Chronogram - February 2007

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NEWS AND POLITICS 22 LETTER FROM BALUCHISTAN Woodstock-based writer and filmmaker Annie Nocenti traveled to this little-known patch of Pakistan to document the life and trials of the Baluch people.

26 BEINHART’S BODY POLITIC Larry Beinhart offers a crash course in capitalist economics, from Adam Smith to Milton Freidman and beyond.

COMMUNITY NOTEBOOK 29 MEMORIES OF ’56 More than 300 refugee students arrived at Bard College after the short-lived Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Al Desetta recounts the history and talks to some of the survivors who will be convening this month for a 50-year renuion conference.

35 CHOCOLATE PERFECTION Ann Braybrooks tells the sweet saga of Rhinebeck caterer and chocolatier Oliver Kita.

LODGING GUIDE 77 A COMPENDIUM OF HOTELS, INNS, AND B&Bs.

WEDDINGS AND CELEBRATIONS 82 THE DIY WEDDING Sukey Pett examines the whys and wherefores of the on-the-cheap, do-it-yourself wedding, and reflects on her own DIY nuptial experience.

84 CHOOSING A PHOTOGRAPHER Tips from the pros on how to ensure you hire a creative and competent photographer.

WHOLE LIVING GUIDE 100 THE POWER OF DANCE AND MOVEMENT Aimme Hughes talks with local dance therapists about how creative physical action keeps the chi flowing and the body going.

104 THE DEPTHS OF DREAMING Lorrie Klosterman looks behind the wall of sleep with local dream experts Doug Grunther and Perry Harris.

42 A boy fishing on the pier at Goree Island, Senegal, March 2006.

Candace Feit, Portfolio.

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CANDACE FEIT

CONTENTS

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CONTENTS

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ARTS & CULTURE 42 PORTFOLIO Photographer Candace Feit’s images of Africa.

44 LUCID DREAMING Beth E. Wilson wonders how provincial Woodstock artists really are.

47 GALLERY DIRECTORY What's hanging in galleries and museums throughout the region.

50 MUSIC Peter Aaron profiles Kingston singer-songwriter Adam Snyder.

Plus local scenester DJ Wavy Davy's Nightlife Highlights and reviews of CDs by Lunch with Beardo Surrealistic Picnic. Reviewed by Jason Broome.

The Stillhouse Rounders Black Dog. Reviewed by Mike Jurkovic.

The Stryker/Slagle Band Latest Outlook. Reviewed by DJ Wavy Davy.

54 BOOKS Nina Shengold profiles Mat Johnson, author of Hunting in Harlem and The Great Negro Plot.

56 BOOK REVIEWS Mikhail Horowitz reviews The Glorious Mushroom by Frank Spinelli.

Susan Krawitz reviews Five Little Gefiltes by Dave Horowitz and Rebekah’s Journey by Ann E. Burg.

Ilyse Simon reviews Just a Little Too Thin by Michael A. Strober and Meg Schneider.

60 POETRY Poems by Roberta Allen, Zachary C. Bush, Oliver Grech, Reina Hardy, B law, Carol Lee, Tad Richards, Bertha Rogers, and Mark Vian.

62 FICTION Mark Morgenstern serves up “Daily Special,” a poignant tale of unrequited love.

66 FOOD & DRINK Jennifer May visits the “other” Mediterranean at Bell’s Cafe in Catskill.

132 PARTING SHOT Christina Mazzlupo’s ink drawing Other Mentals.

PLANET WAVES HOROSCOPES 138 THE HANGED MAN, AND VERUNA Eric Francis Coppolino examines Saddam Husein’s execution.

THE FORECAST 121 DAILY CALENDAR Comprehensive listings of local events. (Daily updates of calendar listings are posted at Chronogram.com.)

PREVIEWS 119 C.J. Chenier brings some zydeco spice to Great Barrington. Robert Burke Warren stirs the gumbo.

120 Peter M. Laffin previews The Paper Bag Players’ presentation of “Dandelion” at SUNY Orange.

122 Sharon Nichols goes out on the EDGE for violinist Jason Kao Hwang’s performance in Kingston.

129 Ashokan’s annual Winter Weekend and Winter Festival include outdoor fun, music, and, of course, jack wax. Peter M. Laffin previews.

130 Jay Blotcher looks at Maura Ellyn’s contemporary take on the ancient Celtic tale “Dierdre.”

133 Top puppetry troupe the Tanglewood Marionettes bring “The Fairy Circus” to town. Peter M. Laffin previews.

134 Julia Taylor writes on Native New York author Evan Pritchard’s workshop on water and religion.

137 Sparrow shares a laugh with comedian Kate Clinton, who performs at SUNY New Paltz on February 9.

69 TASTINGS A directory of what’s cooking and where to get it.

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For the positive lifestyle.

A compendium of advertiser services.

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MAT JOHNSON, AUTHOR OF THE GREAT NEGRO PLOT, ON THE CAMPUS OF BARD COLLEGE WHERE HE TEACHES.

JENNIFER MAY

BUSINESS SERVICES

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EDITORIAL EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Brian K. Mahoney bmahoney@chronogram.com ART DIRECTOR David Perry dperry@chronogram.com ASSISTANT EDITOR Peter Aaron paaron@chronogram.com SENIOR POLITICAL EDITOR Lorna Tychostup tycho56@aol.com BOOKS EDITOR Nina Shengold books@chronogram.com WHOLE LIVING EDITOR Lorrie Klosterman wholeliving@chronogram.com POETRY EDITOR Phillip Levine poetry@chronogram.com COPY EDITOR Andrea Birnbaum CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Jim Andrews jandrews@chronogram.com INTERN Peter M. Laffin PROOFREADERS Christopher Hewitt, Laura McLaughlin CONTRIBUTORS Roberta Allen, Larry Beinhart, Jay Blotcher, Ann Braybrooks, Jason Broome, Diana Bryan, Zachary C. Bush, Eric Francis Coppolino, DJ Wavy Davy, Deborah DeGraffenreid, Al Desetta, Candace Feit, F-Stop Fitzgerald, Mary Ann Glass, Oliver Grech, John Grey, Reina Hardy, Mikhail Horowitz, Aimee Hughes, Annie Internicloa, China Jorrin, Mike Jurkovic, Lorrie Klosterman, Susan Krawitz, B law, Carol Lee, Jennifer May, Christina Mazzalupo, Mark Morgenstern, John Morstad, Sharon Nichols, Annie Nocenti, Kevin Paulsen, Sukey Pett, Tad Richards, Bertha Rogers, Nina Shengold, Ilyse Simon, Sparrow, Julia Taylor, Tom Tomorrow, Mark Vian, Bill Wadman, Robert Burke Warren, Beth E. Wilson, Carol Zaloom

SUBMISSIONS CALENDAR To submit calendar listings, log in at www.chronogram.com, click on the "Events Producers" link, and fill out the form.

E-mail: events@chronogram.com / Fax: (845) 334-8610 Mail: 314 Wall Street, Kingston, NY 12401 Deadline: February 15

POETRY Submissions of up to three poems at a time can be sent to poetry@chronogram.com or our street address. See above.

FICTION/NONFICTION Fiction: Submissions can be sent to fiction@chronogram.com.

Nonfiction: Succinct queries about stories of regional interest can be sent to bmahoney@chronogram.com.

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PUBLISHING FOUNDERS Jason Stern & Amara Projansky PUBLISHER Jason Stern jstern@chronogram.com ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Patrick Downes pdownes@chronogram.com, x106 ADVERTISING SALES Tania Amrod tamrod@chronogram.com, x121 Jamaine Bell jbell@chronogram.com, x112 Ralph Jenkins rjenkins@chronogram.com, x105 MARKETING & PUBLICITY DIRECTOR Elissa Jane Mastel emastel@chronogram.com, x123 ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE MANAGER Tracey Glover tglover@chronogram.com, x113 COMPTROLLER Matthew Watzka mwatzka@chronogram.com, x120 PRODUCTION PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Teal Hutton thutton@chronogram.com, x108 PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Kiersten Miench kmiench@chronogram.com, x116 PRODUCTION DESIGNERS Jason Cring jcring@chronogram.com Julie Novak jnovak@chronogram.com, x102 BUSINESS CONSULTANT Ajax Greene OFFICES 314 Wall St. Kingston, NY 12401 845.334.8600 fax 334.8610 SUBSCRIBE $36 for 12 issues www.chronogram.com/subscribe MISSION Chronogram is a regional magazine dedicated to stimulating and supporting the creative and cultural life of the Hudson Valley.

All contents Š Luminary Publishing 2007 12 CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

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FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS

Mark Morganstern is a graduate of the City College Writing Program.

His work has appeared in Prima Materia, the Crescent City Review, Piedmont Literary Review, New Southern Literary Messenger, Hunger Magazine, Expresso Tilt, Mothering Magazine, and other journals. He received an honorable mention for his story, “Tomorrow’s Special,” (page 62) selected by guest judge Valerie Martin for Chronogram’s 2006 Fiction Contest. Mark subs at the local high school and books concerts for the Rosendale Cafe. He has lived in the Hudson Valley all his life.

Sukey Pett writes about food, travel, and lifestyles. She practices cake decorating in the dead of night. A recent transplant to Woodstock, she once owned as many as 19 red lipsticks at the same time, and danced with Frank Zappa on Halloween. She has worked in all aspects of the food world, from being a cheesemonger to a recipe tester, truffle salesperson, and baker. She and her husband live in Bearsville, but have yet to see any bears. She loves to garden, and hopes this time she will be able to grow zucchini, an endeavor at which she has failed miserably in the past. She is working on a book about food. “The DIY Wedding” (page 82) is her first piece for Chronogram.

Last summer, Annie Nocenti was in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan shooting a documentary on the Baluch nation. Annie’s article on the Baluch appears on page 22. Annie is a screenwriter, photographer, and journalist whose work has appeared in Details, Prison Life, the New York Times, High Times, and many other publications. She is a writer and editor at large for Stop Smiling magazine (www.stopsmilingonline.com). Her feature film script Patriotville, starring Justin Long, is in post-production.

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PHOTO OF MARK MORGENSTERN BY F-STOP FITZGERALD

Deborah DeGraffenreid recently transplanted herself to the Hudson Valley from San Francisco via a short layover in Taos, New Mexico. Her work has been shown in numerous galleries across the US. She is currently working on two fine-art portraiture projects, as well as exploring and photographing the wonder of her new surroundings.

Her portraits of Adam Snyder appear on pages 41 and 50. This is her first assignment for Chronogram.

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ON THE COVER

Untitled KEVIN PAULSEN

| INK ON PAPER | 2006

With its worn appearance, the work of Kevin Paulsen could be easily mistaken for that of early American muralists, specifically Rufus Porter. In colonial times, wealthy American citizens hired artists to emulate the upscale wallpaper commonly found in Europe. Porter was perhaps the most famous of these muralists, who would attempt to re-create the European interior decoration with little direction.

“They would just offhandedly do these things,” says Paulsen.

“However, some of them were gorgeous.”

Most of these murals went undocumented and are difficult to find. Paulsen was so intrigued with them that he spent a few years searching for them throughout New England.

Two particular qualities of these works fascinated Paulsen.

The worn, dry look engendered by the passage of time is part of the aesthetic. “The decay softens the works, giving them a beauty they probably didn’t initially have,” says Paulsen. The unpremeditated approach also gives the murals an unexpected abstract element.

Paulsen uses techniques to create the illusion of age in his own work. By constraining the method and deciding to use a limited number of colors and techniques, Paulsen discovered things that couldn’t be found if planning was more stringent.

Porter’s influence on Paulsen is most evident in this aspect.

“I don’t really plan the murals. I just approach them and do them,” he says.

This piece is scattered with symbols that are loosely based on Dante’s Inferno, with the elements of the early American muralists firmly in mind.

Paulsen is a Kingston resident whose work was featured at last month’s Cafe Chrongram salon. www.kevinpaulsen.com.

—Peter M. Laffin PORTFOLIO OF PAST COVERS AN ARCHIVE OF PAST COVER IMAGES IS STORED AT WWW.CHRONOGRAM.COM/ISSUES.

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CHRONOGRAM SEEN

PHOTOS: UNCLE ROCK AND WAR PROTEST: HILLARY HARVEY; WEB-LAUNCH PARTY: ROY GUMPEL

The events we sponsor, the people who make a difference, the Chronogram community. Here's some of what we saw in January: KIDS ROCK at MAMA / CAFE CHRONOGRAM / RALLY AGAINST ESCALATION IN NEW PALTZ

Clockwise from top left: Uncle Rock performs for a packed room of mixed ages on January 20, at MAMA in Stone Ridge.

DJ Anthony Molina spins at the Chronogram Web-Launch Party on January 12 at the Shirt Factory.

Almost 100 protesters lined both sides of Main Street in New Paltz, at a rally against troop escalation in Iraq on January 11. The rally was organized by New Paltz Women in Black (who have met every Saturday afternoon at that location since the invasion of Afghanistan) and MoveOn.org.

CHRONOGRAM SPONSORS IN FEBRUARY: CAFE CHRONOGRAM (2/3) WITH SPARROW, KALI Z. FASTEAU, AND EMIL ALZAMORA; AN EVENING OF MUSIC AT THE MUDDY CUP (2/9) WITH ADAM SNYDER, JOHNNY WANG, AND VALEN; HUDSON VALLEY COOL: TAKING A STAND ON GLOBAL WARMING (2/11).

For more information, visit www.chronogram.com.

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LETTERS To the Editor: Good article [Editor’s Note, 12/06]. I agree with its content 100 percent. So why aren’t you a little more careful in your use (or misuse) of the English language? The grammatical errors are small, but inexcusable! Chronogram is an excellent publication, a real gem in the Hudson Valley, and I look forward to picking it up each month at my local health food store. However, errors like those in the enclosed article really bring the magazine down.Why aren’t your proofreaders McLaughlin and Ross doing their job? If they can’t find (or don’t know) these errors—such as the difference between a subjective and an objective pronoun (“I” or “me”)—they should not be drawing a paycheck.

Computers don’t do everything, and “spell check” doesn’t correct incorrect sentence structure. I find these types of errors consistently throughout the magazine each month; this is the first time I have been annoyed enough to call them to your attention and actually write to you. Hope that you will be more precise in future articles.

—Anonymous, Woodstock

While we normally do not accept anonymous letters, it seemed petty not to print one that commented directly on shortcomings in my column.And indeed, this observant reader has a point that there were typos in my December Editor’s Note. However, in fairness to our proofreaders, Laura McLaughlin and Barbara Ross, readers should know that neither proofreader had a chance to vet my column as it was submitted late in the editorial process. All errors were mine alone. Mea maxima culpa.

Apologies to Anonymous for his or her annoyance, and forgiveness is begged of you, reader, who expects more from Chronogram. And Anonymous, as for your wish that we will be more precise in future articles—I certainly hope sew. —BKM

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Esteemed Reader The first striving: to have in their ordinary being-existence everything satisfying and really necessary for their planetary body.

—The first of the five “being-obligonian-strivings” of Ashiata Shiemash, as reported by G.I.Gurdjieff in All & Everything: Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson.

Esteemed Reader of Our Magazine: I have been practicing yoga—Hatha yoga, to be precise—on and off for almost 10 years. I’ve gone through several yoga mats, replacing them as my feet have worn holes in the latex during hundreds of upward-dog to downward-dog transitions. Though some see yoga practice as a method of self-development, I view yoga practice primarily as a means of fulfilling the body’s need for exercise, for, in my view, self-development needs to take place in all the ordinary events of life. That said, the yoga-mat practice is ideally suited to developing the power of attention, awareness of the body and breath, and the impartiality of the inner observer. These experiences may then be translated to encounters “in life.”

My yoga style of choice—and there are many, guaranteeing an appropriate style for each practitioner—is called Ashtanga. It means “eight-limbed” because it aims to address all the psychic and physical facets of the experience. It starts with the Tristhana—bringing attention to the physical postures, breathing method, and direction of the gaze. These are a way of preparing for deeper levels of practice, leading to what the philosophical originator of Ashtanga yoga, Patanjali, describes in his sutras as citta vrtti nirodhah, which translated from the Sanskrit, means “the resolution of conflict in the mind.”

When I began practicing yoga I was ambitious to learn the form—Ashtanga teaches a proscribed series of postures—and make rapid progress to the higher levels. I pushed myself to build the strength required to perform the sequence and the flexibility to go deeper into each posture.

This approach culminated with an injury to my knee that was punctuated by a loud “pop” in the middle of a group practice. The sound turned the heads of everyone in the room, and was followed by sympathetic groans. I stopped practicing for several years.

Recently my practice has renewed itself, with the help and encouragement of Baird Hersey of the harmonic-singing group Prana, who hosts early morning practice sessions at his home. With this renewal I noticed a shift in my approach. I am no longer in a hurry to “get there” (the whole concept of which is anathema to any kind of inner work, which has the primary aim of arriving here). I have patience now, and a willingness to submit to a process that will continue for years.

Today I took a led “Primary Series” class at Ashtanga of New Paltz. It was good to be required

by Michael Stein, the owner of the studio, and teacher of the class, to stay in the postures a little longer than I would on my own, and receive his guidance as we progressed through the asana series. Baird happened to be in the class also, and at the end he said hello, and “good to see you again.” This statement, which ordinarily suggests a longish gap between visits, had a particular twist, as we had practiced together every day of the previous week. I understood his meaning.

“We’ve been working together,” I replied.

“It’s been helpful,” he said. “I say to myself ‘I’m practicing for Jason.’”

This reminded me of a Persian saying: “Call a man a friend only once you have eaten a bushel of salt together.” Baird and I have shared at least a teaspoon.

Ashtanga is essentially a self-practice. Once a practitioner knows the form, he does it on his own, though ideally with an instructor providing adjustments, and in the company of other practitioners, to support the practice. This independence affords a powerful self-reliance. To do the practice requires no equipment, special conditions, or membership fees. The practitioner needs only knowledge and the time and energy to do the work. It is a step in the direction of releasing attachment to special conditions and accoutrements.

One of the capacities that distinguishes humanity from other life forms is the ability to refine.

A teacher once said to me, “It is rare that a person practices anything.” And indeed we go through so much of our lives without working toward the development or improvement of anything.

We get caught up in the routines that support the basic needs and pleasures of existence. This push for refinement is the basis of the alchemical allegory of turning base metals into gold. The arena for this work is within our own instrument—through suffering and effort to refine our thoughts, feelings, manifestations, and being to a more rarefied degree. In the most straightforward sense, this is doing God’s work. Our being becomes an instrument for channeling a greater intelligence into God’s creation.

Of course for any refinement to be of use for our being it must be accompanied by that potent, transformative ingredient: Observation. The teacher quoted earlier also said, “[On the path of self-development] you can do anything—as long as you know what you are doing.” Indeed, everything we do, if accompanied by observation and remembrance of ourselves, is naturally work for the refinement of being. Yoga practice is no exception. It can be useful, but if that key ingredient of working with inner attention is absent one might as well be operating a forklift.

—Jason Stern WILL WORK FOR PEANUTS. READ JASON STERN’S BLOG, BLIND ELEPHANTS, AT WWW.CHRONOGRAM.COM.

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YOEL MEYERS

Editor’s Note The literature survey courses of my undergraduate career as an English major placed much emphasis on the theme of place—the idea that great writing is not only physically evocative, but that it creates the more ambiguous and interpretively open-ended sense of place. Frost’s poems about New England have it.

Steinbeck’s depictions of the Salinas Valley contain it. Faulkner achieved it with his Yoknapatawpha County—a locale in his novels so real you’re flabbergasted when you find out it doesn’t actually exist.Wendell Berry’s every scratch of pen to page, whether poem, essay, or novel, embodies it.

In a (dubious) nutshell, sense of place is an amalgam of physical description, characterization, regional specificity, a sense that the characters (and by extension the writing) are unquestionably influenced by their location, and the whiff of legerdemain that makes the artifice more real than its actual counterpart.

(In recent years, anthropologists have adopted the term as a form of negative description, illustrating the dislocating absence of a sense of place in nowhere/ anywhere landscapes like strip malls, airports, and chain stores—human structures that have no special relationship to their geography.)

Sense of place has been much on my mind recently, sparked primarily by the freakishly warm weather the Hudson Valley was experiencing until the true cold snap of late January. The implications of what global warming means for the future of the planet are bad enough, but as I squatted in my garden and picked spinach for a breakfast frittata, eaten al fresco during the first week of the new year, a keen psychic discomfort engulfed me. For if the Hudson Valley, the place where I get my sense of place from, is no longer the place I know, then who am I? How should I shift my persona, my soul, to accommodate the new reality? Hardy greens are one thing, but harvesting lettuces in my shirtsleeves in January is not an activity normally undertaken by a Kingstonian.

Of course, the Hudson Valley has been reworking its sense of place since the Half Moon sailed up the river in 1610. Change has accelerated in the past 20 years—I, an urban transplant, am evidence of it; this magazine’s very existence evidence of it—and doubtless many who have spent the entirety of their lives here find the pace of development disorienting, eroding to their bedrock sense of place. Having lived here only 20 years (almost), I too have seen enough shifting in the landscape to sometimes feel an anxious tug at my psychological tether to the local geography.

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING

Since September 11, civil liberties advocates have criticized and challenged the FBI’s increased usage of national security letters, noncompulsory documents sent to American banks, credit card companies, and other financial institutions asking for access to financial records of US citizens. Recently, it has been discovered that the Pentagon and the CIA have also been issuing these letters to obtain financial information. “There’s a strong tradition of not using our military for domestic law enforcement. They’re moving into territory where historically they have not been authorized or presumed to be operating,” says Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, a former general counsel at the National Security Agency.

The two agencies have made several attempts to gain the authority to issue mandatory letters but have been rebuffed by Congress. While the military has been using the letters sporadically for years, the rate increased substantially in late 2001 when intelligence officials concluded that the USA Patriot Act strengthened their authority to issue the letters. (The Patriot Act, however, does not specifically mention military intelligence or CIA officials in connection with the letters.) Military expert Eugene Fidell finds the practice disturbing, because the military doesn’t have the same checks and balances when it comes to the civil rights of Americans. “Where is the accountability?,” asks Fidell. “That’s the evil of it—it doesn’t leave fingerprints.”

Source: New York Times On January 12, morning disc jockeys from KDND in Sacramento held a contest called “Hold your wee for Wii,” in which contestants would drink as much water as they could without relieving themselves. The survivor would be rewarded with a Nintendo Wii gaming console. When a caller warned them that the stunt was potentially fatal, one DJ replied, “They signed releases, so we’re not responsible. We’re OK.” Jennifer Strange, a 28-yearold mother of three, participated in the contest held at the studio that morning, hoping to win the console for

While change is inevitable—the primary lesson we are to learn in this century, tough-love style, I fear—there can be continuity, and there is a way for character and identity to remain intact. This magazine spends much time and many resources chronicling the continuity of the HudsonValley—this special relationship we have to our place. For it is not just anywhere we live. It’s not just any river that we cross on our daily commutes; not just any mountains we hike; not just any food we eat in season; not just any landscape we exist in. It is this one—this one that surrounds us and is us.

Once again, we’ve endeavored to capture some of that magic in this vessel. ******* Last month in this space, I fairly gushed about the relaunch of our website, lauding its general redesign and expanded functionality. Well, I’m still gushing.

Peter Aaron, Chronogram’s indefatigable assistant editor, is toiling daily to update the site, adding multimedia content and web-only features that enhance the reader’s experience in ways unimaginable in our paper version. (For instance, we now have a catalog of over 50 songs by local artists we’ve reviewed or profiled available for streaming listening on our site, and the archive keeps growing!)

While our site is accessible to everyone with an Internet connection from Beacon to Baluchistan, and it is no more an actual “place” than our magazine (though our servers do reside in a secret underground bunker in Kingston, complete with pneumatic-tube failsafe system), Chronogram.com is as firmly rooted in the Hudson Valley as our paper publication. Chronogram.com refines and expands the vision of Chronogram and projects it into infinite space, but we’re transmitting a regional portrait writ (digitally) large.We may be offering a window to the world, but the view is still of the Hudson Valley, warts and all, from a decidedly Chronogrammatic perspective—creative, questioning, and conscious.

—Brian K. Mahoney

her children. She came in second place, winning the consolation prize, tickets to a Justin Timberlake concert.

Strange reportedly ingested nearly two gallons of water and complained during an on-air interview of a severe headache. She was found dead in her home later that afternoon. Preliminary autopsy reports indicated that she died of water intoxication—a condition that causes the brain to swell, occluding it from regulating vital functions.

Source: USA Today

the legal community. A letter signed by the American Association of Jurists, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and the National Lawyers Guild was written to President Bush calling for Stimson’s immediate dismissal. Stimson later apologized, saying that he hopes his comments won’t reflect his core belief that the legal system works best when both sides have equal representation.

Source: Washington Post

In 1928, over 450 out of every 100,000 adults were institutionalized in the US. Of those institutionalized, 150 were imprisoned and 300 were held in mental hospitals and asylums. By the year 2000, that ratio flipped dramatically. Of the roughly 620 per 100,000 adults institutionalized in the US, 600 were in prisons. According to a Justice Department study released last September, 64 percent of prisoners across the country reported mental health problems within the past year. Bernard E. Harcourt, a professor of law and criminology at the University of Chicago and author of Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age, contends that individuals who once received mental health treatment are now “getting a one-way ticket to jail.”

Source: New York Times

The upcoming report by the International Panel on Climate Change, an international network comprised of climate experts, will be released this month. Recent studies, which will be noted in the report, indicate that there is growing evidence that human activity, not natural phenomena, has caused the most recent warming. For example, average nighttime temperatures have risen markedly in recent years, a change that is unlikely due to variations in the sun, but rather because of greenhouse gases that trap radiating heat from the Earth’s surface even after sunset.

Source: New York Times

Some of America’s most respected law firms are providing pro-bono representation to the “enemy combatant” detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. Responding to this lawerly largesse, Charles “Cully” Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, told Federal News Radio in mid-January that American corporations should stop doing business with law firms that represent these prisoners. During an interview with the Washington Post, Stimson warned that, “CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms.” The comments sparked intense criticism from

Newly elected Governor Eliot Spitzer is not the highestpaid state employee in New York. His $179,000 salary is dwarfed by various professors from the SUNY system, particularly Dr. Alain E. Kaloyeros, the highly-touted SUNY Albany educator and chief administrative officer of its College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.

Kaloyeros makes the highest base salary of any state employee, earning $525,000 a year. “My daytime job is to compete with MIT, Stanford,” says Kaloyeros. “My compensation is designed to reflect that job.”

Dr. Robert C. Lowery, professor and chief of cardiothoracic surgery at SUNY Brooklyn makes a base salary of $400,000. Though his paycheck is smaller than Kaloyeros, Lowery makes more for his clinical work. Last year, he earned over $1.3 million.

Source: New York Times 2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM EDITOR’S NOTE 21

ANNIE NOCENTI

NEWS & POLITICS World, Nation, & Region

LETTER FROM

BALUCHISTAN A Call to Resistance from the Khan of Kalat by Annie Nocenti The Khan of Kalat, Mir Suleiman Daud, is speeding, whipping through endless arid desert, passing mud huts hung with tinsel, huge white mosques, a veiled woman sitting side-saddle on a tiny moped and clinging to her turbaned driver. Khan Suleiman is an expert wheelman, so, despite the speed, there’s no fear in the wide, black Hummer.

“Who drives American cars?” he says, mocking himself. “But when I saw this one, I knew it was my toy.” Khan Suleiman hides his eyes behind Gucci shades, and prefers a ball cap to a turban. Add in the traditional long baggy shirts and baggy pants of the region, what sounds like Pakistani hip-hop blasting, the carload of his men packing pistols and Kalashnikovs that rides behind us, and it feels like quite the posse. But considering Khan Suleiman once took four AK-47 slugs in the gut and chest in the tribal equivalent of a drive-by and lived, the armor-plated Hummer makes practical sense. Khan Suleiman’s survival of that shooting was considered so miraculous that there is a university doctor who teaches a class in the incident. And as for all the guns and ammunition, Baluchistan is one of the tribal provinces of Pakistan, wedged between Afghanistan and India, and in tribal regions, one needs protection. Especially the Khan of Kalat, which literally means King of the Fort, the chief of chiefs. But it’s not his own people he needs protection from.

Khan Suleiman’s province is rich in resources that Pakistan wants to continue to plunder and lease, without proper revenues to the Baluch people. “We sit on a mountain of gold,” he says, “and the devil sits on us.” His people, the Baluch Nation, are being indiscriminately bombed, arrested, kidnapped, and disappeared by the Pakistan military, and he’s powerless to stop it. Journalist Selig S. Harrison has called it a slow-motion genocide, and human rights groups refer to it as ethnic cleansing. “We have 700 miles of coast and oil and gas and gold,” says Khan Suleiman, referring to Baluchistan’s perch on the Arabian Sea. “We try to do something to have rights to it, we get spanked. We resist every 10 years and get spanked every 10 years.” For the past few years, he has been in the middle of an unseen war that few beyond the regional press have reported.

A MODERN SITTING BULL In August 2006 the chief of the Bugti tribe, 79-year-old Newab Akbar Bugti, was killed in an air strike by the Pakistan Army. Bugti, along with other tribal chiefs, had been fighting for an autonomous Baluchistan for decades. “Bugti was buried with three locks on the coffin,” says Khan Suleiman. “They thought his soul might come back and make trouble. So the army put locks on it. None of his tribe was around to see his body.They’ve still got a guard on his body.” People were outraged by the murder, and the incident radicalized many in Baluchistan.

Khan Suleiman had found his moment—the catalyst he needed. As the chief of all chiefs, he is the headman of all tribes. And so, he called a national jirga, a meeting of the tribes, the first in 130 years. He wanted to find out if his sardars, his chiefs, the heads of tribes that have been at war with each other for hundreds of 22 NEWS & POLITICS CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

years, on and off, could lay down personal disputes and unify for a common cause: an autonomous Baluchistan. Khan Suleiman’s allies would be his former enemies.

In the way of tribes, his enemies are also his friends. He put out his call.

My first thought was: This man is a modern Sitting Bull. Which makes him a sitting duck. Which is why he travels in a Hummer and why his travel plans are never announced. What Khan Suleiman has done is akin to Sitting Bull asking the Apache, the Cherokee, the Mohawk, all the major Native American tribes to smoke the peace pipe and unify against the migrating settlers that were stealing their land out from under them.

Khan Suleiman’s historic jirga was attended by 1500, including 85 sardars and 300 tribal elders.The Baluch people have always protested the Punjabi-dominated military regime of Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf that has been made rich off the Baluch province but gives so little back in terms of resources and tax revenues that the entire region still lacks the basic services that most consider human rights. The province is rich in natural gas, yet only six percent of the Baluch have gas connections, less than half the children get an education, and only two percent of the population have clean water.

The answer to Khan Suleiman’s call for unification and resistance against this state of affairs was a resounding yes. “When you make a call you get an answer,” says Khan Suleiman. “The answer means that Baluch is a nation. They have problems, but they have roots. I know them 700 years and they know me 700 years.

I gave a call in the 21st century and 95 percent answered. Students and prime ministers agree. There are the rocket guys and the pen-and-paper guys, but we come together directly or indirectly.” “Rocket guys” are those ready to go to war for independence, and the “pen-and-paper guys” are those in the current government willing to do what they can from the inside. It is ambiguous as to who “rules” Baluchistan, as the skeletal Pakistani government is shadowed by tribal rulers.

The jirga was so inspirational that the Pashtuns, the Sindhi, and the Afghans have all decided to hold their own jirgas to unify their tribes. Even General Musharraf called a “counter” jirga of his own, inviting the same tribes to Islamabad. “But nobody went,” laughs Khan Suleiman.

LAND OF ROCKS Baluchistan is sparsely populated and overwhelmingly a land of rocks. Flatbed trucks pass, carrying enormous marble hunks as big as cars. An old man sits by the side of the road, a mountain of stones to his left, a pile of smaller stones to his right, he in the middle with a hammer. A task for Sisyphus. But the more one looks at these majestic, dusty gray-brown mountains, the more one sees they are

REUTERS/ZAHID HUSSEIN

ABOVE: PROTESTERS RUN TO AVOID TEAR GAS DURING A VIOLENT PROTEST IN KARACHI ON SEPTEMBER 1, 2006, AGAINST THE KILLING OF BALUCH REBEL LEADER NAWAB AKBAR KHAN BUGTI BY PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT FORCES. OPPOSITE: KHAN SULEIMAN. FOLLOWING THE KILLING OF BUGTI, KHAN SULEIMAN CONVENED A TRIBAL JIRGA.

not at all dull, but coyly streaked in color. “Rubies, diamonds, lapis lazuli, gold, emeralds,” says Khan Suleiman. “We have it all. Oil and natural gas and minerals.”

It is, of course, the enormous reserves of natural gas that have perked up the eyes and ears of the major powers. “All the ‘guys’ are around,” says Khan Suleiman with amusement. He lists the US, Iran, India, China, and Russia.

We pass walls scrawled with graffiti, written in delicate Urdu script: “Azad Baluchistan, Baluchistan Zindebad”—Free Baluchistan, Long Live Baluchistan. We pull into a gas station, and the Khan is met by a group of men that somehow knew he’d be stopping here. They pay their respects and ask his advice on property disputes. A day in the life of a Khan. One man asks Khan Suleiman if he thinks the Baluch people are unified. The Khan answers in Baluch, then translates for me. “I asked them: Will they come out and protest on a certain day? Will they join the protest march this month? If they do, then that is my answer and that is their answer.”

Back out on the highway, my tinted window slides up automatically, and I look ahead to see an open, black jeep coming the other way and loaded with armed men staring at the Hummer. Has Khan Suleiman just closed my window to keep the dust out, or did he see that car coming and decide it best to not let them see the foreign woman with the large video camera whose protective veil is constantly slipping off her head?

A 60-mile drive out of Pakistan’s capital Karachi and into Baluchistan is a journey 600 years back in time. As the roadside mosques lit up like discos fade, there are more goats and donkeys, fewer buildings, more huts.Women spend all day walking the desert for one bucket of water. Our convoys of SUVs often pass caravans of camels loaded with sticks of firewood, men riding mule carts loaded with hay. “The poor shepherd’s barefoot son herds his sheep over mountains full of riches,” says Khan Suleiman. Or, as Khan Suleiman’s uncle,Yahya Baloch, Prince of Kalat, said to me the day before, “The shepherd has his goats and makes his cheese and his butter. He sits in the mountains and is his own boss but belongs to a tribe. But every ordinary person has a small radio. And they may be listening to Air America, not the lies of Pakistan radio.” Prince Yahya, like most of the older men we’ve met, has survived many wars in Baluchistan. He shows me the bullet holes in his home to prove it, from the times his father, the previous Khan of Kalat, was attacked. He then shows off his astounding collection of antique guns, from muskets to guns hidden in canes like something out of James Bond.

He speaks in moderate tones but it is easy to feel how much he loves his country.

“Asia is the belt, Pakistan the buckle,” he smiles, “but the pin is Baluch. The pin opens, your pants will fall.”

A US SOLDIER UNDER EVERY MOUNTAIN In the early 1990s, General Musharraf brought in Chinese engineers to develop a strategic port in Gwadar and build a road to the border. He gave a 10-year lease to China, which has been vigorously mining the copper and gold ever since.The Baluch resistance, angry at the lack of economic return to the Baluch for these developments, has periodically responded by blowing up power lines, pipelines, and other infrastructure. And there is widespread fear among locals that a major pipeline will be built that drains their main resource, natural gas, without any return. As one Baluchi nationalist said to me, “The road is coming. The pipeline is coming. It’s not here yet, but it’s coming.The Americans are coming. One day they will just walk in. Under every mountain you’ll see a GI. Write it down in your heart.You’ll see.”

Or, as the eternally unruffled Khan Suleiman puts it, with one of his sly smiles, “Where there is chaos, there is investment.”

While Islamabad fattens its coffers and others dream of wealth to come, the people of this resource-rich province are so impoverished and economically disadvantaged that I’ve heard Baluchistan referred to cynically, by the Baluch, as “the whore of everyone.” Pakistan has long controlled the area by playing the feuding tribes off one another, which is why Khan Suleiman’s jirga was so important. Islamabad spins the actions of the freedom fighters into actions of “terrorists,” and disclaims any official power of the Khan of Kalat. General Musharraf charges that the feudal system of sardar rule is the problem, but to the Baluch this has long been their way of life. Islamabad also uses the presence of the Taliban as a cover for military actions against the Baluch.

HAVE YOU SEEN ANY TALIBAN YET? Khan Suleiman’s home in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, is located on Syriab Street, street of chiefs. In a simple room with banks of low couches, over a spread of nuts, pomegranate seeds, overripe bananas, and cardamom tea, Khan Suleiman asks, teasingly, “Have you seen any Taliban yet?” I had told him that there was nothing much in the mainstream press about Baluchistan other than claims that Quetta was thick with Taliban. When we’d flown into Quetta the day before, the pilot flew like a cowboy, taking dizzy dips over the red hills that surround Quetta. I looked down and saw what reminded me of an old Wild West American outpost: sand rolling off the desert, rock dust falling off the mountains, the town shimmering in a ghostly air. At the airport, the first man to help with my bags said: “I am Baluch, not Taliban.”

The presence of Taliban in Quetta seems to be some kind of nervous inside 2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM NEWS & POLITICS 23

REUTERS/RIZWAN SAEED

PAKISTANI SOLDIERS WORK TO RETRIEVE THE BODIES OF SLAIN BALUCH REBEL CHIEF NAWAR AKBAR KHAN BUGTI AND OTHERS FROM HIS CAVE HIDEOUT IN KOHLU, ABOUT 140 MILES FROM QUETTA ON AUGUST 30, 2006. VIOLENT PROTESTS ERUPTED ACROSS BALUCHISTAN AFTER NATIONALIST LEADER BUGTI WAS KILLED IN A GOVERNMENT AIR STRIKE ON HIS CAVE HIDEOUT IN THE REMOTE HILLS. BUGTI’S KILLING RADICALIZED MANY BALUCH, PROMPTING THE FORMATION OF ORGANIZED POLITICAL GROUPS.

joke that’s probably not funny. It’s not that the Taliban aren’t here in Quetta, a town near the Afghanistan border, but they are not messing with Baluch business, I’m told. “They cross the border,” says Khan Suleiman, “and they are with us.”The only way to understand this comment is to understand the ways of tribes, which is difficult from aWesterner’s perspective.TheTaliban have been increasingly taking over areas of Afghanistan and Waziristan, a Pakistani tribal province to the north.

But while the Baluch are secular Muslims who disagree with the fundamentalist Taliban about the role of Islam in politics and society, that does not mean they will fight them when they cross borders into Baluchistan.

An unquestionably ominous feeling pervades Quetta. Leaving and entering our hotel, security guards roll a mirror on wheels under the car chassis to look for bombs. The first day we go to the Russian bazaar, we are followed by Pakistan’s Military Intelligence and photographed. As we shop for headscarves, the MI follows us and Khan Suleiman’s men follow the MI. It feels more Graham Greene-ironic than dangerous, yet the implication is there. Khan Suleiman’s men confront the MI. “You do your job, we’ll do ours,” they are told. The day after we leave Quetta, three missiles hit the Parliament building. No one takes responsibility for it.

While in Quetta, Khan Suleiman has arranged some interviews with several tribal chiefs. It is important to the Khan that we understand this is not “his” call, but the call of all Baluch, and he wants us to hear it confirmed from other chiefs.

The first is Chief of Sarawan, Nawab Mohammad Aslam Raisani. We drive into a walled and gated courtyard, where tribesmen mill about with Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders as casually as women sling their purses. As I get out of the car, I hear the “Mission Impossible” theme song. It’s Abdullah’s cell phone. Abdullah is one of Suleiman’s cousins and was assigned to this trip; he also has another cell phone that rings with the theme to The Godfather. Inside we meet Nawab Raisani, a distinguished chief with a raspy voice that I imagine is the result of an old war wound. He is gracious, gentle, and gestures toward a large plastic mat on the floor covered in food. He confirms his support for the Khan and that the tribes have “set aside our conflicts and disputes so that we can raise a collective voice.” He stresses the importance of identity. “The Pakistan government wants to finish our national identity,” he says. I ask if the tribes will be able to stay unified, and he answers that pressure is being put on the heads of 24 NEWS & POLITICS CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

tribes to do so. I ask if he would compromise on the question of autonomy for Baluchistan. “We will not go for any type of compromise,” says Nawab Raisani.

“We want total autonomy.”

There is a problem with autonomy for Baluchistan. As it was with the Native Americans, there are broken treaties involved. The current troubles in Baluchistan date back to the 1947 agreement between Britain and India that created Pakistan. Six million Baluch were forced to become part of the newly created country. But a 1948 treaty, in which the former Khan of Kalat (Khan Suleiman’s grandfather) acceded to Pakistan, delineates that accession in only four areas: defense, foreign affairs, currency, and communications. Resource and autonomy rights were not given up, but there is an ambiguity to the language of the treaty that has been exploited by Islamabad.There is also an older controversy around the 1893 “Durand Line” agreement between British India and Afghanistan, which divided the Pashtun and Baluch tribes into Afghanistan, sections of Iran, and what was to become, in 1947, Pakistan—slicing up a nomadic culture with arbitrary lines in the sand. While the Durand Line divided tribes, the Baluch nation was still independent. But in 1948, the Baluch, a culture that dates back more than 1,000 years, ended up in living under colonialist-style rule by Pakistan, a nation that at the time was one year old.

