Emergency Communications Association. Librarians say they love repair events because they offer hands-on, intergenerational learning. Faith communities embrace the theological aspect: This is caring for creation. County waste management or resource recovery agencies recognize the value of any grassroots initiative that will help slow down the pace of waste reaching their landfills. Clubs from technical colleges and school districts bring their team spirit, and high school and college students commonly volunteer to get community service credit. Not surprisingly, the kids often end up behind the digital worktable—or with their hands on a sewing machine, some for the first time.
“Repair Cafe is organized around the ethos of skill sharing. That’s a mutually beneficial thing. It creates opportunities to nurture neighborly networks. It calls on the invaluable wealth of community knowledge and know-how.”
—Jordan Scruggs, Kingston
When journalist Harry Smith brought the “NBC Nightly News” crew to our Repair Cafe in New Paltz, New York, he beautifully interpreted what he found: “The idea is exquisitely simple: neighbor helping neighbor. They fix a lot of stuff. Things left in attics and garages. Things that just stopped working. And what we marveled at was the care, the meticulous, painstaking care that goes into every repair.”
“The community energy is just so strong when people get together to keep a family heirloom going for another 50 years—or to fix the vacuum that keeps the floor clean.”
—Naomi Aubain, New Paltz
The Fix Is In As of this writing, there are more than 150 Repair Cafes in the United States. The largest concentration is in the Northeast, with 50 or so in eastern New York and northern New Jersey and another 50 in Massachusetts and the other New England states. The upper Midwest and the West Coast are the next most “repairing” regions. Sprinkled around the country, you will find regular events in Colorado, Ohio, and the DC and Philly areas, plus outposts in Fairbanks, Alaska; Honolulu, Hawaii; Lincoln, Nebraska; Ellensburg, Washington; Moscow, Idaho;
Houston, Texas; the Research Triangle of North Carolina; and St. Petersburg, Florida—with wide open spaces in between. In one relatively small region—the Hudson Valley, Catskills, and Capital District of New York State—we saw more than 120 events in 2019, in 40 communities in 12 counties. These events involved the time of more than 600 volunteers who brought everything from advanced electronics skills to the wherewithal to make a mean cup of tea. The very social “cafe” side of each event thrives on home-baked treats, fruit, coffee, and tea.
“I like the idea of keeping useful things useful—and out of landfills. It seems there are lots of people who love ugly lamps!“
—Tom Bonita, Warwick
Fixing is not an all-or-nothing endeavor. We like to say that there are three possible outcomes for the item you bring. “Repaired” means the problem was figured out and fixed, and you may have participated in the repair. At the other end of the spectrum is the “Beyond Repair” outcome, where the item isn’t fixable for any of a number of reasons. The pronouncement “Tried, Dead, and Done” frees you to recycle or responsibly dispose of a useless thing, with the satisfaction that you followed its useful life to its end. Or you may carry it over to the Kids Take It Apart Table, our popular “learning lab,” where it will end its life in pieces. Finally, there’s the third, in-between possibility, “Half Repaired”—which is also valuable. Your item wasn’t fixed, but your coach identified the issue
and suggested possible solutions and a next step. If a replacement part is needed, you might order it from the local hardware store and bring it along to the next Repair Cafe. Or you may now know enough to fix it yourself. The common denominator in all three scenarios is this: You learned something about the way things work. You may have even gained a new appreciation for the stuff in your life.
“I love marrying the philosophy of creating community with the practicality of fixing things.”
—Michelle Green, Ossining
And here we can underscore one more attribute about community repair projects: They do not self-select for any political point of view. Everyone has broken stuff, and this speaks to egalitarianism. Sitting down with a neighbor to troubleshoot what’s wrong with your stuff helps bridge the partisan divide—or any other divide— that may separate you in another setting. Repair culture is a tail wagging the dog. It is an active, participatory volunteer gig that animates the larger imperative of sustainability and community. Copyright ©2020 by John Wackman and Elizabeth Knight. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. Newworldlibrary.com.
In conversations with Martine, we’ve talked a lot about the impact of Repair Cafes, and we believe the data don’t capture the movement’s true significance. That significance is the signal the events generate (to use Martine’s appropriate metaphor), the signal received by people who walk into a Repair Cafe for the first time in their town. That signal says, We are better off when we see our own community in the midst of cooperation, creativity, and downright decency, in a place where goals are achieved and positive outcomes are realized. “The value of the Repair Cafe,” says William McDonough, an architect and coauthor of the influential book Cradle to Cradle, “is that people are going back into a relationship with the material things around them.” Evelien H. Tonkens, a sociology professor at the University of Amsterdam, agrees. “It’s very much a sign of the times,” says Dr. Tonkens, who notes that the Repair Cafe’s “anticonsumerist, antimarket, do-it-ourselves ethos” reflects a more general trend to improve the world through grassroots social activism. 11/20 CHRONOGRAM FEATURE 49
sketchbook John Cuneo
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John Cuneo invokes a quote by cartoonist Lynda Barry to explain his attachment to aimless drawing: “You have to be willing to spend time making things for no known reason.” The Woodstock-based illustrator, best known for his work in Esquire and The New Yorker, is constantly sketching. “In between editorial assignments, I’m compulsively drawing,” says Cuneo. “I don’t go anywhere without a sketchbook. Sketchbooks are sort of a lifeline for me. They are a way to practice, to cope. I have a lot of social anxiety.” Sketchbooks are also a place where Cuneo can stretch his imagination beyond the limits of editorial assignments. (Just check out Cuneo’s NSFW Instagram account for a taste of what most magazines, this one included, won’t publish.) “With the narrow parameters and restrictions of editorial art—and it’s getting narrower and narrower with the trajectory of political correctness—I need my sketchbook to draw with a certain amount of freedom.” Cuneo’s latest book of sketches, Coping Skills, will be released by Fantagraphics later this year. —Brian K. Mahoney
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music Kenny Roby The Reservoir (Royal Potato Family Records) KennyRoby.net
Tickle-your-brain lyrics and stick-in-your-craw melodies whirl you down the rapids and float you gently over the rocks as you delve into The Reservoir. The pools are deep, feigning a stillness that hides churning undercurrents of a bruised soul and cascading ripples of a broken heart. The music belies the conflicting sentiments of serenity and precariousness as you contemplate a wade in the shallows or diving in headfirst. Kenny Roby’s baritone guides us through these alternate realities, a soothing presence in the lyrical intensity. The soundscape moves from solo guitar, picking at dirty tempos, to the gorgeous alt-west comforts of nylon-stringed heat and mandolin sunsets. Sometimes more country than folk, other times more Western than Americana. Whether it is because of the brutal backstories of addiction/recovery, divorce, suicide, or just amorphous societal uncertainty, the songs ring with emotion. It is a passionate whirlpool, but one that is memorable, catchy, and often upbeat. Stellar players, including Jeff Hill, Tony Leone, John Lee Shannon, and Jesse Aycock throw down vintage pedigree tones, successfully egoless in service of the song. Produced by Dave Schools of Widespread Panic, the album was recorded in Woodstock, where Roby has since moved from North Carolina. The Reservoir is a down-to-earth encapsulation of the hard-won sensibilities of a thinking man’s questioning and ultimate acceptance of the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful day. At his best, Roby is one of those writers whose songs and lyrics make you wish you had thought of them first: “New strings on an old guitar.” —Jason Broome
Jeff Cosgrove/John Medeski/Jeff Lederer History Gets Ahead of the Story
Geezer Groovy
Ken Fox & Knock Yourself Out Ken Fox & Knock Yourself Out
(Grizzley Music) Jeffcosgrovemusic.com
(Heavy Psych Sounds Records) Heavypsychsounds.com
(Rum Bar Records) Rumbarrecords.bandcamp.com