Revered author and historian Agha Mir Naseer Khan Ahmadzai Baloch is the keeper of Baluch history. “We founded the Baluch nation in 1410. We Baluch made a kingdom. And we told the superpower [Tamerlane, known as Timur the Lame] at the time that they should confirm our kingdom. We were told: ‘You Baluch are sheep herders and on this condition I accept your kingdom.You should agree that annually you should give me 10,000 sheep for my kitchen.’ And in this way,” laughs Naseer Baloch, “our Baluch Kingdom came into existence. From this time right up to Khan Suleiman, 35 Khans have passed. The British conquered Baluchistan and annexed us to India. When they formed Pakistan in 1947, we were told, if you don’t join Pakistan, we [Pakistan] will attack you.”

THE ELEPHANT’S TEETH Khan Suleiman’s next step will be to appeal to the World Court in The Hague, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), claiming that Pakistan has violated the 1948 treaty as well as the 1973 Constitution that promised provincial autonomy.

Violations include the nonpayment of royalties on fisheries, gas, minerals, and overflights, and the building of cantonments. But the question is whether or not the ICJ can give fair hearing to Baluchistan, a tribal province without clear sovereign status, now that Pakistan has become a nation of international standing.The alternative, if an appeal to the ICJ fails, is likely to be armed struggle.

Khan Suleiman is slyly hopeful of US help.Without US or other foreign support, Baluchistan does not have the wealth nor military might to sustain a long insurgency. It is a hope that is touching, fragile, and ornery all at once. “We’ll see,” he says with a sideways grin, “if the Americans are as moral as they say they are.The elephant has different kinds of teeth.The ones the elephant shows, and the ones he eats with. They are not the same teeth.”

We drive from Quetta to Kalat, where the Khan has his palace and his mosque, and Khan Suleiman casually tells us we are to meet Sardar Ataullah Mengal next, in a town called Wadh. I expect an interview similar to the one we had with Nawab Raisani, but that’s not the case.

As soon as we are on the road to Wadh, the air is electric.The convoy of cars and guns is longer this time. There are tribals who have come out of the hills to see Khan Suleiman off. The closer we get to Wadh, the more men we see on the sides of the roads.They raise guns in salute, or join the convoy on motorbikes. Some carry the flag of Kalat. The convoy gets larger and larger until, when we pull in for gas, there is a swarm of followers. Khan Suleiman gets out of the car and the reverence for the man from his people is stunning. Islamabad may think Khan Suleiman has no official power, but that has been the case of many a charismatic leader throughout history, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Malcolm X. We arrive at Sardar Mengal’s compound. A huge fluttering tent is set up, laid out with gorgeous Persian carpets; light streams in from above and the tent flutters, as if Allah is announcing his presence. As we enter, a sea of men turns and stands. As soon as Khan Suleiman and Sardar Mengal are seated, everyone else sits.They speak for a while, as Sardar Mengal confirms his support of the alliance of tribes. “We want to use the tribal way to unify,” says Mengal, “then move on to democracy and the modern ways.” Khan Suleiman has said that the example to think of, in terms of the kind of government possible in Baluchistan, is Britain, with its combination of parliament-style democracy and monarchy. That way the Khan and the tribal chiefs would still have a role in the government, even as they make the transition to modernity. And as Khan Suleiman says about his role in this model, “I’d rather be Queen Elizabeth than Tony Blair.” The gathering itself, with its open invitation and transparency—attendees can listen to their chiefs talk and ask direct questions—has the feeling of a parliament-style meeting. Later, as Ataullah Mengal speaks angrily about current US policy in Iraq and the Middle East, he asks me, with a certain belligerence, “Why are Americans so dumb?” As if to prove it, I have no satisfactory answer.

The next day, we meet with Prince Musa and his son Noroz, a gentle young man ready to step up for his tribe. Prince Musa speaks of his love of flowers and weapons, his soft spot against the killing of animals. He dresses in camouflage clothes and dark sunglasses. As he takes a whiff of the narcissus he grows, he reminds us of Robert Duvall’s character of Lt. Col. Kilgore in Apocalypse Now. He describes his support for Khan Suleiman. “We are a traditional people,” says Prince Musa.

“Tradition is that the elder son become Khan. We have a saying in Baluch: If one person sits on a horse, it looks nice. Two people sitting on a horse, it doesn’t look nice. They will laugh at you.

A horse is made for only one person.”

Prince Musa’s tongue is for peace, but the sense one gets is that he is very ready to fight for it. No one we interviewed was shy about their readiness to go to war for their rights. And they believe their inferior weaponry and manpower are more than made up for by their superior guerrilla tactics and knowledge of their own land. “You Americans are worthless on the ground,” I am told more than once. As Khan Suleiman explains this imbalance of firepower: “When you’re eyeball to eyeball, the first one that blinks is gone. So you have to be strong and not blink.” Later he says, speaking of the position the US finds itself in both in Iraq and in Afghanistan, “The US gets in quicksand and turns the wheels and gets in deeper.”

The Baluch Liberation Front, the Baluch Liberation Army, and the more official Baluch National Party are increasingly made up of not just moderate to extreme tribals or politicians, but intelligentsia, merchants, laborers, out-of-work engineers, lawyers, and the new Baluch middle class. The Baluch Student Organization actively stages demonstrations, roadblocks, and rallies.

Rumor has it that the BLF and the BLA are paid in dollars, but others contend India or Russia finances the opposition. Wherever the backing comes from, because of the geographic position and potential resource wealth of Baluchistan, and this new bid for autonomy, many have an interest and a hand in keeping the region unstable. At the same time, it is US aid to Islamabad and US weaponry that is being used against the Baluch opposition. But perhaps that is politics in the desert, the sands ever-shifting. It seems that, as I’ve been told, “All Baluch want independence.

Even the birds want independence.” It also seems that calls for resistance are most effective when written on the wind.

As this story goes to press, Khan Suleiman is in the process of gathering his evidence, old treaties and the papers of past Khans, to petition The World Court with his case.The outcome of that proceeding will determine the fate of Baluchistan.

TALES OF THE BALUCH: VIEW A VIDEO CLIP OF KHAN SULEIMAN TALKING ABOUT THE STRUGGLE FOR BALUCH INDEPENDENCE, FROM THE UPCOMING DOCUMENTARY THE BALUCH, AT WWW.CHRONOGRAM.COM.

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Commentary

Beinhart’s Body Politic

CAPITALISM 104 In Capitalism 101 we learned that capitalism is good. It beats communism, any day, hands down, out and out.

It also beats socialism, which is soft-core communism and leads to degeneracy.

Really, it does. We all know that profit motivates people to work hard. And fear of becoming destitute is the most efficient of whips. Whereas in a planned economy, which provides security, workers lose their motivation and their fear and just sit around and jerk off.

It also beats all the other isms. Mercantilism (whatever that was), fascism, and feudalism, to name a few.

In Capitalism 102, we learned that capitalism easily gives way to excesses.

It can be manipulated by monopolies and cartels. Fraud and deception can run wild. So can desperate hope and hopeless desperation. Capitalists can hire armies, police forces, goons, and thugs to increase their profits. Fraud and deceit may run wild. Capitalists will sell shoddy, poisonous, destructive, and even murderous products. It goes from booms to busts.And some of those busts—also called panics, recessions, and depressions—can be so severe that they upset the body politic and cause society to flock to one of the other isms—communism and fascism mostly—run by dictators and strongmen.

A few relatively bright people came up with the idea of keeping capitalism while trying to get rid of the excesses!

That meant regulations.

Markets were regulated. Products were checked. Monopolies were restricted.

Cartels and collusion among businesses were forbidden.

It meant government insurance. For both people and businesses. People in America got unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, welfare, and social security. Meanwhile, bank deposits were insured and so were pensions.

It meant government support of unions.

It also meant progressive taxation—the more money you make, the higher the tax rate you pay.

All this was quite successful.

In Capitalism 103 we learned that capitalism is sacred.

A lot of people who only took Capitalism 101 already thought that.

Although the failures of capitalism happened before their eyes—or in recent history—and the success of New Deal reforms and the mixed economies of Europe, Japan, and other Asian nations were present in their growing wealth and security, a fair number of people were convinced that unrestricted capitalism would have done even better; and if those restrictions and regulations and supports and government insurance were removed, things would get better still.

The reason they believed that was that Adam Smith, a great though loquacious philosopher and economist, came up with a metaphor about an invisible hand.

People pursuing their own individual gain would also often create other good things—the wealth of nations (to steal his title)—without even thinking about it, as if by an invisible hand.

As we all know, there’s only one other person who guides all things to the greatest good with an invisible hand.

Nobody was around to say to those folks, “It’s just a metaphor! Note the ‘as if by.’ It’s not an actual invisible hand that belongs to an invisible being who watches over us all and sees every sparrow that falls and makes sure that it falls into someone’s cooking pot. It’s not Him.” So while the mixed economy was cooking along, a group of economists 26 NEWS & POLITICS CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

PHOTO: DION OGUST

BY LARRY BEINHART

starting preaching neo-free market economics. They were led by Milton Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics and is considered to be the most influential economist in (at least) the second half of the 20th century.

Rich people and big business loved Friedman and the Chicago school of economics. Money flowed into think tanks and universities that supported Friedman’s ideas. Pro-free market economists and MBAs were far more likely to be hired by corporations than people who thought that the common good was important. When banana republics and other third world nations fell into bankruptcy, the World Bank made them adopt Chicago school policies in order to get loans. It was this economic scheme that was going to come into its fullest flower in post-Saddam Iraq.

It came to completely dominate all economic thinking in the US. It came to dominate our public and political dialogue, almost to the exclusion of all other approaches.

Free markets became a trinity with patriotism and religion. Generally, where you find fundamentalist Christianity, you will find equally fervent beliefs in country and capitalism, with the same sort of excesses.

Capitalism 104 is a new course. It begins today.

It takes off from what we have learned in our previous courses.

Capitalism is good. History demonstrates that clearly and unequivocally.

But it is not an invisible hand (attached to an invisible God) that makes it great.

It is Random Stupidity Theory.

Everyone is stupid sometimes. Some people are stupid a lot of the time, and a few, all the time. If one person is in charge of everything, then his or her stupidity affects everything. That’s the seed of the failure of planned economies.

But in a capitalist society—at its best—if someone has a stupid idea and convinces some people to invest in it, only he and his investors lose. It’s also important to remember the random part, because we are in a changing world; the ideas that won lost year may turn out to be stupid for this year’s world.

Meanwhile, some random number of ideas will be good ones. If they are well presented and well run and attract enough start-up capital, they may well succeed.

To be continued next month with the following topics: • Why “consumer choice” should not be worshipped.

• Invisible subsidies: How we can make them work for us.

• Packaging good ideas—like alternative energy—as “good capitalism.”

• Admitting that capitalism does some things badly (with some irrefutable examples).

• Overcoming our fear of “high marginal tax rates” (and demolishing Ronald Reagan’s favorite story).

• Why trickle-up economics works and trickle-down doesn’t.

• What’s good for a business may not be “good for business.”

• How Capitalism 103 economics can make lots of money out of a bad economy.

Larry Beinhart is not an economist but he plays one in Chronogram.

READ LARRY’S WORLD AT WWW.CHRONOGRAM.COM/BLOGS

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28 COMMUNITY NOTEBOOK CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS PHOTOGRAPHER: JACK ESTEN

COMMUNITY NOTEBOOK

MEMORIES OF ’56

Bard’s Hungarian Diaspora Looks Back

I

n December 1956, a homesick 20-year-old student, entranced by the “storybook impression” of houses decorated with Christmas lights, arrived at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson. What made Béla Liptak different from the average student was that he was penniless, couldn’t speak a word of English, and was a refugee—one of more than 300 freedom fighters who arrived on the Bard campus in flight from the Hungarian Revolution that had been crushed the month before.

“We arrived from a war, fighting the Russians, overwhelmed by a tank force larger than Hitler used to overrun France,” Liptak, now 70, recalls. He and his young friends had fought those tanks with “no weapons at all—practically none” and had paid dearly. So arriving at the college “was a traumatic experience. We felt lost and miserable.”

But thanks to Bard, Liptak and his fellow refugees—ranging in age from 15 to 35—got a toehold toward starting a new life in the US. During an eightweek program that winter, they received intensive instruction in English and an orientation to American society. To commemorate this moment of Cold War generosity and to honor the Hungarians’ contributions to America, Bard will hold a three-day reunion and conference February 15-17, featuring panel discussions, lectures, a film festival, a concert, and informal discussions with faculty and students.

For Leon Botstein, president of Bard, the reunion and conference are valuable “not only as a reflection on the past, but as a reflection on something immensely relevant in the present.” Botstein hopes the event will prompt discussion of America’s relationship with human rights and justice.

In a foreshadowing of the “Prague Spring” that would occur 12 years later, the Hungarian Revolution began in October 1956, as a spontaneous nationwide

By Al Desetta

uprising against repressive Soviet rule. The Russians responded by invading the country with 150,000 soldiers and 600 tanks. After bitter fighting, during which the US stood on the sidelines despite rhetoric about helping “captive nations,” the revolution was crushed. Thousands died and many others were tried, imprisoned, or murdered. Reformist Prime Minister Imre Nagy was executed and 200,000 refugees fled the country.

If Iraq is a case of misguided intervention, Botstein notes that Hungary is “a case of what America didn’t do. Because of the Cold War, we didn’t support this revolution…and you can argue that was a place we should have been. So it is a moment for honest reflection on America’s role in the world and when it is sensible to use or restrain America’s military might.”

Laszlo Bitó, the conference organizer, also arrived at Bard that December, at age 22. Before the revolution, he and his family were deported from Budapest for being anti-Communist enemies of the state. Bitó was imprisoned for two years as a slave laborer in a coal mine before organizing a camp revolt. He tried to make his way to Budapest to join the fighting, but by then it was too late.

Now living back in Hungary after a career as a scientist in the US, Bitó hopes the conference looks beyond the revolution itself—or “who shot whom,” as he puts it—to focus on the extraordinary intellectual contributions the refugees made to American society.

Béla Liptak admits to “mixed feelings” about the approaching reunion. At a gathering in Budapest last October of student leaders of the rebellion, he couldn’t recognize his old friends. “Those beautiful girls and attractive boys,” he says.

“You know what 50 years does. The only thing I could recognize was their eyes.

Somehow there’s a little twinkle in your eye that doesn’t change.”

But Liptak has no mixed feelings about the role Bard played in giving him a 2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM COMMUNITY NOTEBOOK 29

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ABOVE: LASZLO BITÓ, HUNGARIAN REVOLUTIONARY AND BARD CLASS OF 1960.

PREVIOUS: A RUSSIAN TANK CAPTURED DURING THE ANTI-COMMUNIST REVOLUTION IN BUDAPEST, HUNGARY, 1956.

second chance: “[I]t came like a blessing for an institution to say, ‘We’ll teach you English, you are welcome to have food and shelter, and you’ll be given advice on how to start a new life.’”

Liptak left Bard after the two-month program ended, but not before meeting 18-year-old Marta Szacsvay, a fellow refugee, who would become his wife. He went on to become a renowned engineer, has been involved in environmental protection efforts, and is now helping to build the world’s first solar/hydrogen demonstration plant, which he hopes will someday replace oil-based energy systems.

Upon their arrival in the US, the refugees lived in barracks at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey.

To get out of the camp, they had to have a sponsoring family take them in.

“There were people who said they wanted to go to a film star in Hollywood or a millionaire in Florida,” Laszlo Bitó says, “but I figured they were going to be in Camp Kilmer for a long time. I wanted to go to the next person on the list.”

That meant Cleveland, which at the time had one of the largest Hungarian communities in the US. “All the Hungarian families wanted to have their freedom fighter,” he recalls, but Bitó grew alienated from his host family, who had been in the US since before the First World War and thought the aim of the revolution was to restore the Hapsburg Dynasty. Bitó heard about the Bard program and jumped at the chance.

After the orientation ended, Bitó was awarded a scholarship and graduated in 1960 with a pre-med degree. He valued his close relationship with the faculty. “Bard was a tremendous experience for me,” he says. “At a large university one could have gotten lost, but in the seminar system at Bard, from the first day you had to talk.” Bitó went on to become a professor of ocular physiology at Columbia University and developed Xalatan, an innovative drug for the treatment of glaucoma.

In December 1956, Nick Lyons was a 25-year-old American student attending Bard on the GI Bill. He taught English to the Hungarians and has vivid memories of how engaged and vigorous they were. “They seemed to me to be singing and chattering and talking at a higher level,” Lyons says. Several of them, he recalls, had been on the Hungarian national soccer team: “I can remember them bouncing a ball between them as they went off to mealtime or back to one of the sessions.

They seemed enormously happy to be there.” It was the first time teaching for Lyons, who went on to become a literature professor at the University of Michigan and Hunter College.

None of the students spoke English, and the teachers spoke no Hungarian, so they were taught in an Army system in which only English was spoken. A 20-booth speech lab was installed and a team from Columbia University prepared language tapes and drills.

“It turned out to be a reverse of what was planned,” Liptak says, “because we taught the teachers Hungarian.”

In addition to language study, there was an orientation to American society. A film program from January/February 1957 features showings of Citizen Kane, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, All the King’s Men, and documentaries on Lincoln, Alexander Graham Bell, and Jackie Robinson.

Bitó recalls outstanding lectures, including one by Eleanor Roosevelt on women’s rights.

What most impressed Bito was how open the lecturers were about McCarthyism, racism, and other problems in American society—problems that Bitó had thought were Russian propaganda.

He recalled thinking “that it was impossible in America that they had these witchhunts against 2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM COMMUNITY NOTEBOOK 31

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people, forcing them to testify against one another, or that black people were still being lynched.”

But the lecturers made no attempt to sugarcoat life in the US. The local community also pitched in. Hospitals and doctors provided health and dental care.

A couple in Poughkeepsie arranged a donation of new shoes. A nearby A&P store supplied 200 cartons of cigarettes. Bard’s Catholic chaplain bought $300 worth of suitcases, footlockers, and duffle bags in Kingston and brought them back to the campus by truck, to make sure each Hungarian had new luggage.

Bitó, a great fan of FDR, remembers visiting Hyde Park, as well as Rhinebeck, Red Hook, and Kingston, and being invited to Thanksgiving dinner by a local family.

There were amusing moments, he recalls—mix-ups involving language and local customs.

Bitó, a scholarship student, had a campus job as a night watchman to make spending money. It turned out that a wealthy American student who was an heir to the Wrigley chewing gum fortune had given up the job so he could have it. That student, like so many college students then and now, preferred to wear torn jeans and worn-out shirts.

“I had a regular jacket and regular pants,” Bitó remembers, “and here he was in rags. I said to him, ‘You need the job more than me.’”

The Hungarians got into the Christmas spirit, singing carols and attending campus parties, although, according to a contemporary report, they seemed “under evident emotional strain.”

At the end of one party, having spent hours memorizing the lines, they sang the first verse of the “Star Spangled Banner” in “somewhat halting voices…an emotion-packed moment which none of those present will ever forget.”

While Bitó wants the conference to focus on the Hungarians’ contributions to America—as President Botstein says, “They did us a bigger favor than we did them”—there is no escaping the harrowing events that brought them to this country. Bela Liptak still finds it difficult to discuss the enormous anger he felt when the US government, despite bellicose lip service, did not come to the aid of the revolution.

“They misled us into believing that if we took on the Russians we’d get help,” he says. He was in a group of six or seven people, the oldest 25, firing down on Russian tanks with submachine guns from an apartment facing a square. Among the group was a girl named Marika, 18, who, Liptak remembers, was good at making Molotov cocktails.

“In three days, 200 tanks were burning on the streets of Budapest, more than what the US has lost in three years in Iraq,” Liptak says. “We had the loudspeaker on…broadcasting Radio Free Europe, and we were listening to [Secretary of State John Foster] Dulles…and we were under the impression that American troops were on their way.” But no help came and the fighters were routed.

The human cost of that defeat still haunts Liptak. During their last fight before being captured, they saw the cannon of a tank raised toward the apartment and ran out to the rear of the building.

But Marika went back to retrieve badly needed bread.

“And the tank fired,” Liptak recalls, “and when we went back into the apartment it was full of smoke and dust and we couldn’t see anything. And then I heard this drip, drip sound, and it was her blood.”

He found Marika still clutching the bread, bleeding from a leg wound to the bone. Liptak carried her on a stretcher to medical aid, never saw her again, and never found out if she survived.

For Liptak, who later escaped Russian imprisonment by crawling through underground water pipes, the lessons of the revolution are clear. “[W]hat stayed with me for life, strangely enough, was a sense of optimism,” he says, “because I saw how decent the average human being is. For 35 days I was in hiding and couldn’t go home, and I ate at the tables of strangers, I slept in the beds of strangers, and no one allowed me to pay for anything. Such a sense of family.”

The second lesson has wider political implications: “A basic message is that all nations want to be free, and that occupiers—no matter where they come from—are not welcome.”

Laszlo Bitó’s first love was literature—he began to write short stories and notes for novels while working under slave labor conditions in the coal mine—but turned to science at Bard because of worries about making a living writing the Great American Novel. Since retiring as a professor, he has published a series of novels in Hungarian on biblical themes. After a career dealing with physical blindness, he now ponders blindness of another kind.

As a child during World War II—“a time when children really started to disappear,” he notes, and sons were sacrificed by the millions—Bitó became preoccupied with the story of Abraham and Isaac. His young mind found it impossible to fathom that a man would be willing to kill his own son. At the last minute God’s angel appears and stops Abraham from making the sacrifice.

But for Bitó, the story’s fundamental importance comes from a different interpretation he gives it—that Abraham alone decides to spare Isaac, without God’s help: “[A]s long as we believe that God will hold back the hand of a murderer, we can say, ‘Okay, I can raise my knife against my fellow man, and if God doesn’t want me to kill him, he will grab my hand.’ But anyone who survived the Second World War knows that God never grabs the murderer’s hand. So we have to realize that we have to take responsibility for our own actions. We cannot expect God to intervene.”

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THE ART OF BUSINESS

CHOCOLATE Perfection

Oliver Kita Fine Confections

By Ann Braybrooks photos by Jen May

I

n Dutchess County, between Rhinebeck and Red Hook on Route 9, lies a new jewel box of a chocolate shop. Oliver Kita opened this chocolatiere in November 2006 to provide handcrafted artisan chocolates to beguile the eye and the palate—and, he hopes, the spirit.

Inside Oliver Kita Fine Confections, the decor is French luxe. A fresh white orchid stands on a pedestal, while a vase containing branches of flowering quince adorns Kita’s desk. The individual chocolates—les caramels, les truffes, les pralines, les ganaches—are displayed in large glass display cases. Dark-brown furniture complements the striking color of the walls.

Kita says that he chose the pink-toned orange as his signature hue because it flatters everything around it. “It’s very evocative,” he says. “It speaks of quality, and it speaks of beauty and richness and longevity.” The shade is also used in his marketing materials and for the ribbon that Kita ties around the shop’s sturdy, custom-designed candy boxes.

Kita lavishes the same obsessive detail on his intensely flavored chocolates. Starting with French Valrhona chocolate (and on occasion, chocolate from a Swiss source), he adds fresh butter, heavy cream, fruit purees, nuts, essences, and spices. Perhaps the most traditional of Kita’s offerings are Caramel au Chocolat, made from bitter chocolate, sweet caramel, fresh butter, and heavy cream, and Espresso Double Shot, composed of dark chocolate, Arabica coffee beans, and crushed cacao nibs.

The latter is a truffe en chardon, or thistle truffle, and is one of a group including the more exotic Cherry Ancho (Morello cherry and ancho chile); Mint and Lemon Balm; and Shiki 2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM COMMUNITY NOTEBOOK 35

36 COMMUNITY NOTEBOOK CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

ABOVE: (L-R) OLIVER KITA DUSTS PALE, PINK, IRIDESCENT LUSTER ONTO SOLID CHOCOLATE HEARTS; KITA DEMONSTRATES THE PROCESS OF “ENROBING” A PALET D’OPIUM GANACHE. PREVIOUS: GUANAJA CHOCOLATE IS POURED INTO HEART-SHAPED MOLDS; KITA IN HIS BOUTIQUE CHOCOLATE SHOP IN RHINEBECK.

Matcha Crunch, with green-tea-infused ganache and a croquant exterior. Ganache is the French word for a mixture of chocolate and heavy cream. Croquant means crispy or crunchy.

In the ganache collection, there are Palet d’Opium, with lapsang tea, blood orange puree, and spices; Palet du Figue et Cognac (fig and Liqueur); and Palet d’Olivier, featuring one of Kita’s favorite flavors: black currant. “Black currant has a lot of depth and character to it,” says Kita. “It’s very sensual. I use it a lot when I do sauces for people in the summertime. I love to make cakes that have lemon curd in them with black currant puree as the sauce.”

Before opening Oliver Kita Fine Confections, Kita owned the Heaven cafe in Woodstock, where he also ran a catering business. Kita ran Heaven for 10 years, and although he shuttered it in early 2006 to focus on becoming a chocolatier, he continues to operate Oliver Kita Fine Catering. The catering business is one of the reasons that Kita chose the location outside of Rhinebeck instead of in the village itself. The chocolate boutique, located in the Astor Square business complex, includes parking for a catering truck. Kita caters weddings and other exclusive events at private homes and historic sites in the Hudson Valley, including Boscobel in Garrison, Locust Grove in Poughkeepsie, and Wilderstein in Rhinebeck.

Kita was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and, as the baby of the family and only son, he admits to being spoiled by his mother and three older sisters. He didn’t learn any “domestic skills” until he became house manager at the Phi Delta Chi fraternity at Ferris State University, where he studied pharmacology and earned a degree in microbiology. Instead of becoming a pharmacist, Kita worked briefly in the restaurant business before receiving a fellowship to study at the Culinary Institute of America. While still in school, he operated a wholesale pastry company called New York Biscuit.

Like many CIA graduates, Kita left the Hudson Valley to take a professional position in a large metropolitan area. For one year, he worked as the pastry chef for the Russian Tea Room in Manhattan, but he gave up big-city life, including employment with a renowned restaurant, when he fell in love with someone who had no desire to leave the Valley and move to New York City. For five years, Kita was the executive chef at the Park West Conference Center in Kingston. In 1996, he opened Heaven and started the catering business.

Seven years ago, Kita designed a mold for a chocolate Buddha that he intended to sell at the cafe in Woodstock. Inspired by his quest to find high-quality chocolate, he began educating himself, which led to studying with masters in Canada and France. In St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, not far from Montreal, he studied with Julian Rose at the Barry Callebaut Academy du Chocolat.

“I spoke enough French to go to Canada and not be kicked around,” Kita says. “I chose to go to Quebec because the people were kinder, and it was an easier start. It’s like learning to swim in the ocean versus trying the pool. So I went to the pool to get ready for the ocean.”

In Paris, Kita studied at L’Ecole Lenotre before being given a full scholarship by Valrhona, a small French chocolate company, to attend its prestigious L’Ecole du Grand Chocolate in Tain L’Hermitage, a small town in a wine-growing district near Lyon. Today, Kita has a direct-buying relationship with Valrhona that allows him to purchase chocolate from the company at an

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HANDMADE CHOCOLATES ON DISPLAY BEHIND THE GLASS COUNTER AT OLIVER KITA FINE CONFECTIONS.

attractive price, as well as obtain recipes and information solely available to Valrhona-approved artisan chocolatiers. Kita is the only chocolatier within a 90-mile radius of Rhinebeck with an exclusive contract, and in December, says Kita, “The sales representative for the East Coast came to visit me and photograph the studio, and they’re going to use [the collection of photographs] as an example of how they want other Valrhona artisans to portray themselves.”

Kita uses seven different types of Valrhona chocolate, one of which is organic. Each has a different flavor profile, which Kita considers when creating a new piece of chocolate to add to his line. He uses dark chocolate from Madagascar, Ecuador, and Venezuela. A blend from Indonesia is used for the milk chocolate.

Like coffee, chocolate is grown in equatorial regions of the world, and in order to assist the cocoa growers and their families, Kita has become a member of the World Cocoa Foundation.

The organization provides programs that help raise farmer incomes and encourage responsible, sustainable cocoa farming. Says Kita, “I think it’s important to give back. The World Cocoa Foundation is doing its very best to help farmers in West Africa, where there is a great deal of suffering and disorganization and chaos based on political structures.”

Kita has come up with a slogan for his business: “Mind, body, chocolate: Every day.”

He says, “It’s about opening up your awareness and understanding of this experience of appreciating chocolate.” By tasting a finely crafted piece of chocolate, he adds, “you can understand where you are and appreciate what you have, right now, today. It’s focused attention through pleasure.”

At Heaven, he composed his menu according to the season. “Autumn was inspiring. Spring was rejuvenating. Summer was soothing. Winter was satisfying. I took those four buzzwords that create an emotion and attributed them to the chocolates.”

At oliverkita.com, from which chocolates can be ordered and shipped, the four collections are Inspiring (ganaches), Soothing (caramels), Satisfying (truffles), and Rejuvenating (a selection of all three). A nine-piece box ordered from the website costs $23 plus shipping and applicable taxes. At the shop, a nine-piece box is $22.75—about $2.50 per piece.

Kita crafts and finishes the chocolates in view of customers, who are encouraged to ask questions and chat with him about artisanal chocolate. He employs one assistant, plus a counterperson on weekends.

Regarding his slogan and philosophy about chocolate, Kita says, “A lot of people need to be gently poked and told: You can be inspired today. Perhaps you can be inspired by chocolate. Or maybe your child’s laugh will inspire you. Or the music on the radio will inspire you.” By making the most magnificent chocolates that he can, Kita says, “I’m just part of that picture.”

Oliver Kita Fine Confections and Fine Catering is located at 6815 Route 9, Astor Square Number 8, Rhinebeck; (845) 876-2665; www.oliverkita.com.

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40 PORTFOLIO CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

FEBRUARY 2007

ARTS & CULTURE CHRONOGRAM

caption

Deborah DeGraffenreid

Music, page 50

Adam Snyder’s love letter to Kingston, This Town Will Get Its Due

2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM PORTFOLIO 41

PHOTO OF CANDACE FEIT BY BILL WADMAN

Portfolio Candace Feit

Candace Feit in Union Square, Manhattan, January 2007

In the last four years, at least 400,000 civilians have been killed in the Darfur region of Sudan and more than two million people have been forced from their homes, according to the human rights group Save Darfur. If you’ve seen photographs of the (take your pick, depending upon how hot you are on US intervention)—tribal conflict, civil war, genocide—then most likely you’ve seen the work of Candace Feit.

A self-taught photographer, Feit moved to Dakar, Senegal in 2005 when her partner was posted to the region. Her first assignment was photographing a bloodless coup in February of that year.

Since that time, Feit has worked for numerous publications—including the New York Times, Time magazine, Le Monde, and the Christian Science Monitor, among others—in some of North Africa’s most troubled regions.

Feit’s photographs of Darfur, Togo, Senegal, and Ivory Coast were exhibited during January at the Kingston Museum of Contemporary Arts (KMoCA), 105 Abeel St., Kingston.

Portfolio: www.feitphoto.com.

—Brian K. Mahoney

CANDACE FEIT ON HER WORK On being a self-taught photographer

A shortsighted view of Africa

Malaria

There are a lot of rules I have had to learn through trial and error, which has been a combination of enjoyment and frustration. I have had to learn how to take criticism in a different way than if I had gone to art school, where showing your work and getting honest feedback is just part of the process. So developing the ability to look at my own work critically without letting it get me down is something that I am constantly struggling with.

The conflict in Darfur is a good example, unfortunately, of many conflicts in Africa. It started as one thing—Arabs with the supposed support of the Sudanese government attacking black African tribes. Which in itself is in many ways very clear—one group of people as aggressors, the other as victims. Through the years it has gotten more complex and many of the groups who were fighting for independence or were working to protect themselves have now been fighting amongst themselves. I think that in talking with people about Africa and specifically about Darfur, it is very easy for people to sort of brush off the situation and say, “Oh, it’s tribal,” as if that gives some more information about what is actually happening. In some ways I think that is a very shortsighted way to look at problems in Africa—blowing them off by chalking everything up to these longstanding feuds. Yes, there are those, but like any situation in the world it requires some more effort to actually understand the conflict. What these people are fighting over is a more complicated story, and it often changes.

Following events in Darfur, but also around the continent in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, the Central African Republic—there is so much that needs to be done in all of these situations. There has been so much “never again” talk after Rwanda, and I think people mean that when they say it. However, there are so many problems beyond Darfur which get even less attention—like malaria.

Not very sexy, but it is the number one killer of children in Africa. This is something that is highly treatable as well as being very preventable (with a $7 bed net). The current situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo or Sierra Leone—how are those places going to ever recover from long drawn-out conflicts? These are all issues that I think we have an obligation to pay attention to.

On the other hand, I truly enjoy making pictures and it is something I take very seriously. So knowing how seriously to take the work has been a challenge too, as well as being self-taught. It took me a long time to realize—this is serious, what I am doing is important and I need to treat it that way in order to do my best work.

The best thing about photography is that it is usually accessible. Most people have the language to talk about it.

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Clockwise from top left: Tina, North Darfur, Sudan, May 16, 2006; Tawilla IDP Camp, North Darfur, Sudan, September 7, 2006; People gathered for the funeral of Halima Batwal, an old woman who died of natural causes, at Tawilla IDP camp in North Darfur, Sudan, September 2006.

Opposite (l-r): Kids playing, Goree Island, Senegal, March, 2006; Two boys on the way to a football game, Palmarin, Senegal, October 2006.

What is safe?

Last October, Feit worked on an assignment for the New York Times in Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast. A tanker hailing from Amsterdam had dumped 400 tons of toxic sludge in the city, sickening tens of thousands and killing seven. Feit’s photograph of a man in a white hazmat suit standing in a field of toxic waste appeared on the front page.—BKM The toxic waste dumping story is a good example of going into a situation that is so completely shocking and infuriating.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when we went there—the first place we went was a trash dump where a lot of the waste had been dumped but was also a place where a lot of people went to make their living off of collecting things like aluminum and plastic bags and selling them to middlemen who melt them down and make various things and resell them. So there was a huge dump with men in white suits cleaning on one side, and a few hundred meters away, people foraging in the dump. It was very surreal, because in a sense it is like a lot of things that you see here in West Africa—where there

are people in a dangerous situation, but they are so focused on the immediate need to subsist that they can’t really make a judgment about what is “safe” or not.

A human face What I see as my job when I go into a situation like Darfur is to try and show some connection with the people, to put a human face on a situation that is foreign to most of the world. If people can’t or don’t understand the events there—at least they see that there are people involved. And in many cases, especially in Sudan, there is this fascinating juxtaposition between this extreme and harsh landscape and the colors of people’s clothing, so in many ways it is very easy for me to be drawn to that instant beauty—and in turn, hopefully people see my photos as complex things and are spurred to take a second to try to understand the complexity of the situation.

Keeping out of the story I think to a certain degree photojournalism can be used as an activism tool. But I think that as a photojournalist working in the mainstream press, I don’t see myself as an activist—rather someone trying to use images to tell a story. My effort is to keep myself out of that story, though it is another challenge.

Misery I do, at times, feel overwhelmed by the misery here—but more often it comes through as frustration. More because in so many cases it is acute and there is not too much that can be done about it beyond trying to focus and do my job.

I don’t say that as a cop-out but rather because I think that the more people understand about Africa, the more they can react with understanding. There is good as well as bad here—rich culture, art, humor, beauty, history—so I’m trying to do those stories as well. Though, ironically, it is the more “positive” stories that are more difficult to photograph.

2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM PORTFOLIO 43

Lucid Dreaming

BY BETH E. WILSON

THE P-WORD I recently attended a panel discussion at Cooper Union, organized by the New Museum. Titled “Location, Location, Location! Is Provincial a Bad Word?,” it was billed as addressing the “rise in importance of regional culture in the wake of global culture.” Those of you familiar with this column will recognize something of a hobbyhorse of mine embedded in this topic, so I was quite keen to hear what some of the smartest minds assembled in the art world’s ostensible capital had to say about it.

The whole thing was an utter disappointment, I’ve got to say. While there were glimmers from time to time of ideas connected to the subject, most of the presentations concerned pet projects or mindless, meaningless speculation about things that sounded relevant (but were not); not one of the eminent speakers assembled ever really dealt with the question of the provincial, provincialism, or anything close. By the end of the evening, it was clear to me that this wellconnected brain trust was operating in its own weird vacuum, a feeling I’ve had more than once in recent years when encountering what might be badly described as the art world “mafia”—the establishment that organizes all the big international exhibitions, writes in the big art magazines, and helps to stratify the elite end of the art market. (Even the delicious irony of the panel’s title, referring to the oldest joke ever about real estate, seemed largely lost in its application to the speculative nature of the big money feeding the exclusivity of the art market itself.)

Using Harry Shearer’s apt term, the “news from outside the bubble” presents a very different picture. There are many reasons—real estate being an important one—that many artists have chosen to move out of the city, gravitating to the naturally beautiful yet still culturally connected villages and rural spaces of 44 LUCID DREAMING CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

the Hudson Valley. But of course this is a very different place than it was when Thomas Cole and his 19th-century confreres first came to paint here, and even from the early 20th-century heyday of the Woodstock arts colonies.

Back in the 1920s, the response among many American artists to the bold, formal, and often abstract innovations of the Europeans (think Picasso, Mondrian, et al.) was to reassert the importance of more traditional representation, in a movement known as American Scene painting. These works sprung from the socially concerned work of the Ashcan School, and eventually grew into the new, often politically conservative style of Regionalism, which rejected the suspect polyglot culture of the urban centers, in favor of representing something more purely “American.”

The artists working in and around Woodstock, for the most part, tended to pursue a variant of this sort of American Scene painting (although with more liberal politics, on the whole), and a number of excellent examples of this work from the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s will be on view starting this month at the Woodstock Artists Association. “American Scenes: Images of Leisure and Entertainment” is the second installment in a series of exhibitions organized by the WAA, highlighting the representation of everyday American life by artists from the area.

“Provincial” is not quite the right word to describe the Woodstock artists of that era—then, as now, the connections to New York were too close, too accessible to be ignored. Many artists participated in the community here only during the summers, others shuttled back and forth to the city as they pleased. What they shared, for the most part, was a commitment to easily legible representation, rejecting the farther flung theories of abstract art, a bias

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that emerged in the 1930s as the style made popular by New Deal-sponsored public art (which is also on view this month in an excellent show of government sponsored mural art drawings, “For the People,” at Vassar College).

Works in the show range from Pele DeLappe’s mildly creepy print Coney Island, which depicts a disturbing, faux-Surrealist encounter between a buxom young woman and an otherworldly midget clown, to Julia Leaycraft’s cockle-warming painting Village in Winter, a bucolic view of Woodstock’s Village Green under a blanket of snow.

When I think of a provincial, it’s someone from the boondocks who simply doesn’t know better, whose taste was formed outside of the concentrated centers of culture—in short, something of a bumpkin. On those terms, the Woodstock artists were anything but provincial; it’s just that today, they are seen as being on the wrong side of history, backing the wrong horse in the art historical sweepstakes. (Interestingly, many of them changed their bets after World War II, and threw in with the formal experimentation of Abstract Expressionism.)

Today, in the full-blown era of globalization, the question of being provincial has changed fundamentally.

How would you describe a provincial nowadays? Somebody without high-speed Internet?

That’s something we’ll all have to decide for ourselves, and there are plenty of opportunities this month to do just that. In conjunction with the historical show I’ve just discussed, WAA is opening a member show called “American Scenes,” which asks: What is it that makes us American? Just what is it that defines us as Americans today? And, what about art can connect to such a notion? It should be interesting to see what turns up in response.

A bit further south, Van Brunt Gallery in Beacon is presenting the latest installment in a series of exhibitions dedicated to what owner Carl Van Brunt likes to call the “New Hudson” movement, a group of some of the most talented artists in the region, working in sometimes very diverse styles—and not a single “provincial” in the lot. This show focuses on the seemingly simple question, “What is a landscape?” after considering the elisions between natural and human, placing us “right in the middle of the landscape we once contemplated from afar.” The show includes a variety of responses to this new reality, by artists as diverse as James Dustin, Portia Munson, Vincent Pomilio, Laura Moriarty, and Stephen Spacarelli.

Given the general cluelessness of the panel I witnessed at the Cooper Union, it seems to me that the real “p-word” we need to worry about now is parochialism, which takes hold when a centralized authority uses its power to exclude anything that does not align itself with the particular, narrowly-focused scope or outlook endorsed by that authority. Perhaps what we need today is a bit more provocation from the provinces, and a bit less pontification from the putative center.

“AMERICAN SCENES: IMAGES OF LEISURE AND ENTERTAINMENT” AND THE RELATED MEMBER SHOW, “AMERICAN SCENES,” ARE ON VIEW FEBRUARY 10-JUNE 3 AT THE WOODSTOCK ARTISTS ASSOCIATION & MUSEUM. (845) 679-2198; WWW.WOODSTOCKART.ORG. THE OPENING RECEPTION WILL BE HELD ON SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10 FROM 4 TO 6PM. “NEW HUDSON 3: CONTEMPORARY ART OF THE HUDSON VALLEY” IS ON VIEW THROUGH FEBRUARY 26 AT THE VAN BRUNT GALLERY IN BEACON. (845) 838-2995; WWW.VANBRUNTGALLERY.COM.

2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM LUCID DREAMING 45

gallery directory 46

GALLERY DIRECTORY CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

galleries ALBERT SHAHINIAN FINE ART

EISENHOWER HALL’S 1929 GALLERY

198 MAIN STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE. 454-0522.

US MILITARY ACADEMY, WEST POINT. (914) 734-9540.

“Winter Salon.” Through March 25.

“The Color of Loyalty: A Tribute to Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer.” Through February 11.

ALDRICH CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 258 MAIN STREET, RIDGEFIELD, CT. (203) 438-4519.

“Bitter Fruit.” Photographs by Paul Fusco.

Through February 25.

“No Reservations: Native American History and Culture in Contemporary Art.” Through February 25.

“Josh Azzarella: 2006 Emerging Artist Award Exhibition.”

Through February 25.

ART SOCIETY OF KINGSTON 97 BROADWAY, KINGSTON. 331-0331.

“Children’s Art.” Works by Kingston elementary school students. February 3-February 25.

“Hopscotch.” Works by children’s book illustrators.

February 3-February 25.

ELLENVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY AND MUSEUM 40 CENTER STREET, ELLENVILLE. 647-1497.

“Metal Works by Arthur Cyr.” Sculptures made of recycled materials. Through February 3.

THE FIREHOUSE STUDIO 3 DUNN STREET, KINGSTON. 331-6469.

“Colleen and Brian Trainor.” Paintings, drawings, and photographs. February 3-February 28.

Opening Saturday, February 3, 5-8:30pm.

VASSAR COLLEGE, POUGHKEEPSIE. 437-5632.

Opening Saturday, February 3, 5-7pm.

ART UPSTAIRS

GALERIE BMG

60 MAIN STREET, PHOENICIA. 688-2142.

12 TANNERY BROOK ROAD, WOODSTOCK. 679-0027.

“Windows Over Phoenicia.” Through February 11.

“Nature Without Glass.” Color pinhole photographs by Mark Stetler. Through February 12.

161 MAIN STREET, BEACON. 440-7584.

“Bau Now: 2007 Members Group Exhibition.”

January 13-February 4.

Opening Saturday, February 10, 6-9pm.

WATER STREET MARKET 10 MAIN STREET NEW PALTZ, NY 845 255 6800 w w w. g s t e v e j o r d a n . c o m

GALLERIA ALBA SCULPTURE SHOWROOM 1662 ROUTE 300, NEWBURGH. 566-1276.

“Celebration in Stone.” Sculpture by Anthony Gennarelli.

Through March 9.

gallery directory

“bau26: Curators as Artists.” February 10-March 4.

MOHONK IMAGES GALLERY

FRANCES LEHMAN LOEB ART CENTER “For the People.” American mural drawings of the 1930s and 1940s. Through March 11.

BAU

G. Steve Jordan

THE GALLERY AT R&F 84 TEN BROEK AVENUE, KINGSTON. 331-3312.

CARRIE HADDAD GALLERY 622 WARREN STREET, HUDSON. (518) 828-1915.

“Winter Photography Show.” Works by 9 regional artists.

Through March 4.

“Not Seeing in the Forest.” Paintings by Natalie Abrams, Dorothy Robinson and Pamela Wallace.

February 3-March 31.

Opening Saturday, February 3, 5-8pm.

CCS BARD HESSEL MUSEUM

GALLERY ON THE GREEN

BARD COLLEGE, ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON. 758-7598.

3 MEMORIAL LANE, PAWLING. 855-3900.

“Wrestle.” More than 200 works from the Marieluise Hessel Collection. Through May 27.

“Heart’s Content : A Chocolate Affair.” Works by Leslie Enders Lee. February 3-February 28.

Opening Saturday, February 3, 1-5pm.

CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY AT WOODSTOCK 59 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK. 679-9957.

“Kiss & Tell.” Curated by Kate Menconeri.

Through March 18.

GARRISON ART CENTER 23 GARRISON LANDING, GARRISON. 424-3960.

Lisa M. Robinson. “Snowbound.” Through March 18.

“Feel the Brazilian Heat.” Pottery exhibit.

Through February 18.

CLARK ART INSTITUTE

GCCA CATSKILL GALLERY

225 SOUTH STREET, WILLIAMSTOWN, MA. (413) 458-2303.

398 MAIN STREET, CATSKILL. (518) 943-3400.

“Claude Lorrain: The Painter as Draftsman.” Drawings from the British Museum. February 4-April 29.

“Paintings by John Albert Reinking.” Through March 3.

DIA: BEACON 3 BEEKMAN STREET, BEACON. 440-0100.

“An-My Le: Trap Rock, 2006.” Photography exhibit.

Through September 10.

“Drawing Series.” 14 key works from Sol LeWitt.

Through September 10.

DONSKOJ & COMPANY GALLERY 94 BROADWAY, KINGSTON. 331-8473.

“Winter Show.” February 3-February 17.

HUDSON VALLEY CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART 1701 MAIN STREET, PEEKSKILL. (914) 788-7166.

“Reverence.” Work of 33 internationally renowned artists from 13 countries. Through February 26.

“First Look II.” Works by 16 art students from around the country. February 24-September 30.

Opening Saturday, February 25, 4-6pm.

HUDSON OPERA HOUSE 327 WARREN STREET, HUDSON. (518) 822-1438.

Opening Saturday, February 3, 5-7pm.

“Iraqi Children in War.” Installation by artist Christine Heller.

Through February 25.

EAST VILLAGE COLLECTIVE

HUNTER VILLAGE SQUARE FINE CRAFT & ART GALLERY

99 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK. 679-2174.

MAIN STREET, HUNTER. (518) 263-4291.

“offSET.” Photographs by Lacey Terrell.

Through February 12.

“Deck the Halls.” Holiday exhibit of functional art.

Through February 28.

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galleries JOHN DAVIS GALLERY

THE MOVIEHOUSE

362 1⁄2 WARREN STREET, HUDSON. (518) 828-5907.

48 MAIN STREET, MILLERTON. (860) 435-2897.

“Paintings by Dionisio Cortes.” February 1-February 25.

Reception Saturday, February 3, 6-8pm.

“The Movie Paintings.” Moments inspired by movies.

Through March 1.

KARPELES MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY MUSEUM

NORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM

94 BROADWAY, NEWBURGH. 569-4997.

9 GLENDALE ROAD, STOCKBRIDGE, MA. (413) 298-4100.

“Mountain and Valley Views.” Oils, watercolors, and monotypes by area artist Patti Farrara. February 1-February 28.

“Picturing Health: Norman Rockwell and the Art of Illustration.” Through May 28.

KOTLER-MUROFF GALLERY SUNY ULSTER, STONE RIDGE. 687-5113.

“Democratic Republic of Congo: The Forgotten War.” Works by five photographers. Through February 23.

RIVERWINDS GALLERY 172 MAIN STREET, BEACON. 838-2880.

“Beacon Teen Reflections.” Beacon High School student art. Through February 5.

LADUE DESIGN 2 39 ULSTER AVENUE, SAUGERTIES. 246-5552.

SAMUEL DORSKY MUSEUM OF ART

“Hudson River School Influenced Artists.”

Works by Athena Billias, Patty Ferrara, Carol Slutsky-Tenerowicz, and Michele Moran. Through March 11.

SUNY NEW PALTZ, NEW PALTZ. 257-3872.

LASCANO GALLERY

“Form Radiating Life.” Paintings by Charles Rosen.

February 4-May 23.

Opening Saturday, February 24, 5-7pm.

297 MAIN STREET, GREAT BARRINGTON, MA. (413) 528-0471.

“Red & White.” Through February 25.

STONE WINDOW GALLERY 17 MAIN STREET, ACCORD. 626-4932.

MILDRED I. WASHINGTON ART GALLERY

“Oil Paintings by Sara Harris.” February 4-February 28.

SUNY DUTCHESS, POUGHKEEPSIE. 431-8000 EXT. 3982.

Opening Sunday, February 4, 2-5pm.

“Fall 2006 PVAC Student Exhibit.” Through February 9.

gallery directory

TIVOI ARTISTS CO-OP MILLBROOK GALLERY AND ANTIQUES 3297 FRANKLIN AVENUE, MILLBROOK. 677-6699.

“All Our Artists.” Paintings and sculptures.

Through March 30.

60 BROADWAY, TIVOLI. 757-COOP

“Recent Works.” Works by Co-op members.

February 9-February 28.

Opening Saturday, February 10, 6-8pm.

MILLSTREET LOFT GALLERY 455 MAPLE STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE. 471-7477.

VAN BRUNT GALLERY

“Something Edible.” Works by Tina Spataro.

February 17-March 16.

460 MAIN STREET, BEACON. 838-2995.

Opening Saturday, February 17, 4-8pm.

“New Hudson 3.” Contemporary art of the Hudson Valley.

Through February 26.

CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY AT WOODSTOCK Lisa M. Robinson, Wish, chromogenic print, 28” x 36”, 2005. From “Snowbound.” Through March 18.

48

GALLERY DIRECTORY CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

������������������ TAKING A STAND ON GLOBAL WARMING: Join us for an exciting World Café event Exchange views and ideas about solutions.

Learn about: The Low Carbon Diet: A Thirty Day Program to Lose 5,000 Pounds, to help lower individual carbon footprint and transfer this knowledge to our communities and workplaces.

WHEN: Sunday, February 11, 2007, 2:00pm to 6:00pm WHERE: Woodstock Jewish Congregation, 1682 Glasco Turnpike, just north of Rt. 212 RSVP: globalwarmingcafe@sustainhv.org

Event Sponsors: Sustainable Hudson Valley, Empowerment Institute, Omega, Woodstock Jewish Congregation, Chronogram and others.

2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM GALLERY DIRECTORY

gallery directory

FREE

49

Music

BY PETER AARON

KINGSTON CRUSADER

ADAM SNYDER GIVES HIS CITY ITS DUE PHOTOGRAPH BY DEBORAH DEGRAFFENREID

The city of Kingston sits adjacent to the Hudson River, 91 miles north of New York City. In one of its oldest sections, streets of brick buildings spring up from the edge of the Rondout Creek, a Hudson tributary, and climb a steep slope, finally leveling off on a plateau that overlooks the waters to the east and gazes back toward the lower reaches of the Catskills to the west. Originally home to the Esopus Indians, Kingston was settled by the Dutch before being ceded to the English in 1664; the Brits burned it down in 1777 after it had become a Revolutionary hub. The town was rebuilt into a teeming industrial center in the 1800s, only to be crippled by the Depression in the 1930s and, once again, by the departure of IBM in the ’90s. So, yes, it’s seen some drama over the years, but it’s no New York, New York. No toddlin’-town Chicago, no missable New Orleans. Not even an, ahem, loveable LA. In fact, Kingston’s not a city known to inspire any songs—let alone a whole album of them. But that’s exactly what Adam Snyder’s This Town Will Get Its Due is, though it wasn’t intended to be.

“I didn’t know it was going to be like that until after I’d started it,” says Snyder about his second solo disc (this one on his own Bare Bones label) since his leaving critically exalted Hudson Valley band Mercury Rev in 2000. “I already had some of the songs written and then I noticed a theme was developing, and at some point it became an album about Kingston.”

Anyone who knows Snyder, however, will tell you the subject matter is not really a surprise for the 40-year-old singer and multi-instrumentalist. Around town he’s known as a tireless crusader for the former state capital, especially on issues related to sensible development and sustainability, an active dynamo who belongs to neighborhood advocacy groups and frequently turns up at city hall to speak out at public meetings. (It’s no coincidence he tapped Kingston City Hall as the site of his record release gig.) Also an obsessive student of regional history, Snyder draws on local lore for the voices of the ghosts of Kingston’s past that populate his new record. “These songs came out of me with the same 50 MUSIC CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

force of a breakup song or a love song,” he says. “They were essential. I had to write them.”

Be thankful he did. This Town Will Get Its Due plays like a box of chocolates left in the rain on Valentine’s Day. Inside: sweet morsels of sadness like the migrant-worker confessional “Trickle Down” and gospel-tinged weepers like the title track and “Down the River” warm the bones like The Band or Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger. It’s a beautifully low-key album, full of soul-baring narratives wrapped in rustic intimacy.

In an underdog town, Snyder lives in one of its true underdog quarters: the Rondout. Once the rough-and-tumble waterfront province of Irish and German canal diggers, ice cutters, dock workers, brick makers, and brewers, the area was a city unto itself before being incorporated with Kingston proper in 1872.

Throughout the 1960s and ’70s it was a buffetlike tableau of drugs and prostitution but during the ’90s urban pioneers and West Strand restaurateurs began moving in and revitalizing the neighborhood, which is now a prime nightlife district. If there are ghosts to be found in Kingston, they are most certainly here, in Snyder’s stoic, two-story 1850s brick house.

So what about those spirits, like the one of Mickey Finn, the boy in the defiantly upbeat, thrummed-acoustic “Snake Hill” who floats across the creek in a truck tire as he contemplates the Rondout’s impending demise at the hands of developers? Is there a real Snake Hill?

“Sure is. Come and take a look,” Snyder says. Leading the way past a sprawling, wall-mounted period map of the city and out onto his raised deck, he points to a modest mound topped with bare trees on the opposite side of the creek.

“That’s Snake Hill, right there,” he says. “But Mickey Finn wasn’t a real person.

It’s the name of a boy character in a series of stories by Ernest Jerrold, who lived in Kingston in the 1880s. There’s a little bit of myself in that song, too, but I also wanted to use the character of Mickey Finn to talk about how a boy who grew

up in the Rondout during the 1800s would feel about developers coming in and knocking down the hill he played on so they could build condos there.”

Since becoming one of its permanent residents in 2000, Snyder has made an even more direct contribution to the Rondout’s renaissance. In February 2006, he and Aimee Gardner opened a gallery on Abeel Street, the Kingston Museum of Contemporary Art, also known as KMoCA (the name is a friendly poke at North Adams’s MASS MoCA). Over the past year, the tiny space has hosted exhibits and performances by a wide range of local and traveling artists and musicians.

Snyder was born in Queens to a Manhattan mother and a Brooklyn father. The family moved to Kingston in 1972. While attending college in Syracuse, he played in a handful of indie-punk bands before returning to the Hudson Valley; from there, he tried to make a go of it as a musician in Memphis, a frustrating proposition. But in 1995, his friends in Mercury Rev came calling in search of a keyboardist (Snyder also plays guitar, bass, accordion, banjo, and other instruments). The band sent a plane ticket and he was soon back in Kingston, rehearsing for overseas tours and in the studio making such gold records as the group’s acknowledged classic, 1998’s Deserter’s Songs.

“Adam really had a lot to do with how well Deserter’s Songs turned out,” says Mercury Rev guitarist Grasshopper. “At that point, we were starting to want to play and write songs in different ways, and he really helped us out with the new ideas we had. Plus, Adam’s like a jukebox, he knows so many songs. We’d be playing one of our own songs and he’d drop in some part of a Stevie Wonder song or something. A different musical reference every night, which was really cool.”

So why, then, did Snyder leave the group in 2000? “Well, looking back on it now, I guess I could’ve stayed and still done my own music as a side project,” he says. “But I was a bit of a control freak back then, and I really wanted complete control of my music and my career. We’re still all friends, though. In fact I did a short tour with Mercury Rev not long ago, just for fun.”

His years with the acclaimed neo-psychedelic act have also led to brief stints as a studio player for New Order and as a touring keyboardist for The Waterboys. In addition to the ’Rev-friendly UK, the latter band’s homeland of Ireland has become a ripe region for Snyder’s own performances, one he toured with great success upon the release of his first solo album, 2001’s more folk-based, appropriately titled Across the Pond (released on David Gray’s HTI Records). “Ireland has what I call a really high PQ, or poetry quotient,” the singer-songwriter says. “Everyone there has some level of poetry in them. If you want to stand up and sing all by yourself, or tell them a story, they want to hear the story. If you want to share an emotion with them, they want to share one with you. They’ve got thousands of years of history of understanding that, and it goes right into the pop world. Even though I was singing some of these songs [about Kingston] to them, they still identified with what I was singing. Like, when I did ‘Ghost Town’ they would get really quiet and listen.”

But despite the warm reception he gets on the Emerald Isle, Snyder seems unlikely to leave the city he champions anytime soon—developers be damned. “We’re witnessing a potentially rapid change here. Because I talk about this stuff, a lot of people equate me with protesters who are totally against development,” Snyder explains. “Sometimes I think it would be easier if I was all one way or the other, either 100 percent for development or 100 percent against it. But, really, I’m somewhere in between. The thing about growth is that even though you can’t stop it from happening, you can at least do it in an intelligent way. I just think there needs to be a dialogue about it.”

For This Town Will Get Its Due, Adam Snyder has taken that dialogue and woven it into a collection of quietly heartrending odes to the tarnished city he refuses to stop believing in. Hearing them will make you a believer too.

Adam Snyder plays with Johnny Wang, Valen, and DJ Lemar Soulflower at the grand opening of Muddy Cup coffeehouse in midtown Kingston on February 9 at 8pm. www.adamsnyder.com; www.kmoca.org.

LISTEN TO SELECTED TRACKS FROM ADAM SNYDER’S THIS TOWN WILL GET ITS DUE AT WWW.CHRONOGRAM.COM.

2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM MUSIC 51

NIGHTLIFE HIGHLIGHTS

Handpicked by local scenemaker DJ WAVY DAVY for your listening pleasure.

FIRST SUNDAY SONGWRITERS CIRCLE February 4. The Arts Society of Kingston at 97 Broadway presents a sampler of the region’s finest songwriters the first Sunday of each month (following their hip First Saturday art gallery walks). Hosted by gad-fly girls Elly Wininger and Elise Pittelman, this session also features the contemporary original music of Dorraine Scofield, Ralph Legnini, and Joe Veillette. February is a short month, so get out now and hear live music! 2pm. $10/$8 ASK members. Kingston. (845) 338-0331. www.askforarts.org.

REALITY CHECK February 9. Local band buzz, part one: This veteran Hudson Valley power trio—Anthony Nisi (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Frank Russ (bass), and Guy Elluzzi (drums)—plans to rock the starch out of the Silo Ridge Country Club on Dutchess County Route 22. Seriously, come early to have dinner in their Bistro on the Green, then stay for Reality Check’s mix of modern and classic dance-rock hits. 1, 2, 3, Fore! 9:30pm. No cover with dinner. Amenia. (845) 373-7000. www.rcband.net.

UNCLE ROCK/THE PHANTOMS (A CAPELLA) February 11. Uncle Rock is singer-songwriter, actor, Chronogram scribe, and professional child wrangler Robert Burke Warren. Before being dubbed Uncle Rock by his nephew, Warren was bassist for The Fleshtones and spent a year portraying Buddy Holly in “Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story” in London’s West End. But his most rewarding role to date has been as stay-at-home dad to his son, Jack (seven).

When Jack headed off to kindergarten, “Unk” happily ended up a teacher’s assistant at the School of the New Moon outside Woodstock, where he brought his guitar to play rock ‘n’ roll, country, and folk for the kids. Drawing inspiration from icons like Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, and Roald Dahl, Uncle Rock faces the dragons in your closet. Dorraine Scofield lends a voice to the a capella Phantoms for this kids’ and parents’ show at the Bearsville Theater. 2pm. $8 adults, $5 kids, toddlers free.

Bearsville. (845) 679-4406. (Uncle Rock returns to the Woodstock Library on February 24 at 5pm and to Taste Budd’s in Red Hook on March 3 at 10pm.) www.unclerock.com.

ANTHILL MOB February 17. Local band buzz, part two: We love Anthill Mob for spreading the love from Dutchess County to Manhattan to Austin music fest South by Southwest for almost 20 years. The band (lead vocalist/keyboardist Stephanie Gallo, guitarist Ed Lotz, bassist Rob Nastasi, and drummer Dave Mucci) fills the void between new-edge bands and classic rockers, playing high-test vocal rock and power country at hot spot Michael’s Sports Bar (which just added an actual beer-pong table) on Route 9.

10pm. No cover with dinner. Fishkill. (845) 896-5766. www.myspace.com/anthillmob1.

FANTOM FREQUENCY February 17. Fantom Frequency’s members are the reigning ambassadors of Hudson Valley/New York City crossover hard-emo and one of the most polished units around. Tonight at Cabaloosa the group headlines an outrageous roster of live bands cemented by cutting-edge DJ Claw spinning some of the most exclusive dubplates from emerging artists around the world. Joined by This Level Is Clouds! (from Ohio), Gregory Farley, and Pontious Pilate Sales Pitch (featuring experienced and longtime members of the KingstonWoodstock rock scene), FF presents absolutely something for everyone at this synth-rock-dance-punkdrum’n’bass throwdown. Let’s get ready to you-know-what! 10pm. $8. New Paltz. (845) 255-5400. www.myspace.com/fantomfrequency.

RUSTED ROOT February 17. Any show by Rusted Root is a party, from here at The Chance to dancing in the aisles during WDST’s 1999 holiday concert at UPAC. Despite the name, RR stays fresh year-in and yearout. Take note: Jambase is running a contest to give away tickets to the upcoming February tour at www.jambase.com/contests. New York City-based jam unit Quintus is psyched to be added to this tour, having just posted the news all over the band’s MySpace page (www.myspace.com/quintusmusic).

7:30pm. $25. Poughkeepsie. www.chancetheater.com. (845) 471-1966.

PETE LEVIN ORGAN TRIO March 3. Woodstock-based keyboard legend Levin has performed and recorded with hundreds of jazz and pop artists, including Paul Simon, Miles Davis, David Sanborn, Robbie Robertson, and John Scofield, not to mention his 15-year association with legendary composer/arranger Gil Evans. Says Levin, “What I got from Gil was the unshakable notion that playing music was to create from a place where there are no boundaries. If it can be imagined then it can be done.” With a new CD, Deacon Blues, about to drop this spring, Levin embraces his roots and first love, the Hammond organ. Since he’s been working with a heavy group of sidemen (including Joe Beck, Danny Gottlieb, Tony Levin, and Mike DeMicco), don’t be surprised to see who shows up at this “trio” gig at the Rosendale Cafe.

(The cafe now hosts a community singer-songwriters night every other Tuesday at 7:30pm, call for February dates.) 8pm. $10. Rosendale. (845) 658-9048.

HEAR MUSIC FROM THE ACTS PREVIEWED IN NIGHTLIFE HIGHLIGHTS. WWW.CHRONOGRAM.COM

52 MUSIC CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

CD REVIEWS LUNCH WITH BEARDO SURREALISTIC PICNIC FDH RECORDS, 2006

Do you experiment with DMT or acid? Perhaps you go for the more natural highs of weed and ’shrooms. Or maybe you just like some masochism mixed into your meditation routine. Whatever your psychedelic Kool-Aid of choice, Lunch with Beardo might be a worthy side dish. In case you haven’t fed your head in a while, buy the album and you will find yourself out the door to the local herb man tout de suite. If not to enjoy the music then to just get the hell away from it. Be emotionally prepared, or just schedule your therapy appointment now.

This is noise from five hard-working and creative boys who cut their teeth on punk, hardcore, and prog-metal. Slow that down to 1/10th the RPMs, add a meandering trumpet, nonsensical groaning, tape loops, some minor arpeggios, a Theremin, and other miscellaneous trickery, and you have Lunch with Beardo. This art is anarchy in motion. Don’t question it. You will miss the point.

Lunch with Beardo is a much-needed shot in the arm for the fearfully homogeneous Hudson Valley music scene. Give us experimental noise collage any day over one more chanteuse with an acoustic guitar. Much of the band hails from New Paltz and surrounds such as Warwick and La Grange. Lunch with Beardo plays The Cubbyhole in Poughkeepsie on February 25. www.lunchwithbeardo.com.

—Jason Broome

THE STILLHOUSE ROUNDERS BLACK DOG JAM JAR RECKERDS, 2006

Sometimes this critic thing gets in the way of letting one’s freak flag fly high. You spend time distracted from the music, looking for comparisons and hunting down influences. Digging for clever metaphors or profound alliterative phrases to capture what you’re hearing.

To hell with all that this time ’cuz me and the missus are kicking up our heels as the Rounders—guitarist and vocalist Gil Sayers, fiddler Mark Schmidt, banjo man Mike Fleck, and bassist Geoff Harden—roll n’ tumble over the mountains with an ever-infectious glee. Their irrepressible groove of sweet back-porch pickin’ and finger-lickin’-good times throughout these 17 trad-bluegrass tunes will pull you from the narcotic lure of the mainstream. If you’re looking for good times, check out the Stillhouse Rounders at the Rosendale Cafe on February 10. They will also be featured on WAMC’s “Dancing on the Air” on February 14. And if you make it to Rosendale and I don’t, please find out what a “meatskin” is and get back to me.

—Mike Jurkovic

THE STRYKER / SLAGLE BAND LATEST OUTLOOK ZOHO MUSIC, 2007

Let’s face it: Jazz is often perceived as pretentious or intimidating. Atonal chord changes and endless bass solos usually mean an extended trip back to the wine-and-cheese table. Not so with Latest Outlook, the third CD from the combo led by alto saxophonist Steve Outlook Slagle and Orange County-based guitarist Dave Stryker. Together, they deliver top-flight jazz that is upbeat and captivating, never dry or blase. Hard-swinging drummer Billy Hart and bassist Jay Anderson round out the group, and the CD was recorded at Anderson’s New Paltz studio. Tenor giant Joe Lovano makes a guest appearance on two cuts: Stryker’s totally ear-catching Charlie Parker ode, “Bird Flew,” and a soulful cover of Charles Mingus’s “Self-Portrait in Three Colors.” Stryker, who toured for over a dozen years with saxman Stanley Turrentine, is equally gifted whether playing hard bop or ballads, and Slagle’s tone is as clear as springwater.

—DJ Wavy Davy

YOUR EARS, PLEASE. HEAR THIS MUSIC @ WWW.CHRONOGRAM.COM > LUNCH WITH BEARDO “THEY ATE WONDERS” < > THE STILLHOUSE ROUNDERS “SAL’S GOT A MEATSKIN” < > THE STRYKER-SLAGLE BAND “SELF-PORTRAIT IN THREE COLORS” <

2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM MUSIC 53

Books

HARLEM RENAISSANCE MAN MAT JOHNSON DOES THE WRITE THING

F

By Nina Shengold photo by Jennifer May

rom Mat Johnson’s website: “The man in the picture is the author of Drop, Hunting in Harlem, The Great Negro Plot, Incognegro, and Pym. At times he has been known as The Mullah of Mulattos. He is seven feet tall, conks his facial hair with lye, and wears a belt buckle made from the skull of Iceberg Slim.”

Bard professor Johnson did indeed write those books, and a colleague at the international writers organization PEN laid that nickname on him, but as for the rest? He’s a good fiction writer.

Even at a mere 6’ 4”, with no visible lye burns or bone on his belt, Johnson cuts an imposing figure as he lopes into Bard’s student center. He’s a burly man with buzz-cut hair and intense dark eyes, the sort of keep-you-guessing multiethnic looks that built a career for Vin Diesel. Today he’s been slammed by a winter cold he caught from his three children. “I feel like I have a pound and a half of spaghetti inside my head,” he says affably, settling down at a table that seems much too small for his frame. He’s holding a copy of his latest book, The Great Negro Plot, from a carton that just arrived at his house.

Born in 1970, Johnson grew up in “racially stratified” Philadelphia. His mother is African American; his father, Irish American. After his parents’ divorce, he was raised by his social worker mother in a largely black section of the city, Germantown, where he often felt like a standout. “When I was a little kid, I looked really white—I was this little Irish boy in a dashiki.”

Germantown was “not the roughest neighborhood, but not the best.”

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Johnson stayed indoors a lot, becoming an avid reader. His first love was comic books. “Then I realized that for the same 75 cents I spent on an Incredible Hulk comic, I could buy a whole book of science fiction that would last three or four days.”

In his teens, he transferred to a private school, Abingdon Friends, in a more affluent neighborhood. “It was the first time I was around a lot of white people. I suddenly realized I had an ethnic identity, and started to think about race.” He listened to Public Enemy and devoured The Autobiography of Malcolm X and books by W.E.B. DuBois and Toni Morrison. “AfricanAmerican literature felt like an intellectual home, this place where I fit and belonged,” he says gratefully.

Like the late playwright August Wilson, Johnson seems to identify almost exclusively with the African roots of his biracial family tree. “African-American is a Creole culture. It embraces the mix,” he asserts.

The Great Negro Plot, an “urban historical,” describes a series of arson fires that sparked a witch hunt in colonial Manhattan. In 1741, the port city, known for its roustabout taverns and uncivil ways, had a large population of enslaved Africans. With memories of an abortive slave rebellion in 1712 still fresh, suspicions flared, giving rise to a kangaroo court of staggering transparency.

The trial’s star witness was Mary Johnson, a 16-year-old indentured servant who was promised her freedom in exchange for testifying. Though

her eyewitness accounts wobbled like jelly, expanding to include whoever was dragged into court, and even veering toward the occult (she claimed to see “devil rats” among the cabal of slaves at her master’s tavern), the court took her word until—many months later—she wracked her brains for rich white instigators and started accusing the judges’ own families. This testimony threw her out as an unreliable witness. By then, half the city’s adult male slaves had been implicated: 160 were jailed, 72 banished, 18 hanged, and 13 burned at the stake. If the author can barely hold his indignation in check, who can blame him?

In 2001, Mat Johnson was living in northern New Jersey, and saw the Twin Towers go down. “I remember thinking, ‘I wish I had a history book from 50 years from now that could tell me what the hell’s happening.’ Not just the attack, but the heightened insanity afterward, the anthrax scare, people wanting to bomb and raze entire countries just out of fear.” He decided to explore a similar incident from a historical perspective. “The Great Negro Plot was the first terrorist attack on New York,” he observes, and it was “met with the same hysteria and militant xenophobia.”

Many historians have covered this ground, but as Johnson points out, “We still look at these incidents from a European perspective. I wanted to put the enslaved at the center of the discussion.” During the research phase, he landed a job teaching African-American Studies and Creative Writing at Bard. “Living in the Hudson Valley really helped. You still see the same names: Beekman, Rondout.” Walking around Kingston, with its traditional British and Dutch colonial architecture, mountain and river views, gave Johnson “a sense of what an agrarian Manhattan might look like.”

After three years of reading, he sat down and “wrote it like a novel.” The narrative voice he employs is startling, ranging from an incantatory prologue (“Beware the Africans, Koromantines and Pawpaws of the Akan-Asante, kidnapped from West African shores and brought to the ocean’s other side”). to an informal, streetwise diction that seems to come straight from crime fiction (“Silver has always made good stealing. You can hammer the metal down if you put your muscle to it, or melt it if you got the know-how”).

This hardboiled tone is no accident. Johnson’s latest titles are the graphic novel Hellblazer: Papa Midnite (illustrated by Tony Akins and local artist Dan Green) and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award winner Hunting in Harlem, nominally a thriller. “There’s a long tradition of social satire in AfricanAmerican literature, but satire is what closes on Saturday night. So they marketed it as a thriller,” says Johnson.

Thriller or not, Hunting in Harlem is packed with phrases Raymond Chandler would relish: a scrawny author resembles “a skeleton dipped in chocolate”; parole officers are “like office coffee left to burn on the plate for days”; a victim “looks like a jockey’s runt son.” Walter Mosley called the book “righteously terrifying…a cautionary tale for our time.” The setup is simple: Three ex-cons are recruited by Harlem’s Horizon Realty for a secondchance incentive program. By the time they realize that Horizon’s vision of a new Harlem Renaissance involves uplifting the race (and property values) through ethnic self-cleansing, they’re in it up to their necks.

Johnson’s first novel, Drop, follows an African-American adman from West Philly to London and back. The hero’s journey echoes the author’s: During college, he spent an exchange year in Wales and later moved to London on a graduate fellowship, studying the African-American diaspora in Europe and Africa. He also wrote ad copy for MTV; his wife, Meera Bowman, was art director of Essence.

Between gigs, Johnson attempted a novel that he cheerfully labels “abysmal. I realized I wasn’t good enough to write a good book, and too proud to write one bad enough to sell.” He attended Columbia’s MFA program, where he studied his craft with the likes of Michael Cunningham and spent some years living in Harlem.

Johnson venerates the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and ’30s; his website references that era with the provocative moniker www.niggerati.com. (“The only negative response I’ve gotten has been from white people,” he notes with amusement.) “Niggerati” was coined by either Zora Neale Hurston or Wallace Thurman to describe Harlem’s cultural intelligentsia. Johnson writes, “While tongue-in-cheek, the word managed to take a slur and make it regal, using it to describe a new caste of Talented Tenth meritocrats. It is both self-effacing and self-aggrandizing, an in-group word that only one ethnic group can comfortably speak aloud.”

He launched the site in November and often gets over a hundred hits a day, including a lively blog-and-response section. “I wanted a place for African-American people to talk about African-American literature,” he exults.

“I got into writing because I wanted to have a conversation with society. I

started the blog so people could talk back.”

Johnson’s next publication, Incognegro, is a graphic novel described

by Vertigo (DC Comics’ adult imprint) as “a noir mystery based on true tales of undercover race spying in the Jim Crow South.” He calls writing graphic novel scripts “a good palate-cleanser” and enjoys the challenge of frame-by-frame storytelling. To those who disdain the form, he responds, “That’s like saying you can’t have a good conversation on the telephone.

It’s just a medium.”

“Sometimes it’s difficult to code-switch between forms,” he admits. “But if there’s something I’m not quite comfortable with, that’s attractive to me.

I want to keep getting better, I don’t want to calcify.”

Johnson’s next novel, Pym, spins off Edgar Allen Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, a problematic fantasy that ends with a literal cliffhanger.

H.G. Wells and H.P. Lovecraft both wrote sequels, but Johnson’s take on Pym’s “half-breed” companion is uniquely his own. Noting the college’s tradition of literary experimentation, Johnson grins. “This is my Bard book.”

Though thrilled with his teaching job, he’s dismayed by one fact: “In four years at Bard, I’ve had exactly zero students of African descent in my creative writing classes.” But Mat Johnson finds that the Hudson Valley has its own sort of diversity. “Where else can you go to Best Buy and see a Tibetan monk buying a widescreen TV?”

READ AN EXCERPT FROM THE GREAT NEGRO PLOT. SEE THE WORK BEHIND THE PROFILE ON OUR REDESIGNED WEBSITE, AND FIND OUT MORE ABOUT MAT JOHNSON’S TALE OF CONSPIRACY AND MURDER IN 18TH CENTURY NEW YORK. WWW.CHRONOGRAM.COM

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SHORT TAKES These notable new books by Hudson Valley authors will take you away—from the back alleys of the capital to the dark side of the moon.

The Glorious Mushroom Frank Spinelli

ALBANY SCRAPBOOK: VOL. 1 KENNETH SALZMANN GELLES-COLE LITERARY ENTERPRISES, 2006, $12.95

Recently featured on WGY’s “Don Weeks Show,” Salzmann gathers a posse of colorful anecdotes about the capital city sometimes maligned as “Smallbany,” debunking a few urban legends (Fidel Castro was not scouted by the Albany Senators, but Troy infielder Esteban Bellan was the first Hispanic player in the big leagues—in 1871).

HARMONIOUS ENVIRONMENTS: BEAUTIFY, DETOXIFY & ENERGIZE YOUR LIFE, YOUR HOME & YOUR PLANET NORMA LEHMEIER HARTIE LINGHAM PRESS, JANUARY 2007, $19.95

One-stop shopping for spiritually inclined, eco-sensitive homeowners. Using her patented Harmonious Adjustments approach, which blends elements of Feng Shui, the Four Elements, color and energy work, creative visualization, and interior design, Crugers-based author Hartie warmly encourages readers to revitalize via changes both macro and micro.

HAUNTED BY PARENTS LEONARD SHENGOLD, M.D. YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, JANUARY 2007, $35

Eminent psychoanalyst and Soul Murder author Shengold (paternal haunter of Chronogram’s Books Editor) explores the lifelong impact of early parenting, including the lingering fear that “change means loss,” on such literary figures as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Leonard Woolf, Henrik Ibsen, and childhood expert Dr. Benjamin Spock.

I WILL HOLD YOU TILL YOU SLEEP

BY LINDA ZUCKERMAN, ILLUSTRATED BY JON J MUTH SCHOLASTIC, OCTOBER 2006, $16.99

Veteran children’s-book-editor-turned-author Zuckerman takes flight with this heart-tugging lullaby of parental love that lasts a lifetime, and beyond. The luscious watercolors by Caldecott Honor medalist and Ulster County resident Muth ((Zen Shorts, The Three Questions) weave night skies into garments.

MONA LISA BLOSSOMING SUNNY BERKLEY, FEBRUARY 2007, $14

The prolific Highland author of Mona Lisa Awakening continues her fantasy saga, taking the mixed-blood Queen of the Moon and her courtiers into the steamy intrigues of Louisiana’s bayou country. Spicier than jambalaya with plenty of hot sauce, this is an erotic romance that walks on the wild side.

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Catskill Press, 2006, $35

Gone, gone is rapture’s flooding gushes When mushrooms they were fairy bowers, Their marble pillars overswelling, And danger paused to pluck the flowers That in their swarthy rings were dwelling.

T

hose lines, by the English “peasant poet” John Clare, may be the one literary allusion to mushrooms that has somehow escaped Frank Spinelli in this glorious book of large, vivid photographs and equally enticing prose. From his forays into the “forests, rocks and open fields” that fringe his home in the Catskills, Spinelli has laden these pages with a trove of toadstools, a cornucopia of boletes, and an opulence of polypores for the reader’s delectation, along with learned tidbits on taxonomy, nomenclature, identification, edibility, and the like, with lyrical asides from Shakespeare, Shelley, Thoreau, Anonymous, and other illustrious hiking companions.

As anyone knows who has spent any time trooping through the northern woods after a midsummer rain or in the amber light of early autumn, mushrooms and the Muse are a natural match. Looking at Spinelli’s photos, shot mostly from ground level at close range, it’s easy to see the connection. How, for instance, can one fail to be transported by a colony of Fuzzy Foot Morel, the color of honey mustard, tiny trumpets making a fanfare for the eye as they surge across a hemlock stump? Or by an apparitional pair of fairy hats (Marasmius rotula), whitely manifesting on the morning after a storm?

How, indeed, can anyone of sound stalk and mind withhold a sigh, confronted by the loveliness of a white, chartreuse, and lavender Russula, graced by the ministrations of a snail?

A portrait of a willowy clump of Spindle-Shaped Yellow Coral perfectly illustrates one of the paradoxical impressions evoked by fungi: how organisms that are so emblematic of the rank, littered, redolent earth they spring from can suggest something so ghostly or exobiological.

“Whether I view this mushroom as an element in a moonscape or as a plant in a submerged seascape, the impression is one of otherworldliness,” Spinelli writes, italicizing the point with a passage from The First Men in the Moon, in which the “sinuous shapes” of the lunar vegetation are not unlike those of coral fungi.

For all their beauty, mushrooms can be repellent to some observers. The Netted Stinkhorn, a phalluslike fungus, has a distinctive odor (“an oddly sweet perfume with the undersmell of rancid meat”) that lures the flies whose legs distribute its spores. “Because this species so resembles the human penis, there is little doubt that, along with its putrid odor, it was a contributor to the [Victorian] era’s aversion to all things fungal,” Spinelli writes. Even so enlightened an observer as Thoreau fairly spews when considering the Stinkhorn: “Pray, what was nature thinking of when she made this? She almost puts herself on a level with those who draw in privies.”

Such repulsion, along with mycophobia, or fear of mushrooms, is a cultural response. As Spinelli notes, ’shrooms have acquired a degree of guilt-by-association—with witchcraft, devil worship, and hippie rituals—in the collective consciousness. But some of that fear, at least, is grounded in the very real specter of mushroom poisoning. Although Spinelli points out that only a handful of the many thousands of mushroom species have dire consequences when ingested, the ones that do are doozies. Gaze, o mortal reader, upon the two arresting photographs of Amanita bisporigera, the Hannibal Lecter of the fungal kingdom, and read the description of what happens to those unwary enough to sample one. Then resolve to never, ever nibble a mushroom that you have not positively identified, and quickly turn to the luscious photos of choice edibles—Boletus edulis, Cantharellis cibarius, Laetiporus cincinnatus—and the drool-inducing recipes the author has magnanimously provided. As delectable for the eye and the mind as is for the palate a brace of morels braised in butter and lightly salted, this book is a choice read.