While bassist and bandleader William Parker has been an inspiration for multiple generations of forwardthinking jazz musicians, good luck finding his tunes in anyone’s book but his own. Past Parker associate and drummer Jeff Cosgrove, alongside Woodstock-area organist John Medeski (of Medeski, Martin & Wood) and wind player Jeff Lederer, at long last give Parker’s singular gifts as a composer the rousing recognition they deserve. The trio draws ample scoops from the gutbucket on the opener, “O’Neal’s Porch,” fracturing into pointillistic beads of texture and leaving Lederer’s altissimo howling like a hot wind in the distance. Medeski also sets his drawbars for higher vibrations and joins Lederer’s flute in a chirping dialog of startling synchronicity to open the impellent free bop of “Little Bird.” Cosgrove deftly supports throughout, never overplaying. The probing, noir-ish “Harlem” closes the set and brings specificity to the mystery, much as the trio does for William Parker’s considerable songbook. —James Keepnews
While the very cool, blacklight-ready, ’70s-esque, lysergic album art from Ryan Williams might imply Scooby Doo territory, the latest full length from Kingston’s acclaimed stoner rock torch bearers Geezer is very multilayered. The songs breathe a lot more, the band sounds more at ease than ever, and the synergy between the trio, engineer Matthew Cullen, and the studio comes across in every track. “Atlas Electra” is one of the brightest constellations in the Geezer pantheon of godly tunes yet, a laid-back, melodic slow burn that eases over you like a billowing cloud. “Slide Mountain” is a near-perfect, jammed-out mostly instrumental meditation that somehow evokes a weird, multidimensional handshake between Clutch and Explosions in the Sky. “Dead Soul Scroll” hypnotizes whales with far out, spacious sounds while the band achieves near-ZZ Top levels of boogie glory and future nostalgia on the commanding title track. —Morgan Y. Evans
Way back in early March, when people could still safely gather in a sweaty rock ’n’ roll club, Ken Fox & Knock Yourself Out lit a musical fire at Quinn’s in their hometown of Beacon. Longtime Fleshtones bassist Fox and powerhouse combo Knock Yourself Out were celebrating the release of this dynamo of an EP. With his fiery, quavering delivery, Fox makes a convincing front man. It also doesn’t hurt to have the explosive and versatile KYO as the musical engine room, along with a host of notable Hudson Valley players adding horns, piano, and violin. Fleshtones fans will recognize the gloriously buzzy, Fox-penned “Let’s Go!” and “One Step Less” from 1995’s Laboratory of Sound. The psych-punk ramalama of the Pink Fairies’ “Do It” is a highlight, as is the power-pop-meets-honky-tonk of “Love is in the Grave.” —Jeremy Schwartz
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books Suffrage and Its Limits: The New York Story Kathleen M. Dowley, Susan Ingalls Lewis, Meg Devlin O’Sullivan STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS, 2020, $95
Here is an interdisciplinary overview of the legacy and limits of suffrage for women in New York State on its 100th anniversary. Bringing together scholars with a wide variety of research specialties, Suffrage initiates a timely dialogue that links an appreciation of accomplishments to a clearer understanding of present problems and an agenda for future progress. With a preface by Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul and a final chapter by activist Barbara Smith, this collection combines diverse approaches and analyses to make connections between history, political science, public policy, sociology, philosophy, and activism. This study moves beyond merely celebrating the centennial to tackle women’s issues of today and tomorrow.
Poisoned Jennifer Donnelly SCHOLASTIC PRESS, 2020, $17.99
Donnelly, a Hudson Valley resident and the author of the New York Times bestseller Stepsister, offers a dark, feminist retelling of the Snow White fairytale in her latest young adult novel. A kind and foolish princess named Sophie rides off into the forest with the queen’s huntsman, who steals her heart (literally, with a knife), seemingly at the command of the jealous queen. After being saved by seven mysterious strangers, Sophie begins to question whether or not the queen is really to blame, and what effect the poisonous words of others have had on her. Sophie must find the strength to overcome the limiting narratives others have written for her, to keep girls like Sophie from becoming too powerful or too strong.
The Second Mother Jenny Milchman SOURCEBOOKS LANDMARK, 2020, $26.99
In this haunting thriller, Julie Weathers, a young mother who has lost her daughter to sudden infant death syndrome and her marriage to her husband’s alcoholism and abuse, attempts to piece her life back together after answering a job posting: “Opportunity: Teacher needed in one-room schoolhouse on remote island in Maine. Find the freedom in a fresh start.” Julie moves to Mercy Island and kicks off a classic tale of isolated-community psychological suspense. She befriends neighbors and slowly gains fascinating insights into the history of the tight-knit community. But soon Julie comes to suspect that she may have traded one troubled place for another, and she begins to wonder if the greatest danger of the island is its remote location or the people who live there.
Sketch & Finish: The Journey From Here To There Milton Glaser PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS, 2020, $19.99
The design legend (and part-time Woodstock resident before his death a few months ago) demystifies his creative process in this thoughtful and visually stimulating collection of illustrations showing his journey from sketch to finish. Glaser was a truly multidisciplinary designer working in exhibition, interior, and product designs. Glaser writes, “The tentativeness in the act of sketching is crucial. Doubt is essential. If you already know the answer before you start, why bother? Conviction is the killer of imagination.” As he purposefully intends for the reader, it is fascinating to see the paths one’s mind takes from the spark of a thought.
A Kabbalah of Food: Stories, Teachings, Recipes Rabbi Hanoch Hecht MONKFISH, 2020, $16.95
Truly a book about nourishing the soul. Thirty-nine Chassidic tales revolving around food and eating are accompanied by spiritual teachings and 63 recipes delving into the mysteries of the Kabbalah exploring Kosher and modern Jewish cuisine. Rabbi Hecht is the spiritual leader of the Rhinebeck Jewish Center; a member of an international family of notable rabbis around the world; and he’s known as the Six-Minute Rabbi, innovator of the renowned Six-Minute Torah geared toward business people with busy schedules. Rabbi Hecht has instructed at the Culinary Institute of America and competed on the Food Network’s “Chopped,” cooking in competition with a priest, a nun, and a pastor. (Hecht finished second behind the pastor.) —Lee Anne Albritton
Sex Death Enlightenment: A True Story Mark Matousek MONKFISH BOOK PUBLISHING COMPANY, 2020, $16.95
In this timely, candid, and mesmerizing reissue (new introduction) of Mark Matousek’s 1996 best-selling, breakout memoir, readers are transported back to the mid-`80s in Manhattan, when AIDS cases were rising rapidly and New York City was an exciting and insane place to live. As an editor for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine (he describes Warhol as “the grand vizier of meaninglessness and the most famous artist in the world”), Matousek, was “plugged into the epicenter of that insanity.” But after a few years of rubbing elbows with celebrities and witnessing the devastation that AIDS was wreaking on his friends and the gay community, Matousek began to feel the heaviness and emptiness of the glittery and shallow existence he was living. “In the three years since I had started working at Interview, Andy had come to symbolize everything that was wrong with the world: hype and cleverness without soul, a Technicolor surface without depth, a glittering facade fashioned from fame, name, and money.” This was in sharp contrast to how he felt as a young teenager who, at 15, had run away from his tumultuous home in Los Angeles with a friend. In describing how he felt the first time he emerged from the subway in the West Village Matousek writes: “I stood there watching this wonderful circus pass by. New York matched my idea of how huge and outrageous my life could be. Its scale was my scale. I could fit in here and start all over, 3,000 miles away from my mother, those old memories, all that bad blood.” In a scary but somewhat funny experience (in retrospect), they only lasted a week and had to call Matousek’s mother for money to help them get home. But Matousek knew he would return, which he did upon graduating from college. Just a few years later, the AIDS epidemic became an intimate part of his reality. Matousek describes being on vacation with his college buddy John (and partner in bitching) in Jamaica and noticing a lesion on John’s foot. “In the instant that I saw John’s lesion, in the seconds it took me to realize what it was and what it meant for both of us, life as I’d known it cracked down the middle, from chimney to basement. The house I’d lived in—the self I’d believed in, the future I’d thought was waiting for me—was suddenly condemned. Though it was John’s foot and not mine, I knew without question that the virus was in me.” As the AIDS epidemic came into his own life, grief and fear were added to his expanding sense of dissatisfaction. Upon meeting British writer Alexander Maxwell, he decides to leave the fast-track publishing life and to hit “the dharma trail in search of a meaningful life and spiritual wisdom.” Together as lovers, they travel to India and to Germany to meet with Mother Meera, a young woman believed by many to be an embodiment of the Divine Mother. Matousek candidly shares his journey and the often unsettling experiences he has had with trances, visions, and the mystical energy of some of the gurus he encountered on his spiritual journey. This page-turning account of Matousek’s hard and often terrifying childhood (unstable single mother, three sisters each suffering in their own way, sexual abuse, and a stint as a teenage hustler) and the path of his spiritual journey make for an engaging and enlightening reading experience. In the pages of this candid and courageous account of one man’s expansive search for spiritual meaning are profound messages of inspiration and hope. Something we could all use today. —Jane Kinney Denning 11/20 CHRONOGRAM BOOKS 55
poetry
Brown Skin, Sin, (compassion) 4,000 Newton’s Will snap your femur And mine. Lives? Hold any close Like-kin. So one says, Stomp and hold One knee to one chest? Is this the best Humanity can serve? So for you, The skin we ware Ain’t always what we choose. Never there a choice. THEREFORE: claim privilege? We did not choose a costume; Random skin. DNA like tidal swirls; Chromosomes link or are undone. I am undone. Your adrenaline hatred. Your scorn for brown skin. Your stump dumb prejudice. Call me Buddha. Come Mohammad Where are you Christ? If the brown baby cried; Would you feed it Like a breast? 4000 Newton’s Of pressure will break Your femur or mine. A feather weight breaks mine. A knee decimates —Jason S. Davis
The Delivery The UPS driver delivered a boxful of my new book. I gave him one. “You’re a writer?” he said. “No,” I said. “I’m a poet.” “Oh, is there a difference?” he said. “Yes, writers write to be understood. Poets write to be remembered,” I said. “Well, I’ll remember you,” he said. “Good,” I said. “Also it couldn’t hurt to understand what you remember.” “Got it,” he said. —JR Solonche
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EDITED BY Phillip X Levine
The Pros and Cons of Cigarettes Musical accompaniment: Haydn string quartet in C minor op. 17 no. 4 movement 4. When you’re young, they’re something new— they give your hands a task to do; and, then, you’re looking so mundane— just add a top hat and a cane; they buzz a person pretty fast— five minutes in, you’re flabbergast. Sure, drinking hits you more profound but not as quick, just ask around; the soothing of the nerves, also the analytical gusto; they keep your concentration strong, your train of thought they will prolong; at least that’s how it goes at first— it don’t take long to get immersed. Besides to help you concentrate, they’re efficacious to lose weight; suppressing appetites sure hooks some people hung up on their looks; and, then, there are folks who lean t’ward just having smokes because they’re bored; which is another way to say they need `em to get through the day. They give you something of a break and maybe help you stay awake; but when you’re older you’re aware tobacco’s not so debonair; the repetition does infer it’s rather an empty succor; and then there is the vulgar smell you qualify under its spell; it’s true they help to calm you down but notice how your teeth are brown; your skin’s sallow and leathery— you don’t exude salubrity. To get addicted to a plant is rather most inelegant; sure, it was lots of fun at first but now the fun feels all coerced; and every year it’s harder still to get your breath to move uphill. You know they’re going to kill you soon and that will be inopportune; look at the mucus you eject— it’s unrefined if left unchecked; your lungs are gasping from the strain— that smoking, sir, is quite the bane! —Wortley Clutterbuck
Yellow Stave I am the knowledge of the experience of my awareness The shadow ahead is the light behind I am the tree that shadows life —Josh Sweet
Self Medication Often it appears as a slight inflammation, insignificant. Yet the attention is drawn. Even though you know better to leave it, you just have to pick until it becomes really sore. One day you wake; she’s gone to seek a second opinion. —Clifford Henderson
Rubber Band I like a certain type of rubber band, with a band that’s thick and square-shaped. Only the tan ones. They come in boxes with rubber band dust, and then hang above my sink. Not circles, or anything really, shape indistinct, they give you… freedom, and limitation; expansion, and a place to come home. I want love like my rubber bands. —Anna Keville Joyce
Man Song Some plants seed in autumn, And some in the spring. We seed where life takes us, But often in dreams. It takes but a glance, “Yes, my coffee with cream.” But the moment passes, Leaves lost in a stream. —James Lichtenberg
Full submission guidelines: Chronogram.com/submissions
When It Was Winter/The Egg of Potential/ For the Good Man in My Life, Whoever You Are I was just a bunch of bare branches camouflaged by the hides of hemlock and doug fir and even my own detritus. I was a withered trunk that you trekked to and sought out my secret bounty. You slid your hand up and down the grain of my chilly bark and fingered between the splits until I felt a heartbeat. You stuck a tap in me and turned my sap into syrup. You sucked my sugar into your mouth and were satiated by my sweetness. Stop. This poem isn’t about sex. This poem is about self-love ourselves-love This poem is about you cracking my egg of potential that I’d been afraid to hatch.
Reflection
Bleed Into My Boy
I am Born Daily Into My Own Arms, From the Womb of Yesterday, And Delivered to The Handmaiden of Tomorrow. Who am I then To Speculate On Reincarnation?
This is my son I draw him a bit darker today
—Bob Grawi
After Rain You are the kind of color and smell to sew bells on, so when you grow distant, I’ll know— even from under the blankets— that it’s time to start the chase. —Adriana Stimola
—Paula Dutcher
Imagining His World lying there listening to his labored breathing now saddened to think of the time when it will stop then smiling to hear his floorboard scratching all legs twitching in full muffled barking pursuit and wondering what creatures he can be chasing in his exhilaratingly exhausting dreamworld game watching him later as he rests at driveway’s end trying to imagine how he knows to patiently wait for the time his small friends take their daily walk curious to comprehend why well into his old age he still finds so much comfort in the stuffed toys that he proudly offers to us when we return home or uses for his pillows on stone floors or soft rugs or sneaks outside on walks to show off his domain before absently dropping under some tree or bush trying to picture his life shared with others before us that compels him to block the way when you vacuum or bark crazily when family now playfully hug or kiss or anxiously paces waiting each evening homecoming measured minutes and miles from my journey’s end hoping that all the memories he seems to still hold stay alive in him in the other world that he will enter when that final sleep puts to rest his labored breaths
I press hard on the pen and feel the weight and watch the ink bleed into my boy I draw him and I press hard because I think on him I love on him every day I watch the ink play through his hair dripping into tiny locks dreaded What is this my fair son twelve and bigger each day I can feel a new firmness in his back when we wrestle I think on this sketch this darker sketch of my boy carried into our lighter town he’s chasing a friend across a neighbor’s yard How hard do I press the pen before my boy is a threat and not a friend —James Christopher Carroll
Mother his small hands grabbed at birds and bugs without the grace to understand the delicacy of their spines as they struggled free and she watched him apologizing, with her eyes, for all the things in life that would escape him and make his world not his —Sophia V Paffenroth
—James DelViscio
11/20 CHRONOGRAM POETRY 57
music
Hudson Valley Votes Virtual Concert and Rally Scenes from the Hudson Valley Votes concert at Hutton Brickyard that was broadcast on October 17. Clockwise from top: Ben Perowsky, Abena Loomson-Davis, Natalie Merchant, and Corey Glover. Photos by Phil Mansfield
58 THE GUIDE CHRONOGRAM 11/20