—Mikhail Horowitz CHRONOGRAM REVIEWS NEW BOOKS BY HUDSON VALLEY AUTHORS AND PRESSES, AND ON SUBJECTS OF REGIONAL INTEREST. SEND REVIEW COPIES TO: NINA SHENGOLD, BOOKS EDITOR, CHRONOGRAM, 314 WALL ST., KINGSTON, NY 12401

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Rebekkah’s Journey Ann E. Burg, illustrated by Joel Iskowitz Sleeping Bear Press, September 2006, $17.95

Five Little Gefiltes Written and illustrated by Dave Horowitz Putnam Children’s Books, February 2007, $12.99

F

or the sake of access and order, booksellers group like with like. Unfortunately, this can backfire for many books, especially those with the potential to reach beyond their most obvious audience.

Jewish-themed children’s books often straddle a tricky divide. But there are simple clues to wider appeal. Is the book’s focus religious or cultural? Does it open a window onto another way of life?

Maybe, like the picture book Rebekkah’s Journey, it shows history from a unique angle. Created by a Rhinebeck writer and a Woodstock-based illustrator, the story is based on the little-known true tale of 1,000 World War II refugees invited in 1944 by FDR to stay at an empty Army Base in upstate New York. The viewpoint character is seven-year-old Rebekkah, who voices with affecting spareness her flight from the Nazis: “For miles Mama carried me on her back. But then she grew tired. ‘Rebekkah,’ she whispered into my hair as she put me down.

‘Please, Bekah, be strong.’”

Rebekkah’s a sensitive narrator with a heartbreaking eye for detail. She has no shoes, and some of her fellow travelers wear “dirty striped pajamas.” She’s afraid of the seriousness of statuesque Miss Liberty and her flaming torch, and, after a train ride north, is overwhelmed by the kindness of the townspeople. But the Army base isn’t the rainbow’s end. It’s enclosed by a fence the refugees are not allowed to cross—shades of the camps some have just fled.

The illustrations, mostly in tones of old-photo sepia, capture the story’s mood perfectly. Told with sincerity, restraint, and age-appropriate detail, Rebekkah’s Journey is a strongly compelling tale. Children will find relevance in Rebekkah’s struggles with fear, courage, and trust, but a warning to reading-aloud parents: You may find yourself needing to explain your tears.

A completely different side of the Jewish-American experience is presented in Five Little Gefiltes, the latest picture book by a prolific Rosendale writer/illustrator. (For the uninitiated, “gefiltes” are chopped fish in aspic.) In a creatively slanted take on a classic toddler rhyme, Horowitz combines folksy Yiddishisms, goofy rhymes, cut paper, and paint to portray a charming, pushcart-strewn, two-cent-pickle version of New York’s Lower East Side. Five black-hatted gefiltes “set out one day” and then, to the chagrin of Mama Gefilte, they fail, one by one, to return to their jar. But they don’t go far—errant gefiltes can be spotted in each spread, boating in the harbor, dancing on rooftops, spoiling someone’s soup.

The backgrounds are saturated with delightful details, like a store called Schmata King (we got a lotta schmatas!) and a sign at a deli exhorting patrons to “have a nosh.” The gefiltes add to the silliness as well. “I’m totally schvitzing,” one complains. “I know—it’s so humid!” says another. But the humor isn’t just for insiders; there’s a glossary of Yiddish words and their pronunciations at the end. And because it’s the kind of book that begs repeat reads, Five Little Gefiltes will be a vocabulary-building experience as well as a bedtime favorite (prepare to embrace the phrase Oy vey).

The family’s ultimate reunion will satisfy the book’s youngest audience, but kids of every age and ethnicity will find delight here. Lucky are the parents who get to mouth kvetched, schnook, and mischpocheh again and again (say it throaty, like you have a hairball).

The glossary’s explanation of chutzpah reads, “Dave got someone to publish this ridiculous book about a bunch of gefilte fish? Now that’s what I call chutzpah!” It seems this meshuga book was as much fun to write as it is to read.

The book is being promoted “just in time for Passover,” the holiday when gefiltes quiver gelatinously at seders around the world. But like Rebekkah’s Journey, Five Little Gefiltes deserves to hop the fence of the ethnic book shtetl, and find a place as an appreciated guest at other tables too.

—Susan Krawitz CHRONOGRAM REVIEWS NEW BOOKS BY HUDSON VALLEY AUTHORS AND PRESSES, AND ON SUBJECTS OF REGIONAL INTEREST. SEND REVIEW COPIES TO: NINA SHENGOLD, BOOKS EDITOR, CHRONOGRAM, 314 WALL ST., KINGSTON, NY 12401

58 BOOKS CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

Just a Little Too Thin: How to Pull Your Child Back from the Brink of an Eating Disorder Michael A. Strober and Meg Schneider Da Capo Press, September 2006, $16.95

I

s Katie’s diet a brief experiment at weight loss, or is it part of an emotional struggle to improve her life, win a boyfriend, and raise her self-esteem? Just a Little Too Thin is a guide for parents unsure about whether their daughters’ dieting behaviors are a normal quest for health or the beginnings of a serious struggle with body image and disordered eating.

Just a Little Too Thin was written by Meg Schneider, an adolescent and family therapist based in Rhinebeck, and UCLA’s eating disorder program director, Michael Strober.

Though Schneider has authored several parenting books, this is her first to deal with eating disorders.

Somewhere between a self-help workbook and a well-rounded read about the prevalent cultural obsession with weight and dieting, Just a Little Too Thin targets the parents of female teens who diet or have a strong focus on their weight. It is not intended, though it may be helpful, for parents of adolescents already diagnosed with serious eating disorders.

This book tracks the phases of adolescents traveling on the “slippery slope” between a healthy desire to “lose a few pounds” and a dieting compulsion. The authors provide benchmarks for parents to assess their children’s behavior. Does your daughter meticulously study food labels or avoid social gatherings that involve food? Is the dinner table filled with tension as she cuts her food into tiny pieces and moves it around on her plate, almost unconsciously? Although every teen will progress differently, this book highlights important markers and red flags of eatingdisordered behaviors that parents should heed.

Just a Little Too Thin also gives parents practical exit strategies for children heading into a downward slide, including concrete advice on what to say to support self-esteem. When listening to your daughter’s exhilarated exclamations about her recent weight loss and how much she likes looking thin, the authors suggest reminding her about other positive traits as well. From how to question a teen about her diet to sample conversations about advertisements promoting thinness or the pressure teens feel from not seeing their body type reflected in the media, parents will find these dialogues useful as a model for constructive conversation—though they may need to reread the phrases a few times to remember language that’s outside one’s daily vernacular.

When up to 60 percent of all teens diet regularly and 50 percent of normal-weight teens see themselves as heavy, there is clearly a gigantic cultural pressure to be thin. The authors pointedly acknowledge this: “We can’t stress enough that dissatisfaction with appearance is tied closely to our social world. The pressure on young people to achieve thinness and to see the success of doing so as equal to other accomplishments has intensified. The message is conveyed through the media, peer pressure, parental encouragement, and more, making it virtually impossible to avoid as it permeates every aspect of our daily routine.” A teen’s perceived pressure to be thin is now the greatest predictor of body dissatisfaction. This is critical for adults and teens to understand so they can see—and avoid—the enormous power of this cultural obsession.

Schneider and Strober are astute in pointing out that parents need to look at the messages they learned while growing up about dieting and body image. The authors have captured a crucial concept of parents, “need to deal with their own personal stuff first,” incorporating it throughout this guide. Along with stories from families who have been on this slope, the book functions as a script, teaching parents to change their language to help prevent dieting obsessions. It is a road map essential for anyone with a teen on the dieting trip.

a whole new

.com

—Ilyse Simon CHRONOGRAM IS NOW PUBLISHING SHORT FICTION. SUBMIT YOUR STORY TODAY! GUIDELINES: WWW.CHRONOGRAM.COM/SUBMISSIONS. FICTION@CHRONOGRAM.COM / 314 WALL ST., KINGSTON, NY 12401

2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM BOOKS 59

POETRY

Edited by Phillip Levine. Submissions are accepted year-round. Deadline for our March issue is February 5. Send up to 3 poems or 3 pages (whichever comes first), by regular mail, to: Poetry, 314 Wall St., Kingston, NY 12401, or via e-mail (preferred) to poetry@chronogram.com. Subject: Poetry Submission. Full submission guidelines at www.chronogram.com/pages/submissions.

with your head beside my shoulder and your belly by my need perhaps i can go on —p

Unfair to Apes

Would We?

An animal named Tommy called me on the phone screaming that I ordered a storm window for the closet. I did not order a storm window. I told him to get me a price on a storm window that I would order only if it was cheap enough since I could get the handyman who was anyway building me a shelf in the bedroom to just nail a board or something over the window so the cold air wouldn’t blow in whenever I opened the closet door. Whoever heard of a window in a closet? But that’s beside the point. e point is that Tommy acted like an animal and I use the word “animal” loosely because I know I am using it in a context that is unfair to animals which I, in general, like—though I didn’t like the squirrel that tore apart my favorite succulent and for what? Bugs to eat? If Tommy had been a little guy, perhaps him screaming at me wouldn’t have been as horrifying as it was, but imagining this muscle-bound ape coming at me through the phone, as though he could squeeze his square body through the instrument, was even scarier to me than the night a year ago when I heard a terrific crash outside my house and imagined kids throwing rocks from a passing car or a big bird like a buzzard falling dead against my front door; imaginings that frightened me less than my discovery next morning that the large planter on my porch had been smashed to bits by a black bear, an animal even stronger and scarier than Tommy.

After the sun set and we tired of playing hide and go seek, I followed you into the barn where you grabbed the flashlight, then ran through the cool grass flashing flickers of light with the fireflies, climbed the stairs high into your brothers old tree house, where you searched for those hiding pictures you knew were there. stiff mildew polaroids under yellowed papers and comic books And when you found them we marveled, wondering about our own someday, when we would grow breasts and hair on our bodies...

Would we strip for would-be boyfriends with cameras?

—Roberta Allen

Mortar He came home to find the front door of his house bricked solid the mortar smelled like wet grout the dental hygienist puts in your mouth it hardens wants to cling to you when she chivvies it out the bricks were an illusion the door opened like a mouth and he walked through nothing had changed

—B law

Home Office She used to spend her days in offices, one of the early ones circling the coffee room smile not yet erased by daily memos, interoffice mail, the supervisor’s peremptory smirk her dress not creased by the uneasy seat of her creeping clerical chair. ese mornings became her constants regular, lifeless as the news.

Now she comes alone to daylight, brews her own drink, taking care not to make more than she can consume, careful not to waste.

She works at her own pace, but she’ll tell you truth she liked the little frisson she felt when someone brushed by, hand brushing her rear.

—Bertha Rogers

Forlorn Turtle Verse

he couldn’t recall he felt as though enzymes permeated his eyes he began to soften

I would have cherished the excursion you suggested Into well-explored wilds In hunt of elusive poem For your much-beloved turtles; Yet the distance between suggestion And implementation Proved too much As you proceeded at a turtle’s pace, Attention waning, Invite stalled, And I regretfully discovered on my own Some other author’s chelonian verse, Written with more authority an fate will now allow me to muster.

—Tad Richards

—Oliver Grech

the TV his wife and two friends he didn’t want to fuck he wondered had he ever

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On Being Idle and Blessed: HER

Heidegger Becoming Round, da Mtn

e view is of rolling verdant hills, the mountains beyond, purple and blue in their distance. e walls of the house are glass. Outside comes inside every day.

if you begin making a great spring roll and end up with a great chocolate almond croissant, your intention must have changed along the way.

e birds chitter away, teaching their young to fledge. A feral cat lurks in the tall crownvetch, crouched low and eager to pounce on a tumbling bird. His ears come to devilish points, and long fur extends from his jowels...looking more like a lynx than a barncat. His eyes meet mine briefly, and though mine linger, his have more important things to do. Surely the birds know he is there?

So glorious, the soul takes in the scenery as easily as the eyes, lapping it up, like a cat with milk; feeding the senses, warming the heart, intoxicating the brain. ud! A bird has flown into the window on the other side of the house. A cloudy smudge marks where it made impact. He is down for the count, on the grass below. She takes a small brown paper bag and some garden gloves to protect her hands and places the stunned bird in the bag. Closing it, she sits on the ground, the bag in her lap.

What a delightful gift, she thinks, waiting patiently for the fluttering she anticipates. But the bird remains still, like her heart. She opens the bag and, inside, the bird looks up at her with one upturned eye. She reaches in and cups him in the palms of her hands. Cocking his head, he looks up at her now with the other eye.

She walks him past the various birdhouses on the property. He remains docile.

Is he interested? Unable to decide? en, a bird warbles from a distant tree. And, off he goes.

—Carol Lee

On Being Idle and Blessed: HIM

the Divine is not a priori, but emerges with us like dawn washing down Roundtop again.

—Mark Vian

At Harvest’s End e rain showers slipped south of Jaguar Paw. Papa Sun drew back burnt-orange blankets of warmth to the chin of the isolated village.

Shukar, the youngest Zamboozie, plucked sweet from the bruised branches of a shrunken banana tree. Mother Sheilamae bent a bamboo bow on top her knee, and shot three gold-tip arrows at the highest arch-point of the newlyformed rainbow.

Joy for this good harvest, she shouted in native tongue. Shalamesh, nearing a ripe age, devoted his praiseful attention to Shunanny, the long-necked girl, bathing nude in the river.

e leaves overhead were unfurling from their buds, like butterflies from their cocoons. e air was damp, warm and dense, with only a thin curtain of fog.

—Zachary C. Bush

e sun was just past overhead and he made it about one o’clock. He might have earlier been splitting wood, a chore more associated with October, but he enjoyed the work and did it whenever the branches could hold on no longer; like these casualties of winter.

The Walk Home

He enjoyed it until he didn’t. Perhaps the wedge was now permanently lodged inside a log. Or, maybe he couldn’t find where he had last tossed it in a mass of leaves. Maybe the axe handle had broken, or he strained a muscle in his back. en he’d thunder at the gods, hurling expletives. Sometimes, he just got tired of it, or even finished chopping all of it. Either way, he’d wend his way to nirvana.

And shouting just to get through to keep going up the crick the rain has made of college walk

He had his “spot.” Here he could laze through the seasons adoring the world overhead as the mantle morphed from a pattern of lofty bare branches on a slate background, into the outrageous cacophony of rustling leaves on a breezy day.

Perhaps his favorite time was when the great maple turned yellow in the fall, the leaves lush, loud and bouncing off a seamless blue sky.

He’d get lost in it, his mind traveling to places he’d never otherwise go. Here there were no reservations, to make or to have. e hammock was a kind of magic carpet, fueled by the beauty of the canopy overhead.

A fawn approaches. His wobbly legs place him near birth, as does his proximity to man. A twin follows close behind. ey stare at him, coursing through the galaxies in his hammock. “What are you doing here?” they appear to be saying.

—Carol Lee

e sky is running towards me running towards it across the slick and blackened pavement

And all across New York the rain is driving people in their hordes under the street And itself from eardrum down to spine and further— Listen, I’m not the only one. e plazas flock with hurt umbrellas.

One skipped behind me as my own umbrella tore, Running from the wind while I face to it, shouting I love it. Yes I love it. More.

—Reina Hardy

2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM POETRY 61

Fiction

TOMORROW’S SPECIAL

F

by Mark Morgenstern illustration by Carol Zaloom

rom his perch at the counter stool, Kenneth watched Helen sweep the tiled floor. He pointed out bits of straw wrapper and matches with powdery black heads—and the occasional lucky penny. By all rights he should have been sweeping, being the hired man, but Helen preferred to sweep—though she missed a lot of crumbs by refusing to wear her new prescription. She worked along the cigarette machine, where he called her attention to a piece of piecrust poking out from under. “If I don’t see it, it ain’t dirt.” This was her standard reply. Though they both hailed from the Tar Heel State, he loved her Boone accent. People agreed that you sounded like you were from North Carolina if you were. But people from Boone spoke Boone. It just sounded different, softer, a bit of mountain music. He swiveled thoughtfully, pinching a speck of tobacco from his tongue, and sighed as Helen bent over, angling the broom under a peach-colored booth, vinyl glowing in the twilight. The Formica table tops sported peach-colored flakes and ivory trim. In fact, all the furnishings in the restaurant were colored peach. It was called The Sweet Peach Café.

Over the years, Helen had added a few touches: peach napkins, award-winning peach cobbler, and a peach-colored jukebox. Atop the roof was a huge peach, created by a neon artist from the college in the mid ’60s. The sign dwarfed the squat building and had been designed to look as though a big bite had been taken out of it. A local acid-tripper claimed that a giant mouth had roared out of space one night and bit it. For many in the town, especially the college kids, the glowing peach was more inviting than the smooth, chrome cross in front of the Baptist church.

Smoke streamed like a vaporizer from Kenneth’s nostrils, slow and warm.

62 BOOKS CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

This added pleasure to Helen’s haphazard end-of-the-day cleanup. Five years he’d watched her do this. Five years ago he’d responded to her ad for a dishwasher/ cook—No Alcoholics Apply. He had been hired on the spot by the distinction of being the only applicant for the job. He didn’t actually want a job at the time.

He was recovering from a colossal career setback. He had just been dismissed from the Carolina Culinary for poisoning most of the school’s board at the Easter dinner, including the president’s wife, a corpulent, unkind woman. It was not his fault; the tainted pheasant was bad luck, a result of unsanitary farm practices. But he was the student chef in charge and responsible for all aspects of the meal. There was a saying at Carolina Culinary: “The chef goes down with the gravy boat.” He went down.

At the dismissal hearing he became sarcastic and said that many board members looked like they’d eaten too much already. Purging might have added years to their lives. This did not bode well. Later, he received a certified letter saying his chef’s certification would be withheld in perpetuity. He considered moving to Virginia, where there was no reciprocal food service agreement. But he took the job with Helen. He could flip burgers and make Caesar salads, salmon stew, and puddings in his sleep, plus a whole lot more if he wanted to. But he had sworn off pheasant. That was his cover reason, anyway, for taking the job. He liked Helen’s voice and her facial expressions. Whatever she thought seemed to be right there in her eyes and mouth.

She told him that it was time for her to get out from behind the grill and broaden her horizons, take a look at the world. Mainly this amounted to her becoming the hostess/waitress in her own cafe. She did get to sleep later and see more movies. One day in the summer, she left Kenneth in charge and took

a trip up to Manteo to see “The Lost Colony.” It was performed outdoors and featured folks like Sir Walter Raleigh, Miles Standish, and Virginia Dare, who came to life on the stage. There was a weekend trip to Elizabeth City where, Kenneth gathered, she went to say good-bye to her old boyfriend, a carpenter who drank too much and had tried to rough her up. Helen said, proudly, that she had thrown him into a wall of sheet rock. Kenneth hoped that it had not been a fond good-bye, though she came back home crying.

The main thing with Helen was that he had to keep on his toes, find some middle ground. Her emotions ran hot, cold, and boiling over with temper, all of which he found attractive.

The Bunn-o-Matic spit fresh, hot coffee into the carafe. Kenneth sniffed appreciatively as he set up two mugs and spoons, peeled the tops from three creamers, and set them by hers. “Doughnut?” he called out, clicking the tongs rhythmically. “Cinnamon’s good.” She was two stools away jabbing at the debris.

When she got to him, he raised his long spider legs, thinking it made him look silly. She swept vigorously around his martyred Nikes, almost impatiently.

“Frosted,” she said, accenting the second syllable, a bit irritated. “It’s always been frosted.” He took in her aroma, faint bleach from the apron, KT.’s Firebird Chili, some salesman’s cigar. Maybe something faint, like lily of the valley. He wished she wore perfume. Somehow that might make things easier; she might be more receptive. After five years and several anxious days, he had decided to declare himself to her. Tell her how he felt. Dread cramped his stomach.

Perfume or not she was plenty feminine enough.

Finally, at the far end of the counter she bent over and swept the dirt into a dustpan, her peach skirt lifting above her legs. A well-pronounced calf. Soft, fleshy skin behind the knees. Her butt was wide, but nicely shaped. His face was suddenly warm.

She plopped down one stool away from his and began pouring out the creamers. “More on the floor than gets in their mouths,” she quipped. Kenneth deliberately stubbed out his cigarette and stirred coffee. He was feeling a bit listless now, tired. Maybe all of this could wait. Speaking up had never done him much good before. And, if it didn’t go well, he’d most likely be packing up tomorrow. He could just let it go, on this, a cozy, discontented life. Keep an eye on Helen from a distance.

One night, about a year ago, they were talking about the menu. Helen had selected a few tunes on the jukebox; she was a big Patty Page fan. Kenneth had stood up suddenly and planted his hands on the counter. He uttered a word that she couldn’t understand. “Dance.” He wanted to say, “Helen, dance with me?” but he froze. His hands stuck to the counter as if they’d been Super-Glued. He stared straight ahead into the refrigerated dessert case. He felt Helen next to him, breathing, waiting. He couldn’t speak; he couldn’t look at her. Finally she left, slamming the door with a decisive bang, upsetting a bowl of plastic peaches from the shelf above. He thought he’d tell her he’d had a spell of some kind, but neither of them mentioned it the next day or after that. There was something in both of them, a shy carefulness, some undercurrent, a silent agreement that things would take their course when it was time. Now Kenneth, though frightened, felt that he had to move on it. What if some carpenter or plumber came along that was really nice to her?

He took a gulp of coffee, got up, went to the front window, unhooked the blackboard from its chain, and wiped it clean with his bandana. He made a note that the Kale and Ginger Soup was probably too fancy for Peach’s. He set the board between them. A bit of doughnut fell from Helen’s lips as she said, “What’s it gonna be?” This signaled the start of their daily meeting to decide on the next day’s specials. Kenneth always knew what the special was going to be, but he enjoyed the process.

“Hmm,” he feigned some uncertainty. “Let’s see…I’m going to take those meatballs out of the sauce and use ’em for a taco salad.”

“Why?” Helen demanded.

“Because that sauce is tired.”

Helen pressed on: “How do you know the meatballs are good?”

“Sauce kept ’em good, juicy. Now the sauce is tired.”

She looked at him skeptically. “And,” he went on, “I’m going to take all those farm eggs you got from Mr. Clarence and make a Julianne wrap out of ’em.”

Helen set her mug down, abruptly. “I don’t trust wraps. I’ve told you that.”

“Everyone’s makin’ ’em now. It’s the new sandwich. A little strip of ham, egg, mesclun, hint of relish. They’ll get eaten up.”

“I’m not a wrap type,” she announced. Her edge was starting to show.

“They’re simple, Helen, like salad, but rolled up.”

“Huh.” She looked back toward the kitchen, then examined the ceiling.

“Goddamn place needs painting.”

“Yeah,” he drew the word out.

She went behind the counter and took the carafe, splashing coffee into her mug. He looked at her hands. The cuticles were stained with red-eye gravy, a variety of food smudges over her fingers. He glanced at her waist. She had been trying to diet lately, eating a lot of tuna and lettuce, though she liked to sop up the salad dressing with heels of Italian bread. She hit the No Sale button and extracted a coin envelope and slid it across the counter.

“What’s this?”

“It’s Friday,” she said. “Pay.” “Oh yeah, forgot.” The envelope was tight with stuffed bills, thicker than usual. She didn’t like to write checks. She believed that a business should pay as it goes, avoid building up debt.

“It feels thick,” he said.

She always smiled when she paid him. He thought she might have read in some management book that you’re supposed to smile when you pay the help.

She flipped her guest pad and recited: “Nineteen grilled-cheese steaks, eleven shrimp baskets, five Roman omelets, and seven bowls of Firebird Chili, Kenneth, just seven. Your chili did not achieve celebrity status.”

“It’s real chili with hand-picked Mexican habanaros,” he defended.

“It’s too damn hot,” she pronounced.

He felt a little hurt. “I’ll fix it, make a foot-long sauce that’ll make love in your mouth.”

They locked eyes. Helen swallowed the last of her doughnut, then licked the sugar from between her thumb and forefinger.

“Well…you know what I mean,” he trailed off.

She moved down the counter, poured some water and drank it, then turned to look at him. “No, I don’t know what you mean. Exactly what do you mean, Kenneth Tucker?” He knew it was trouble when she called him by his full name.

“I don’t mean nothin’,” be blurted quickly, struggling to say what was on his mind.

“What I know is you been acting weird for days, sneaking around here like a guilty rabbit.”

“That’s not true,” he snapped, nervously shaking a cigarette out of the pack.

Helen slammed the chalk down on the counter, smashing it into shards and dust. “Goddamn it, if you’ve got something to say, say it, because I know what it is anyway, Kenneth Tucker.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“It’s your name, isn’t it?”

They looked toward the door, where Moses, the lumpy boxer, was whining and scratching to get in. He licked the glass, cocking his head to one side. Helen went and unlocked it. Moses made his way toward the back, checking under each booth for scraps. Helen had done a good job this time and he whined some more. Looking sorrowful, he dropped down in a heap in front of the jukebox.

He knew if he bided his time and wasn’t too much of a bother, dinner would be forthcoming. Kenneth eyed Moses resentfully. She has more regard for him than me, he thought.

Helen retreated to the kitchen and was banging things around. “I know what’s going on,” she yelled out the service window.

He splashed coffee into his mug and drew on the cigarette. What the hell’s goin’ on? he asked himself. Then he thought, This is taking a bad turn.

“I heard ’bout it,” Helen yelled.

“What? What’d you hear?”

“That you’d been down to King Street looking at the storefront where the barbecue place closed. I know what’s up.” He had looked at the storefront. He did have ideas about someday opening his own place, a place the two of them could have, use some of that expensive training, but under a different name.

Maybe do a higher-level menu, but nothing too fancy. Something people would like. They could make a decent living, together, maybe. But he wasn’t going to mention that until he’d worked things out with her.

“You’re gonna open a little gourmet paradise, aren’t you? Poison some more good folks. Isn’t that your plan?”

He stood up, angry. “I told you that in private, Helen. For you to bring that up is just…ugly.”

“There’s an extra week’s pay in your envelope,” she shouted. “Take it and get out.” He felt the lump in his pocket. That explained the stuffed envelope.

He was completely flustered. He looked at Moses threateningly. This was not part of his plan. Should he just walk out? Slowly, he took a guest check, touched the pencil to his tongue, and wrote on it, then slid it cautiously through the service window. She snatched it up. A moment later it sounded like she ham2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM BOOKS 63

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mered the stove with a cast-iron frying pan. Moses jumped up and whimpered. The banging seemed to strike his chest. The coffee suddenly turned Kenneth’s stomach sour and he retreated to the head.

He took care of his business and then stood looking into the mirror. He was surprised to see himself crying. “I’m crying,” he said to himself in the mirror. “This is just great, I’m a mess.

Army Corps of Engineers ought to come clean me up like a hazardous spill.” He snuffed, wiped his nose, and whispered hoarsely, “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” He opened the window and leaned out. “Am I going to run away now? Is that it?” he asked himself. “J-e-e-sus!” He looked out across the stubble of an empty lot at the Woolworth’s. Above, the sky was purple and thrumming with stars.

It was still, too early for the college kids to be carousing the streets. A vine of honeysuckle grew up the drainpipe. He grabbed some and held it up to his nose. Such sweetness, such bitterness, he thought. He resolved to go out and face her and cracked the door open cautiously and peered out. Moses was sitting there looking at him, a line of clear drool falling off his jowl.

She wasn’t there. He went toward the kitchen and looked in the window. She was standing over the grill, a look of demonic satisfaction on her face. There were two large steaks sizzling and a wad of golden onions slithering on the side like transparent worms. A small side of chili bubbled in a blackened pot. She flipped the steaks violently, banged two platters down, shoveled them in with the onions, some slaw, and a spoon of chili, then set them down in the window.

“Table two,” she barked.

“Helen,” he began.

“Table two,” she commanded. Kenneth picked up the plates, peering in at her, slightly comforted by her crazy expression. “You’re a touch odd, Helen.”

“I ain’t no ‘Normal Nancy,’ if that’s where your taste runs.”

Moses followed him to the table, his wrinkled snout angled at the dishes. Helen kneed open the door carrying two 16-ounce cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a plastic bowl she held with her teeth. She set the beers on the table and the bowl under it, where Moses jarred Kenneth’s knee diving in. She extracted some quarters from her apron pocket, “A-7 and B-5, C-1, and,” she paused. “Whatever…”

He considered this request, then went and entered the selections. He sauntered to the table and popped the beer and took a big swallow. It tasted good and cold and right. He followed it down with some more. Helen sawed a piece off her steak, heaped some onions on top, and began chewing. “God, this is good.”

He sat down across from her. Thought about picking up his fork, took another gulp of beer.

“Helen, I said something to you back there.”

She stopped chewing, her eyes wide, surveying him. She spoke, even-toned. “You didn’t say nothing to me. You wrote something.”

“That’s true,” he said, squirming in his seat. She kept looking at him, waiting. He said, “For some time now...”

“For some time now, what?”

“Well...,” he was sweating, “The note, I mean what I wrote on the check, plus for some time now.” He swallowed hard.

She pointed the tip of her steak knife a few inches away from his throat. “Don’t play with me, Kenneth.”

“I’m not playing…I…thought you knew,” he said, pitifully.

She leaned back, closed her eyes for a moment, exhaled a deep sigh, like resignation. The milkshake-smooth voice of Patty Page spilled over them. “You’re sure to fall in love with Old Cape Cod,” she sang. “That’s where I want to go. I’ve never been further north than Maryland. I want to see the ocean in Cape Cod. I like lobster stew.”

“How about some swan’s eggs with artichoke hearts in champagne sauce? I could make that for you, Helen.”

She cocked a suspicious eye at him. “How’s that, Kenneth?”

“Or maybe shrimp with ginger and leaks, angel food cake for dessert. I’d love to make that for you.” He was looking squarely down in his lap.

They sat quiet for a while. A man looking in his lap. A woman with her head back against the booth, Patty Page singing with strings, Remind you of the town that you were born. Moses slobbering under the table. When Kenneth finally looked up he saw how soft Helen’s face looked in the light. She seemed to be luxuriating, spreading out like a calm lake. He felt something push against his thigh. Annoyed, he reached under to push Moses’ begging nuzzle away. But it wasn’t Moses. It was a foot, her foot, and he took hold of it. Tight at first, then he relaxed his grasp and began massaging it, running his index finger between each toe. He brought his hand up to his mouth, kissed his hand, and touched it to her foot. Her eyes opened up to him, and they looked at each other till the next song began. He was holding her ankle now with both hands, his fingertips at the bottom of her calf.

“How long’s it take to cook a swan’s egg?” she asked.

GIMME FICTION. PAST STORIES ARCHIVED AT WWW.CHRONOGRAM.COM.

2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM BOOKS 65

Food & Drink

MEDITERRANEAN BOUNTY IN GREENE COUNTY Bell’s Cafe in Catskill Text and photographs by Jennifer May

In the kitchen of Bell’s Cafe, jars of exotic herbs and spices from the Mediterranean line the shelves: za-atar, harissa, sumac (not the poisonous one), turmeric, and several curry blends. Bottles of pomegranate juice fill another shelf and a bowl of pomegranates on the wooden countertop await peeling and seeding.

While the name of the restaurant has remained the same for 25 years, in the past two years everything else has changed, including the owners.

“As long as I can remember, I wanted to cook,” says Keith McMorrow, coowner. McMorrow dropped out of corporate life as a manager for FedEx to attend Peter Kump’s Culinary Institute in Manhattan. Running a kitchen in Queens after graduation, McMorrow met Yael Manor (now McMorrow), who moved to New York from native Israel to attend the French Culinary Institute.

Keith says he was Yael’s boss, “for about this long.” He snaps his fingers. Yael shrugs her shoulders and nods, laughing.

Their first years as a couple, they traveled back and forth between New York City and Keith’s weekend home in the Greene County town of Durham.

They looked at opportunities to cook at restaurants in the area, and when a friend told them she had seen an old luncheonette named Bell’s Café for sale in Catskill, they took a field trip. Yael recalls the day she peeked inside the closed shop windows. Two months later, it was theirs.

The building was a pleasant surprise. “It’s a gem. We just peeled away the layers,” says Keith. The circa 1830s building was well maintained when they bought it, though in need of cosmetic updates. In the first year they closed the restaurant every few days to renovate. The McMorrows handled most of the renovations themselves, incorporating elements from the previous owners left behind—like a circa 1950 freezer refashioned into a dessert case. A dropped tile ceiling hid beautifully embossed tin. Arched wood and glass details on the front windows were also buried. Upstairs, in the two floors they call home, 66 FOOD & DRINK CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

they found gold-painted wallpaper behind the plasterboard.

Today, Yael and Keith pay homage to the earlier incarnations of Bell’s Café, and to the town of Catskill, in framed photographs on the wall by the kitchen.

Horses weave through streets filled with bonnet and petticoat-clad women and men in wide brimmed hats. There are also black-and-white photographs of the shop as an ice cream and soda parlor, as a diner, and as a candy shop. Though they changed everything else about the menu and the interior, they left the name and the original hand lettering on the front windows. “Why mess with the karma?” Yael asks.

September marked the second anniversary of the new Bell’s Cafe and they took a vacation to Yael’s home in Israel. They loaded their luggage with Turkish coffee, Arabic cooking and serving utensils, English-language cookbooks of classic Israeli and Arab dishes, and the unique spices which are second nature to Yael and in which Keith delights such as harissa, a spicy chili pepper blend from Yemen; and za-atar, a classic Middle-Eastern spice blend.

Keith brought a specialty coffee pot back from Nazareth. Known as a fingan, it brews a cardamom-laced Arabic coffee which is sweet and thick and served in narrow white cups. Flipping through a Mediterranean cookbook, Yael points to a photograph of a similar pot nestled amongst heaps of flaming coals in an open-air fire. She flips the page again and points to a photograph of a brunch dish they had a run on after a New York Times article made it famous. Shakshuka consists of eggs cooked in a spicy tomato stew and is served with a breadbasket for dipping. “And this,” she says, pointing to a photograph of a braised chicken dish on another page, “is why we brought the sumac and pita pan back from Israel.” She laughs. “We do international research and bring it to Catskill.”

They are still looking for the right word to summarize their cooking style.

They used “eclectic” for a while, until the word became trendy. “The items on

ABOVE: THE INTERIOR OF BELL’S CAFE, LOOKING OUT ON MAIN STREET, CATSKILL; OPPOSITE (L-R): A FINGAN, AN ARABIC COFFEE POT, USED TO BREW SWEET AND THICK CARDAMOM COFFEE; FRESHLY PLUCKED POMEGRANATE SEEDS ON A BOWL THE MCMORROWS PURCHASED IN A MARKET IN ISRAEL. “WE DO INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH AND BRING IT TO CATSKILL,” SAYS YAEL MCMORROW.

our menu are not mainstream—you could say they are hearty, ethnic, and peasant on a gourmet scale,” says Keith. Certainly it is Mediterranean inspired—as viewed from Israel, Morocco, and Egypt, as well as Europe.

In late January one of the entrées was Kibbeh Soup, a traditional Iraqi soup made with green vegetables and large beef dumplings. The soup has lemon and parsley overtones and is spiced with peppery bahar, a blend of turmeric, cumin, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

On that same chilly night, dinner began with a salsa verde made of parsley, capers, garlic, and olive oil served beside thick slices of warm Italian bread. Next we tried one of Bell’s Café’s signature dishes, fatoush salad. The salad is served on a hand painted yellow bowl which Keith picked up in a market in Israel and is loaded with fresh pomegranate seeds, cucumber, tomato, lemon, a hint of mint, slivers of red onion, shaved romaine lettuce, and chunks of crunchy homemade pita dressed in fresh-squeezed lemon and virgin olive oil—a fresh, healthy, and invigorating combination of tastes. We also sampled the Bell’s Cafe version of French onion soup. A pastry as light as a cloud hovers above the sweet and rich onion broth, and is delicately balanced on the rim of the bowl. Keith explains the soup takes four hours to prepare. “The onions are added in three layers,” he says. The first batch caramelizes in a lightly browned butter and adds sweetness; additions ensure a variety of textures. Spanish Manchego cheese oozes between onion and pastry in the steaming broth as a subtle accent.

We followed the soup and salad with a trio of fish cakes served on a puree of slow-roasted fresh tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, harissa, and cilantro. The slowly warming spice in the tomatoes hits deep in the back of the throat—a perfect remedy to winter aches. The McMorrows shred their thyme-infused duck leg guazzatto and serve it over torn pasta in a porcini mushroom sauce—both comforting and filling. For desert we had kataifi with a cream cheese filling, similar to a baklava—with a simple syrup and pistachios, served warm—with cappuccino.

“We are lucky because our customers are willing to try new things,” Yael says. And new things constantly appear; the McMorrows change the menu every few weeks. “We get bored otherwise,” says Keith.

The weekend brunch menu remains constant, however, as they fear the wrath of their regular customers—many of whom come once or twice a week.

The egg and tomato shakshuka is a staple, and other items include vegetable or corned beef hash; Challah French toast; potato pancakes served with apple sauce and sour cream; and half a dozen kinds of eggs including the farmer’s casserole in which eggs are baked with bacon, peppers, and potatoes. They do grilled Italian Panini sandwiches with various fillings including roast lamb served with grilled vegetables and harissa spread; or fresh mozzarella, tomato, and pesto.

There are salads such as the sautéed Hallomi made with mushrooms, roasted red peppers, and sunflower seeds and set over mixed greens.

“We try to know everyone who comes in,” says Yael. The couple take turns cooking and serving. During the week Keith tends customers while Yael cooks.

They switch on the weekends and Yael takes charge of the front of the house while Keith cooks. With only 30 seats, even on the busiest nights, it is possible for the McMorrows to staff the cafe themselves.

Portions at Bell’s are generous, and entrées range from $16 to $22; appetizers, soups, and salads from $5 to $13; brunch dishes are in the range of $8. The small wine list was created by the Wine Merchant in Hudson to complement the neo-Mediterranean fare, and features bottles from France, Spain, Italy, South Africa, and the US ranging in price from $21 to $38.

In a town which has been largely neglected over the past years, Bell’s Café is one of a kind. Catskill is building momentum, however, and the cafe is already surrounded by antique shops, art galleries, and boutique kitchen stores. There’s a gourmet coffee shop opening across the street. Bell’s Cafe was recently selected by the Boston Globe as a worthwhile place to eat when day tripping in the area.

As Keith says, “Hudson and Saugerties were neglected for a long time and look at them. It’s Catskill’s turn now.”

Bell’s Cafe 387 Main St., Catskill; (518) 943 4070; www.bellscafeny.net Dinner: Wednesday to Saturday, 5-10pm Brunch: Saturday, 10am-3pm; Sunday, 9am-3pm 2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM FOOD & DRINK 67

tastings directory

Food Décor Service 24 20 21 Marion’s

Country Kitchen

Marion’s

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TASTINGS DIRECTORY CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

tastings directory BAKERIES

ment of eating and drinking well. Garrison, NY. (845) 424-8204. www.FreshCompany.net.

The Alternative Baker “The Village Baker of the Rondout.” 100%

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free, Wheat-free, Dairy-free, Vegan, Gluten-free, and Organic Treats! Cakes and Wedding

Pad Thai Catering

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served in your home by Chef & Owner Nuch

Worth The Trip! 35 Broadway, at the historic

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DAIRY

CATERING

Bobolink Dairy & Bakeyard

Blue Mountain Bistro Catering Co. On and off-premise catering. Sophisticated Zagat-rated food and atmosphere in a rustic country setting, wide plank floors, rough hewn

Bobolink Dairy & Bakeyard features raw milk cheeses made from the milk of our own grass-fed cows. We also make rustic breads on the farm in a single-chamber, wood-fired oven designed by Alan Scott. Also available are free range eggs and pasture raised

beams and a stunning zinc bar. Chef-owner Er-

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taste food as it should be! Bobolink LLC, 42 Meadowburn Road, Vernon, NJ. For class

Claudia’s Kitchen

schedule, directions, and mail order visit

Personalized celebrations and weddings, using

www.cowsoutside.com. (973) 764-4888.

fresh local ingredients to create delicious and elegant menus. Homemade artisanal breads,

FARMERS MARKET

Hudson Valley cheese, fabulous appetizers, meat and vegetarian entrees, out-of-this-world

Rhinebeck Farmers Market

desserts. Claudia works one on one to custom

The Hudson Valley’s best farmers bringing

design your menu, your party, your wedding or

you farm-fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, poul-

special event. (845) 868-7338 or (914) 475-

try, dairy, eggs, wine, honey, bread, flowers,

9695. www.claudiascatering.com.

jam, pickles, herbs and much more. Free

The Natural Gourmet Cookery School For more than 20 years people around the world have turned to Natural Gourmet’s avocational public classes to learn the basics of

tastings directory

3589. www.lemoncakes.com.

healthy cooking.

They come to the Chef’s Training Program to prepare for careers in the burgeoning Natural foods Industry.

live music every week. Tastings and special

Fresh Company

events all season long. Municipal Parking

At our kitchen in the Hudson Highlands, we

Lot on East Market St. www.rhinebeckfarme

gather great local and imported ingredients

rsmarket.com.

for events of all sizes and pocketbooks, from grand affairs to drop-off parties. True to our

PASTA

name, we emphasize the freshest, finest ingredients, because great food is the spark

La Bella Pasta

that ignites a convivial gathering. Our style is

Fresh pasta made locally. Large variety of

reflected in meals that encourage hospitality

ravioli, tortellini, pastas, and sauces at the

and leisure at the table, the elemental enjoy-

factory outlet. We manufacture and deliver our

With the growing awareness of the effect that food has on health and well-being, there is a great demand for culinary professionals who can prepare food that is not only beautiful and delicious, but health-supportive as well. Our comprehensive Chef’s Training Program, the only one of its kind in the world, offers preparation for careers in health spas and restaurants, bakeries, private cooking, catering, teaching, consulting, food writing and a variety of entrepreneurial pursuits.