“This election is really important,” says hitmaker Norah Jones when asked why she decided to lend her talents to a concert sponsored by the local Hudson Valley Votes organization to benefit Democratic candidates last month. “When I was asked to be involved, saying yes was just a no brainer.” Jones as well as fellow performers Natalie Merchant, Emily King, Meshell Ndegeocello, Justin Vivian Bond, Nels Cline, Sean Lennon, Amy Helm, John Medeski, Kate Pierson, Brian Collazo, Abena Koomson-Davis, Jack DeJohnette, Nels Cline, Gail Ann Dorsey, Corey Glover, Dave Holland, Steve Jordan, Simi Stone, and many others performed for free remotely and at Hutton Brickyards in Kingston and were taped for the prerecorded program, which was broadcast virtually on October 17. Also appearing at the star-packed online concert/ rally were candidates Antonio Delgado, Jen Metzger,
Michelle Hinchey, and Karen Smythe and a roster of guest speakers that included comedian, actor, and musician Fred Armisen; musician Melissa Auf der Maur; actors Cally Mansfield, Tim Guinee, Thomas Sadoski, Bobby Tisdale, Amanda Seyfried, and Mary Stuart Masterson (volunteers from the latter’s Stockade Works film production firm assisted with the effort); Ulster County Sheriff Juan Figueroa; Town of Woodstock Deputy Supervisor Reggie Earls; drag artist Brita Filter; and activists Rebecca Martin, Moraya Seeger DeGeare, and Maitreya Motel. The uplifting event, which encouraged viewers to donate online to progressive nonprofit fundraising group ActBlue and regional voter-advocacy organization Common Cause New York, was streamed on the Hudson Valley Votes YouTube channel and social media, as well as on Radio Kingston, Radio Woodstock, and other outlet. —Peter Aaron
the guide
A still from Dislocation Blues, a video by Sky Hopinka
It’s a piece about reincarnation and looking at the world, and life and death; it was a way to recontextualize my tribe’s beliefs, which seemed so foreign and distant to me growing up, as they do to others looking in. It’s about weaving something new together. These are the words that accompany one of the videos in “Centers of Somewhere,” the powerful first solo museum exhibition of the work of Sky Hopinka, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians. They refer to I’ll Remember You as You Were, not as What You’ll Become, which Hopinka describes as an elegy to Diane Burns, the late Indigenous poet who explored themes about racism and colonialism in the US. But they also aptly summarize the central themes that unite the selected works, on view at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College through February 14. Curated by Lauren Cornell, director of the Graduate Program and the chief curator for CCS Bard, “Centers of Somewhere” is part of a series of solo shows designed to provide emerging artists with a platform to make a significant statement about their work. Throughout the photography and experimental films on view, the 36-year-old visual artist and filmmaker seeks to destabilize entrenched colonial perspectives of Indigenous peoples and recast descriptions of land, sky, sea, myth, place, and personhood in their own words. Language, which Hopinka describes as a container of culture, plays a central role throughout the installation. Hopinka often subtitles his films in either English, Hočąk, or Chinuk Wawa, a nearly extinct Indigenous language that Hopinka teaches. In Jáaji Approx, (“jáaji” is a Hočąk term used to directly address a father), the artist juxtaposes audio recordings of his father, Mike Hopinka, a powwow singer, relaying
personal experiences through anecdotes and song, with video footage of landscapes—mountain, sea, sky, roads—the two have traveled both together and alone. The imagery grows more abstract and begins to merge and separate, very much like the relationship between a father and son, between generations, between languages and emotional experience that can’t be articulated with words. At the end of the film, Hopinka crosses a bridge and then cuts to a still-shot—the first and only static image in the film—of the artist’s father sitting in the passenger seat of a car watching a sunset, capturing a poignant moment of repose and reflection at the end of a journey. “The films are told from a personal place and a place that is fluid and looks at different linguistic systems and at the US from the perspective of its colonial history,” Cornell explains. “The videos offer something new by way of a visual and sonic vocabulary.” Here you are before the trees, a newly commissioned, multichannel installation, consists of footage Hopinka shot while traveling through landscapes in the Hudson Valley, where he currently resides, and Wisconsin, where he is from. By visually connecting these different regions that contain indigenous histories, Hopinka “is very much trying to destabilize the very historical, traditional, romantic ways that the Hudson Valley has been seen by looking at landscapes anew,” according to Cornell. The experience of “Centers of Somewhere” is profound and revelatory. On the one hand there is the bucolic beauty and lyricism of the imagery, and on the other, a palpable tension and longing inherent in the words, both spoken and written, used to attempt to convey how the visualized landscapes are seen, felt and experienced by the Indigenous peoples who inhabit them. —Dan Fisher
Big Sky Country “SKY HOPINKA: CENTERS OF SOMEWHERE” Through February 14 at CCS Bard Ccs.bard.edu
11/20 CHRONOGRAM THE GUIDE 59
music
In the Tranes’ Name THE 2020 HUDSON JAZZ FESTIVAL November 13–December 20 Hudsonhall.org.
Clockwise from top: Marcus Strickland, Orrin Evans, Camille Thurman, Brandee Younger, JD Allen There’s music that’s stylistically transcendental, that cuts across genre boundaries and appeals to all kinds of listeners. And there’s also music that’s itself transcendental, that puts forth a profound, mystical feeling, inspiring listeners to look both skyward and inward as they contemplate their place in the universe. Very rarely has there been music that does both of these things. But the music Alice and John Coltrane made, individually and together, certainly does. It attracts not only jazz fans, but also those denizens of the classical, R&B, psychedelic, hip-hop, experimental, and world-music realms who are open to searching, soulful sounds. It was the shared sonic quality and farreaching allure of the Coltranes’ music that Cat Henry, the curator of the 2020 Hudson Jazz Festival, had in mind while she was assembling the event, which will run from November 13 through December 20 virtually and at Hudson Hall. “Their music has a real healing aspect to it,” Henry says. “Like [John Coltrane’s 1963 album] A Love Supreme, which deals with grieving and recovery. That’s something that’s we really need right now. With the 60 THE GUIDE CHRONOGRAM 11/20
festival, I didn’t want it to just be a tribute series. Even though the festival programming does reflect on John and Alice’s legacy, it also connects with that healing force of their music and how it relates to people living through difficult times. And to the struggle for racial justice that was going on when they were alive and is still going on now.” The six-week festival, designed to pick up Hudson’s cultural-economic baton from the summer Shared Streets mercantile program enacted by the city in response to COVID-19, will bring some of the contemporary jazz scene’s standout musicians to Hudson Hall for live-streamed concerts. It all begins on November 13 with the opening of “Art & Soul,” a festival-long group art show managed by local artist Reginald Morrison and featuring living room-like, health protocol-mindful “pods” in which attendees can relax and listen to handpicked playlists. The run of live-streamed performances kicks off with harpist Brandee Young and her trio (November 14), followed by the Marcus Strickland Quartet (November 21), the Orrin Evans Trio (November 28), the JD Allen Trio (December 4),
and the Camille Thurman with the Darrell Green Trio (December 12). Also planned are free talks by Grammy winner Ashley Kahn, the author of the John Coltrane biography A Love Supreme, the Impulse! Records history The House That Trane Built, and other books; noted musicologist Kwame Coleman; and others. “The Coltranes were deeply spiritual people, and their lives were a shared expression of their music,” offers Henry, who served as vice president of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s concerts and touring wing from 2014 to 2020. “They were about peace, togetherness, and harmony, which is what we want to bring to Hudson with this festival.” The Hudson Jazz Festival will take place from November 13 through December 20 at Hudson Hall in Hudson. Livestreamed concerts will air November 13 through December 12 at 7pm (tickets are $20 or pay what you can for each concert; a package pass for all five concerts is $75). The “Art & Soul” exhibit is free on Fridays through Sundays from 1 to 5pm, with timedentry admittance (online reservations are required). —Peter Aaron
Debra Priestly “ me m o r y wa l k i n g ” Opening : November 7, 12 – 6 pm November 4 – December 13, 2020 www.11janestreet.com
© Debra Priestly “looking glass 8”, 1999 china, steel, wood, photo transfer, paint 32 x 32 x 7 in.
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11/20 CHRONOGRAM THE GUIDE 61
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Holiday Pottery Show & Sale November 20–29
Open daily 10–5pm Closed Thanksgiving Member Discount Day & Opening Reception Friday, Nov. 20, 1–7pm See website for COVID precautions and procedures
Celebrating the best of rural life in Berkshire, Columbia, northern Dutchess and northern Litchfield counties
ruralintelligence.com PART OF THE
62 THE GUIDE CHRONOGRAM 11/20
FAMILY
art
Aaron Siskind, Church Interior, Harlem, 1938
Jean-Marc Superville-Sovak has a passion for history, especially those corners of history that don’t make it into textbooks. “New York State was the number one destination on the Underground Railroad,” he informs me. “John Brown [the radical abolitionist] is buried in the Adirondacks.” Superville-Sovak is also an artist, who has combined his love of history and art to curate “We Wear the Mask: Race and Representation in the Dorsky Museum Permanent Collection.” The show will be on view until November 22. “We Wear the Mask” is an ambitious survey, including an Ethiopian Christian gouache, a portrait of a child by the Harlem photographer James Van Der Zee (1925), an ancient Egyptian pottery figurine of a slave, and two pieces by Richard Howard Hunt, the first African-American sculptor to have a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, in 1969. Two Polaroid portraits of the artist JeanMichel Basquiat by Andy Warhol are included. The photographer who took these pictures was not the aloof, blasé Warhol persona everyone knows. He was a careful, sensual observer, especially attuned to the private pain of celebrities. You can see Andy Warhol’s envy in these photos, as he stares at the inspired artist with luscious, creamy skin who is electrifying the art world, while Warhol’s greatest work was behind him. But in Basquiat’s face we see the torments of a young man who too swiftly became famous for his bitter paintings mocking racism. One of the Basquiat portraits is paired with a famous Goya etching, The Dream of Reason Produces
Monsters, showing a man asleep at his desk, as bats and owls flock around him. Basquiat was also beset by a host of demons. He died of a drug overdose in 1988. The stereoscope was a 19th-century gadget allowing one to see three-dimensional images by placing a card with two identical photographs in a wire holder. The paired photographs were usually black-and-white, like the one in this show, of AfricanAmerican sharecroppers picking cotton, as their overseer lurks behind on horseback (Cotton is King Plantation Scene, Georgia, circa 1900). Tourists would watch cotton pickers the same way they might gaze at a marina full of colorful sailboats—without considering the near servitude and penury of the workers before them. “To me, there is something obscene about this image,” Superville-Sovak writes in the wall text. This is the first show the artist has curated, but he is not entirely new to the process of selection. “Every good artist has to curate their own work,” he points out. The exhibition doesn’t feel didactic, but rather like a gathering of neglected jewels and surprises. Only a small percentage of the 6,000 items in the Dorsky collection is typically on view. It’s gratifying to see pieces that usually remain in storage. Often, African-American art objects find themselves on those sad shelves. The Black Lives Matter movement challenges us to examine the racism within us. It’s a long, grueling, and liberating effort. “We Wear the Mask” is a visual companion to that struggle. —Sparrow
Masks That Don’t Come off “WE WEAR THE MASK” AT THE DORSKY MUSEUM Through November 22 Newpaltz.edu/museum
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exhibits “SASCHA MALLON: INNEN WELTEN-INNER WORLDS” AT WAAM
The Woodstock Artists Association & Museum reopens its on-site galleries on November 13 with two solo exhibitions, Mallon’s and “C. J. Matherne: Stacked Against You,” both chosen by Kristen Dodge, owner and director of September Gallery in Hudson. Mallon makes small ceramic sculptures representing female figures, plants, and animals, which she groups in sitespecific installations.Her work is predominantly about the cycle of life, and within that context her sculptures serve as pictograms, carriers of hidden messages, and memento mori, creating dreamlike worlds whose narratives illustrate relationships, transitions, and dichotomies such as life/death. There is a surreal quality to Mallon’s work, with figures covered by flowers and insects, an unusual sense of scale, and bodies opening up to reveal scenes inside. “Innen Welten-Inner Worlds” will be on display through February 1. Woodstockart.org Poppy Mountain, Sascha Mallon
“KIKI SMITH: RIVER LIGHT” AT STORM KING ART CENTER
This solo exhibition of outdoor works marks Kiki Smith’s first presentation of flags—a new element within her expansive production—in the United States. For this exhibition (which closes November 9) Smith has created a new collection of flags whose unpredictable, ever-changing movements mimic the ebb and flow of water in a river. Installed on Storm King’s Museum Hill with long views of Storm King Mountain and the Hudson Highlands, the flags present an ephemeral installation that is activated by the natural world around it. Arranged in a circular procession, the images in the nine blue flags are pulled from a film Smith created in 2005 of glints of sunlight on the East River. Do make sure to reserve a spot ASAP as Storm King tends to sell out, especially on weekends. Stormking.org An installation view of "Kiki Smith: River Light" Photo by Jeffery Jenkins
“RANSOME: THE VIEW FROM HERE” AT BARRETT ART CENTER
Part of Barrett’s series of solo shows selected by leading curators from across the country, “Ransome: The View from Here” was chosen by Ashley James, associate curator of contemporary art at the Guggenheim Museum. Ransome’s work focuses on images that centered around his African-American lineage, a through line that connects back to his sharecropper ancestors. Combining acrylic paint with an array of found, created, and purchased papers, Ransome’s work is imbued with the spontaneity of hip hop artists and the resourcefulness of rural quilters, creating a fusion that unites historical folkways with a modern, urban sensibility. The pictorial narratives are personal, yet the symbols interplay with larger social, racial, ancestral, economic, and political histories that speak to current issues. The show in Poughkeepsie runs through November 14. Barrettartcenter.org Who Should Own Black Art?, Ransome
64 THE GUIDE CHRONOGRAM 11/20
exhibits
Electrolux, Pamela Zaremba
“PAMELA ZAREMBA: TRANSPOSED” AT BAU Running from November 14 through December 6 at BAU in Beacon, Pamela Zaremba’s new series of photographs created during the pandemic, “Transposed.” Zaremba captures a skewed domesticity in her work, imbuing the seemingly banal scenes with an undertone of The Stepford Wives-style creepiness. That the photographer happens to live in the suburban idyll of Westport, Connecticut, which the town of Stepford was based on in Ira Levin’s satirical thriller, is a fitting subtext for the series. The photos also try and marry the current moment of heightened domesticity, when we are all spending more time in our homes, with the historical confinement of women to homes and householding. As Zaremba notes in her artist’s statement: “This pandemic prompted a resurgence of finding comfort in the day-to-day chores under a profoundly complex context, one that continues to unfold seemingly indefinitely.” Baugallery.org
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exhibits
11 JANE ST
11 JANE STREET, SAUGERTIES “Michael Pope: Strange Tales From the Apocalypse Heart.” Fridays-Sundays. “Debra Priestly: Memory Walking.” November 4-December 13. Opening reception November 7, 12-6pm.
ALDRICH CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 258 MAIN STREET, RIDGEFIELD, CT
“Through the Eye of a Needle.” First major solo museum exhibition of New York-based artist Genesis Belanger. “Frank Stella’s Stars: A Survey.” Outdoor installation. Both shows through May 9.
ANN STREET GALLERY
104 ANN STREET, NEWBURGH “Black Renaissance Festival.” Juried group show curated by Kirsten Kucer. Through November 28.
ARTPORT KINGSTON
110 EAST STRAND STREET, KINGSTON “We Are All in This Together.” Artists: Doreen McCarthy, Alexander Hammond, Kirsten Hassenfeld, Jacinta Brunnel, Jennifer Dalton, Ann Tarantino, Patricia Tewes Richards, Mary Ann Strandell, Roxanne Faber Savage, Stefan Saffer, Jeila Gueramian, Susan Rowe Harrison, Karlos Carcamo, Dan Devine, Michelle Weinberg, Christine Stiver. Through November 7.