Please browse our website to see how much we can offer you!

WWW.NATURALGOURMETSCHOOL.COM TELEPHONE: 212-645-5170 FAX: 212-989-1493 48 WEST 21ST STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10010 EMAIL:INFO@NATURALGOURMETSCHOOL.COM 2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM TASTINGS DIRECTORY

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tastings directory

Japanese Restaurant VOTED “Best Sushi in the Hudson Valley” Chronogram & Hudson Valley Magazine Poughkeepsie Journal Rating EXCELLENT

by Zagat’s Vegetarian dishes available • 2 great locations

www.osakasushi.net

18 Garden Street, Rhinebeck (845) 876-7338 (845) 876-7278 70

TASTINGS DIRECTORY CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

74 Broadway, Tivoli (845)757-5055 (845)757-5056

excellent selection of pastas to fine restaurants,

and handcrafted beers brewed by GABF Gold

gourmet shops, and caterers throughout the

Medal Winning Brewmaster Darren Currier.

Hudson Valley. Call for our full product list

Chef driven & brewed locally! 3 Main Street,

and samples. Located on Route 28W between

New Paltz, NY. (845) 256-1700.

Kingston and Woodstock. (845) 331-9130. www.labellapasta.com.

Hana Sushi Best authentic sushi in the Hudson Valley!

RESTAURANTS

Superb Japanese sushi chefs serve the best authentic sushi with extended Dining Area.

Beso Located on Main St. in the heart of New Paltz is Beso. Spanish for “kiss,” Beso offers casual fine dining by Chef Owners Chad Greer and Tammy Ogletree. Fresh, modern American cuisine, seasonally inspired by local Hudson

Sit at the counter or tables and enjoy all your favorites from Chicken Teriyaki and Udon to Yellowtail and Special rolls. Eat-in, Take-out, and private room is available. 7270 South Broadway, Red Hook, NY. (845) 758-4333. www.hana-sushi.com.

Valley farmers, using as many organic ingredients, including beef and poultry, as possible.

Hickory BBQ Smokehouse

Get cozy in the intimate dining room under sky-

Located on historic Route 28 between Kingston

lights and glowing candlelit tables, or sit at the

and Woodstock, Hickory offers diners Hudson

bar for a more casual experience. Housemade

Valley’s finest barbecue and smokehouse

pastas include gnocchi and cannelloni, Grilled

cuisine such as ribs, pulled pork, smoked beef,

Swordftish, or Braised Beef Short Ribs. And

fish and free-range chicken. Whether enjoying

for dessert, Maple Mascarpone Cheesecake.

your meal by the fireplace in Hickory’s three-

International wine list. Private parties, children

star dining room or sipping a cocktail at the

welcome. 46 Main St., New Paltz, NY. (845)

wood bar, Hickory’s staff is trained to make

255-1426. www.beso-restaurant.com.

you feel as comfortable as you would at home.

Hickory also features several vegetarian op-

The newly opened Bywater Bistro (former home of The Cement Company) has a friendly and sophisticated atmosphere with indoor and outdoor seating. The classic bistro menu has items ranging from $6-$25. The bistro also boasts an extensive wine list, and onsite mixologist for specialty cocktails. In a small town, this restaurant packs a big taste. Open for dinner or drinks. Reservations are recom-

tions, steaks, homemade desserts, happy hour

tastings directory

Bywater Bistro

specials, a complete take-out menu, and catering and special events in our private dining room. You can enjoy live music featuring the area’s hottest bands on Friday and Saturday night. Open daily for lunch and dinner. 743 Route 28 (3.5 miles from NYS Thruway Exit 19.), Kingston, NY. (845) 338-2424. www.hickor yrestaurant.com.

mended for parties of five or more. 419 Main

Joyous Café

Street, Rosendale, NY. (845) 658-3210.

Is it any wonder that Joyous Caf. 608 Broadway, in The Heart of Broadway The-

Catamount Restaurant Located near Phoenicia and Woodstock, the Catamount Restaurant has been a locals’ and

ater Square, Kingston, NY. (845) 334-9441. www.joyouscafe.com.

visitors’ favorite for years. Experience the pas-

Kyoto Sushi

toral beauty of the surrounding Hudson Valley

Kyoto Sushi. 337 Washington Ave., Kingston,

as you dine creekside in the warm, inviting din-

NY. (845) 339-1128.

ing room. Enjoy the locally-inspired menu that features perfectly seasoned steaks and chops,

Luna 61

creatively prepared fish and poultry and several

“Best Vegetarian Restaurant.” 55 Broadway,

vegetarian dishes. And don’t miss the house-

Tivoli, NY. (845) 758-0061. www.luna61.com

made desserts. Available for private parties and business functions. 5368 Route 28, Mt. Tremper, NY. Call (845) 688-2828 for reservations. www.emersonresort.com.

Machu Picchu Peruvian Restaurant The only authentic Peruvian restaurant in Orange County, NY. Family owned and operated since 1990. Serving the community traditional

Gilded Otter

dishes from the mountains and coast of Peru.

A warm and inviting dining room and pub

Trained in Peru, our chefs make authentic

overlooking beautiful sunsets over the Wallkill

dishes come alive. Wine list available. 301

River and Shawangunk Cliffs. Mouthwatering

Broadway, Newburgh, NY. (845) 562-6478.

dinners prepared by Executive Chef Larry Chu,

www.machupicchurest.com.

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HICKORY

743 ROUTE 28 Kingston, NY Between Kingston and Woodstock, 3 mi. from I-87

338-2424 hickoryrestaurant.com

HICKORY UPTOWN 305 Wall Street Kingston, NY (Stockade Dist.)

338-8315

hickoryrestaurant.com/uptown • Did you know that we cater weddings, rehearsal dinners, christening, office or graduation parties large & small? Call us to discuss your options.

• Or, plan your party in our rustic private party room.

tastings directory

JOIN US FOR FOR OUR ANNUAL VALENTINE’S DAY DANCE PARTY on SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10th FEATURING “THE PHANTOMS. OR OUR MARDI GRAS CAJUN JAZZ BRUNCH ON SUNDAY, FEB 18th FEATURING CLEOMA’S GHOST.

r e s tau r a n t OPEN 7 DAYS • LUNCH • DINNER LATE NITE SNACKS • SUNDAY BREAKFAST RT. 32 • N. CHESTNUT & ACADEMY ST• NEW PALTZ 845.255.2433

����

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Main Course

Osaka Japanese Restaurant

Four-star, award-winning, contemporary

Want to taste the best Sushi in the Hudson Val-

American cuisine serving organic, natural, and

ley? Osaka Restaurant is the place. Vegetar-

free-range Hudson Valley products. Wednesday

ian dishes available. Given four stars by the

and Thursday nights, food and wine pairing menu Daily Freeman. Visit our second location at 74 available. Voted “Best Caterer in the Hudson

Broadway, Tivoli. (845) 757-5055. 18 Garden

Valley.” 232 Main Street, New Paltz, NY. (845)

Street, Rhinebeck, NY. (845) 876-7338 or (845)

255-2600. www.maincourserestaurant.com.

876-7278.

Marion

Plaza Diner

Nestled inside the beautiful compounds of the

Established 1969. One of the finest family res-

Woodstock Lodge, near Woodstock. 20 Coun-

taurants in the area. Extensive selection of en-

try Club Lane, Woodstock, NY. (845) 679-3213.

trees and daily specials, plus children’s menu.

www.MarionsCountryKitchen.com.

Everything prepared fresh daily. Private room for parties and conferences up to 50 people.

Mexican Radio Voted best Mexican restaurant in NYC, Mexican

Open 24/7. Exit 18 off NYS Thruway. 27 New Paltz Plaza, New Paltz, NY. (845) 255-1030.

Radio’s 3-year old branch in Hudson features the same award-winning homemade dishes

Roasted Garlic at the Red Hook Inn

and the world’s greatest margaritas! Everything

Elegant environment, comfortable atmosphere,

made fresh daily. Extensive vegetarian/vegan

internationally acclaimed chef/owner, the Red

choices. A Great Place for Parties! Open

Hook ‘Country’ Inn, located in the heart of his-

Every Single Day - 11:30am - 11pm. 537

toric Red Hook/Rhinebeck NY has it all. This 6

Warren Street, Hudson, NY. (518) 828-7770.

room Federal style colonial, built in 1842, offers

www.mexrad.com.

guests a walk back in time as they enjoy modern amenities including luxury bedding, linens,

Monster Taco can satisfy, visit Monster Taco. With fresh food, reasonable prices, and a funky atmosphere, there’s no doubt you’ll keep coming back to feed the monster. Open for lunch and dinner. 260 North Road, Poughkeepsie, NY. (845) 452-3375.

dining room at the Inn, Roasted Garlic, features

tastings directory

When you have a hunger that only Mexican food

jacuzzis, fireplaces and wireless internet. The a mixture of French, American and Mediterranean menus with a focus on flavor and affordability. Meet Chef Nabil Ayoub and Hostess Patricia Holden as you enjoy charm, exquisite cuisine and warm hospitality. Red Hook, NY.

www.monster-taco.com.

Soul Dog Neko Sushi & Restaurant Voted “Best Sushi” Restaurant by Chronogram readers and rated four stars by Poughkeepsie Journal. Serving lunch and dinner daily. Eat in or Take Out. We offer many selections of Sushi & Sashimi, an extensive variety of special Rolls

Featuring a variety of hot dogs, including preservative-free and vegetarian hot dogs, chili, soup, sides, desserts & many gluten-free items prepared in-house. Redefining the hot dog experience!. 107 Main St., Poughkeepsie, NY. (845) 454-3254.

and kitchen dishes. Live Lobster prepared daily. Parking in rear available. Major credit

Sukhothai Restaurant

cards accepted. 49 Main Street, in the Village

Sukhothai Restaurant located in Beacon, NY,

of New Paltz, NY. (845) 255-0162.

offers a delicious menu full of authentic Thai

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73

cuisine. From traditional dishes, such as Pad Thai and Som Tam, to custom dishes created exclusively by our master chef, our menu is sure to please any palate. Takeout is also available. 516-518 Main St., Beacon, NY. (845) 790-5375.

The Emerson at Woodstock Crave fresh seafood? Need your red meat fix? Have a hankering for slow-cooked pork chops, organic chicken or right-off-the-farm vegetarian dishes? Experience the Emerson at Woodstock.

Enjoy fine wines, micro-brews or specialty drinks from the Emersonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s magnificent bar while you enjoy the atmo-

tastings directory

sphere of the transformed 19th Century farmhouse. Surf the web at the Emersonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new internet cafe with free wi-fi. Available for private parties, rehearsal dinners and business functions.

109 Mill Hill Road, Woodstock, NY. (845) 679-7500. www.emersonresort.com.

The French Corner Chef Jacques Qualin, former NY Times critically acclaimed chef of Le Perigord in NYC, impresses with his innovative style of cuisine which cleverly combines ingredients typical of his native Franche-Comt.

Routes 213 West and 209, Stone Ridge, NY. Thurs-Sun from 5pm, Sunday Brunch 11-2pm. Prix Fixe is $28. (845) 687-0810. www.frcorner.com.

Wasabi Japanese Restaurant Open 7 days a week. 807 Warren Street, Hudson, NY. (518) 822-1888.

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Barclay Heights Bed & Breakfast "Experience Outstanding Hospitality"

2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM LODGING GUIDE 77

THE PIG HILL INN

A

t Pig Hill we’ve raised selfindulgence to a fine art. We take the term Bed & Breakfast quite literally. So, after a wonderful breakfast in bed, just snuggle down into one of our quilt-covered four posters by your own fireplace. Then spend the day exploring hiking trails and the evening relaxing in a jacuzzi. We have the luxuries you deserve!

73 MAIN ST. • COLD SPRING, NY 10516

www.pighillinn.com • 845.265.9247 78 LODGING GUIDE CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM LODGING GUIDE 79

80 WEDDINGS AND CELEBRATIONS CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

CHINA JORRIN/WWW.CHINAJORRIN.COM

MIA THOEN AND JOHN VAN MOYLAND AT THEIR COUNTRY HOME IN GARDNER, JULY 2006. PUJA THOMPSON PRESIDED OVER THE CASUAL CEREMONY OF ABOUT 150 GUESTS, MANY FROM THE GROOM’S FAMILY FROM ENGLAND.

THE 2007 CHRONOGRAM WEDDINGS AND CELEBRATIONS SUPPLEMENT 2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM WEDDINGS AND CELEBRATIONS 81

Knowing where to save and where to splurge

By Sukey Pett 82 WEDDINGS AND CELEBRATIONS CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

CHINA JORRIN/WWW.CHINAJORRIN.COM

THE DIY WEDDING

I

suspect the propensity for large weddings, with pastel Jordan Almonds and matching bridesmaids’ gowns, lies within our DNA. But, for better or for worse, I lack it. There is an intrinsic body of wedding lore I had no access to. Who knew, for example, that the candy-coated nuts, which were my second-favorite movie theater fare (after Sno-Caps), were considered aphrodisiacs at Middle Eastern weddings? Not I. Who knew the “right” number of Jordan Almonds to give as a wedding favor was five (symbolizing health, wealth, longevity, fertility, and happiness)? Again, not I. I didn’t know my ring size, or anything about headpieces or grooms’ cakes.

My wedding fantasies were more Jean-Luc Godard than Modern Bride. There was usually a getaway car involved, lots of cigarettes, and a guy with a quiff. I dreamed my wedding would take place in the Metropolitan Museum’s Temple of Dendur. My poodle-skirted, black-leather-clad guests and I would be dancing in and around the sandstone temple, underneath the watchful eye of Isis, the capo di tutti capo of all goddesses. One thing that hasn’t changed is my ability to dream big. Dreaming big is one thing. Paying for it is quite another. At 44, I was one of the last among my friends to marry.

According to costofwedding.com, the bare-bones cost of nuptials in Kingston is $42,257. This includes clothing for the bride and groom, basic flowers, basic food, and the venue. It doesn’t include designer duds, vintage quaff, or nifty food—nifty costs extra. In Brooklyn, where we actually did marry, this would have been $61,164.

If money is no object, put this article down immediately and book everyone who did TomKat’s wedding. If not, read on about how my husband and I brought our bill down to about $1,000, including clothes, dinner, cake, and flowers.

It was the day after Thanksgiving of 2001 when we decided to get married—on New Year’s Eve. And so the race was on.

The first thing to do is decide where to splurge and where to save. For us, it was largely about the food and wine. For someone else, it might be about flowers, music, or a favorite place. Whatever your focus is, organize your wedding around the most expensive (and important) aspect of it and work your way backward. For some people, it might be about flying friends and relatives in to attend. I am a lifelong thrift shopper and yard-sale aficionado, so going that route for my wedding attire made perfect sense.

As a woman who had been with her then-boyfriend for six years, something long and white was just silly. Red leather was out of my budget—so what was next? Well, I found a ballet-length pewter satin skirt for $20 in a thrift store, and at another, a bustier with silver satin, black tulle, and lavender and green beading for $50. At a jewelry supply store (rather like Woodstock’s Bead Emporium) I found a pair of sterling silver pterodactyl earrings for $15. And for $2, a tiara from a stoop sale (Brooklyn’s yard sale equivalent) rounded off the accessories. I already had a Persian lamb coat to don for the journey from house to ceremony ($20). Eric wore traditional navy blue pants and a gray tweed jacket and a skinny 1950s tie I’d gotten him at a stoop sale and a toy praying mantis in his lapel. Thrift-store wedding dresses, unless you really luck out, are one thing I don’t advise—mostly out of superstition, and my obsession with the stories around the clothing. Why is this dress here, in this thrift store? Did the marriage fail? Would my marriage fail if I wore it? Was the bride so hardhearted she just wanted the tax deduction?

For selfish as well as economic reasons, we had our reception at home: We wouldn’t have to wear shoes at our reception, and our cats could come. And home was, simply, home. It spoke of the life Eric and I had crafted together, antique chocolate molds adorning the dining room; secondhand furniture mingled with antiques throughout the house; dining room windows looking out on the backyard, the scene of many a stray cat rescue. Ivan the Terrible, oldest and most alpha cat, hosted our wedding. Black and white, he glided around the reception like a seasoned maitre’d, only with a much better tail. Two months later, at 17, Ivan died. His attendance at our wedding is a treasured memory.

We weren’t as lucky when it came to our parents. Marrying when we did, our parents had died years before.

Eric’s immaculately coiffed, redheaded mother was a lawyer, with a palate keener than my own, who should have been a restaurant critic. My father was an old-school journalist whose youngest child (me) loved him fiercely. Had they been alive, they would have been the two biggest naysayers about the do-it-yourself aspect of our wedding. Eric’s mother would have dragged me KATRINA DORAN AND PETER FOSTER FLEW FROM NORTHERN IRELAND TO GET MARRIED AT THE CITY HALL IN MANHATTAN, THEN WENT OUT FOR COCKTAILS AND DINNER AFTERWARDS WITH CLOSE FAMLY AND FRIENDS. KATRINA’S BROTHER DID THE SAME THING THE FOLLOWING SPRING.

shopping at Neiman-Marcus for a dress, and had her hairdresser in situ on the big day. She might have let me cook—but she would never have let me bake the cake. My overprotective father, on the other hand, would have been calling me constantly to make sure the cake hadn’t collapsed. I will always be grateful for the fact I knew and loved the woman who would have been my mother-in-law, and regretful that my parents and husband never had the chance to know one another. Their absence was a strong presence that day.

I

f you do your own wedding, some of your nearest and dearest will tell you you’re nuts. Expect it, and stick to your guns. It’s your wedding, after all.

My friends have had weddings featuring everything from $20,000 gowns and ice sculptures at Leonard’s to picnics and bare feet in Brooklyn. Some of the friends with the fancier weddings didn’t have time to sit down and eat, or visit with their guests. We got to do plenty of both.

For the culinarily inclined, preparing the food yourself can be a huge cost cutter. It’s relaxing, fun, and you can have exactly what you want. My advice?

Cook in stages, do as much as far in advance as possible, and be honest about your culinary skills. If you make a mean chili, go for it and go all out. If you’ve never roasted an entire pig, now is not the time to experiment. I made macaroni and cheese—albeit truffled macaroni and cheese, with 10 different kinds of cheese. This was easy, because all of the cheese could be cut up and grated, the pasta cooked, and the béchamel made two days in advance. Our appetizers were gravlax and blinis, with roast garlic puree on crostini for the vegetarians.

A plain green salad accompanied the mac ’n’ cheese.

Then there was the cake. I chose a light, white cake, my favorite, from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. I enhanced its flavor with lime, lemon, tangerine, and grapefruit zest, and a passionfruit buttercream. It was a project unto itself.

Tiered cakes, replete with fondant and buttercream, are surprisingly heavy, and require architectural supports in the form of dowels, and cakeboards between the layers. Though I bake quite well, a wedding cake is a specialty I can’t lay claim to. Mine was a three-tiered beauty, and I never worried once about how it would taste, because I knew.

We nixed a DJ and music in general. It was a small wedding, about 25 guests, and music would have seemed more an intrusion than an enhancement. There was a song I’d always wanted playing when I walked down the aisle—but there was no aisle. We also decided against photographs, since we both despise having our picture taken. That’s something we regret.

Some shopping advice: If you don’t want to spend a fortune, don’t expect traditional wedding trappings. The bridal bouquet is probably not in your cards, but with help from a sympathetic florist, or a DIY approach such as Stems has, beautiful flowers are well within reach. At the bakery, steer away from the tiered wedding cakes. Find out what the bakery’s specialty is—pound cakes? Gingerbread? Cupcakes? Sandwich cookies? If you’re using a caterer, think away from full-course meals. Consider a cocktail party, high tea, or brunch instead.

When it came to flowers, for my bouquet and for the house, I sought the help of a local florist simpatico enough not to charge extra. We designed a lovely bouquet of anemones, baby’s breath, and sweetheart roses. Too bad I forgot it, and left it in the refrigerator at home. Fat lot of good it did me.

Was our home transformed? Not at all. It looked like home, only tidier and with more flowers and candles. We were drinking champagne and eating truffled macaroni and cheese on our laps. Everybody who wanted leftovers got them.

On our final morning as a single couple, I made us a Trailer Trash Breakfast of fried eggs and biscuits with sausage gravy, and we watched “Jerry Springer.”

We met our family and friends at the Municipal Building in Brooklyn, the equivalent of Kingston’s City Hall, for the ceremony.

The mood inside the Municipal Building was festive and anxious. The lines were long, the sale of single artificial roses, booming. It was finally our turn, and we went into the 1970s-era chapel. Our vows were over in a matter of a few minutes, and married life had begun.

In the five years since we made those vows, we’ve moved from Brooklyn to Dutchess County, and finally, to Woodstock, hopefully to stay. Soon it will be time to renew our vows, Woodstock-style. Here are the resolutions: 1. Wear red leather.

2. Don’t forget the bouquet.

Oh, and that song? I can hear Dave Edmunds singing now: “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock’n’Roll.”

2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM WEDDINGS AND CELEBRATIONS 83

CHOOSING YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER

CHRISTINE IRVIN OF FETE ACCOMPLI PHOTOGRAPHY SETS UP FOR PHOTOS OF THE COUPLE, NOELLE AND MICHAEL, AS THEY STROLL THROUGH GROUNDS OF THE RECEPTION HALL.

Your wedding day will be over sooner than you realize, but high quality pictures and videos of the event can make the memories last a lifetime. The best way to ensure good results is to hire a professional photographer who is experienced at shooting weddings.

To find a photographer, start by asking recently married friends, as well as other wedding pros, for recommendations. Call photographers to check availability and prices, and set up meetings with those you like so you can evaluate their portfolios.

When you set up meetings with potential photographers to evaluate their portfolios, pay close attention to the quality of the photos. Look for technical skill—clear, well-lit pictures—and for the photographer’s ability to capture the moment. If you’re considering a mix of color and black-and-white shots, be sure to look at examples of both.

Many brides today are looking at their parents’ wedding albums, full of formally posed portraits, and wanting more lively pictures of the day. That’s why the journalistic approach, where the photographer moves around during the wedding to capture the event from start to finish, is gaining popularity. With this style, the completed album works like a story of the day in pictures. Still, most couples also want good-quality posed photographs of themselves as well as family members and close friends, and even a photographer who works in the photojournalistic style should understand this and be able to meet your needs.

When interviewing a candidate, view posed photos and candids to make sure she is equally competent at taking both, and be wary if she tries to convince you that you don’t “need” portraits. Assuming you like the style and quality of the pictures, New York-based wedding photographer Andy Marcus suggests focusing on the following points: • Find out exactly how many hours the photographer will be spending at the wedding. Be sure she leaves enough time to do posed family and bridal-party shots, plus all the special moments—from your grand entrance to the bouquet toss—throughout the day.

• Ask if the photographs will be printed by hand or machine. Hand printing may cost a bit more but it insures superior color and custom-cropping of your images. Also ask if the fee includes retouching. If not, it can cost hundreds of dollars extra.

• Make sure the photographer has backup equipment and will dress appropriately.

• Find out exactly how long it will take to get your album or finished prints after the wedding day. Only use a photographer who’s willing to put a date in writing.

• Be sure the photographer’s personality is compatible with yours—you’ll be spending a lot of time with her.

Apply the same requirements to prospective videographers, and discuss the specifics of what might be in your final tape: Full-ceremony coverage, a childhood photomontage, special effects, etc.

Pick your package Once you’ve narrowed your list to two or more finalists, it’s time to compare prices and packages. Every photographer puts packages together differently. One might include time, materials, proofs in an album, custom prints in a custom album, parents’ albums, photo thank-you cards, and enlargements. Another might simply include his time and materials, with everything else a la carte.

Many photographers do not sell their proofs and even more do not sell their negatives—neither is necessarily a good or bad sign. (Some photographers let you keep the proofs, but stamp their name or the word “proof” in a conspicuous spot, making the pictures virtually worthless, so ask whether the proofs will be marked in any way.)

84 WEDDINGS AND CELEBRATIONS CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

WWW.FETEACCOMPLI-PHOTO.COM

PICTURES TO LAST A LIFETIME

Jean Picard of Jean Picard Wedding Consulting suggests telling each photographer exactly how much you can spend. He or she can then realistically present the services and selection of photographs in that range. It’s the best way to cost-compare one photographer to another, and you’ll know exactly how far your money will go with each one.

Before you step foot into a studio, you and your beloved should agree on what is absolutely essential and what you can do without or purchase later. Choose a photographer you can communicate with, and one who can offer you your must-haves without blowing your budget. Do hire the best photographer you can afford, even if that means having fewer hours professionally photographed, or receiving fewer prints to keep. If you can’t buy all the prints you want right away, most photographers keep their negatives on file; you can order more after you recover from the cost of the honeymoon.

The details of what’s included in your package should be spelled out completely in your contract. Also make sure the contract covers how many photographers and/or assistants will be present, how many cameras will be on site in case of equipment malfunction, and the date proofs or tapes will be delivered.

No Regrets: Get Pictures Worth a Million Bucks • Provide your photographer with a detailed list of must-take photographs, and appoint a close friend or family member to help point out the listed people.

The photographer will have enough to do without having to figure out which couple is Uncle Ralph and Aunt Emily. Also warn her about any sticky family situations such as unhappily divorced parents, so she does not cause discomfort by forcing people together for a portrait.

• Schedule enough time to take those desired pictures, even if this means taking the portrait shots before the ceremony. If you have your heart set on not letting the groom see you till you walk down the aisle, figure out which groupings (his side of the family; you and your bridesmaids) can still be done in advance and plan locations so he does not spot you.

• Warn your photographer in advance about any unusual moments or events you want captured. For example, shooting the bride circling the groom in a traditional Jewish ceremony may require an angle the photographer is not prepared for.

In the Hudson Valley, weddings are all about location. Only a tiny fraction of area weddings are held at indoor-only catering facilities; most celebrations take place, in part outside, and capitalize on the gorgeous backdrop of the region—the river, mountains, fall foliage, and historic reception settings. Mary Ann Glass, of Beacon-based wedding photography outfit Fete Accompli, believes that if you’re having an al fresco event, you want to take full advantage of the natural surroundings in the photos. “It’s an obligation for photographers in this area to use the light and the landscape to create beautiful photos.” If you have a specific framed vista in mind, don’t be afraid to share your vision with the photographer.

The most important thing to remember when hiring a photographer, according to China Jorrin, is to know what kind of photographer you’re looking for.

“Choose a photographer who embodies the style that you want,” says Jorrin, who a Beacon-based wedding photographer. “Do you want more posed, formal photographs, or behind-the-scenes documentary-style photographs?” Jorrin also suggests not only viewing the portfolios of numerous photographers, but also having a face-to-face with potential photographers. “It’s good to see a lot of work,” says Jorrin, “but it is important to meet the photographer and feel comfortable with the person you’re hiring, especially a bride, because a photographer will be in the same room with you as you’re getting ready.” If you’re not simpatico with the photographer in a casual situation, odds are you won’t feel comfortable and natural during your ceremony and reception.

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THE KETUBAH MAVEN Each relationship is a unique and unfolding story.

Together, with your input, we create a work of art in word and image that captures the living essence of your commitment to each other.

Exquisitely Designed Works of Art to Celebrate and Solemnize Your Commitment Leslie M. Pereira (917) 533-3082 www.ketubahmaven.com

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business directory ACTING

EcoArch DesignWorks Award winning design,harmonizing spirit, health and

Sande Shurin Acting Classes

the environment, solar and “green” design. Licensed in New York, New Jersey and California, EcoArch

Revolutionary new acting technique for Film/Stage/

DesignWorks specializes in planning, architecture

TV. The book: Transformational Acting. A Step

and interiors for single family or multi-family homes,

Beyond, Limelight Editions. The technique: transform

entertainment, retail or office environments. Recent

into character using current emotions. No recall. No

projects in New York include the Oriental Emerson

forward imagining. Shurin private coaches many

Spa, the Ram Dass Library @ Omega and numerous

celebrities. The classes: Thursday eves at 7pm,

private homes and additions. Unlock the potentials

Woodstock. Master classes at the Times Square

of your site, home or office, to foster greater design

Sande Shurin Theatre. Woodstock, NY. (917) 545-

harmony, prosperity,spirit,health, and ecological

5713 or (212) 262-6848.

integrity. (845) 247-4620. ecoarchitect@hvc.rr.com. www.JanusWeltonDesignWorks.com.

ANTIQUES ART CENTERS Hudson Valley Showcase Expect the unexpected at the Hudson Valley’s newest antiques and crafts center. The multi-dealer from the acclaimed Riverfront is open 7 days, has ample parking, a café, and offers superb quality at affordable prices. Come check out the unique array of antiques, jewelry, collectables, crafts and more.

280 Broadway (9W), Newburgh, NY. (845) 494-1135. www.hudsonvalleyshowcase.com.

Open to the community for over 5 years. Inspiring

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Hudson Valley Showcase in Newburgh, minutes

The Living Seed Yoga & Holistic Center movements of inner freedom and awareness. We offer yoga classes for all levels of students, gentle/ beginner to advanced. Including pre & post natal yoga, family & kids yoga, as well as a variety of dance classes, massage, acupuncture, sauna & organic yoga clothing. 521 Main St. (Route 299), New Paltz, NY. (845) 255-8212. contact@thelivingseed.com. www.thelivingseed.com.

APPLIANCE ART GALLERIES Earl B. Feiden A full-service appliance store with a long history in the community and pioneers of the home-appliance industry. We provide premium products, premium service and stock name-brand appliances. Our commitment to customer satisfaction is the cornerstone of our business. Visit us when you decide to shop for your next appliance at 661 Broadway, Kingston, New York, (845) 331-2230 or 785 Route 9, Latham, New York, 12110 (518) 785-8555.

ARCHITECTURE

Imari Arts Hudson’s newest craft shoppe/art gallery is worth a one block walk off Warren. Imari features Hudson Valley painters, sculptors, and craftsmen. You will find one of a kind items ranging from fine art and sculpture to decorator items and wearable art.

Open Thur-Sat 11:30am-6pm; Sun 11am-2pm. moconnellhudson@aol.com. www.imariarts.com.

Van Brunt Gallery Exhibiting the work of contemporary artists. Featuring abstract painting, sculpture, digital art, photography,

DiGuiseppe Architecture

and video, the gallery has new shows each month.

Inspired, sensitive, and luxurious.These are the

The innovative gallery Web site has online artist

words that describe the quintessential design work

portfolios and videos of the artists discussing their

that is Diguiseppe. The firm, with design studios in

work. 460 Main Street, Beacon, NY. (845) 838-2995.

Accord, New York City, and Boca Raton, provides

www.vanbruntgallery.com.

personalized architecture and interiors for each and every client. Whether the project is a sensitive historic renovation, a Hudson Valley inspired home or luxuri-

ART SUPPLIES

ous interiors, each project receives the attention of the firm’s principal, Anthony J. Diguiseppe, AIA RIBA,

Beacon Art Supply

an internationally published architect and award-

A source for locals and tourists selling art and

winning furniture designer. Accord (845) 687-8989;

design-related gifts, specialty papers, kids stuff, note

New York City (212) 439-9611. diarcht@msn.com.

cards, books & journals in addition to art supplies.

www.diguiseppe.com.

Papers. Paint. Gifts. Canvas. Crayons &Then Some.

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Create Something! Open daily 12-6, Thurs until 8 pm, closed Tues. 506 Main Street, Beacon, NY. (845) 440-7904. www.beaconartsupply.com.

BED & BREAKFASTS / INNS Storm King Lodge Bed and Breakfast

Catskill Art & Office Supply Traditional fine art materials, studio furnishings, office products, journals, cards, maps, and gifts. Creative services, too, at all three locations: photo processing, custom printing, rubber stamps, color copies, custom picture framing, and full-color digital output. Pushing the envelope and creative spirit for over 20 years.

Woodstock (845) 679-2251; Kingston (845) 331-7780; Poughkeepsie (845) 452-1250.

Manny’s Since 1962, big city selection and small town service have made Manny’s special. We offer a full range of art materials, custom picture framing, bookmaking supplies, and the best selection of handmade and decorative papers north of Manhattan. Manny’s, it’s more than just an art store. 83 Main Street, New Paltz, NY. (845) 255-9902.

R & F Handmade Paints

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Internationally known manufacturer of Pigment Sticks and Encaustic paint right here in the Hudson Valley.

Stop in for a tour of our factory, get paints at discounted prices, sign up for an Encaustic or Pigment Stick workshop, or check out bi-monthly exhibits in the Gallery. 84 Ten Broeck Ave, Kingston, NY. (845) 331-3112. www.rfpaints.com.

BEVERAGES Leisure Time Spring Water Pure spring water from a natural artesian spring located in the Catskill Mountains. The spring delivers water at 42 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. The water is filtered under high pressure through fine white sand. Hot and cold dispensers available. Weekly delivery. (845) 331-0504.

Bicycle Depot Open every day except Tuesday. 15 Main Street, New Paltz,

BOOKSTORES Deep Clay Art and Therapy

Law Offices of Andrea Lowenthal, PLLC Offices in Hudson and Manhattan, serving individuals and businesses throughout the Hudson Valley and New York City. Estate Planning (wills and trusts) and Elder Law (planning for you or your aging relatives), Domestic Partnerships (for GLBT families), Family Matters, Business Formations and Transactions, and Real Estate.

Intelligent and sensitive approach to your personal and business legal matters. Hudson, NY. (518) 671-6200 or (917) 301-6524. Andrea@LowenthalLaw.com.

Schneider, Pfahl & Rahme, LLP Manhattan law firm, with offices in Woodstock, provides legal services to individuals, institutions, professional firms, companies, and family businesses.

Specific areas include: Real Estate, Estate Planning, Corporate, New Media and Arts, and Entertainment Law. Each matter is attended to by a senior attorney, who develops a comprehensive legal plan with the client. Woodstock, NY. (845) 679-9868 or (212) 629-7744. www.schneiderpfahl.com www.nycrealestateattorneys.com.

BUSINESS DIRECTORY CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

The School for Young Artists An Extraordinary Art Experience! The School for Young Artists provides you with the tools, materials, instruction and support to achieve your goals. Our studio is about the joy of learning and the power of making art. Classes and individual sessions for children and adults. Call Kathy Anderson. (845) 679-9541.

CINEMA Upstate Films Showing provocative international cinema, contemporary and classic, and hosting filmmakers since 1972 on two screens in the village of Rhinebeck, NY. 26 Montgomery Street, Rhinebeck, NY. (845) 876-2515.

CLOTHING Pegasus Footwear

NY. (845) 255- 3859. www.bicycledepot.com.

Deep Clay Art and Therapy with Michelle Rhodes Licensed Master Social Worker, ATR-BC. A creative and grounding approach for crisis management, transitions, and deep healing. Individual, couple, and group arts based psychotherapy. Effective expressive approach is suited for all ages. Gardiner, NY. (845) 255-8039. deepclay@mac.com. www.deepclay.com.

CHILDREN’S ART CLASSES

BICYCLE SALES / RENTALS / SERVICE

ART THERAPY

ATTORNEYS

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Come and enjoy our cozy lodge, converted from an early 1800’s post-and-beam barn, and guest cottage in a country setting with gardens, pool, and mountain views. The Great Room offers a comfortable place to relax, with a roaring fire on winter evenings; or enjoy those summer nights on the covered veranda. Choose from six comfortable guest rooms with private baths. Comforts include central AC, several fireplaces, spacious lawns, gardens, and the grand swimming pool. Located near Storm King Art Center, West Point, DIA: Beacon, Woodbury Common Premium Outlets, and 1 hour from NYC. Great restaurants nearby. 100 Pleasant Hill Road, Mountainville (Cornwall), NY. (845) 534-9421.

Hundreds to choose from, 2’x3’ to 9’x12’. Kilim pillows, $20-$55. We encourage customers to try our rugs in their homes, without obligation. MC/Visa/AmEx. 54G Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY. (845) 679-5311.

Barner Books Used books. From kitsch to culture, Thoreau to thrillers, serious and silly. We have the books you read. 69 Main Street, New Paltz, NY. (845) 255-2635. barnerbk@ulster.net.

Mirabai of Woodstock The Hudson Valley’s oldest spiritual/holistic bookstore, providing a vast array of books, music, and gifts that transform, renew, and elevate the spirit. Exquisite statuary and other art works from Nepal, Tibet, Bali. Expert Tarot reading, astrological charts/interpretation available. 23 Mill Hill Road, Woodstock, NY. (845) 679-2100. www.mirabai.com.

Offering innovative comfort footwear by all your favorite brands. MERRELL, DANSKO, KEEN, CLARKS, ECCO and UGGS and lots more. Open 7 days a week - or shop online at PegasusShoes.com. 10 Mill Hill Road, Woodstock and New Paltz, NY. (845) 679-2373. www.PegasusShoes.com.

COLLEGES Mount Saint Mary College An independent liberal arts college offering more than 30 undergraduate programs; graduate programs in business (MBA), education, and nursing; and noncredit courses. 2,500 women and men. Its beautiful campus overlooks the Hudson River and is conveniently located off I-84 in Newburgh, NY. (845) 569-3222. www.msmc.edu.

CONSIGNMENT SHOPS

The Golden Notebook

Past ‘n’ Perfect

A feast for book lovers located in the heart of Woodstock, we are proud to be a part of Book Sense: Independent Bookstores for Independent Minds. In addition to our huge database, we can special order any book in or out of print. Our Children’s Store located right next door has an extensive selection of books and products exclusively for the under-14 set. We also carry the complete line of Woodstock Chimes. 25-29 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY. (845) 679-8000. thegoldennotebook@hvc.rr.com. www.goldennotebook.com.

A quaint consignment boutique that offers distinctive clothing, jewelry, shoes and accessories, and a unique variety of high quality furs and leathers.

Always a generous supply of merchandise from casual to chic; contemporary to vintage; all sizes accepted. Featuring a diverse and illuminating jewelry collection. Conveniently located at 1629 Main Street (Route 44), Pleasant Valley, NY, only 9 miles east of the Mid-Hudson Bridge. (845) 635-3115. www.pastnperfect.com.

CARPETS / RUGS Anatolia Tribal Rugs & Weavings Direct importers since 1981. Natural-dyed Afghan carpets; Balouchi tribal kilims; Russian sumaks; antique Caucasian carpets; silk Persian sumaks; Turkish kilims.

The Present Perfect Designer consignments of the utmost quality for men, women, and children. Current styles, jewelry accessories, and knickknacks. Featuring beautiful furs and leathers. 23G Village Plaza, Rhinebeck, NY. (845) 876-2939.

CONSTRUCTION

DANCEWEAR

Phoenix Construction

First Street Dancewear

Phoenix Construction and Contracting is a company dedicated to superior addition, remodeling, and renovation work through top quality materials installed by trained professionals. Along with a high standard of work, we pride ourselves on superior job site and budget management. Our close-knit network of subcontractors ensures the success of every project through proper delegation of its mechanical and specialist requirements. We deliver customer service coupled with quality assurance.

Phoenix Construction professionally handles all details so that you don’t have to worry. (845) 2665222. www.phoenix-b.com.

First Street Dancewear in Saugerties, NY offers quality dancewear for Adults and Children. We have dancewear, knit warm-ups, ballet, jazz, tap shoes, gymnastics wear, skatewear, accessories, and gift items. We also feature a line of women’s active wear clothing suitable for Yoga and Pilates. Saugerties, NY. (845) 247-4517. www.firststreetdancewear.com.

COSMETIC AND PLASTIC SURGERY M. T. Abraham, MD, FACS Facial Plastic, Reconstructive & Laser Surgery, PLLC Dr. Abraham is Double Board Certified and a Clinical Instructor in Facial Plastic Surgery. He is an expert in the latest minimally invasive techniques (Botox, Restylane, Thermage, Thread Lifts, Lifestyle Lifts, IPL Laser Hair & Vein Treatments), and specializes in rhinoplasty. Offices in Poughkeepsie, Rhinebeck & NYC with affiliated MediSpas. Poughkeepsie, NY. (845) 454-8025. www.NYfaceMD.com.

Crafts People Representing over 500 artisans, Crafts People boasts four buildings brimming with fine crafts, the largest selection in the Hudson Valley. All media represented, including: sterling silver & 14K gold jewelry, blown glass, pottery, turned wood, kaleidoscopes, wind chimes, leather, clothing, stained glass, etc. 262 Spillway Road, West Hurley, NY. (845) 331-3859. www.craftspeople.us.

Deep Clay Showroom Pottery and Dreamfigures Wood-fired, raku, and stoneware. From everyday mugs and bowls to Tea Ceremony ware. Simple forms, natural colors, islands of calm, created by artist/therapist Michelle Rhodes. Studied pottery in Bizen and Tea at Urasenke. (845) 255-8039. www.michellerhodespo ttery.com.