BARD COLLEGE : CCS BARD GALLERIES ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON
“Sky Hopinka: Centers of Somehwere.” First solo museum exhibition of artist and filmmaker Sky Hopinka. Through February 14.
BARRETT HOUSE ART CENTER
55 NOXON STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE “New Directions 2020.” 36th annual national juried contrmporary art exhibition juried by Nic Brierre Aziz of the New Orleans Museum of Art. Through Novermber 14. “Ransome: The View From Here.” Through November 14.
BAU GALLERY
506 MAIN STREET, BEACON “Splits: Jebah Baum.” Lithographic transfer prints. “Double/Exposure.” New work by Melissa Schlobolm. Both shows Through November 7. “Pamela Zaremba: Transposed.” November 14-December 6.
BOARDMAN ROAD BRANCH LIBRARY 141 BOARDMAN ROAD, POUGHKEEPSIE
“Lynn Schamberger: Needlepoint and Fiber Art.” November 3-January 3.
CARRIE HADDAD GALLERY
622 WARREN STREET, HUDSON “Man & Machine.” Group show with Mark Beard, Matthew Hopkins, Robert Goldstrom, Harry Orlyk, Joseph Richards, Allan Skirloff, Lee Musselman, and Nick Simpson. Through November 29.
CLARK ART INSTITUTE
225 SOUTH STREET, WILLIAMSTOWN, MA “Ground/work.” First outdoor exhibition at the Clark featuring work by Kelly Akashi, Nairy Baghramian, Jennie C. Jones, Eva LeWitt, Analia Saban, and Haegue Yang. Through October 2021.
CORNELL CREATIVE BUSINESS & ARTS CENTER 129 CORNELL STREET, KINGSTON
“We Are All Human.” Group show juried by MariaElena Ferrer. Through November 30.
DIA:BEACON
“WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER” AT ARTPORT KINGSTON Though November 9 at the newly opened contemporary art space in the historic Cornell Steamboat building in Kingston’s Rondout neighborhood, works that address the challenging times we live in and invites the twin questions: What is our communal awareness? What do we all have in common? The works in “We’re All in This Together” are frankly optimistic and refreshingly upbeat. Artists in the exhibition: Doreen McCarthy, Alexander Hammond, Kirsten Hassenfeld, Jacinta Brunnel, Jennifer Dalton, Ann Tarantino, Patricia Tewes Richards, Mary Ann Strandell, Roxanne Faber Savage, Stefan Saffer, Jeila Gueramian, Susan Rowe Harrison, Karlos Carcamo, Dan Devine, Michelle Weinberg, and Christine Stiver. Artportkingston.com Memory Blanket, Jacinta Bunnell
3 BEEKMAN STREET, BEACON Works by Lee Ufan, Sam Gilliam, Mel Bochner, Barry Le Va, Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, and others on long-term view.
EMERGE GALLERY & ART SPACE 228 MAIN STREET, SAUGERTIES
“Petit: Smaller Sized Art.” Works sized 11” x 14” and under. November 7-29.
FRANCES LEHMAN LOEB ART CENTER VASSAR COLLEGE, POUGHKEEPSIE
“Miracles on the Border: Retablos of Mexican Migrants to the United States.” Retablos are thank-you notes to the heavens dedicated to Christ, the Virgin, or saints to consecrate a miraculous event. The votives in this exhibition— spanning the entirety of the 20th century—were offered by Mexican migrants and their families to commemorate the dangers of crossing the border and living in the United States. Through December 13.
FERROVIA STUDIOS
17 RAILROAD AVENUE, KINGSTON “David Schoichet: Recent Work.” Schoichet’s black and white photographs are exclusively of people of color; his subjects range from brief interactions with strangers at public events such as protests, rallies, and marches, to intimate portraits of family and friends. Ongoing.
GARRISON ART CENTER
23 GARRISON’S LANDING, GARRISON “Chairs: Re-Created.” An online auction of chairs by esteemed reginal artists to benefit GAC. Through November 14.
HOLLAND TUNNEL ART
46 CHAMBERS STREET, NEWBURGH “Terra/Derma.” Work by Marieken Cochius, Kent Peterson, and Romina Gonzales. Through November 22.
66 THE GUIDE CHRONOGRAM 11/20
HUDSON BEACH GLASS GALLERY 162 MAIN STREET, BEACON
exhibits
“Thomas Rodda: Paintings”. Through November 8.
LABSPACE
2642 NY ROUTE 23, HILLSDALE “In My Room: Susan Carr.” Paintings, drawings, sculpture and ceramics. Through November 8.
MAGAZZINO ITALIAN ART
2700 ROUTE 9, COLD SPRING “Bochner Boetti Fontana.” Examines the formal, conceptual and procdural affinites in the work of Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, and Lucio Fontana. Curated by Mel Bochner. Through January 11.
MARK GRUBER GALLERY
NEW PALTZ PLAZA, NEW PALTZ “Barns and Boats.” Through November 28.
MOTHER GALLERY
1154 NORTH AVENUE, BEACON “The Hunch.” Daniel Giordano, Marcy Hermansader, and Caitlin MacQueen. Through November 22.
NEW YORK RESTAURANT
353 MAIN STREET, CATSKILL “Sirpa Cowell: Paintings.” Through January 1.
OLIVE FREE LIBRARY
4033 ROUTE 28, WEST SHOKAN “If Only.” Group show of feminist artwork by Katharine Umstead, Jacinta Bunnell, Carole Kunstadt, Yvette Lewis, and Natali Bravo-Barbee. Through November 7.
PAMELA SALISBURY GALLERY
362 1/2 WARREN STREET, HUDSON “Escape Clause.” An exhibition of works by thirteen recent graduates of Bard College and Bennington College. Escape Clause is curated by Gee Wesley, a current student at the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard. November 7-December 6.
THE POUGHKEEPSIE TROLLEY BARN 489 MAIN STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE
“The Art Effect Alumni Show.” Drawing, painting, sculpture, tattoo, and more from alumni from Spark Media, Mill Street Loft, and the Art Effect. Through November 21.
ROCA
27 SOUTH GREENBUSH ROAD, WEST NYACK “Fire & Indigo: Gerardo Castro.” Puerto Rican-born Gerardo Castro tells stories through burnings on paper. Castro’s art work is drenched with powerful narratives—supernatural forces influenced by Afro-Cuban religions and spirituality that enables a connection to history and a courageous confrontation of meaning and myth, ethnicity, and gender. Through November 21.
SAMUEL DORSKY MUSEUM OF ART 1 HAWK DRIVE, NEW PALTZ
“Dos Mundos: (Re)Constructing Narratives.” Twleve artists who center stories at the fringe of public attention: hidden sanctuaries, subcultures, painful identities, far-away homes, spirituality, transcendence, broken promises, and all too easily ignored social ecologies. Through November 22. ‘We Wear the Mask: Race and Representation in the Dorsky Museum Permanent Collection.” Curated by Jean-Marc Superville Sovak. Through November 22.
STORM KING ART CENTER
1 MUSEUM ROAD, NEW WINDSOR “A stone that thinks of Enceladus: Martha Tuttle.” Outdoor exhibition is series of human-made stone stacks or cairns, built of boulders gathered at Storm King, and molded glass and carved marble stones. Ongoing.
THE RE INSTITUTE
1395 BOSTON CORNERS ROAD, MILLERTON “Together in Isolation”. Long-term outdoor exhibition about the pandemic. Through November 13.
THOMAS COLE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE 218 SPRING STREET, CATSKILL
“Pollinator Pavilion.” A 21 ½-foot-high, painted wood, architectural confection draped with flowers, plants, and paintings by Mark Dion and Dana Sherwood. Ongoing.
TIVOLI ARTISTS GALLERY 60 BROADWAY, TIVOLI
“Members’ Best.” Exhibit of member work. Through November 15.
WOODSTOCK ART EXCHANGE 1398 ROUTE 28, WOODSTOCK
“Small Etchings: Joseph Owczarek”. A registered architect and interior designer, Owczarek studied drawing and printmaking at the Illustrators Society, Spring Street Studio, and the Salmagundi Club. Through December 28.
WOODSTOCK ARTISTS ASSOCIATION AND MUSEUM
“TERRA/DERMA” AT HOLLAND TUNNEL
This three-person show in Newburgh brings together the work of Marieken Cochius, Kent Peterson, and Romina Gonzales. A central theme running through the exhibit: the ways in which natural and humanmade forces are changing the surface of the Earth in both subtle and dramatic ways. Cochius’ mixedmedia collage series, “Elements of the Motherboard,” includes a variety of natural materials and shows how natural forms change over time, addressing the destruction of the environment as man-made systems collapse and damage the world around them. The cracked surfaces of Peterson’s “Strata” paintings are made by painting over tar, reminiscent of geological structures that have been eroded over time. Gonzales’ series of sculptures, “Finding the Window” are life-sized masses of pulled glass. Hollandtunnelgallery.com Romina Gonzales working on a piece from her "Finding the Window" series.
28 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK
“C.J. Matherne: Stacked Against You.” Matherne’s body of work is informed by an experience the artist had a number of years ago teaching art in Miami with a population of chronically homeless adults. The vulnerability of their condition left an indelible mark on Matherne. Using both the human body and architectural forms, the paintings explore this vulnerability. November 13-February 1.
11/20 CHRONOGRAM THE GUIDE 67
Horoscopes By Lorelai Kude
MENTAL WHIPLASH, SOCIAL ROT, AND REVOLUTION
Everything you always wanted to know about COVID but were afraid to ask
THURSDAY, 11/19, 4:30-6PM
Mental whiplash is the most likely injury during the first week of November. Mercury retrograde in justice-loving Libra is knocked off balance by a square to status quo seeking Saturn in Capricorn November 1. Revolt around perceived unfairness flavors Mercury’s direct station on Election Day, November 3, and Mercury squares Saturn again November 6. Confusion around communication, authority, and questions of “what is fair” and “who’s in charge” are not immediately resolved. By the Venus-Mars opposition on November 9, the polarization of the collective good vs. individual rights reaches a breaking point. Mercury enters Scorpio on November 10, empowering deep investigation into long-held secrets. The third of 2020’s Jupiter-Pluto conjunctions occurs November 12, right before Mars stations direct November 13. The lessons we didn’t learn in early April and late June come back to hit us in the collective face. If that face isn’t wearing a mask, that blow will do more than simply sting. The New Moon in Scorpio on November 14 at the Sun’s sextile to both Pluto and Jupiter demands a rebirth of basic respect for life and death, including the life of our planet, which supports all. Mercury’s third opposition to Uranus November 17 completes the trifecta of oppositions since mid-October. The discovery of subterfuge and the threat to communally shared values are revealed when Venus squares Pluto and Jupiter November 15. Deceit and distortion are exposed when Neptune stations direct November 18, though those who profit from confusion and disinformation resist with technological tools designed to sow chaos. The Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Gemini on November 30 demonstrates that we’re only as secure as our information systems. Rot from the inside is revealed when trust in formerly respected institutions collapses. Self-respect and a firm foundation inside save us from external chaos when revolution is in the air.
ARIES (March 20–April 19)
Phillip Pantuso
Managing Editor, The River Newsroom
Lissa Harris
Staff Writer, The River Newsroom
Reporters from The River Newsroom will host a conversation with panel guests from the public health, local business, and community service worlds, and answer reader questions about the pandemic—from its effects to what it’s like to cover it.
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Planetary ruler Mars stations direct Friday the 13th and not a moment too soon, as his retrograde through Aries by squares to Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto during September and October has forced confrontation with the power structures in your life. Your hard-won maturity is challenged to perform in partnership at the opposition of Venus to Mars on November 9. Sun in Mars-ruled Scorpio through November 20 fuels your urge to connect in a powerful, passionate way. Sun in inspirational Sagittarius after November 21 and a surge of charismatic superpowers November 24–26 at the Aries Moon empowers your pursuit of desire.
TAURUS (April 19–May 20) Planetary ruler Venus in Libra through November 20 continues October’s feel-good momentum. The opposition of Venus to Mars in retrograde Aries on November 9 challenges you to go the distance in relationships. Put out extra effort to find common ground and maintain harmony with loved ones when Venus squares Pluto, Jupiter, and Saturn November 15–19. Venus enters solar opposite Scorpio on November 21, injecting an intense sense of urgency into developing your own resources and protecting your existing assets. And now for something completely different: Prepare for the big reveal when Venus in Scorpio opposes Uranus in Taurus November 27. A practicing, professional astrologer for over 30 years, Lorelai Kude can be reached for questions and personal consultations via email (lorelaikude@yahoo.com) and her Kabbalah-flavored website is Astrolojew.com.
68 HOROSCOPES CHRONOGRAM 11/20
Horoscopes
GEMINI (May 20–June 21) Sandwiched between two Mercury/Saturn squares— retrograde November 1 and direct November 6—is Mercury’s direct station in Libra on November 3 in a hard square to Capricorn in the ultra-sensitive area of the zodiac, which has been bombarded by hard-core conjunctions of Saturn, Pluto, and Jupiter since January. Internal tensions must be resolved through unflinching and utterly ruthless honesty with yourself. Mercury re-enters Scorpio on November 10, empowering the deepest dive into intense self-examination. Lunar Eclipse/ Full Moon in Gemini November 30 with Mercury’s sextile to Saturn launches the next phase of intellectual inspiration, flowering maturity, and personal emotional growth.
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CANCER (June 21–July 22) The Sun in Scorpio through November 20 sharpens and defines your desires. Though it’s hard to let go, ultimately, you’ll be grateful at Last Quarter Moon in Leo November 8, prompting a conscious distinction between luxury and necessity. New Moon in Scorpio November 14 resurrects your creative forces; you start to believe in your own capacity to imbue significance into every encounter. First Quarter Moon in Pisces November 21 sparks a refreshing and much-needed spiritual renewal. Lunar Eclipse/Full Moon in Gemini November 30 reveals unconscious thought processes enabling ambiguity—root out subconscious impediments, and right the ship of state.
LEO (July 22–August 23) Oh 2020, you thought you were already intense? Sun in Scorpio through November 20 wrote the book on intensity. The possibilities unlocked during the square of your planetary ruler to your natal Sun herald tremendous creative opportunity, wrested from resolving inner conflict. Sun trine Neptune November 9, strengthening your faith and your self-confidence. Sun sextile Pluto and Jupiter at the New Moon in Scorpio November 14: Others trust your stability and determination. Sun sextile Saturn November 18; you are rewarded for hard work and a job well done. Sun enter Jupiter-ruled Sagittarius November 21, bringing bounty, buoyancy, and blessings.
VIRGO (August 23–September 23) Possible confusion and subsequent fear around finances when Mercury retrograde in Libra squares Saturn in Capricorn November 1. Don’t panic. Mercury stations direct November 3, then squares Saturn again November 6 and confusions untangle into manageable and actionable information. Mercury enter Scorpio November 10, empowering a sense of accuracy and self-control. The third in a series of opposition of Mercury to Uranus occurs November 17, returning you to conditions around October 7, second and even third chances appear when Mercury trines Neptune November 23. Make peace with prudence and practicality when Mercury sextiles Pluto, Jupiter, and Saturn November 27–30.
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LIBRA (September 23–October 23) Like a warrior preparing for battle, you’ve assembled weapons and you’re not afraid to use them when planetary ruler Venus in Libra opposes retrograde Mars in Aries November 9. You insist on a fair fight; you’ve got justice on your side November 15 at Venus’s square to both Pluto and Jupiter in Capricorn. Display maturity and wisdom at the Venus-Saturn square November 19 and when Venus enters Scorpio November 21, you’ll be richly rewarded. Prepare for shocking, abrupt, or unexpected disruptions November 27 at the opposition of Venus to Uranus, affecting values, valuables, resources, and intimacies shared with others. 11/20 CHRONOGRAM HOROSCOPES 69
Horoscopes
SCORPIO (October 23–November 21) Sun in Scorpio through November 20 nourishes personal empowerment and your sense of self-control in a world increasingly out of control. The Venus-Mars opposition November 9 catches you unawares; if you’re schooled for unbalanced behavior, take it to heart. Correction offered in love is to be valued. New Moon in Scorpio sextile Pluto and Jupiter November 14 is an emotional rebirth. The third of 2020’s three Jupiter-Pluto conjunctions occurs on November 12. If you’ve worked consciously on communicating with integrity, you’re empowered to speak some life changing, magical words to the heart—both your own and that of the beloved.