CUSTOM HOME DESIGNERS Atlantic Custom Homes Atlantic Custom Homes is an independent distributor of Lindal Cedar Homes, the world’s largest manufacturer of quality cedar homes. Lindal is known around the world for their signature post and beam home designs, quality building materials and detailed craftsmanship. We believe that your home should be a realization of your wishes. We take the time to explore them with you, and to develop your design in accordance with those wishes, your budget and your property.

(845) 265-2636.

Philmont Family Dentistry Caring, modern dental practice for year-round and second-home owners in Upper Hudson Valley (Columbia, Greene, Dutchess, Ulster, Albany, Rensselaer, Berkshire). A sophisticated urban practice in a beautiful rural setting, one mile from Taconic Parkway in Philmont. Restorations (crowns, bridges, veneers, implants), cosmetic dentistry (whitening, bonding), root canal, extractions, emergencies. Call for appointment 518672-4077, or visit www.philmontfamilydentistry.com.

DISTRIBUTION Chronogram Is Everywhere!

Have you ever noticed how wherever you go,

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CRAFTS

DENTIST

Chronogram is there? That’s because our distribution is so damned good. We can distribute your flyer, brochure, business card, or publication to over 700 establishments in Ulster, Dutchess, Columbia, Greene, Putnam and Orange counties. Now in Westchester county with new stops in Peekskill. (845) 334-8600. distribution@chronogram.com.

DOG BOARDING Dog Love Personal Hands-On Boarding and Daycare tailored to your dog’s individual needs. Your dog’s happiness is our goal. Indoor 5x10 matted kennels with classical music and windows overlooking our pond. Supervised playgroups in 40 x 40 fenced area. Homemade food and healthy treats. New Paltz. 240 N. Ohioville Road, New Paltz, NY. (845) 255-8254. www.dogloveplaygroups.com.

EDITING Carol Rogovin Experienced editor will edit manuscripts with a focus on optimizing reader understanding. Will also consult on whether graphics could be a persuasive addition to the text.

FAUX FINISHES Faux Intentions Cat Quinn, professional decorative artist, setting the standard for excellence in Custom Faux Finishes for your home and business. With infinite possibilities, your walls, floors, ceilings, fireplaces and furniture

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can be transformed using my faux finishing techniques. A full spectrum of decorative finishes using plasters, glazes and many other mediums, help to fill your home full of your unique personality and spirit. Don’t miss the beauty and exhiliration of transforming the rooms you live and work in every day into spaces that reflect your sense of style. Portfolio showing a phone call away. (845) 532-3067.

tion, Photography, Post Production, Web design and more.

Production: It’s what we do! For more information check out. 23-27 West Main Street 3rd Fl., Middletown, NY. (845) 344-1888. www.8hatshigh.com.

GARDENING & GARDEN SUPPLIES

DeStefano and Associates

Mac’s Agway in Red Hook/New Paltz Agway Specializing in all your lawn and garden needs. We carry topsoil, peat moss, fertilizers and organics, grass seed, shavings, straw, fencing, pet food, bird seed, bird houses, and more. Mac’s Agway, 68 Firehouse Lane, Red Hook, NY. (845) 876-1559; New Paltz Agway (845) 255-0050.

The Phantom Gardener At Phantom we provide everything you need to create and enjoy an organic, beautiful landscape. Our dedicated and knowledgeable staff will help you choose from an unbeatable selection of herbaceous or woody plants, garden products and books. We offer professional design, installation, and maintenance services. Visit us! Rhinebeck, NY. (845) 876-8606. www.thephantomgardener.com.

GIFTS

INTERIOR DESIGN

Barbara DeStafano has been the owner of DeStefano and Associates, an interior design business, for 18 years. She received certification in Feng Shui from the Metropolitan Institute of Interior Design and has completed advanced work with several Feng Shui Masters. Feng Shui is the perfect marriage to interior design. It brings a spiritual dimension to your space. Barbara can create a kind of beauty that touches your spirit, and brings balance and harmony to a level that transcends the superficial. Barbara is available for consultations, guest speaker engagements, and workshops. (845) 339-4601.

INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS Hudson Valley Internet Local Internet access and commercial Web site hosting.

Fast, reliable, easy to use, flexible pricing. Want more?

How about: free software, extra e-mail, K56Flex support, personal web space, helpful customer service, and no setup charges. (845) 255-2799. www.hvi.net.

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Earth Lore Walk into a world of natural wonder: amethyst caves and heart-shaped druzies, quartz crystal spheres and sculptures, orbs of obsidian, lapis and jasper. PLUS a gallery of wearable art. Navaho necklaces of turquoise and coral, pendants and bracelets of moldavite, tektite and meteorite; watches crafted from oxidized copper, brass, sterling; an array of Baltic amber in all its hues: honey, lemon, butterscotch, cognac, fashioned into jewelry that makes a statement. Earthlore also offers unique objects of home decor such as a 100 yr old camel bell from Afghanistan, a Thai rain drum, and fossilized salt lamps from the Himalayas. A great place to find gifts from around the globe. 2 Fairway Drive, Pawling, NY. (845) 855-8889.

Webjogger

GUITARS

K9 Consultant

McCoy Is your guitar or bass performing up to its fullest potential?

Do you have fret buzz? Is your action too high/ too low?

Is your instrument just plain old hard to play? Guitars and basses regularly need set ups, much like cars need oil changes and tune ups to keep them running well. Here at McCoys Guitar Shop our aim is to make your instrument play as well, or better than, you ever thought possible.

Remember, if your instrument isn’t playing up to par, perhaps neither are you! Come to McCoys Guitar Shop and fall in love with your instrument all over again! McCoys Guitar Shop: Expert repairs, restoration, guitars and basses bought, sold and traded. Give us a call: 845 658-7467.

You’ll be glad you did!. Rosendale, NY. (845) 658-7467.

ILLUSTRATION

Blazing fast broadband internet access. Featuring symmetrical bandwidth, superior personal attention and technical support, rock-solid security and reliability, and flexible rates. Complementary services include e-mail, Web hosting, accelerated dialup, server collocation and management, and customized networking solutions.

Webjogger is a locally grown company with offices in Tivoli and Kingston. Kingston, NY. (845) 757-4000. www.webjogger.net.

the Hudson Valley. Subscribe and get the lowdown first.

Whether you live in the Hudson Valley or just visit, you’ll know what’s going on. Send $36 for yearly subscription to: Chronogram, 314 Wall Street, 2nd floor, Kingston, NY 12401. info@chronogram.com.

MEDIATION & CONFLICT RESOLUTION Pathways Mediation Center We are a unique mediation practice for couples going through divorce or for families in conflict. Josh Koplovitz has over 30 years as a Matrimonial and Family Law Attorney and Myra Schwartz has over 30 years as a Guidance Counselor working with families and children. This male/female, counselor and attorney team can effectively address all your legal and family issues. Use our one hour free consultations to meet us or visit us on the web at www.PathwaysMediationCenter.com. (845) 331-0100.

Rodney Wells, CFP, Member AFM & NYSCDM If you’re separating, divorcing, or have issues with child support, custody, or visitation, choose mediation. On average, mediated agreements are fulfilled twice as often as litigated court decisions and cost half as much. I draw on my experience as a Financial Planner, psychotherapist, and pro se litigant to guide couples in a responsible process of unraveling their entanglements, preserving their assets, and creating a satisfying future. Cornwall, New Paltz, and NYC. Cornwall, NY. (845) 534-7668. www.mediated-divorce.com.

MUSIC Burt’s Electronics Good music deserves quality sound! Avoid the malls and shop where quality and personal service are valued above all else. Bring Burt and his staff your favorite album and let them teach you how to choose the right audio equipment for your listening needs. 549 Albany Avenue, Kingston, NY. (845) 331-5011.

K9 CONSULTANT WVKR 91.3 FM WANTED: DOGS WITH ISSUES: Digging, barking, aggression, chewing, phobias, obsessions, etc. A simple, proven approach to banish your dogs unwanted behavior. Let me help. The K-9 Consultant. (845) 687-7726.

LITERARY

Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. A listener-supported, non-commercial, student-run alternative music station.

Programming is provided by students and community members, and includes jazz, new music, folk, hip hop, polka, new age, international, blues, metal, news, and public affairs programming. WVKR Web casts at www.wvkr.org. (845) 437-7010. www.wvkr.org.

MUSIC LESSONS Ione Writing workshops and private instruction for writers.

(845) 339-5776.

Submit to Chronogram Seeking submissions of poems, short stories, essays, and article proposals. Accepting pieces of all sorts.

With SASE, send submissions to Chronogram, 314 Wall Street, 2nd floor, Kingston, NY. info@chronogram.com.

Bibi Farber – Guitar Lessons Guitar Lessons – Acoustic / electric pop, rock, blues & folk Beginners welcome, age 11 and up. I offer very flexible scheduling & discounts for students teaming up. Lessons in Minnewaska area or in your home, if within a 30 minute radius. Songwriting coaching & demo recording also available. Let’s play. (646) 734-8018. www.bibifarber.com.

NURSERIES MAGAZINES

8 Hats High 8 Hats High is a full service animation studio and production house located in Middletown, NY. We specialize in Animation, Illustration, Storyboarding, Television Produc-

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Loomis Creek Nursery Inc Chronogram The only complete arts and cultural events resource for

Great Plants for Adventurous Gardeners! Hudson, NY. (518) 851-9801. www.loomiscreek.com.

PERFORMING ARTS Lehman Loeb Art Center/ Powerhouse Theater Season (845) 437-5902. Vassar College Box 225, Poughkeepsie, NY. (845) 437-5902. befargislanc@pop.vassar.edu.

PET SERVICES & SUPPLIES Pussyfoot Lodge B&B The Pioneer in Professional Pet Care! Full house-petplant sitting service, proudly serving three counties for 32 years. Experienced, dependable, thorough, and reasonable housesitting for your pets. (845) 687-0330. www.pussyfootlodge.com.

PHOTOGRAPHY

N & S Supply N & S Supply. 205 Old Route 9, Fishkill, NY. (845) 896-6291. cloijas@nssupply.com.

training at Oberlin College and San Francisco Opera; performing professionally on three continents for twenty years.

(845) 677-1134. annpandora@aol.com.

PRINTING SERVICES

TAROT

New York Press Direct

Tarot-on-the-Hudson - Rachel Pollack

At NY Press Direct we exist for one reason - to delight our customers! What does that mean to you? Worry-free shopping for all your printing and fulfillment needs. Our solutions are leading edge in the industry. Our pricing is among the most competitive in the northeast region. Call John DeSanto or Larry Read for more information. (845) 896-0894.

Exploratory, experiential play with the Tarot as oracle and sacred tool, in a monthly class, with Certified Tarot Grand Master and international Tarot author Rachel Pollack. All levels welcome. Tarot Readings in person or by phone. Also see ad. Rhinebeck, NY. (845) 876-5797. rachel@rachelpollack.com.

PUBLISHERS

WEB DESIGN

Monkfish Book Publishing Company

A Hudson Valley based photographer dedicated to documenting weddings in a candid and creative style. While remaining unobtrusive she is able to capture key, quiet and personal moments of the event. Please call for rates and availability. (917) 449-5020. www.chinajorrin.com.

Monkfish publishes books that combine spiritual and literary merit. Monkfish books range from memoirs to sutras, from fiction to scholarly works of thought. Monkfish also publishes Provenance Editions, an imprint devoted to elegant editions of spiritual classics. Monkfish books are available at your favorite local or online bookstores, or directly from us. Rhinebeck, NY. (845) 876-4861. www.monkfishpublishing.com.

France Menk Photography & Photodesign

SCHOOLS

China Jorrin Photography

Michael Gold Artistic headshots of actors, singers, models, musicians, performing artists, writers, and unusual, outlandish, off-thewall personalities. Complete studio facilities and lighting.

Creative, warm, original, professional. Unconditionally guaranteed. The Corporate Image Studios, New Paltz, NY. (845) 255-5255. www.michaelgoldsphotos.com and click on to the “Headshots” page.

PIANO Adam’s Piano Featuring Kawai and other fine brands. 75 pianos on display in our Germantown (just north of Rhinebeck) showroom.

Open by appointment only. Inventory, prices, pictures, at adamspiano.com. A second showroom will be opening in New Paltz in November. Superb service, moving, storage, rentals; we buy pianos! (518) 537-2326 or (845) 343-2326. www.adamspiano.com.

Piano Clearing House Piano Clearing House. 8 John Walsh Blvd. Suite 318A, Peekskill, NY. (914) 788-8090. www.pianoclearinghouse.com.

PLUMBING AND BATH

Institute of Transpersonal Psychology ITP is an accredited graduate psychology school offering clinical and nonclinical certificates, MA and PhD degrees.

The curriculum combines mind, body, and spiritual inquiry with scholarly research and self discovery. Graduates have strong clinical skills and can communicate in a variety of complex relational circumstances. (650) 493-4430. itpinfo@itp.edu. www.itp.edu.

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whole living 

THE

POWER

OF

“THE

DANCE

AND

MOVEMENT

FACT THAT THERE HAS ALWAYS BEEN DANCE COMPELS US TO ACCEPT IT AS AN OLD AND DEEPLY

ROOTED HUMAN ACTIVITY WHOSE FOUNDATIONS RESIDE IN THE NATURE OF BEING HUMAN. IT WILL CONTINUE AS LONG AS THE RHYTHMIC FLOW OF ENERGY OPERATES, AND UNTIL HUMANS CEASE TO RESPOND TO THE FORCE OF LIFE AND THE UNIVERSE. AS LONG AS THERE IS LIFE, THERE WILL BE DANCE.”

—MARGARET N. H’DOUBLER

  

    For as long as I can remember, I have danced; for as long as I can recall, few things in life have brought me greater joy. My journey through movement began at age three, studying the Western styles of jazz, tap, and ballet. In the high school years I explored modern dance and my passion for creating an emotional picture inspired by the canvas of enchanting music. Years later, I found myself in New Orleans, steeped in the rituals of African dance and the primitive beat of the drum. I also joined a samba troupe and danced down St. Charles Avenue during Mardi Gras. After an adventure in India, yoga became an integral part of my daily life. Presently, the intoxicating rhythms of flamenco feed my soul and spirit every day.

Dance and movement have, from an early age, served as powerful tools in my development and sense of self. They have provided me with means to explore various cultures, traditions, and rituals that I may have not otherwise have come to understand.

They have helped maintain my physical health and are among my most beloved means of spiritual practice, thereby enhancing my overall mental, emotional, and spiritual growth.

Whether a seasoned dancer or not, every one of us can benefit immensely from various forms of dance and movement. May the following information inspire you to further explore the great joys of your body as a vehicle for self-expression and fulfillment.

DANCE THERAPY Dance scholar Margaret N. H’Doubler, author of Dance: A Creative Art Experience, once said, “If all children in every school from their entrance until their graduation were 100 WHOLE LIVING CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

given the opportunity to experience dance as a creative art, and if their dancing kept pace with their developing physical, mental, and spiritual needs, the enrichment of their adult life might reach beyond any results we can now contemplate.”

Dance is an extremely potent tool in the development of self. Suzi Tortora, a dance therapist in Cold Spring, observes, “From the beginning, each baby develops his or her own personal communicative dance to express how he or she perceives and experiences his or her surroundings.” In the early years of one’s self-development, it is through movement that the world is discovered. It is also through movement that young children communicate with their surroundings and let the world know how they feel. Dance therapists can get a feel for a child’s experience by observing his or her nonverbal communication. In time, a therapist helps a child discover more varied movement, which eventually enhances and expands his or her repertoire. This, in turn, expands a child’s ability for self-expression in the world and enables greater interaction with others. This approach can be highly beneficial for any child, regardless of their stage of emotional, mental, and physical development.

For adults, too, dance therapy is a powerful vehicle for mental, emotional, and physical healing. Based on the principle that body and mind are interrelated, dance movement psychotherapy is defined by the American Dance Therapy Association as “the psychotherapeutic use of movement as a process which furthers the emotional and physical integration of the individual.” According to dance therapy, the qualities of movement and postural structure of an individual are a reflection of a person’s emotional expression.

Tortora says, “For me, the word dance has come to symbolize all nonverbal expression which has the potential to be communicative. The goal of my work—from individual psychotherapy sessions to parent-child counseling to teaching creative dance—is to help the participants learn how their nonverbal actions accompany and add meaning to their verbalizations. Understanding the role that movements and gestures play in our interactions facilitates greater awareness of self and others.”

Tortora is the founder of Dancing Dialogue Healing and Expressive Art Center in Cold Spring. She is a key contributor to Drea’s Dream, having developed and now directing this dance therapy and expressive movement program for children and young adults with cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. That program was established by the Andrea Rizzo Foundation, created in honor of Andrea (Drea) Rizzo, a young woman who survived childhood cancer and adored dance. The foundation has an outreach program that brings dance therapy to hundreds of special needs children throughout New England and New York.

HEALTH AND MOVEMENT Trish Doherty, a modern dancer and dance therapist based in New York City, explains how dance has enriched her life in boundless ways. “Dance became a way for my deep inner self to speak and thus helped me establish my identity, a sense that I am someone, and this helped me transcend mental illness.” For 40 years dance has played a center-stage role in her life, and continues to each day. On a physical level, Doherty notes that it has given her a strong body and a much straighter spine, as it dramatically improved her scoliosis to a point where it was no longer a major problem. “Dance gave me good posture and a beautiful body—previously I had a very weak spine and was top heavy, not in proportion. It has helped me have a strong and healthy body as I approach my elder years.”

Several other forms of movement offer benefits at all levels: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Yoga asana is one of the most popular and beneficial forms of therapeutic movement, and one of my favorites. Asana is defined as “posture”; its

literal meaning is “seat.” In yoga asana, one moves through a series of asanas. These do more than just stretch the body; they open the energy channels (chakras) and psychic centers. From a physical aspect, yoga strengthens muscles, increases flexibility, improves endurance, and calms the mind and body. It also focuses on the power of breath, which helps to maximize one’s inner energy source while allowing it to flow through the entire body, bringing much healing and a sense of calm. Yoga is a wonderful form of meditation in motion. It is an ideal form of healing movement while traveling through life, literally and metaphorically, because it needs nothing but the body and the breath. Yoga helps me to connect with the spiritual world, as it has done for so many humans around the globe for thousands of years.

The Alexander Technique is a movement therapy based on the proper alignment of the head on the spine. When the head balances lightly at the top of the spine, the neck muscles do not overwork. This relationship between the head and the spine is of critical importance to health and coordination of the rest of the body. A teacher of the Alexander Technique helps a person discover what his or her movement style is, and how it fosters recurring problems like chronic neck, shoulder, or back pain, or any limitations in physical movement. By implementing the technique, students learn to rid the body of many harmful habits, heighten self-awareness, and use their own thought processes to restore poise to the body and graceful, natural movement—the way we were meant to move.

POPULAR PILATES The Pilates Method is a physical fitness system developed by Joseph Pilates in the 20th century. Joseph Pilates, a boxer, circus performer, and self-defense trainer of English detectives, was interned at a camp in Lancaster with other Germans as “enemy aliens” during World War I. There, he developed an exercise method he called Contrology, referring to its emphasis on using the mind to control the muscles.

Known today as Pilates, this exercise method focuses on the core postural muscles that are essential in keeping the body balanced and in supporting the spine. The ex2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM WHOLE LIVING 101

102 WHOLE LIVING CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

ercises also teach awareness of breath and spine alignment. While following the method, one learns how to control body movement through a series of exercises (with names like Swan or Mermaid) while keeping the mind focused on the task. Research and theories in motor learning, biomechanics, and musculoskeletal physiology support the overall health benefits experienced by those who practice this particular therapeutic movement method, which include stronger deep muscles of the back and abdomen, greater support and alignment of the spine, relief of back pain, and enhancement of long, strong, and flexible muscles.

SELF-LEARNING THROUGH MOVEMENT

RESOURCES

���������������

Several movement forms besides dance therapy teach self-awareness, not just of the physical self but of nonphysical attributes. The Gurjieff Movements, for instance, are a collection of precise movement exercises and sacred dances developed by G. I. Gurdjieff. The technique focuses on inner practices of attention, sensing, breath, awareness, feeling, and mental imagery while performing the movements. Patty Kane Horrigan is a teacher in the Gurdjieff style of movement therapy in New York. “Many of the Gurdjieff gestures are contradictory to what we expect—they’re not very fluid. In fact, they’re immensely angular; they require divided attention. Each part of the body may have a different tempo, and you’re doing them in a group where people are traveling in all sorts of directions. There’s not time to do anything except be there and try to find a way to manage all the different elements. If ever there was an activity that showed the uselessness of negative emotion or empty thinking, the movements are it. You can’t waste a second on doubt, criticism, idle thoughts, or any of the million other activities that go on inside our heads.” These movements aren’t intended as physical exercise. Instead, Horrigan explains, “They are part of a spiritual tradition that teaches that we work on ourselves so that we can ultimately work with and for others, and can be of service to the universe. For those who are interested in that journey, I can’t think of a better place to start than the body.”

The Feldenkrais Method teaches that the body is the primary vehicle for learning. The method has two main forms: Awareness Through Movement and Functional Integration. The first consists of movement sequences taught by a practitioner, usually to groups of people in a classroom setting. The lessons make one aware of habitual neuromuscular patterns and rigidities, and expand options for new ways of moving, while simultaneously improving efficiency and increasing sensitivity. Several hundred hours of lessons are thought to achieve the best results. Functional Integration is a hands-on form of kinesthetic communication; through gentle touching and movement, a practitioner teaches a student how to move in more expanded motor patterns.

My flamenco teacher, Miel Castagna, told me, “When I think about how dance has enhanced my life, my mind becomes overcrowded with words. I think when you are a dancer, there is somehow no other option of how to be or what to be. Dance is your life.” She explains that aside from becoming a mother, flamenco is the only thing that fills her heart with complete and intuitive passion.

I agree. If I eliminated dance from my life, my existence would be much less rich. I can even say it would feel like an integral part of myself had died. I absolutely adore flamenco because of the amount of utter emotion it entails. It embodies sorrow, love, joy, honor, and even death. Like other forms of ethnic dance, the meaning behind the dance is paramount. It tells a story, a feeling, and oftentimes translates an entire history of a particular culture.

The desire to know oneself and express one’s deepest feelings using the body is an incredibly humanistic, primal instinct that crosses barriers of language. When I am moving my body through a dance or through a yoga asana, I experience a divine sort of freedom: an ability to express myself from the heart, which awakens a natural intuition and a feeling of connection to the rhythms of the universe. Dance becomes prayer, and movement becomes life.

American Dance Therapy Association: www.adta.org American Journal of Dance Therapy: www.springerlink.com/content/1573-3262 Suzi Tortora: (845) 265-1085; (212) 420-0899; www.suzitortora.org Patty Kane Horrigan’s Gurdjieff Movement classes: kane-horrigan@earthlink.net The Andrea Rizzo Dance Therapy Foundation: www.theandrearizzodancetherapyfoundation.com

������������������������������������������������������������� YOUR COMMENTS, PLEASE. POST RESPONSES TO THIS ARTICLE AT CHRONOGRAM'S REDESIGNED WEBSITE. YOU CAN ALSO FIND AN ARCHIVE OF STORIES ON WELL-BEING STRETCHING BACK TO 1998.

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2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM WHOLE LIVING 103

THE DEPTHS OF DREAMING

BY LORRIE KLOSTERMAN

ILLUSTRATION BY DIANA BRYAN

When you drift to sleep and into a dream, where do you go? Most of us were taught that dreams are baffling diversions from reality. “We in the West have learned that dreams are projections of the waking mind, or they are wish fulfillments,” explains Sarvananda Bluestone, a psychic in Woodstock and the author of a fascinating compilation of dream stories from around the globe called The World Dream Book. “Or they are subconscious, unconscious, preconscious, but definitely not conscious. By referring to dreams as either ‘sub-’ conscious or ‘un-’ conscious, we are stating that dreams are either lower than consciousness or they are without any consciousness at all.”

We are rather alone in these perspectives. “Most of humanity has seen dreams differently,” Bluestone says. Those alternate views include interpreting the dream world as a place of finding one’s truest self, healing psychological and physical ailments, discovering unique scientific insights, and communicating with and getting help from the spirit world.

This oft-quoted statement, ascribed to Rabbi Hisda from the fourth century, tempts us to look deeper into dreams: “An uninterpreted dream is like an unread letter.” What mountain of mail has been accumulating for those of us who ignore our dreams? How do we start to access them instead?

Dream “work” has actually become popular in the West, too, with a bounty of dream “dictionaries” in bookstores that ascribe meanings to those bizarre 104 WHOLE LIVING CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

images that pop up—the three-legged dog, the boat on a dry riverbed, the slithering snake. But many dream experts agree that searching for meaning this way isn’t the best approach. Symbols can carry drastically different meanings depending on such things as one’s personal history, social context, and religious background.

Doug Grunther is an unquenchable dream enthusiast who recently completed advanced certification in Dream Work Facilitation from the Marin Institute for Projective Dream Work—another step in his dozen years of dream exploration. As host of “The Woodstock Roundtable” on WDST-FM, he upon occasion invites listeners to call in to describe their dreams. He, like his mentors Dr. Jeremy Taylor (founder and director of the Marin Institute) and legendary psychiatrist Montague Ullman, says we each are our own experts. Others can assist the process to some degree; an effective way is for the dreamer to describe what transpired and have a listener tell it back, giving the dreamer a chance to experience it again. The most a listener should do to interpret is, if helpful, say, “If it were my dream, to me it would mean….”

Psychiatrists and therapists who impose their own interpretations, or insist a dream can only be understood through professional analysis have, Ullman laments, “killed the dream.”

Grunther’s dream work began with an affinity in the late ’50s and ’60s

for Eastern traditions—Buddhism, Taoism, Zen—which opened him to non-Western forms of self-discovery. Then, in the ‘80s, he suffered a period of inexplicable, tenacious allergies that even the best specialists couldn’t alleviate. Grunther eventually realized he might need to “go inside” for an explanation of his malady. During that time he came across Dream Work

by Jeremy Taylor.

“It just resonated; it sang to me. I started doing what it recommended—keeping a dream workbook, using the techniques, remembering more dreams.” Within a few months Grunther had a series of dreams that gave him some insights about what might be troubling him.

“Then one day, all of a sudden, it popped. It was like the clouds parted, and I realized what was going on. I felt totally elated and exhausted.” Once Grunther understood the dream to signify his mother’s death years earlier, an event he had never dealt with emotionally, he found a therapist who could effectively guide him through that emotional work. Shortly afterward, his allergies disappeared and have never returned.

Taylor, who has since been on Grunther’s radio show many times, has worked over four decades with hundreds of people whose dreams, when decoded, have warned of an impending medical problem, for which they were able to get help before serious repercussions arose.

Grunther acknowledges that we can’t rationally explain this, but cites quantum physics as a parallel. “It’s a mystery. We can’t say how it all works. But there are definite techniques we can use to take advantage of dreams.”

Grunther spells out these simple steps to begin dream interpretation. First, get a small notebook that you will devote only to recording your dreams. This will be your dream journal. Put it, as well as a pen that works and a light source, within easy reach of the bed.

Then each night before you go to sleep, state your desire to receive a dream. This intention develops dream awareness and recall. (Grunther says it took him five days to start noticing dreams and begin recording them.) Whenever you awaken with the images of a dream, immediately describe it in your journal as completely as possible; record the date. If you can’t devote much time at that moment, jot down a few notes and write more fully later—but soon. You won’t remember details of even the most stunning dreams without notes.

Simply recording dreams may stir insights about yourself and your life. Grunther cites these key principles about dreams as tools of self-knowing: All dreams, including nightmares, come in the service of health and wholeness, not of evil. All dreams have multiple meanings, as do all the images within a dream. Literal interpretations of dreams weaken their power; dreams are not literal stories. All dreams are unique to the dreamer yet carry messages that are universal. And by all means, Grunther says, seek dream books (but recall that dream dictionaries are of limited value), websites, magazines, dream specialists, workshops, and dream groups to enrich your discoveries.

Lucid dreaming is another approach to dreams. Perry Harris, a “dream yogi” in Chester, has been a lucid dreamer for nearly 30 years and has studied extensively; he is completing an update of his book, Wake Up Through Dreaming, which is part autobiography, part teaching tool to help people “open their inner eye” and interact with the images in their dreams.

Harris became interested in dreaming when he took up yoga and read that “when we dream, we think it’s real, and when we’re in waking reality, we think that’s real—both are totally believable.” The Carlos Castaneda books, especially The Art of Dreaming, fueled his curiosity.

Lucid dreaming, Harris explains, “is a great opportunity for self-healing. The idea is to be in the dream with your volition, so you have a piece of the same consciousness as in waking reality. That opens up many doors. You can face your fears. And I believe that illnesses actually start out in your subconscious. If you have a healthy dream reality, you’ll be healthy in waking reality. You can work within the dream world to heal, before problems are manifested in physical reality.”

You can exploring lucid dreaming by keeping a journal of your dreams. Then, with practice, stating an intention before you fall asleep to show up in your dream should eventually pay off and allow you to interact with your dream world. (Naps are a good place to start.)

Say you’re going through a spell of disturbing dreams where someone is pursuing you for no clear reason; you’re always one step ahead of harm and terrified. Instead of simply awakening with the trauma of this dream, you could face the pursuer and ask what’s going on. It may not actually be a threat but a message relevant to an important choice in life.

You can even resolve issues that might take years to accomplish by other methods, says Harris. Whereas psychiatry takes dreams as clues to issues and then works on them in waking reality—sometimes a very long process—with lucid dreaming, “you go back to the dream world and work on it there. You can get immediate results.” Further, Harris strongly holds that “as we wake up through dreaming, we are becoming more conscious, and creating a better world.”

Consider getting to know your dream world. It’s a resource of vast richness beyond, yes, your wildest dreams.

ONLINE RESOURCES AVAILABLE AT WWW.CHRONOGRAM.COM. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON DREAMS AND DREAMING, VISIT WWW.CHRONOGRAM.COM.

2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM WHOLE LIVING 105

whole living guide ACTIVE RELEASE TECHNIQUES Active Release Techniques Active Release Techniques (ART) is a patented soft tissue treatment system that heals injured muscles, tendons, fascia (covers muscle), ligaments, and nerves. It is used to treat acute or chronic injuries, sports injuries, repetitive strain injuries and nerve entrapments like carpal tunnel syndrome, and sciatica. ART is also used before and after surgery to reduce scar tissue formation and build up. ART doctors are trained in over 500 hands-on protocols and must undergo rigorous written and practical examination to become certified. In order to maintain their certification in ART doctors attend yearly continuing education and re-certification by ART. Dr. David Ness. (845) 255-1200. www.drness.com.

agnostic studies. His experienced, friendly staff offer the most comprehensive and individualized rehabilitative care available. Please call the office to arrange a consultation.

New patients and most insurances are accepted. Half mile south of the Galleria Mall. 1772 Route 9, Wappingers Falls, NY. (845) 298-6060.

Stephanie Ellis, LAc, Chinese Herbalist Ms. Ellis is a magna cum laude graduate of Columbia University in pre-medical studies and has been practicing acupuncture in Rosendale since 2001. In 2003 she completed post-graduate work in the study of classical Chinese herbal medicine. Ms. Ellis trained at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center for the treatment of cancer patients with acupuncture. Ms. Ellis also has special training in infertility treatment, facial acupuncture and chronic pain. Her new, expanded location is at the medical offices of Rosendale

ACUPUNCTURE Acupuncture Health Care, PC Peter Dubitsky, L.Ac., Callie Brown, L.Ac., and Leslie Wiltshire, L.Ac. Mr. Dubitsky is a faculty member and the Director of Clinical Training at the Tri-State College of Acupuncture, and a member of the NY State Board for

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Acupuncture. Ms. Brown and Ms. Wiltshire each have years of acupuncture experience in private practice and in medical offices. We are all highly experienced, national board certified, NYS Licensed acupuncturists. We combine traditional Asian acupuncture techniques with a modern understanding of acupuncture and oriental medicine to provide effective treatments of acute and chronic pain conditions, and other

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Three Treasures Acupuncture Specializing in Facial Rejuvenation Acupuncture and teenage acne, Mindy Pickard, MS, LAc, utilizes a whole body approach to beauty by improving your overall health. Ms. Pickard also practices results-oriented acupuncture for many conditions including: allergies, asthma, bronchitis, headaches, chronic pain, GI issues, women’s health, arthritis, anxiety, insomnia and conditions of aging. A graduate

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for all people who meet our low income guidelines. 108

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APOTHECARY

For the past 18 years, Dr. Hoon J. Park has been practicing

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Essential Astrology Free Astrology Consultation. Call with a question and I'll give you a free 15 minute consultation to introduce you to my work and to the helpfulness of the Western and Vedic astrological traditions. Penny Seator, Essential Astrology.

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CHILDBIRTH Homebirth and Gynecology Practice of Judy Joffee, CNM This practice offers a unique and exquisite opportunity for woman care in a powerfully compassionate and sacred

BODY & SKIN CARE

manner. I offer complete prenatal care focused toward

Absolute Laser, LLC

necological care, counseling, and self-determination await

Absolute Laser offers commitment to beautiful skin through

you. Also offering school, work, and general physicals for all

outstanding care and service. Offering Laser Hair Removal,

ages. Call for consultation. (845) 255-2096.

homebirth. For the nonpregnant woman, individualized gy-

whole living directory

Microdermabrasion, Vitalize Peel, and Fotofacial RF. The Fotofacial RF is the next generation in high-tech skin enhancement. These gentle, no downtime treatments are used to improve cosmetic appearance of the face, neck, hands,

CHIROPRACTIC

and body. The results are brighter, smoother, more radiant

Dr. Bruce Schneider

and luminescent skin. This process delivers results that skin

Dr. Bruce Schneider. New Paltz, NY. (845) 255-4424.

care products alone cannot do! Recover and rediscover the youth and vitality of your skin. Call for a complimentary

Dr. David Ness

consultation: Janice DiGiovanni. Springbrook Medical Park,

Dr. David Ness is a Certified Active Release Techniques

Rhinebeck, NY. (845) 876-7100. www.absolute-laser.com.

(ART) Provider and Certified Chiropractic Sports Practitioner specializing in helping athletes and active people quickly relieve their pain and heal their injuries. In addition to providing traditional chiropractic care, Dr. Ness utilizes

BODY-CENTERED THERAPY

ART to remove scar tissue and adhesions in order to re-

Irene Humbach, LCSW, PC - Body of Wisdom Counseling & Healing Services

treatments will allow. If you have an injury that has not

By integrating traditional and alternative therapy/healing approaches, including Body-Centered Psychotherapy, IMAGO Couples. New Paltz, NY. (845) 485-5933.

Julie Zweig, MA Verbal Body-Centered Psychotherapy utilizing doctoral level training in psychology and 15+ years of experience as a therapist, as well as the principles of Rosen Method Bodywork, but without touch. New Paltz, NY. (845) 255-3566.

store mobility, flexibility, and strength faster than standard responded to treatment, call Dr. Ness for an appointment today. (845) 255-1200.

Nori Connell, RN, DC Nori combines 28 years as a registered nurse with 18 years of chiropractic experience to offer patients a knowledgeable approach to removing the interferences in the body that lead to disease. She combines accredited techniques such as Neuro-Emotional technique, kinesiology, and Network Chiropractic to work with the bodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s innate intelligence and its ability for healing. Dr. Connell also offers workshops on natural health care for the family and is also one of the directors of Alternatives Health Center of Tivoli (845) 757-5555.

CAREER & LIFE COACHING

Rhinebeck Cooperative Health Center, Rhinebeck, NY. (845) 876-5556.

Allie Roth - Center for Creativity and Work Career and Life Coaching for those seeking more creativity, fulfillment, balance and meaning in life and work. Offer a holistic approach to career and life transitions. Also

COLON HYDROTHERAPY

business owners, consultants and private practitioners.

Connie Schneider, Advanced Level I-ACT Certified Colon Hydrotherapist

25 years experience. Kingston and New York City offices.

Colon Hydrotherapy is a safe, gentle, cleansing

Kingston, NY. (845) 336-8318. Toll Free: (800) 577-8318.

process. Clean and private office. A healthy function-

allie@allieroth.com. www.allieroth.com

ing colon can decrease internal toxicity and improve

specialize in executive coaching, and coaching small

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WHOLE LIVING DIRECTORY CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

digestion; basics for a healthy body. See display ad.

Ecological and Building Health practices. Not confined to

New Paltz, NY. (845) 256-1516.

Interiors, Classical Feng Shui begins with good site planning & siting of a building, and follows through the design placement of important Entries, Rooms, and Functions,

CRANIOSACRAL THERAPY

and recommends the most appropriate Directions,

Craniosacral Therapy

the Clients, and for the Building itself. Both new and

A gentle, hands-on method for enhancing the body’s own

existing Residential and Commercial Buildings can

healing capabilities through the craniosacral rhythm. Cranio-

be balanced and enhanced with these cutting edge

sacral aids in the release of stress-related conditions such

techniques!. (845) 247-4620. ecoarchitect@hvc.rr.com.

as anxiety, nervousness, insomnia, depression, digestive, menstrual, and other problems with organ function, breath-

Elements, Colors and Shapes and Timing for the Site,

www.JanusWeltonDesignWorks.com.

ing difficulties, and headaches. Increase energy, reduce pain, and improve immune system function. Effective for whiplash, TMJ, sciatica, fibromyalgia, scoliosis, arthritis, low back tension, and chronic pain. Also helpful for children with birth trauma, learning difficulties, chronic ear problems, and hyperactivity. Hudson Valley Therapeutic Massage, Michele Tomasicchio, LMT. (845) 255-4832.

FLOWER ESSENCE THERAPY Cheri Piefke- Bach Foundation Registered Practitioner Flower essences are a unique vibrational healing modality for mind-body health and emotional well-being, that are safe, effective and compatible with other medications or

DENTISTRY

therapies. If you are seeking the missing piece in recovering from crisis, breaking behavioral patterns that no longer

Philmont Family Dentistry

serve you, or if you simply desire support for personal

Caring, modern dental practice for year-round and second-

growth, an individualized blend of flower essences can be

home owners in Upper Hudson Valley (Columbia, Greene,

the gentle loving partner that makes the difference. Call for

Dutchess, Ulster, Albany, Rensselaer, Berkshire). A sophis-

more information or to schedule your personal consultation.

ticated urban practice in a beautiful rural setting, one mile

(845) 266-0230.

from Taconic Parkway in Philmont. Restorations (crowns, bridges, veneers, implants), cosmetic dentistry (whitening, bonding), root canal, extractions, emergencies. Call for appointment. 1078 Rte. 217, Philmont, NY. (518) 672-4077. http://www.philmontfamilydentistry.com

Setting the standards for excellence in dentistry for more than 25 years, the Center for Advanced Dentistry attracts clients from throughout the northeast and abroad. Their client-centered approach to providing comprehensive dental services for adults and children includes “old school” care and concern combined with the latest technologies. The office is conveniently located 1.5 miles east of the NYS Thruway, exit 18. 494 Route 299, Highland, NY. (845) 691-5600.

Group Psychotherapy Many people avoid intimacy in romantic relationships or

whole living directory

The Center For Advanced Dentistry - Bruce D. Kurek, DDS, FAGD; Jaime O. Stauss, DMD

GROUP PSYCHOTHERAPY

friendships because of the fear of being hurt or rejected.

Group psychotherapy is a very effective way to develop insight into one’s patterns regarding intimacy, and learn and practice new behaviors. Currently, there is an evening group in Uptown Kingston co-led by an experienced male and female therapist which offers a safe environment to develop greater connection in relationships. For further information call Thaddea Compain, LCSW at (845) 247-4059 or Clayton Horsey, LCSW at (845) 679-2282.

www.thecenterforadvanceddentistry.com.

Tischler Dental With over 35 years experience, Tischler Dental is the leading

HEALTH & HEALING FACILITIES

team of dental care experts in the area. Dr. Michael Tischler

Guidance of Spirit, Wisdom of Heart

is currently one of only two Board Certified Implant Dentists

Heart-based Intuitive Healing, Karma Release with Crystals,

in the Hudson Valley Region of NYS and one of only 300

Space Clearings & Blessings, Long Distance Healings,

dentists in the world to have achieved this honor. Sedation

End-of-Life Transitions, Guided Meditation/visualization.

dentistry, acupuncture with dental treatment, dental implant

Thursday evenings at 7:30pm. Self healing is a process of

surgery, cosmetic makeover procedures and gum surgery

self-discovery. Within the space of the heart discover what

are just a few of the many unique services Tischler Dental

you need to heal. Kate DeChard M.Ed. The Soul Sanctuary,

offers. Their practice philosophy is that each modality of

6052 B Route 9, NY

dental treatment is performed by the practitioner that is best trained in that area. Working as a team, they deliver ideal

The Sanctuary: A Place for Healing

dental care. Woodstock, NY. (845) 679-3706. tischlerdental

A quaint healing center in a quiet part of downtown New

@hvc.rr.com. www.tischlerdental.com.