SAGITTARIUS (November 22–December 22) The third of 2020’s Jupiter/Pluto conjunctions occurs November 12, your deadline to solidify intentionalities, if not actual commitments, you made in early April and late June. You’ve transformed your personal values into something of external, measurable, and quantifiable worth. Adjustments made now to the structures and hierarchies you’ve helped to create will support your future. Sun sextile Jupiter at the New Moon in Scorpio November 13 blesses with bounty, Venus square Jupiter November 15 cautions prudence and wise restraint. Sun enter Sagittarius November 21, and at Mercury’s sextile Jupiter November 28 please have your cake and eat it too.
CAPRICORN (December 22–January 20)
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It’s a whiplash-y start to the month when Mercury retrograde squares Saturn November 1, followed by Mercury direct squares Saturn November 6. Communication confusion threaten structures and security, but don’t panic. You’ve ingrained and integrated Saturn’s many lessons during 2020 not because it was fun—it wasn’t!—but because it was a matter of life and death. Demonstrate your hard-earned patience, maturity, wisdom, and practicality, supported by Sun’s sextile Saturn November 18, and be an example to those around you. Your friends, family, and community need the stability your presence provides them, and you need to be a giver.
AQUARIUS (January 20–February 19) Mercury opposite Uranus November 17, completing the trifecta of oppositions which began in October and enabling a reset of the deep disconnect you’ve found between your public and private life. This issue has caused internal dissonance, which has sapped your focus and has you running on backup power to whatever degree your personal values are misaligned with your public persona. Prepare for a reality show revelation in the realm of relationships when Venus opposes Uranus November 27. If you think you’ve been keeping secrets, you may find out that you are the secret and you’re the one being kept.
PISCES (February 20-March 19)
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70 HOROSCOPES CHRONOGRAM 11/20
A harmonious trine of the Sun to Neptune November 9 illuminates all the many reasons you’re grateful, if only by contrast to the “there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I” contingent. Conscious gratitude strengthens faith and starts to gain momentum against overwhelming external events at First Quarter Moon in Pisces November 21. Put inspirational ideas into both words and action when Mercury trine Neptune November 23. A long period of dormancy ends when Neptune stations direct November 28, though this may not be the physical freedom you crave, but a mental empowerment ultimately leading to inner liberation.
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parting shot
The remains of Dixie Kiefer’s plane that crashed on Mount Beacon in 1946. Photo by David Rocco
November 11, 1945, was a rainy day in the Hudson Valley. Low cloud cover and fog blanketed the Hudson Highlands. That day, Captain Dixie Kiefer, a veteran of both world wars, was flying back to the naval air station he commanded in Rhode Island from New Jersey. The pilot of the airplane carrying Kiefer and five other servicemen tried to fly under the cloud cover and crashed the Navy transport plane 1,100 feet up Mount Beacon. There were no survivors. It was a tragic and ironic end for Kiefer, whom Naval Secretary James V. Forrestal had dubbed “the indestructible man” for the injuries he suffered in combat with Japanese forces in the Pacific, including at the battles of Midway and the Coral Sea. Kiefer received the Distinguished Service Medal for Coral Sea and the Navy Cross for Midway. 2020 is the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. It is also the 75th anniversary of the crash that took the life of Kiefer and five others on Mount Beacon. This was actually the second deadly plane crash to take place on Mount Beacon. On September 14, 1935, two Navy reservists lost their lives in a crash. These veterans’ lives are memorialized in two historic markers, one placed at each crash site, and a granite wall plaque at the Town of Fishkill’s Veterans Park. On Saturday, November 7, at 10:30am, a ceremony will be held at the Town of Fishkill’s Veterans Park to honor these eight men. In April of next year, Stackpole Books will reissue Don Keith and David Rocco’s The Indestructible Man: The True Story of World War II Hero Captain Dixie, which tells the story of one of the best-known figures of the war. —Brian K. Mahoney
Portrait of Commander Dixie Kiefer, circa 1941 72 PARTING SHOT CHRONOGRAM 11/20
The Jacob Dunham House
$834,000
Majestic hilltop setting & Catskill Mnt. views. Elegant privacy landscaping reminiscent of English gardens. Original house was built in 1790 by Jacob Dunham, a privateer who sailed the Hudson River and the high seas, by commission for private commercial ship owners. 1895 Greek Revival style addition. Gloriously restored by renowned designer, 3 BR/3 BA, 4 FPs. Original details abound in this lovely center hall, each room is light, airy and roomy. Wide formal entrance, bright chef’s kitchen with original 1790 fireplace and large pantry, formal living and dining rooms. On the second floor there are three bedrooms, including a master suite with large dressing room. Walk to Village of Catskill.
❚ Pamela Belfor 917.734.7142
Hudson River Retreat
When the outside world gets crazy, our homes are our sanctuary. (Some literally so.)
$595,000
Rare opportunity to live right on the Hudson River with views that go on, and on, and on. Built in 1900 and recently updated, the 3 BR/2 BA cottage in Catskill is a sophisticated home giving the feeling of living on a house boat. The open kitchen has new stainless appliances. The living room, dining room, all have wide board chestnut floors. The main floor bedroom/office with its own bath and laundry are all warmed by a lovely enameled pellet stove. On the second floor there is a generous master suite with sitting area and new bathroom with spa shower. The guest bedroom has a lovely balcony facing the river, historic Olana, and the Rip Van Winkle bridge. The stone patio, lawn and garden sit behind protective retaining walls. Launch your kayak from your very own beach.
❚ Harriet Shur 518.965.2144
Gracious Rhinebeck Village
$1,800,000
Completely renovated w/ preserved original architectural features, oak floors, generous moldings & oak staircase. Center hall, chef’s kitchen. Dining & living rooms share double-sided FP. Music room, lower level family room, guest bedroom and full bath. Second master suite. The top floor is one large open room with soaring ceiling—perfect for a writing space or home office. 4 BR/3.5 BA. Outside, the carriage house has upstairs guest quarters, and the yard has the beginnings of a big beautiful vegetable garden, with enough space to add a pool and all kinds of outdoor activities. Walk to Rhinebeck Village.
❚ Alison Vaccarino 845.233.1433 ❚ Cynthia Fennell 914.409.5144
23 Fitch Street
$1,380,000
Striking 1884 Gothic church overlooking the Rondout Creek, neighboring the historic Rondout. Large main floor with exposed stone walls & lights from the Russian Tea Room, combo kitchen, dining & living space with adjacent private BR suite. Large original nave with stained glass, Venetian plaster, vaulted ceiling. 2 rooms can be converted to BRs. Major renovation, new heating & plumbing, electric, windows, and standing-seam metal roof, custom copper & French gutters. Plenty of parking on a large double lot.
❚ Tracy Dober 845.399.6715 ❚ Adelia Geiger 845.216.0218
We’re very proud to announce our new Kingston office. (Hyper-local means hyper-effective.) 89 Broadway Historic Rondout Waterfront District Kingston NY 12401 t: 845.331.3100
Tivoli NY • Hudson NY • Catskill NY Rhinebeck NY • Kingston NY
garydimauro.com
ESCAPE TO OUR VICTORIAN CASTLE FOR AN UNFORGETTABLE DECEMBER GETAWAY Join us on the mountaintop and feel your stresses melt away.
844.859.6716 | mohonk.com | New Paltz, NY