Paltz. Specializing in Craniosacral Therapy, Stress Point Release through Chiropractic, Swedish & Sports Massage, Shiatsu, and Energetic Reiki. New offerings include medita-

EQUINE FACILITATED HEALING Ada Citron - Taoist Counselor and Instructor Equisessions. (845) 339-0589. www.adacitron.com.

FENG SHUI Janus Welton, AIA, BBEC, IFSG Architect and Feng Shui & Ecological & Building Health Consultant

tion and nutritional counseling. Call for an appointment. 5 Academy Street, New Paltz, NY. (845) 255-3337 and (845) 853-3325.

HEALTH CLUBS The Millbrook Training Center The Millbrook Training Center, located in picturesque, historical Millbrook, is a personal fitness training center

A pioneer of Feng Shui In the U.S. since the 1980’s, Janus

inclusive of a cardio complex, weight training center, yoga

Incorporates The Wisdom Traditions of Classical Feng

studio and three Pilates studios. Our staff of certified

Shui and Advanced Compass Techniques as well as

professionals offers individualized training and motivational

Vastu Shastra from India; and grounds these practices

programs to assist people with achieving a healthier lifestyle

into the 21st Century Architecture & Design combined with

and reaching their fitness goals.

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HEALTH PUBLICATIONS Hudson Valley Healthy Living A comprehensive directory of MidHudson health services, products, and practitioners, along with articles on health issues of interest. Published biannually (April/October) by Luminary Publishing, Inc., the creators of Chronogram, 50,000 copies are distributed in the region throughout the year.

Contents are also available on the Web at www.hvhealthyliving.com. See our website for advertising rates or call the HVHL sales team. (845) 334-8600. www.hvhealthyliving.com.

HERBS Monarda Herbal Apothecary In honoring the diversity, uniqueness, and strength of nature for nourishment and healing, we offer organic and ecologically wildcrafted herbs using tradition as our guide. Certified Organic Alcohol Tinctures, Teas, Salves, Essential Oils, and more. Product Catalog $1. Workshops and Internships. (845) 339-2562. www.monarda.net.

whole living directory

HOLISTIC HEALTH John M. Carroll, Healer John Carroll is an intuitive healer, teacher, and spiritual counselor who integrates mental imagery with the God-given gift of his hands. John has helped individuals suffering from acute and chronic disorders, including back problems and cancer. Remote healings and telephone sessions. Call for consultation. Kingston, NY. (845) 338-8420.

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Marika Blossfeldt, HHC, AADP Holistic Health and Nutrition Counselor, Yoga Instructor You were meant to lead a happy and fulfilling life. What. Beacon, NY. (646) 241-8478. marika@deliciousnutrition.com.

Priscilla A. Bright, MA Energy Healer/Counselor Specializing in women’s stress, emotional issues, and physical illness, including stress-related anxiety, depression, and physical burnout.

Women in transition, businesswomen, mothers, all welcome. Experienced counselor. Faculty, Barbara Brennan School of Healing. Convenient offices in Kingston & New Paltz. Initial phone consultation no charge. Kingston, NY. (845) 688-7175.

HOMEOPATHY Kimberly Woods C. HOM. See extended directory listing under Holistic Health. (845) 688-2976. www.naturalhealthsource.us.

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HYPNOSIS Achieve Your Goals with Therapeutic Hypnosis Sharon Slotnick, MS, CHt. Increase self-esteem and motivation; break bad habits; manage stress, stress-related illness and anger; alleviate pain (e.g. childbirth, headaches, chronic pain); overcome fears and despondency; relieve insomnia; improve learning, memory, public speaking and sports performance; enhance creativity. Other issues. Change your outlook.

Gain Control. Make healthier choices.

Certified Hypnotist, two years training; broad base in Psychology. New Paltz/ Kingston, NY. (845) 389-2302.

Freddie Blue Fox. NGH Certified Hypnotherapist in practice since 1994. Freddieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s revolutionary, three session, smoke ending program helps clients stop smoking for as long as they desire. Freddie asserts that smoking is a symptom, and that once the cause of the symptom is eliminated, the symptom, smoking, drops away.

Kary Broffman, RN, CH A registered nurse with a BA in psychology since 1980, Kary is certified in

whole living directory

Ericksonian Hypnosis, Hypnobirthing, and Complementary Medical Hypnotism, hypnocoaching with the National Guild. She has also studied interactive imagery for nurses. By weaving her own healing journey and education into her work, she helps to assist others in accessing their inner resources and healing potential. Hyde Park, NY. (845) 876-6753.

One-Session Hypnosis with Frayda Kafka CHT Building on my success with smoking cessation in 1978, I have continued to help clients with weight loss, pain, childbirth, stress, insomnia, habits, phobias, confidence, and almost any behavior you can think of. Known for my easy, light manner and quick results, I have an intuitive knack for saying just the right thing at the right time so that a major shift can be initiated.

Groups, home visits, gifts and phone sessions are available. Kingston, NY. (845) 336-4646. info@CallTheHypnotist .com. www.CallTheHypnotist.com.

JEWISH MYSTICISM/ KABBALAH Irene Humbach, LCSW, PC Kabbalistic Healing in person and long distance. See Body-Centered Therapy.

(845) 485-5933.

LIFECOACHING Shannon Fasce - Certified Holistic Life Coach Medical intuitive-Intuitive consultantRestoring balance for the Body,

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Mind & Spirit. Using techniques such as Energy Medi-

stress, boost the immune system, and address system

cine, Guided meditation, Chakra Balancing, Bach Flower

imbalances. Natural animal care, individual consulta-

Remedies & Integrated Energy Therapy. To schedule an

tions for a healthy home and personal concerns, spa con-

appointment call (845) 758-8270.

sultant, classes, and keynotes. Essential Oils, nutritional

Shirley Stone, MBA, Certified Empowerment Life Coach Want to convert fear into courage, stress into power, depression into joy, worry into satisfaction? Consider empowerment life coaching. Get clarity on the life you want plus the tools and techniques to make your dreams a reality.

Stop being a problem solver and become a vision creator.

Rhinebeck, NY. (845) 876-2194. Shirley@findingthecourage.

supplements, personal care, pet care, children’s and home cleaning products from Young Living Essential Oils.

For more information, contact Joan Apter. (845) 679-0512. japter@ulster.net. www.apteraromatherapy.com.

Susan DeStefano, LMT Healing Massage. Swedish. Deep Tissue. Hot Stone.

Shiatsu Craniosacral. Lymph Drainage. Tibetan Reflexology.

com. www.findingthecourage.com.

Reiki. Touch For Health. (845) 255-6482.

Tammy Friedman

Woodland Massage

New Paltz, NY 12461. (845) 729-3728. tam88774@aol.com.

A healing practice for body, mind and spirit. Attention artists, activists, farmers, executives, builders, teachers, truckers, healers, helpers, merchants, mothers, and weekend wan-

MASSAGE THERAPY

derers. Strong, gentle, knowledgeable bodywork, personal-

Ada Citron, LMT

fees. Accord office/home visits. Mark Houghtaling, LMT.

A licensed practitioner since 1988, Ada currently prefers the modalities of Chi Nei Tsang, Chinese internal organ mas-

ized to meet your treatment goals. Flexible schedule and Keep in touch. (845) 687-4650.

sage, and Shiatsu, pressure point massage. Classes offered in CNT. House call fees are commensurate with travel time. Kingston. (845) 339-0589. www.adacitron.com.

Affinity Healing Arts A holistic approach to chronic pain and stress. Deeply effective, intuitive and client-centered bodywork blends swedish/ deep tissue massage, myofascial, aromatherapy and Reiki

Zen Mountain Monastery Offering year-round retreats geared to all levels of experience: introductions to Zen meditation and practice; programs exploring Zen arts, Buddhist studies, and social

energy balancing. Workshops: Stress Management; Reiki

action; and intensive meditation retreats. South Plank Road,

Certification; Integral Yoga. New Paltz/Poughkeepsie, NY.

Mt. Tremper, NY. (845) 688-2228.

whole living directory

(845) 797-4124. affinityhealing@earthlink.net.

bodhi studio Bodhi Studio is a lovely and calm space nestled in the heart

Catskill Mountain Midwifery - Home Birth Services

at an affordable price, so that taking care of yourself can

Give birth as you wish, in an environment in which you feel

happen often and easily. Offering Massage, Acupuncture,

nurtured and secure; where your emotional well-being,

Natropathic medicine, Craniosacral therapy, Skin Care,

privacy, and personal preferences are respected. Be sup-

2233. www.bodhistudio.com.

Hudson Valley Therapeutic Massage Michele Tomasicchio, LMT, specializes in Integrative Massage - incorporation of various healing modalities: Swedish, Myofascial Deep Tissue, Craniosacral, and stretching to facilitate the body’s healing process. A session may include all or just one modality. No fault accepted. Gift certificates available. By appointment only. 243 Main Street, New Paltz, NY. (845) 255-4832.

WHOLE LIVING DIRECTORY CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

MIDWIFERY

enced and caring therapists to give you the care you need

of downtown Hudson. We have brought together experi-

Body waxing, earconing, Reflexology and Reiki. (518) 828-

112

MEDITATION

ported by a tradition that trusts the natural process. Excellent MD consult, hospital backup. (845) 687-BABY.

Sunflower Healing Massage Kim Beck, RN Certified Nurse, Midwife and Licensed Massage Therapist. In home prenatal and postpartum massage.

(845) 705-5906.

Suzanne Berger Certified nurse midwife at the Women’s Care Center offering

Joan Apter

a full range of holistic, alternative and traditional services.

Offering luxurious massage therapy, including Raindrop

Serving Kingston, Benedictine and Northern Dutchess Hos-

Technique, with therapeutic essential oils to relieve

pitals. Rhinebeck (845) 876-2496. Kingston (845) 338-5575.

NATUROPATHIC MEDICINE Naturopathic Medicine Dr. Thomas J. Francescott, ND. Free Your Mind - Release Your Body - Energize Your Spirit! Solve health issues, enhance wellness, and gain awareness. Scientifically proven naturopathic solutions for challenging and/or chronic health concerns. I offer naturopathic expertise in a sacred space to help you feel better. Graduate of the prestigious Bastyr University. Rhinebeck Cooperative Health Center, Rhinebeck, NY. (845) 876-5556. www.drfrancescott.com.

NUTRITION Ilyse Simon RD, CDN Nutrition Therapist Diet is a four letter word. Nutritional therapy for emotional eating to chronic eating disorders, body image issues, insulin resistance and diabetes.

Teaching normal eating based on hunger cues. Specializing in teens to adults. Bastyr University of Natural Medicine educated with non-diet approach including whole foods. Many insurances accepted. “Life is not black

whole living directory

and white. Living is the full spectrum in-between.”. 318 Wall St, Suite 3A, Kingston, NY. (845) 331-6381. ilysefood@yahoo.com.

Jill Malden, RD, CSW Prominent Nutritionist specializing in eating behavior and eating disorders for 15 years. Warm, nonjudgmental treatment. Understand the effects of nutrition on your mood, anxiety level, cravings, concentration, energy level, and sleep, in addition to body weight.

Recover from your eating issues and enjoy a full life! 1 Water Street, New Paltz, NY. (845) 489-4732.

Valerie Crystal, MS, Clinical Nutritionist "If I don't make time for healthy eating, I'll have to make time for illness."

Valerie Crystal, MS, Clinical Nutritionist.

Assessments and diagnostic testing for chronic disorders caused by poor eating habits. Learn how, what and when to eat and heal yourself! House calls available. Free Phone consultation. (518) 678-0700.

Vicki Koenig, MS, RD, CDN Creating Wellness for individuals and businesses. Nutrition counseling: combining traditional and integrative

Rachael Diamond

LCSW, CHt

Holistically Oriented Counseling, Psychotherapy & Hypnotherapy

solutions to enhance well-being. Health Fairs for Businesses wanting to improve employees’ productivity. Providing help with Diabetes, Cardiovascular conditions, Weight loss, Digestive support, Women’s health, and Pediatric Nutrition. Many insurances accepted.

Offices in New Paltz and Kingston. Call

office convenient to new paltz & surrounding areas

(845) 883-9642

Free 1⁄2 hour consultation SLIDING SCALE FEE

(845) 255-2398 for an appointment. www.Nutrition-wise.com.

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Vitamin Navigator

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Confused about what to eat and what not? Find your own bioindividuality, your diet is as unique as you are, your optimum health can be achieved without serious deprivation. Andrew Wright Randel HHC AADP has 15 years experience with alternative and

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complementary health care. (914) 4662928. www.vitaminnavigator.com

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NUTRITIONAL COUNSELING

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Delicious Nutrition Discover the foods and lifestyle that truly nourish your body and soul. In-

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fuse your life with balance, vitality and

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ness, mindfulness and kindness. Take

Monarda Herbal Apothecary

joy! Empower yourself through awarecharge and create change now. I can

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help you live your life fully. Contact me for a free initial consultation. Oneon-one counseling, group programs, wellness workshops, lectures, whole foods cooking classes, yoga, retreats.

(646) 214-8478. marika@deliciousnutrition.com.

ORGANIC PRODUCTS All Goodies Organic It’s All Goodies offers natural, organic

whole living directory

gift baskets. Give the gift of better health AND good taste! To see our baskets (customized to suit any taste, diet, and theme) visit http://itsallgoodies.mysite. com/ Email itsallgoodies1@yahoo.com Call us toll free at 1-888-556-7339. Mention this ad for a 10% discount on your first order.

NewAgeProducts.Org Offers handmade Organic Soaps, All Natural & Organic Herbal Juice Supplements and many Organic Bath & Body Products. All high quality and very competitively priced. Your #1 place to get all your organic body care needs. An easy and convenient way to experience the difference of Organic & All Natural Body Care. www.NewAgeProducts.org.

OSTEOPATHY Applied Osteopathy - Joseph Tieri, DO, & Ari Rosen, DO. Drs. Tieri and Rosen are New York State Licensed Osteopathic physicians specializing in Cranial Osteopathy. As specialists in Osteopathic manipulation, we are dedicated to the traditional philosophy and hands-on treatment of our predecessors. We have studied with Robert Fulford, DO, Viola Freyman, DO, James Jealous, DO, and Bonnie Gintis, DO, and completed a two-year residency in Osteopathic Manipulation. We treat newborns, children, and adults. 3457 Main St, Stone Ridge, (845) 687-7589. 138 Market Street, Rhinebeck, (845) 876-1700.

257 Main Street, New Paltz, (845) 256-9884. By Appointment. For more information call or visit the website. www.stoneridgehealingarts.com.

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PHYSICIANS

sexual/physical trauma, grief and bereavement, eating dis-

Women Care Center

consult. 199 Main Street, New Paltz, NY. (914) 262-8595.

Empowerment through information. Located in Rhinebeck

orders, dealing with divorce, gay/lesbian issues. Free initial

and Kingston. Massage and acupuncture available. Gynecology - treating our patients through the most up-to-date medical and surgical technologies available, combined with

PSYCHOTHERAPY

alternative therapies. Obstetrics - working with you to create

Amy R. Frisch, CSWR

the birth experience you desire. Many insurances accepted.

Psychotherapist. Individual, family, and group sessions for

Evening hours available. Rhinebeck (845) 876-2496; Kings-

adolescents and adults. Currently accepting registration for

ton (845) 338-5575.

It’s a Girl Thing: an expressive arts therapy group for adolescent girls and The Healing Circle: an adult bereavement

PILATES

group offering a safe place to begin the healing process after the death of a loved one. Most insurances accepted.

Beacon Pilates

New Paltz, NY. (914) 706-0229.

A fully equipped classical studio that tailors each workout

Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, Energy Psychology – Beth Coons, LCSW - R

to fit the individual. 181 Main Street, 2nd Floor, Beacon, NY. (845) 831-0360. www.beaconpilates.com.

Pilates of New Paltz / Core Pilates Studio These studios offer caring, experienced and certified instruction with fully equipped facilities. Each student receives detailed attention to his/her needs while maintaining the energizing flow of the classical pilates system. Hours are

Mind-Body, Experiential, as well as traditional talk therapy used to access inner resources for deep emotional healing.

Adult and childhood trauma, including physical, emotional and sexual abuse, PTSD, stress reduction, relationship issues and personal growth. Free initial consultation. (845) 702-4806.

Paltz: (845) 255-0559; Core Pilates in Poughkeepsie: (845)

Change Your Outlook, Heal, and Grow Sharon Slotnick, MS, CHt.

452-8018.

With combination of "talk" therapy for self-knowledge

flexible enough to accomodate any schedule. Pilates of New

and hypnotherapy to transform negative, self-defeat-

The Moving Body

ing thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Faster symptom

(845) 679-7715. www.themovingbody.com. 276

relief. Feel better and make healthier choices. Sliding

Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY. (845) 679-7715.

scale, Certified Hypnotherapist and Counselor. New

www.themovingbody.com

Paltz, Kingston. See also Hypnosis. New Paltz, NY. (845) 389-2302.

Debra Budnik, CSW-R

Psychically Speaking

term work. Aimed at identifying and changing self-defeating

whole living directory

PSYCHICS

Traditional insight-oriented psychotherapy for long- or short-

Psychic Consultations by Gail Petronio, internationally re-

attitudes and behaviors, underlying anxiety, depression,

nowned psychic. Over 20 years experience. It is my sincere

and relationship problems. Sliding scale, most insurances

hope to offer my intuitive abilities and insights as a means to

accepted, including Medicare/Medicaid. NYS-licensed.

provide awareness of one.

Experience working with trauma victims, including physical and sexual abuse. Educator on mental health topics.

PSYCHOLOGISTS Mark S. Balaban, Ph.D. Licensed Clinical Psychologist offering individual and group psychotherapy for adults and adolescents. Experienced in working with relationship/intimacy issues, loneliness, depression, anxiety, current family or family of origin issues, eating/body image concerns, grief, stress management, and personal growth. Convenient after-work and evening appointments available. Rosendale, NY. (845) 616-7898.

Located in New Paltz, one mile from SUNY. New Paltz, NY. (845) 255-4218.

Dianne Weisselberg MSW, LMSW Individual Therapy, Grief Work and Personal Mythology.

Stuck? Overwhelmed? Frustrated? Depressed? THERE IS ANOTHER WAY! Dianne Weisselberg has over 16 years experience in the field of Counseling and over 8 years of training in Depth Psychology. Sliding Scale fees.

Office hours in Woodstock and Willow. (845) 688-7570. dweisselberg@hvc.rr.com.

Licensed psychologist. Insight-oriented, culturally sensitive

Heart Centered Counseling & Expressive Arts Therapy Dr. Nancy Rowe, PhD, LMHC

psychotherapy for adults and adolescents concerned with:

Emotional healing for children and adults using talk,

relationship difficulties, codependency, depression, anxiety,

imagery, sandplay, expressive arts, and/or movement.

Peter M. del Rosario, PhD

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Background in transpersonal psychology, play therapy, family therapy, spiritual guidance, authentic movement, and expressive arts therapy. Dr. Nancy Rowe, PhD, LMHC, Kingston, NY. (845) 679-4827. www.wisdomheart.com.

Janne Dooley, LCSW --Brigid’s Well--Psychospiritual therapy, Gestalt, EMDR, with a specialty in childhood trauma, relationship issues, recovery, codependency and inner child work. Brigid’s Well also offers life coaching and workshops to intergrate healing and help create a richer, more satisfying life. Call for information or free consultation: New Paltz office.

(347) 834-5081.

Jeanne Asma, LCSWR Psychotherapist And Life Coach www.connectingwithhealers.com

Individual, couples and group sessions for adults. Women’s issues groups now forming. Specializing in relationship issues, improving self-esteem, binge eating and body image, life transitions including divorce and grief issues, trauma and abuse. Many insurance’s accepted or sliding scale available. Office located in Poughkeepsie location. (845) 462-1182.

whole living directory

www.JeanneAsma.com.

Judith Blackstone, Ph.D. Offering traditional psychotherapy and EMDR for healing from trauma and changing limiting beliefs, Breathwork for relieving stress and breathing difficulties, and Realization Process, a body-oriented meditation for deepening contact with oneself and others.

For individuals and couples. NY State licensed. Offices in Kingston, Willow and NYC. (845) 679-7005. www.realizat ioncenter.com.

Judy Swallow, MA, TEP Integrative body/mind therapist using Rubenfeld synergy and psychodrama in her work with individuals, couples, groups, and families. Inquire for workshops and training, as well as therapy.

New Paltz, NY. (845) 255-5613.

Julie Zweig, M.A., Licensed Mental Health Counselor See also Body-Centered Therapy directory. Offices in Poughkeepsie and New Paltz. NY. (845) 255-3566.

Kathleen Calabrese, PhD Family, Individual Psychotherapy For over 20 years with offices in Kingston and New York. Her empathic, practical approach enables people to understand their past, assess present day choices, and live more authentically and creatively in the future. This winter, take a creative leap into the unconscious by participating in a COLLAGE WORKSHOP. Call or email

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WHOLE LIVING DIRECTORY CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

for details! 17 John St. (845) 688-2645. kathleencalabrese @hvc.rr.com.

Kent Babcock, MSW, LMSW Counseling & Psychotherapy Development of solutions through simple self-observation, reflection, and conversation. Short- or long-term work around difficult relationships; life or career transitions; ethical, spiritual, or psychic dilemmas; and creative

REIKI The Sanctuary - Reiki Rev. Denise Meyer offers Usui Reiki treatments. Experience the benefits of deep relaxation and energetic releases through this method of healing touch. Reiki energy supports and heals the mind, body, heart and spirit through the delivery of Light Energy into the energy field of the receiver. The Sanctuary, New Paltz, NY. (845) 255-3337 ext. 2.

blocks. Roots in yoga, dreamwork, spiritual psychology, and existential psychotherapy. Sliding scale. Offices in Woodstock and Uptown Kingston. (845) 679-5511 x4. kentagram@gmail.com.

Martin Knowles, LCSW

ROSEN METHOD BODYWORK Julie Zweig, M.A., Certified Rosen Method Bodywork Practitioner.

Rosen Method is distinguished by its gentle, direct touch.

Taking a systemic approach to well-being and relationships

Using hands that listen rather than manipulate, the prac-

for over 20 years, Martin Knowles works with individuals,

titioner focuses on chronic muscle tension. As relaxation

couples and families in Uptown Kingston. His effective,

occurs and the breath deepens, unconscious feelings,

down-to-earth style amplifies and encourages natural

attitudes, and memories may emerge. The practitioner

talents and resources, bringing out the best in each of us.

responds with touch and words that allow the client to

(845) 338-5450 x301.

begin to recognize what has been held down by unconscious muscle tension. As this process unfolds, habitual

Meg F. Schneider, MA, CSW Psychotherapy for adults and adolescents. Counseling

tension and old patterns may be released, freeing the client to experience more aliveness, new choices in life, and a greater sense of well-being.

and guidance for special parent issues: helping children through divorce, coping with a new single life and communicating with troubled teens. Long or short term therapy and EMDR. Rhinebeck, NY. (845) 876 8808.

SCHOOLS & TRAINING International Feng Shui Institute

Michelle Rhodes LMSW ATR-BC See also Art Therapy and Group Psychotherapy.

(845) 255-8039.

Holistically-oriented therapist offering counseling, psychotherapy, and hypnotherapy. Specializing in issues pertaining to relationships, personal growth, life transitions, alternative lifestyles, childhood abuse, codependency, addiction, recovery illness, and grief. Some insurances accepted. Office convenient to New Paltz and surrounding areas. Free half hour consultation. New Paltz, NY. (845) 883-9642.

Wellspring Evolutionary coaching using movement and breath to ac-

October 20, 2006 over 6 weekends /year. The IFSI is the only Institute of Professional Feng Shui Training to integrate Classical & Compass Chinese Feng Shui with

whole living directory

Rachael Diamond, LCSW, CHt

Workshops in Woodstock and Manhattan. Starting

BTB Tibetan Bhuddist Feng Shui techniques with a focus on Individual Coaching, Consultations, and Design Applications w/ a practicing architect. Brought to you by Director, Eric Shaffert, BTB Feng Shui Coach and author of Feng Shui and Money; Janus Welton, AIA, Architect, Classical & Compass Feng Shui & Ecology in The 21st Century; and Susanna Bastarrica, President, United Nations FSRC; BTB transcendental teacher and Universal Minister. Call for registration by Oct. 20. (845) 247-4620. ecoarchitect@hvc.rr.com. www.JanusWelton DesignWorks.com.

cess and clear lifelong patterns and transform relationships.

Joshua Pearl

Rodney and Sandra Wells, certified by Gay and Kathlyn

Develop and liberate your unique musical potential through

Hendricks. (845) 534-7668.

customized music lessons, workshops, or artist development programs. For aspiring and developing musicians and bands. Explore your music in a supportive environment. Call

REBIRTHING Susan DeStefano

(845) 679-7599 and receive a free lesson during September.

Studios in Woodstock and Manhattan.

Heart-centered therapy for healing the body, mind, and

Omega Institute

emotions. Improve relationships, release the past, heal the

Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Arianna Huffington, and Nora

inner child through personal empowerment. (845) 255-6482.

Ephron join some of Omegaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s favorite faculty in New

2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM WHOLE LIVING DIRECTORY

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York City from April 13-15 for Being Fearless, a conference celebrating courage and spirit in our everyday lives. www.beingfearless.org. Our 2007 Rhinebeck, NY season begins in April. Many courses are now available for registration. www.eomega.org or 800-944-1001.

SHAMANISM, HEALING & TRAINING Janet StraightArrow - Woman of Medicine, Energy Healer, Medical Intuitive, Shaman Heal and enjoy your entire life. No need for pain, depression, or disease. Holistic Healing System - Be

THERAPY Legga, Inc. at Cedar Ridge Farm Specializing in Equine Assisted Discovery groups and individual sessions, for Children, Adolescents, & Adults.

Saugerties, NY. (845) 729-0608

Toni D. Nixon, Ed.D. - Therapist and Buddhist Practitioner Offering a unique combination of techniques that integrate therapeutic goals and spiritual practice. The basic principles of Buddhism and psychotherapy are concerned with the goal of ending human suffering. Both paths to liberation are through greater self awareness,

The Medicine. (845) 679-7175. Janetoasis@aol.com.

a broader view of one’s world, the realization of the

www.oasisforthesoul.com

possibility of freedom and finding the means to achieve it. In essence, effective psychotherapy moves toward liberation and Buddhist practice is therapeutic in nature.

SHIATSU Sublime Bodywork Sabra Goodban. Healing from the inside out. New York Licensed Massage Therapist and Master Teacher in the Shadulliya Sufi Path. Specializing in low back pain, knee problems,

Eidetic Image therapy is a unique and powerful method that encourages the liberation of the mind and spirit from obstacles that block the way to inner peace. Specializing in life improvement skills, habit cessation, career issues, women’s issues, and blocked creativity. By phone, online, and in person. (845) 339-1684.www.eidetictherapy.com

anxiety and depression. Experience shiatsu, massage and Raindrop therapy. Zen shiatsu utilizes myofascial release and streching to allow for an increase in flexibility and range of mo-

VEGAN LIFESTYLES

tion. Raindrop therapy utilizes therapeutic grade essential oils

Andrew Glick - Vegan Lifestyle Coach

to reduce inflammation created in back pain, scoliosis, lordosis

The single most important step an individual can take to

and other spinal problems. Raindrop therapy may also alleviate

help save the planet’s precious resources, improve and

central nervous system conditions like Lyme’s and Parkinson’s.

protect one. (845) 679-7979. andy@meatfreezone.org.

Located in the Woodstock area. Sessions available by calling

www.meatfreezone.org

whole living directory

(845) 246-4180.

YOGA SPAS & RESORTS The Spa at Emerson Place Embrace the Asian-inspired design of the Emerson Spa as you relax into an oasis of peace and tranquility that is surrounded by the Hudson Valley’s pastoral beauty. Indi-

Barbara Boris Woodstock Iyengar Yoga The Iyengar method develops strength, endurance and correct body alignment in addition to flexibility and relaxation. Standing poses are emphasized: building strong legs, increased general vitality and improved circulation, coordination and balance. 12 years teaching yoga, 20

vidually-tailored treatments are created by the experienced

years practicing. Twelve trips to India. Extensive training

therapists who are skilled at delivering virtually all the

with the Iyengar family. Mt. View Studio, Woodstock.

Emerson Spa’s 40+ treatments. Spend the day enjoying

(845) 679-3728. bxboris@yahoo.com.

the Spa’s hot tubs, steam showers, sauna, resistance pool,

www.barbaraborisyoga.com

cardio equipment, yoga/meditation room and relaxation area all included with your Spa visit. For appointments, call

Jai Ma Yoga Center

(845) 688-1000. For the treatment menu and specials, visit

Offering a wide array of Yoga classes, seven days a week,

www.emersonresort.com.

from Gentle/Restorative Yoga to Advanced. Meditation classes free to all enrolled. Chanting Friday evenings. New expanded studio space. Private consultations and Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy sessions available. Gina Bassinette,

SPIRITUAL COUNSELING Spirit Asked me to Tell You

�������������������� ����������������������������� ������������������� Repeat $10 Advance: $30 Door: $40

RYT & Ami Hirschstein, RYT, Owners. New Paltz, NY. (845) 256-0465

Spiritual channeling and guidance. Individuals and groups, will

Satya Yoga Center

travel for groups. Native American spiritual teachings. I have

Satya Hudson Valley Yoga Center is located in the heart

spent ten years out West learning Native American teachings

of Rhinebeck village, on the third floor of the Rhinebeck

and rituals. Telephone sessions by appointment. All information

Department Store building. We offer classes for all levels,

in private sessions are confidential. (845) 679-0549.

7 days a week. There is no need to pre-register: we invite you to just show up. Rhinebeck, NY. (845) 876-2528. www.satyayogarhinebeck.com

STRUCTURAL INTEGRATION Hudson Valley Structural Integration Structural integration is a form of soft tissue manipulation based on the lifelong work of Dr. Ida P. Rolf. It is a process-oriented whole systems approach that seeks to improve one’s health and vitality by balancing the body and reestablishing appropriate relationships. Benefits include

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Yoga on Duck Pond A new approach to yoga based on the premise that we develop habitual patterns of movement that can effectively be changed by bringing unconscious movement into conscious awareness. Only then can we explore new combinations of ways to move. Learn how to experience yoga poses comfortably and beneficially, from the inside out, without strain or struggle. When we slow

feeling lighter, more energy, greater freedom of movement,

down, we can sense and feel more clearly and comfort-

relief from chronic pain, and positive psychological effects.

ably how we move. Experience a style of yoga that is

We offer a safe place for exploration and work with sensitiv-

dynamic, rejuvenating, empowering and transformational.

ity and compassion. Krisha Showalter and Ryan Flowers are

Donna Nisha Cohen, RYT with over 25 years experi-

certified practitioners of the KMI method. Rhinebeck, NY.

ence. Classes daily. Privates available. (845) 687-4836.

(845) 876-4654.

www.yogaonduckpond.com

IMAGE PROVIDED

the forecast

EVENT LISTINGS FOR FEBRUARY 2007

FORECAST

C.J. CHENIER WILL PERFORM ON FEBRUARY 19 AT CLUB HELSINKI IN GREAT BARRINGTON.

LOVIN' GUMBO Thanks to the ubiquity of modern media, there are few Americans who haven’t seen

musician to win a Grammy, was a stranger to C.J. until the gifted young musician

the haunting images of the aftermath of the 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita. And now,

was on the verge of manhood. Growing up in the hardscrabble tenement projects

as the mud hardens, one need only listen to ace accordionist/keyboardist/vocalist

of neighboring Port Arthur, C.J. had carved out a life for himself as an accomplished

C.J. Chenier’s deeply soulful 2006 release The Desperate Kingdom of Love (World

saxophonist, flutist, and keyboard player, working in bands that covered Motown, funk,

Village) to know what the aftermath sounds like.

and R&B hits. He had won a scholarship and was studying music when, in 1978, one

Literally conceived and recorded in the wake of the storms and floods that decimated

week before his 21st birthday, C.J. got an invitation from his legendary dad to join The

his hometown of Port Arthur, Texas, and his ancestral homeland of New Orleans, the

Red Hot Louisiana Band. Originally hired as a sax player, C.J. soon gravitated to the

CD is a rich gumbo that mixes songs by P.J. Harvey, Van Morrison, and Hank Williams

keyboard accordion and the role of front man and singer, all the while discouraged

with traditional bayou stompers and Chenier’s tasty originals. The resulting rave reviews

by his father from emulating him and encouraged instead to develop his own style.

have further cemented Chenier’s reputation as the new king of zydeco.

Upon Clifton Chenier’s death in 1987, C.J. assumed the mantle of band leader. Over

Backed by Massachusetts’s own Tarbox Ramblers and recorded with minimal

the ensuing two decades, he and The Red Hot Louisiana Band have recorded for

overdubs, The Desperate Kingdom of Love takes listeners on a journey through

several independent labels and barnstormed the world, bearing the torch of classic

loss, resignation, hope, lust, and the undimmed desire to dance. And Hudson Valley

zydeco while spicing the music with modern flourishes.

residents will have a golden opportunity to celebrate properly that most hallowed of

“Oh, love you were a sickly child/And how the wind knocked you down/Put on

New Orleans holidays—yes, Mardi Gras—when Chenier brings his legendary Red

your spurs, swagger around/In the desperate kingdom of love,” Chenier sings in the

Hot Louisiana Band to Club Helsinki in Great Barrington on February 19 to perform

P.J. Harvey-penned title track to the new CD. With trials and tribulations behind us

selections from the new album as well as his storied canon of dancehall rave-ups

all, who could resist such an invitation?

and blues-drenched ballads.

Clayton Joseph Chenier’s story has an archetypal ring to it: His father, Clifton Chenier, a New Orleans institution, the undisputed king of zydeco, and the first Creole

C.J. Chenier and The Red Hot Louisiana Band play Club Helsinki in Great Barrington on February 19. (413) 528-3394; www.clubhelsinkiweb.com.

—Robert Burke Warren

2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM FORECAST

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IMAGES PROVIDED

FORECAST

LEFT: PAPER BAG PLAYER TED BRACKETT AND A COSTUMED CHARACTER IN “DANDELION.” RIGHT: PLAYERS, FROM LEFT, NINA ONUORA, BRACKETT, JAMES ELMORE, AND EVA BREUL.

IT'S IN THE BAG According to Judith Martin, co-founder of the Paper Bag Players, “If you can’t imagine

they are something other than themselves. The group mimics this child-like simplicity,

it happening, you can’t believe it.”

making the performances easily understood by kids and fondly embraced by adults.

Darwinian evolution maintains that frogs came from fish. In “Dandelion”, the genetic mutation occurs before the eyes of the audience in a matter of minutes and with the vocal encouragement of kids. “You can do it!,” the audience chants in unison at the fish out of water that now needs lungs and legs to survive.

Unlike TV and the Internet, the troupe encourages active participation.

“Encouraging children to imagine increases their chances of discovering and understanding the complexities of our world,” says Martin.

The players create and perform for children between the ages of four and nine.

Martin is also the artistic director and choreographer of the production, a lively

Because of an excessive amount of children who could not afford to attend the

rendition of the life cycle according to Darwin. Her mission is not to tell the story and

players’ low-cost performances last year, the group recently instituted a program

have it comprehended, but rather to invite the viewers to join the ride, breaking down

called Theater for All with the goal of guaranteeing all New York City school children

the wall that separates actor and audience.

the opportunity to see the show at least once.

“There is an intense connection between the audience and players in ‘Dandelion’,” says Martin. “Everyone takes the journey together.”

Martin believes that children’s theater is not a tool that prepares for future theatergoing. Instead, she feels that exposure to art is paramount and invaluable to the

At certain points, a narrator asks the crowd to cheer on a species in need of a change, helping to create the illusion that there is a relationship between the participating audience and the evolutionary process.

intellectual development of children.

“Art nourishes children,” says Martin. “It provides them with insights that you otherwise wouldn’t believe they were capable of attaining.”

The New York troupe’s name is reflective of the sets, props, and costumes it uses

The Paper Bag Players will perform “Dandelion” at the Orange Hall Theater

— household objects like cardboard boxes and brown paper bags. The scenery helps

at Orange County Community College at 2pm on February 4. (845) 341-4891;

create a production more accessible to children. When children put their arms and legs

www.sunyorange.edu/lyceum.

—Peter M. Laffin

into the holes of a cardboard box, their imaginations freely allow them to pretend that

get it on.

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FORECAST CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

short, long, baby, hoodie.

buy online.

www.chronogram.com/tshirts

THU 1 BODY / MIND / SPIRIT Tai Chi Chuan

Call for times. Advanced class. $50/4 sessions. Cunneen-Hackett Cultural Center, Poughkeepsie. 486-4571.

Poetry Reading Night at Inspired 7-9PM. Featured poet Evi Seidman. Inspired Books & Gifts, Kingston. 331-0644.

How to Solve Human Problems

7PM. Borders Books and Music, Middletown.

695-2233.

Lenten Luncheon Lecture Series

CLASSES Pink Strategies for Women

7:30PM-9:30PM. 6 sessions. $299. New You Coaching, LaGrangeville. 227-3190.

1PM. Prophetic Practice in Ancient Israel. $16/$14 members. Bertelsmann Campus Center, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7087.

THE OUTDOORS

EVENTS Love is in the Stars

5:30PM. With astrologer Demitra Vassiliadis. $55. Monteverde at Oldstone Manor, Cortlandt Manor. (914) 739-5000 ext. 1.

Full Moon Snowshoe Hike

7PM. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston.

331-1682 ext. 132.

THEATER Community Playback Theatre

FILM Movie Night

8PM. Oriole 9, Woodstock. 679-5763.

8PM. Stories of audience members brought to life by improv troupe. $6.

Boughton Place, Highland. 691-4118.

MUSIC

Deirdre

Fred Eaglesmith and Band

8PM. New look at the legendary Irish Celtic story. $15/$12 students and seniors.

Marbletown Multi-Arts, Stone Ridge. 6878890.

SPOKEN WORD

Life is Short

8PM. $20. Rosendale Cafe, Rosendale.

658-9048.

6:30PM-7:30PM. Palenville Branch Library, Palenville. (518) 678-3357.

7:30PM. 8 short comedies. Taconic Hills Performing Arts Center, Craryville.

(518) 325-0447.

The $64 Tomato

The Little Foxes

Breast Cancer Support Group

7:30PM. Book signing and discussion with author William Alexander. $7/$4 members.

Museum of the Hudson Highlands, Cornwall-on-Hudson. 534-5506.

THE OUTDOORS Bimonthly Mid-Week Moderate Hike

Call for meeting place and time. 677-9909.

8PM. Play about a wealthy family destroyed by greed. $15/$10 seniors and students. Van Cortlandtville School, Mohegan Lake.

(914) 528-4145.

Wait Until Dark

8PM. $15/$12 members. Ghent Playhouse, Ghent. (518) 392-6264.

THEATER

SAT 3

Pippi Longstocking

Call for times. Backstage Studio Productions, Kingston. 338-8700.

ART

FRI 2 ART

5PM-8:30PM. Paintings, drawings, and photographs. Firehouse Studio, Kingston.

331-6469.

Art Quilt Exhibit

CLASSES

CLASSES

10AM-6PM. Learn about the basic requirements and responsibilities for first-time beekeepers. $85/person. Sustainable Hudson Valley Resource Center, Rosendale. 255-6113.

7PM. Works by Carol Weber. East Fishkill Community Library, Hopewell Junction. 221-9943.

FORECAST

Colleen and Brian Trainor

Intro to Organic Beekeeping: Planning a New Hive for Spring

Drawing Class for Adults & Teens

9AM-12PM. Shape, line, color, composition and space explored. Shuster Studio, Hudson.

(518) 828-0188.

Painting Class for Adults & Teens

1PM-4PM. Shape, line, color, composition and space explored. Shuster Studio, Hudson.

(518) 828-0188.

EVENTS Modfest

Music, poetry, dance, theater, art. Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 437-7294.

FILM Raging Bull

7:30PM. Bardavon, Poughkeepsie. 473-5288.

DANCE DanceFest 2007

Call for times. Performances by ten local dance schools. $10/$8 children and seniors.

New Paltz High School, New Paltz. 256-9300.

English Country Dance

8PM-11PM. Workshop at 7:30. $10. Hurley Reformed Church, Hurley. 679-8587.

MUSIC Hal Ketchum

Call for times. Country rock. $35. Club Helsinki, Great Barrington, MA.(413) 528-8418.

Lisa Dudley and Prairie Fire

8PM. Country-ballad blend of original songs.

Red Hook Inn, Red Hook. 758-8445.

Ollabelle

9PM. With Donald Fagen & Phoebe Snow. $65/$45/$30. Bearsville Theater, Woodstock. 679-4406.

PeachJam

10PM-1AM. Classic rock. New World Home Cooking, Saugerties. 246-0900.

The Holmes Brothers

Call for times. Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling.

855-1300.

Todd Giudice

8PM. Folk, roots, Americana. Peekskill Coffeehouse, Peekskill. (914) 739-1287.

SPOKEN WORD Consumer Protection Series: Tax Tips 7PM-8PM. Clinton Community Library, Rhinebeck. 266-5530.

EVENTS Healthy Heart Fair

1PM-4PM. Cholesterol and blood pressure checked, recipes and exercise tips.

Poughkeepsie Galleria, Poughkeepsie.

297-7600.

Modfest

Music, poetry, dance, theater, art. Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 437-7294.

Soul to Solar Conference and Expo

8:30AM-4PM. Workshops and exhibits. Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, Bethel. 295-2445.

Tax Filing

11AM-3PM. From the Hudson Valley CA$H Coalition. BOCES, Port Ewen. 340-9170.

Cafe Chronogram

8PM. Monthly salon. Music: Kali z. Fasteau; Spoken Word: Sparrow; Sculpture: Emil Alzamora. Art on Wall, Kingston. 334-8600.

KIDS Creature Feature

1:30PM. Get up close and personal with the animal residents. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston. 331-1682 ext. 132.

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IMAGE PROVIDED

JASON KAO HWANG AND EDGE WILL PERFORM ON FEBRUARY 25 AT ALTERNATIVE BOOKS IN KINGSTON.

FORECAST

JAZZ WITH AN EDGE Jason Kao Hwang’s quartet is called EDGE, with good reason. If you are already on the edge, consider yourself tipped over. Avant-jazz isn’t really for the casual listener (or the mentally unstable or the faint of heart, for that matter), and if you’re wanting to take a roller-coaster ride to the madhouse, look no further.

Of course, the ardent jazz devotee will think he or she has died and gone straight to heaven.

In the late 1990s, violinist/composer Hwang was commissioned by Asia Society, Music from China, and the Museum of Chinese in the Americas to write a chamber opera, The Floating Box: A Story in Chinatown, and the recording was later named one of the top ten opera CDs by Opera News. Hwang sites this experience as what fueled the creation of EDGE. “The creative process took about eight years,” he says. “The intense experience of creating a 70-minute opera infused my compositions for the improvisations of EDGE with new ideas. The creativity of the musicians in the band—Taylor Ho Bynum (coronet, flugelhorn), Andrew Drury (drum kit), and Ken Filiano (string bass)—have highly individual, strong instrumental voices, very inspirational. Because they are also composers, they bring tremendous insights and intuitions to rehearsal, developing the music to higher incarnations, accompanied by zany humor.”

Released on Asian Improv Records, the four lengthy tracks on the unit’s self-titled debut could hardly be considered Eastern. The 12-and-a-half-minute “No Myth” is aggressive and dramatic, the players keeping the movement tight throughout. “Threads,” clocking at nearly 10 minutes, slows the pace for awhile, then breaks into psychological intensity. “Parallel Meditations” is no less ferocious, but gives way to the closing lament of “Grassy Hills.”

Hwang began violin lessons at age eight, though he admits to being primarily self-taught. He learned orchestration and composition from self-study and writing for independent films. While attending college in New York City, he discovered a cultural center in Chinatown where he became a regular at jazz jams, and got involved with the loft scene.

“The music of improvisation was multicultural,” he says, “essentially inclusive, a location where my violin could develop into my voice, fulfilling the ideals of the Asian-American movement with the full force of individualism. Emotions, history, ethnicity, and the multiplicity of elements words cannot apprehend interact as a vast, organic universe, defining our identity, and manifest within the vibrations of music, to the extent one’s artistry allows. We strive for higher levels of artistry to liberate these vibrations that are a life force. These vibrations are shared, resonating with both musicians and audience because of the natural exchange of energies during a concert, and the mutual empathic response that ensues.”

Jason Kao Hwang and EDGE will record a second CD in March and will play new music from that endeavor at Deep Listening Institute’s New Vanguard series on February 25 at 3pm at Alternative Books in Kingston. (845) 338-5984; www.deeplistening.org.

—Sharon Nichols

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FORECAST CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

Puss ‘n’ Boots 11AM. Puppetry. $8/$5 children. Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-3080.

MUSIC Christine Lavin with David Roth

Call for times. Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling.

855-1300.

Ollabelle

9PM. With Donald Fagen & Phoebe Snow. $65/$45/$30. Bearsville Theater, Woodstock.

679-4406.

The Bruce Katz Band

8PM. Blues, jazz. $10. The Rosendale Cafe, Rosendale. 658-9048.

The Holmes Brothers and Shemekia Copeland

7PM. Blues. $24. The Egg, Albany.

(518) 473-1845.

THE OUTDOORS Mohonk Preserve Singles Ski or HikeCopes Lookout 10AM-3PM. Meet at the West Trapps Trailhead, New Paltz. 255-0919.

Shawagunks Grasslands NWR

9:30AM. Winter birding adventure. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston.

331-1682 ext. 132.

Snowshoe Hike

1:30PM. Kingston Point, Kingston.

338-0670.

Winter Hike

10AM-12PM. Rockefeller State Park Preserve, Tarrytown. (914) 631-1470 ext. 14.

THEATER Deirdre

8PM. New look at the legendary Irish Celtic story. $15/$12 students and seniors.

Marbletown Multi-Arts, Stone Ridge.

(845) 687-8890.

FORECAST

Life is Short

7:30PM. 8 short comedies. Taconic Hills Performing Arts Center, Craryville.

(518) 325-0447.

The Little Foxes

8PM. Play about a wealthy family destroyed by greed. $15/$10 seniors and students.

Van Cortlandtville School, Mohegan Lake.

(914) 528-4145.

Wait Until Dark

8PM. $15/$12 members. Ghent Playhouse, Ghent. (518) 392-6264.

WORKSHOPS Jason Moffitt: Poetry Workshop 1PM-4PM. $40. Sunbridge College, Chestnut Ridge. 425-0055.

Photographing the Nude in the Studio 6:30PM-9:30PM. $75/$65 members. Unison Arts and Learning Center, New Paltz.

255-1559.

Watercolor Workshop

12:30PM-3PM. For adults. Rivertown Senior Apartments, Athens. (518) 945-1751.

SUN 4 BODY / MIND / SPIRIT Legacy Farm Cohousing Open General Circle Meeting

1:30AM-3PM. For those seeking community life for themselves and their families Benedictine Hospital, Kingston.

334-3077.

Women’s Full Moon Circle

7PM. Share in ritual and meditation. $5-$10.

The Dreaming Goddess, Poughkeepsie.

473-2206.

CLASSES Understanding and Caring for Your Bees

10AM-4PM. Advanced class. $85.

Sustainable Hudson Valley Resource Center, Rosendale. 255-6113.

West African Drumming and Dancing with Assan

1PM-1:30PM. $12. Living Seed Yoga Center, New Paltz. 255-8212.

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DANCE Swing Dance Jam

6:30PM-9PM. Lesson at 6pm. $5. Arlington Reformed Church, Poughkeepsie. 339-3032.

EVENTS DCSPCA Supurr-Bowl Spectacular

5:30PM-10PM. Prizes, games, and drawings, refreshments. $50. Dutchess Golf and Country Club, Poughkeepsie. 454-5345.

Modfest

Music, poetry, dance, theater, art. Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 437-7294.

KIDS Dandelion

2PM. Presented by the Paper Bag Players. $7/$6/$4. Orange Hall Theater, Middletown.

341-4790.

MUSIC Bach, Beethoven and Schubert

4PM. Till Fellner, pianist. $25/$12. Howland Cultural Center, Beacon. 297-9243.

New Vanguard Series

3PM. Tomas Ulrich, Rolf Sturm, Michael Bisio. Alternative Books, Kingston. 338-5984.

Songwriter’s Circle

2PM-4:30PM. Featuring Dorraine Scofield, Ralph Legnini and Joe Veillette. $10/$8. Art Society of Kingston, Kingston. 338-0331.

SPOKEN WORD Seeing Winter From a Different Angle 1PM-2:30PM. Mohonk Preserve, New Paltz.

255-0919.

Hudson Valley: Cradle of World Consciousness with Evan Pritchard

2PM. Experience the spiritual history of the region. Mirabai of Woodstock. 679-2100.

THE OUTDOORS

FORECAST

Mohonk Preserve Singles Ski or HikeRhododendron Bridge 10AM-3PM. Meet at the West Trapps Trailhead, New Paltz. 255-0919.

THEATER The Little Foxes

2PM. Play about a wealthy family destroyed by greed. $15/$10 seniors and students. Van Cortlandtville School, Mohegan Lake.

(914) 528-4145.

Wait Until Dark

8PM. $15/$12 members. Ghent Playhouse, Ghent. (518) 392-6264.

WORKSHOPS The Anatomy of Yoga and Dance

2:30PM-7PM. The actions and synergy between the bulk of the skeletal-muscular system. $45. Ashtanga Yoga of New Paltz, New Paltz. 430-7402.

MON 5 SPOKEN WORD Dialects of Enlightenment

Call for times. Olin Hall, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7512.

Poetry Open Mike

7PM. Featuring Burton Aldrich and D. Alexander Holiday. $4. Colony Cafe, Woodstock.

TUE 6 CLASSES Artist’s Nest: Collage Escapes for Women

6:30PM-9:30PM. Collage, embroider, draw, paint. $20. Call for location. 256-0754.

EVENTS Open House for 2007 Pre-K Program

4PM-5PM. Museum of the Hudson Highland, Cornwall. 534-5506 ext. 204.

KIDS Bilingual Storytime

6:30PM. Barnes and Noble, Kingston.

336-0590.

MUSIC Dueling Pianists

8PM. Performance by Sylvia Buccelli and Ruthanne Schempf. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-7869.

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Josh Ritter and Stephen Kellogg 7:30PM. American roots. $24. The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845.

Masterclass with Violinist Ani Kavafian 3PM. Olin Hall, Annandale-on-Hudson.

758-7196.

THE OUTDOORS Adult Nature Hike

11:30AM. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston.

331-1682 ext. 132.

WED 7 BODY / MIND / SPIRIT Tai Chi Chuan

Traditional Yang Tai Chi Chuan. Beginner/ Intermediate 10 session course 7 pm.

Instructor Cherie Barnier. $100. Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 452-7067.

DANCE Lord of the Dance

7:30pm. Michael Flatley and troupe perform traditional Irish dances. Mid-Hudson Civic Center, Poughkeepsie. 454-3388.

KIDS Creature Feature

3:30PM. Meet the animals of the nature center. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston.

331-1682 ext. 132.

The Game Guild

3:30PM-4:30PM. Stone Ridge Library, Stone Ridge. 687-7023.

MUSIC Open Mike with Fred Gillian Jr.

7PM. Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling. 855-1300.

Voodelic

10PM-1:45AM. New World Home Cooking, Saugerties. 246-0900.

FORECAST

SPOKEN WORD The Harlem Renaissance and the Black Body with Dr. Julia Folkes

4PM. Villa Library, Mt. St. Mary College, Newburgh. 569-3179.

Art Lecture by Kirsten Hassenfeld 7:30PM. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz.

257-3200.

Breast Cancer Support Group

1PM-2:30PM. East Fishkill Community Library, Hopewell Junction. 339-4673.

WORKSHOPS Basic Computers

6PM-8PM. For adults and senior citizens.

Ellenville Public Library, Ellenville. 647-1497.

THU 8 BODY / MIND / SPIRIT Zikrs

5:45PM. $5-$10. St. Gregoryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Episcopal Church, Woodstock. 679-7215.

DANCE Psychology Colloquium

4PM. Preston Theater, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7222.

FILM Movie Night

8PM. Oriole 9, Woodstock. 679-5763.

SPOKEN WORD Freemasonry and Reform in 18th Century Vienna

5PM. Lecture by Heather Morrison. Honors Center, SUNY New Paltz. 257-3933.`

Bannerman Castle

ESSENTIAL Dog Grooming

by Kelly Ward gentle, non-toxic products by appointment 845.688.2512 Phoenicia, NY

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7:30PM. $7/$4 members. Museum of the Hudson Highlands, Cornwall-on-Hudson.

534-5506 ext. 204.

Breast Cancer Support Group

1AM-1:30PM. Olive Free Library, West Shokan. 339-4673.

The Renaissance East and West: Gentile Bellini in Istanbul

7PM. Lecture concerning the relations between Italy and Turkey during the Renaissance. Lecture Center 108, New Paltz.

(631) 514-5982.

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WORKSHOPS Our Higher Voice with Baird Hersey

7-9PM. Sound healing workshop: Discover your voice. Mirabai of Woodstock. 679-2100.

FRI 9 CLASSES

DANCE

Contradance

8PM. Music by the Russet Trio. $10/$9 members/$5 children. Woodstock Community Center, Woodstock.

246-2121.

Les Ballets Africains

8PM. $24/$20 seniors/$12 children.

The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845.

Drawing Class for Adults & Teens

9AM-12PM. Shape, line, color, composition and space explored. Shuster Studio, Hudson.

(518) 828-0188.

EVENTS 1920’s Speakeasy Costume Party

10PM. Wear costumes, live jazz, games, dancing, refreshments. $10/$15 at the door.

Oriole9, Woodstock. 679-5763.

Free Tax Filing

1PM-3PM. From the Hudson Valley CA$H Coalition. Saugerties High School, Saugerties. 340-9170.

Romantic Roses-Afternoon Tea

2PM-4PM. $7/$4 members. Museum of the Hudson Highlands, Cornwall-on-Hudson.

534-5506 ext. 204.

An Evening with Comedian Kate Clinton

Rosendale Lovefest

Art of Chocolate

KIDS

8PM. A benefit for the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community. $20-$100. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 331-5300.

10AM-5PM Rhinebeck. The Cups with Tarot Grandmaster Rachel Pollack. (845) 876-5797.

ZoeMaat@hvc.rr.com.

The Nature of Winter Writer

1PM-4PM. Mohonk Preserve, New Paltz.

255-0919.

Watercolor Workshop

12:30PM-3PM. For adults. Rivertown Senior Apartments, Athens. (518) 945-1751.

The Law of Attraction and the Human Energy Field

2-4PM. Tap into the universal law of “like attracts like” with Donna Ho Lightsey. Mirabai of Woodstock. 679-2100.

SUN 11

Activities throughout the town.

658-7569.

BODY / MIND / SPIRIT Justice in the Gospels

Call for times. Cooking demos, liqueur and wine tasting, music, and chocolate goodies.

Mohonk Mountain House, New Paltz.

255-1000.

Creature Feature

1:30PM. What is the difference between ‘loving justice’ and ‘doing justice’? Christ Episcopal Church, Poughkeepsie. 452-8220.

The Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America Conference

The Fairy Circus

CLASSES

Call for times. $115. Sunbridge College, Chestnut Ridge. 425-0055.

Winter Weekend 2007

Share skills and knowledge, music, workshops, activities. Ashokan Field Campus, Olivebridge. 657-8333.

MUSIC Crawdaddy Stu Spector and Jimmy Eppard

10PM-1AM. Swampy blues. New World Home Cooking, Saugerties. 246-0900.

Live Music Presented by Chronogram

FORECAST

EVENTS

WORKSHOPS Magick, Mystery and Mayhem in the Minor Arcana

8PM. Featuring Valen, Johnnie Wang, Adam Snyder. $7. Muddy Cup Coffeehouse, Kingston.

Paul Brady

8PM. Rock, rhythm and blues blended with traditional Irish music. $24. The Egg, Albany.

(518) 473-1845.

Rod MacDonald

8PM. Blend of ballads and modern, eclectic folk songs. $10. North River Listening Room, Newburgh.

Vineyard Avenue Cafe Open Stage

7:30PM. $5. The First United Methodist Church of Highland, Highland. 691-8451.

Lauren Amato.

Voodelic

8:30PM. Blues rock. Stella’s Lounge, Catskill Point, Catskill. (518) 943-3173.

SPOKEN WORD Lenten Luncheon Lecture Series

1PM. Prophetic Practice in Ancient Israel. $16/$14 members. Bertelsmann Campus Center, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7087.

THEATER Wit

8PM. Presented by the Mohonk Mountain Stage Company. Unison Arts and Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.

1:30PM. Get up close and personal with the animal residents. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston. 331-1682 ext. 132.

11AM. Presented by the Tanglewood Marionettes. $8/$5 children. The Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck. 876-3080.

MUSIC Chris Thile & The How To Grow a Band 7:30PM. Featuring Bryan Sutton with special guests Sometymes Why. $22. The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845.

West African Drumming and Dancing with Assan

1PM-1:30PM. $12. Living Seed Yoga Center, New Paltz. 255-8212.

DANCE Les Ballets Africains

5PM. Republic of Guinea national dance company. Bardavon, Poughkeepsie.

473-2072.

Leon Redbone

Call for time. Is he Frank Zappa in disguise?

Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling. 855-1300.

Schuman: Romance and Fantasy

6PM. Music of Robert and Clara Schuman. $30/$35/$10. St. James Church, Great Barrington, Massachusetts. (413) 528-1460.

Stillhouse Rounders

8PM. Old-time string band and country roots. $10. The Rosendale Cafe, Rosendale.

658-9048.

Unearth

7PM. Mid-Hudson Civic Center, Poughkeepsie. 454-5800.

Voices of the Hudson River

7PM. Performance of original songs based on poems by Hudson youth. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438.

Nina Sheldon Trio

EVENTS Income Tax Prep Service Fair

10AM-3PM. Income tax preparation and financial literacy counseling. Hodge Center, Kingston. 331-2140.

Hudson Valley Cool— Taking a Stand on Global Warming

2-6PM. Exchange views & ideas at this World Cafe event. Help lower our carbon footprint. Woodstock Jewish Congregation, Woodstock. globalwarmingcafe@sustain hv.org.

KIDS For the Birds

1:30PM-3:30PM. Young naturalist program for ages 7-11. Rockefeller State Park Preserve, Tarrytown. (914) 631-1470 ext. 14.

MUSIC

8:30PM. W/Jack Ryon and Otto Garinder.

Stella’s Lounge at Catskill Point, Catskill.

(518) 943-3173.

A Mad Empress Remembers

SPOKEN WORD

Charlotte Kendrick

Mala Hoffman Book Release Party

7PM. Author of Half Moon Over Midnight.

Utility Canvas, Gardiner. 255-9290.

3PM. By cellist Diane Chaplin and pianist Sharon Bjorndal. Olin Hall, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7900.

Call for times. Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling.

855-1300.

Dog On Fleas

Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival 2PM. Woodstock Town Hall, Woodstock.

679-6345.

2PM. Smorgasbord of instruments. $7/$5 students and members. Time and Space Limited, Hudson. (518) 822-8448.

Matthew Lippman

New Vanguard Series

2PM. Poet reads from The New Year of Yellow. Hudson Opera House, Hudson.

(518) 822-1438.

3PM. Louis Belogenis, Jay Rosen, Michael Bisio. Alternative Books, Kingston. 338-5984.

Stephen Robinson

THE OUTDOORS

SAT 10

Kingston Point Bird Walk

Call for times. Kingston Point, Kingston.

338-0670.

ART LoveFest Art Show

1PM-9PM. Work includes metal sculpture water colors, oil, photography & collage.

Rosendale Cafe, Rosendale. 658-9048.

BODY / MIND / SPIRIT

Mohonk Preserve Singles Ski, Snowshoe, or Hike-Awosting Falls

3PM. $30. Manor Lake, Kingston.

New River Jazz Session Sundays

7:30PM. W/Pamela Pentony. Stella’s Lounge at Catskill Point, Catskill. (518) 943-3173.

SPOKEN WORD

Call for times. Herbal medicine, reiki and chakras. Barclay Heights Bed & Breakfast, Saugerties. 246-3788.

Snowshoe Hike

1:30PM. Kingston Point, Kingston. 338-0670.

3PM. Gardiner Town Hall, Gardiner.

255-9675.

CLASSES

THEATER

THE OUTDOORS

Painting Class for Adults & Teens

Wit

Mohonk Preserve Singles Snowshoe or Hike-Giants Workshop

1PM-4PM. Shape, line, color, composition and space explored. Shuster Studio, Hudson.

(518) 828-0188.

FORECAST CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

9AM. Meet at 299/9W Park and Ride, Highland. 454-4428.

Woodstock Chamber Orchestra

10AM-3PM. Meet at the West Trapps Trailhead, New Paltz. 255-0919.

Winter Wellness Retreat

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Minnewaska Ski/Hike

4PM. Classical guitars. $15/$11 members.

Unison Arts and Learning Center, New Paltz.

255-1559.

8PM. Presented by the Mohonk Mountain Stage Company. Unison Arts and Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.

After Shock: From Cancer Diagnosis to Healing

9:30AM-3:30PM. Meet at the West Trapps Trailhead, New Paltz. 255-0919.

IMAGE PROVIDED

FORECAST

WINTER WEEKEND WILL BE HELD FEBRUARY 9 THROUGH 11 AT THE ASHOKAN FIELD CAMPUS.

JACK FROST AND JACK WAX

ALWAYS UP AND RUNNING! High-Speed Internet Access

Ashokan Field Campus’s 14th annual Winter Weekend intends to rouse the interest of numerous sorts of people—teachers, artists, nature enthusiasts, and even those who prefer to lounge indoors.

The three-day event offers a variety of hands-on activities. Interpretive hikes are led by Ashokan instructors who stop at various locations like the Old Mill site or the Bluestone Quarry along the way, explaining their historical significance to the area. The Colonial Craft Village offers an opportunity to experience the smell of coal smoke and the effort required to shape tin into a useful product.

“We teach about how products were made in the past and about the history of a craftsman’s life, The event will also provide numerous creature comforts, beginning with live music by Jay Ungar and Molly Mason. Buffet-style meals will be prepared by a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America with a variety of tastes and diets in mind.

“The food is usually very well prepared,” says Joyner. “A lot of people comment on the fact that they don’t get cooked for so well at home.”

There is a limit of 120 participants for the weekend. Joyner compares the event to a vacation at a ski lodge, where some people prefer to remain inside and socialize—perhaps enjoying some jack wax, a taffylike substance made of maple syrup that’s been boiled and poured over snow—while others prefer to be outside on the trails.

“Sometimes people just sit around inside and talk,” says Joyner. “I hear a lot of laughing.”

For those who can’t spend the entire weekend, Ashokan presents a one-day Winter Festival

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from apprentice to master,” says Brian Joyner, Ashokan’s coordinator of special programs.

offering some of the same activities as the Winter Weekend, such as snow tubing and access to the Colonial Craft Village.

The Winter Weekend will take place February 9 through 11, and the Winter Festival will be held on February 10 from 11am to 4pm at the Ashokan Field Campus. (845) 657-8333;

w w w . w e b j o g g e r . n e t

845.757.4000

www.ashokanfieldcampus.org.

—Peter M. Laffin

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IMAGE PROVIDED

MAURA ELLYN PERFORMS IN “DEIRDRE” ON FEBRUARY 2 AND 3 AT MARBLETOWN MULTI-ARTS.

DEIRDRE, WARRIOR PRINCESS Looking for an all-purpose cultural touchstone in these despairing days? Introducing Deirdre, the

FORECAST

heroine of a Celtic saga dating back to the first century. This durable take offers an allegory for myriad current social ills, from unbridled patriarchy to global warming, according to its most recent interpreter.

“She risked everything to live her own life,” said Maura Ellyn, a Stone Ridge-based singer-composer who became fascinated decades ago by this tale of a beautiful, determined woman who defies a cruel king to win true love. For the past four years, Ellyn—a disciple of mythology master Joseph Campbell—has worked to define the tale of “Deirdre.”

The result is a chamber music piece, which will debut February 2 at Marbletown Multi-Arts (MaMA).

Ellyn will sing her score, complemented by local musicians with international credits: flutist Steve Gorn, guitarist Peter Einhorn, and bassist John Lindberg. Ellyn has performed at the Herodes Atticus, the ancient theater at the foot of the Parthenon, and the World Trade Plaza, as well as on and off Broadway. Her jazz CD, Chiaroscuro, features luminaries Marc Copland, Gary Peacock, Billy Hart, and Cyro Baptiste.

An oral tale, “Deirdre” was first documented circa 8 CE by Irish monks, who brought their ascetic taint to the tale, Ellyn explains. The resulting version depicts the protagonist as a renegade rather than a heroine. Despite the “Christian thing happening, a lot of the rawness of the culture comes through,” Ellyn says. Subsequent eras have used the malleable character as a pawn for their own cultural agendas. Victorian scribes, steeped in melancholy and loving it, depicted Deirdre as a lachrymose lass. William Butler Yeats and 20th-century Irish writer James Stephens also took turns at defining Deirdre. But men, being men…

“Deirdre was seen as a Helen of Troy figure,” Ellyn says, a simplistic depiction. “She was not a femme fatale or Victorian victim.” Historically, Celtic women were as fearsome as their menfolk, who were renowned for their ferocity as warriors. Celtic culture was pagan-based and honored goddesses.

“Women had incredible rights back then; they could split from a mate and still have equity.”

After sifting through as many as 20 versions, Ellyn forged her own hybrid. Its pro-feminist, proecology storyline (the character is happiest when living in the woods), Ellyn insists, sprang from the values of the Celtic culture. The take-home lesson of Ellyn’s “Deirdre” is that when society “tips into patriarchy, it gives birth to more materialism and violence.”

After the MaMA concert, Maura Ellyn pledges to craft a fully staged theatrical production to amplify her score. Despite an embattled past based on centuries of misogyny, "Deirdre" offers numerous lessons for the next generation. “'Deirdre’ is not some feminist tract, really,” Ellyn says. “It’s just about looking for balance. This is not all men’s fault by any means.”

“Deirdre,” starring Maura Ellyn, will be performed at Marbletown Multi-Arts (MaMA) in Stone Ridge on February 2 and 3 at 8pm. (845) 687-8890; www.cometomama.org.

—Jay Blotcher

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MON 12 DANCE Artists’ Open Mike

7PM. Carlos Osorio Dance Performance & Class. $4. The Colony Cafe, Woodstock.

679-5342.

EVENTS

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and After

Call for times. Conferences on the impact and contributions. Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-6822.

FILM SPOKEN WORD Breast Cancer Support Group

6PM-7:30PM. Catskill Regional Medical Center, Harris. 339-4673.

Eurabia: the Muslim Challenge in Europe

Call for times. Olin Hall, Annandale-onHudson. 758-7512.

Reading: 2007 Bard Fiction Prize Winner 7PM. Bertelsmann Campus Center, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7087.

Movie Night

8PM. Oriole 9, Woodstock. 679-5763.

MUSIC The Jerry Douglas Band

7:30PM. Americana roots. $28.

The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845.

SPOKEN WORD Breast Cancer Support Group

12PM-1:30PM. Northern Dutchess Hospital, Rhinebeck. 876-3001.

How to Solve Human Problems

TUE 13 CLASSES Artist’s Nest: Collage Escapes for Women

6:30PM-9:30PM. Collage, embroider, draw, paint. $20. Call for location. 256-0754.

7PM-9PM. Learn the source of problems and how to solve them. Main Street School, Goshen. 856-9000.

The World of Damselflies and Dragonflies

7:30PM. $7/$4 members. Museum of the Hudson Highlands, Cornwall-on-Hudson.

534-5506 ext. 204.

Voice in Fiction

KIDS Book Worms

11AM. Stories and activities for children ages 3-5. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston. 3311682 ext. 132.

7PM. Featuring Nina Shengold and Da Chen. SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge. (800) 724-0833.

THE OUTDOORS Bimonthly Mid-Week Moderate Hike

Call for meeting place and time. 677-9909.

MUSIC Community Music Night

7:30PM-9:30PM. 6 local singer-songwriters.

Rosendale Cafe, Rosendale. 658-9048.

Made and Played in Colonial America 8PM. Scottish folk music and Irish pub songs. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz.

257-7869.

Green Tuesdays

7PM. Green products & materials for building construction, furnishing, and cleaning. Newburgh Free Library, Newburgh.

534-5622.

Cabaret

8PM. Set in Berlin in the early 1930’s. $10; $5 w/ Marist ID; Group discount for 10+.

Nelly Goletti Theatre, Marist College, Poughkeepsie. (845) 575-3133.

The Marriage of Figaro

8PM. Mozart’s most popular opera. $42/$31.50 children. Lycian Centre for the Performing Arts, Sugar Loaf.

469-2287.

FRI 16

THE OUTDOORS Adult Nature Hike

11:30AM. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston.

331-1682 ext. 132.

BODY / MIND / SPIRIT

WORKSHOPS

Call for times. Retreat for teachers and administrators . $75. Sunbridge College, Chestnut Ridge. 425-0055.

Kingston Rhinebeck Toastmasters

7PM-9PM. Learn to speak in public. Ulster County Office Building, Kingston. 340-3800.

WED 14 BODY / MIND / SPIRIT Feast of the Senses Ritual

7PM-10PM. Integrate sex and spirit with sensual ceremony. $35-$50. Call for location.

338-8325.

EVENTS Twist Valentines Day Dinner

Courage To Teach Renewal Retreat

Qigong: Breath/Energy

Call for times. Introduction to the Five Animal Frolics, inspired by the crane, bear, deer, monkey, and tiger. $275/MRO students $200. Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper.

688-2228.

CLASSES Drawing Class for Adults & Teens

9AM-12PM. Shape, line, color, composition and space explored. Shuster Studio, Hudson.

(518) 828-0188.

EVENTS

Spend the evening with your sweetheart.

Twist Restaurant, Hyde Park. For information and reservations 299-7094.

Culinary Adventure Weekend

KIDS

Evenings of Psychodrama

Creature Feature

3:30PM. Meet the animals of the nature center. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston.

331-1682 ext. 132.

FORECAST

SPOKEN WORD

THEATER

Wine tastings and cooking classes. $395/$240. Cedar Hill Farm Culinary Bed and Breakfast, Gardiner. 255-0554.

7:30PM. $6. Boughton Place, Highland.

255-7502.

Knit One, Read Two

7PM. Clinton Community Library, Rhinebeck.

266-5530.

MUSIC Betty MacDonald & Peter Tomlinson 5-10PM. Stella’s Lounge at Catskill Point, Catskill. (518) 943-3173.

SPOKEN WORD Breast Cancer Support Group

6PM-7:30PM. Livingston Town Hall, Livingston. 339-4673.

THU 15

FILM Nature Spotlight

7PM. Movie and lecture. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston. 331-1682 ext. 132.

KIDS A Day at the Barn

9AM-2PM. For children ages 7 and up.

Winslow Therapeutic Center, Warwick.

986-6686.

BODY / MIND / SPIRIT

MUSIC

Zikrs

Captain Squeeze and the Zydeco Moshers

5:45PM. $5-$10. St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church, Woodstock. 679-7215.

10PM-1AM. New World Home Cooking, Saugerties. 246-0900.

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Conservatory Chamber Orchestra 8PM. Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson.

758-7900.

Blueberry CD Release Party Call for time. Live set by Blueberry with DJ Dr. Snitch spinning dance classics.

Bearsville Theater, Woodstock. 679-4406.

Peggy Stern Trio 8:30PM. Jazz. Stella’s Lounge at Catskill Point, Catskill. (518) 943-3173.

10+. Nelly Goletti Theatre, Marist College, Poughkeepsie. (845) 575-3133.

Puccini’s Tosca

8PM. Opera. Bardavon, Poughkeepsie.

473-2072.

WORKSHOPS Spellbound: When Mundane Words Become Sacred with Jeff Davis 7-9PM. Writing & speaking workshop.

Mirabai of Woodstock. 679-2100.

SPOKEN WORD How to Solve Human Problems 7PM. Borders Books and Music, Wappingers Falls. 297-3700.

Lenten Luncheon Lecture Series 1PM. Prophetic Practice in Ancient Israel. $16/$14 members. Bertelsmann Campus Center, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7087.

THEATER Cabaret

132

THE OUTDOORS

Calling All Owls!

Special Night Time Program

7PM-9PM. $8/$6 members. Museum of the Hudson Highlands, Cornwall-on-Hudson.

534-5506 ext. 204.

SAT 17 CLASSES Painting Class for Adults & Teens

1PM-4PM. Shape, line, color, composition and space explored. Shuster Studio, Hudson. (518) 828-0188.

Creature Feature

12:30PM. Get up close and personal with the animal residents. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston. 331-1682 ext. 132.

Maple Sugar Tours

1:30AM-3PM. $7/$5 members. Museum of the Hudson Highlands, Cornwall-on-Hudson.

534-5506 ext. 204.

1:30PM. Kingston Point, Kingston. 338-0670.

Capital Steps

8PM. Bardavon, Poughkeepsie. 473-2072.

Graham Parker

Call for times. Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling.

855-1300.

THEATER Cabaret

2PM & 8PM. Set in Berlin in the early 1930’s. $10; $5 w/ Marist ID; Group discount for 10+. Nelly Goletti Theatre, Marist College, Poughkeepsie. (845) 575-3133.

Todd Giudice

DANCE Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana 8PM. $24/$20 seniors/$12 children.

The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845.

8PM. Folk, roots, Americana. Chthonic Clash Coffeehouse, Beacon. 831-0359.

10AM-3PM. Free tax filing from the Hudson Valley CA$H Coalition. Hodge Center, Kingston. 340-9170.

FORECAST CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

WORKSHOPS Laughter Meditation Workshop

8PM. Broadway revue. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438.

3PM-5PM. $20/$25 for two/$15 students/$10 seniors. Living Seed Yoga Center, New Paltz.

255-8212.

Will Smith Trio

Magick, Mystery and Mayhem in the Minor Arcana

Nina Fine: Love Bites

EVENTS Tax Filing

Watercolor Workshop

12:30PM-3PM. For adults. Rivertown Senior Apartments, Athens. (518) 945-1751.

SUN 18

KIDS

MUSIC

FORECAST

8PM. Set in Berlin in the early 1930’s. $10; $5 w/ Marist ID; Group discount for

12PM. Food, juggling, ice sculpture, ice boats, music, parade, more. Rondout area of Kingston. 339-6925.

Snowshoe Hike

Winter Songs 2007 Learn songwriting, guitar, singing, performance. $399. Ashokan Field Campus, Olivebridge. 750-6871.

Kingston Mardi Gras

8:30PM. W/Mark S Meritt & Smokin Joe Tracey. Stella’s Lounge, Catskill Point, Catskill. (518) 943-3173.

10AM-5PM Rhinebeck. The Cups with Tarot Grandmaster Rachel Pollack. (845) 8765797. ZoeMaat@hvc.rr.com.

BODY / MIND / SPIRIT Will our Parish Love Justice or Do Justice?

1:30PM. What is the difference between ‘loving justice’ and ‘doing justice’?. Christ Episcopal Church, Poughkeepsie. 452-8220.

CLASSES West African Drumming and Dancing with Assan

1PM-1:30PM. $12. Living Seed Yoga Center, New Paltz. 255-8212.

DANCE Swing Dance Jam

6:30PM-9PM. Lesson at 6pm. $5. White Eagle Hall, Kingston. 339-3032.

EVENTS First Annual Hudson Valley Cheese Festival

2PM-5PM. Meet cheese & wine producers, sample their products from around the world. $40. Verdigris Art +Tea, Hudson.

(518) 537-3640.

IMAGE PROVIDED

“THE FAIRY CIRCUS” WILL BE AT THE CENTER FOR PERFORMING ARTS AT RHINEBECK ON FEBRUARY 10.

FORECAST

PUPPET RULERS Though the tricks will be performed by hand-crafted puppets rather than bearded ladies or daredevils, Tanglewood Marionettes’ “The Fairy Circus” will offer an experience similar to that of a real circus on February 10 at the Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck. Numerous puppets will dazzle the audience while accompanied by a variety of recognizable music ranging from Tchaikovsky to Benny Goodman.

Peter Schaefer, cofounder and lead puppeteer of the Ware, Massachusetts based troupe, will begin the show by briefly demonstrating the company’s art with a variety of puppets, such as the simple glove puppet and the more complex mouth puppet.

“The demonstration is not meant to be [purely] educational,” says Anne Schaefer, Peter Schaefer’s wife and logistical director and cofounder of the company. “Though it is interesting to try and figure out how the puppets are brought to life, our main concern is making the audience enjoy themselves.”

Most of the company’s productions are collaborations with other puppeteers. The upcoming show in Rhinebeck, however, will be a solo act. Throughout the performance, Peter Schaefer’s manipulation of the marionettes will be visible to the audience, satisfying curious adults attempting to understand the intricacies of puppetry while allowing children to remain captivated.

“Though most of our shows are geared toward children,” says Ann Schaefer, ‘The Fairy Circus’ is one of our least age-specific.”

The production is part of the Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck’s Saturday Morning Family Series and will be held on February 10 at 11am. (845) 876-3080; www.centerforperformingarts.org.

—Peter M. Laffin

DAILY UPDATES, BONUS FEATURES— VIEW OUR ENTIRE CALENDAR ONLINE WWW.CHRONOGRAM.COM

POST YOUR EVENTS ONLINE AT WWW.CHRONOGRAM.COM

2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM FORECAST

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IMAGE PROVIDED

EVAN PRITCHARD LEADS A WORKSHOP ON THE SACRED POWER OF WATER ON FEBRUARY 4 AT MIRABAI BOOKS.

FORECAST

SACRED SPACE It’s fitting that Evan Pritchard should lead a workshop about the importance of rivers to spiritual wellbeing. He’s a specialist on the history of the Algonquin people and their geography, producing colored maps of Native American territories that show how they split up the land along the Hudson River. A philosophy professor at Marist and visiting scholar at other academic institutions, Pritchard became an “expert source” for post September 11 national media because of his book, Native New York. And on the day I met with him, his car was packed with dried sweetgrass, a sharply sweet-smelling reed that grows along riverbanks and symbolizes purity of spirit in some Native American cultures.

Pritchard has shifted the focus of his studies and is now looking more deeply at water and rivers, which he calls the cradles of civilization—and spirituality. In his workshop at Mirabai Books in Woodstock on February 4, "The Hudson Valley: A Cradle of World Consciousness," Pritchard plans to discuss water and its importance to most religions throughout the world. For the Algonquins, the river was literally a lifestream—they fished and drank from and canoed on the Hudson and its tributaries. Waterfalls have particular value, both practically and spiritually.

“Waterfalls are considered places of power. They embody the power of the Earth and power of the spirit,” Pritchard says. “I think everybody senses the spirituality of the waterfalls, but they say, ‘Nah, it must be because of the Pocahontas cartoon.’ But no, it’s always been that way. Waterfalls are very important.”

Pritchard’s workshop is part of a series Mirabai’s owners started in 2001, inviting different spiritual thinkers to share their thoughts with others in a participatory setting. Pritchard’s ideas fit the bookstore’s workshop series, says Jeff Cuiule, who owns Mirabai with his wife, Audrey Cusson. Cuiule tries to craft the series to touch on both local and global themes, to explore a variety of spiritual ideas.

Cuiule started the series about six years ago. The workshops sometimes serve regular customers and sometimes bring new ones into the store, whose L-shaped space is crammed with spiritual books from all over the world. Events take place in an open gallery space behind the shop.

“We’ve held well over 300 workshops in that space. I believe the energy in that room is wild, because so many good things have happened there,” Cuiule says.

Pritchard plans to bring his own ritual to the space. He hasn’t quite decided how, but he plans to use something to bring a concrete understanding of the importance of water to people who participate.

It’s a connection that’s easy to inject into a routine, he says.

He thinks that with a spiritual connection to the river, people are more likely to keep it clean, preserving it for future generations. “At any time you can go out and just get close to the river,” he says. “Most people should get in a rowboat or canoe and just get out on the river.”

Pritchard's workshop will take place on February 4 from 2 to 4 pm at Mirabai Books in Woodstock.

(845) 679-2100; www.mirabai.com.

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—Julia Taylor

TUE 20

Income Tax Prep Service Fair 10AM-3PM. Free income tax preparation and financial literacy counseling. Business Resource Center, Kingston. 331-2140.

CLASSES

Sundae Pancake Supper

6:30PM-9:30PM. Collage, embroider, draw, paint. $20. Call for location. 256-0754.

5PM-7PM. To benefit local mission projects. $7/$6 seniors/$5 children. Rondout Valley United Methodist Church, Stone Ridge.

687-9090.

Artist’s Nest: Collage Escapes for Women

MUSIC Oboe Music from America

8PM. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz. 257-7869.

KIDS Pathfinders Session 1: Gotta Have A Habitat

3:45PM-March 27, 5:15PM. Grades K-2. $80/$70. Museum of the Hudson Highlands, Cornwall-on-Hudson. 534-5506 ext. 204.

SPOKEN WORD Breast Cancer Support Group

6:30PM-8PM. The Sanctuary, New Paltz.

339-4673.

How to Solve Human Problems 7PM. Barnes and Noble, Newburgh.

567-0782.

MUSIC Bardavon Gala 2007

7PM. Featuring Gladys Knight with orchestra. $175/$125/$75. Bardavon, Poughkeepsie.

473-2072.

Duo Flutes

3PM. Featuring Katie Schlaikjer and Leon Livshin, cello and piano concert. $12 /$10 seniors/students/children free. Saugerties United Methodist Church, Saugerties.

246-7802.

Stacey Earl and Mark Stuart

Call for times. Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling.

855-1300.

Unplugged Acoustic Open Mike

4PM. $6/$5 members. Unison Arts and Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.

11:30AM. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston.

331-1682 ext. 132.

Druids: Then and Now w/ Bryan Perrin

7-9PM. An overview of Druid history with a Druid priest. Mirabai of Woodstock. 679-2100.

WED 21 BODY / MIND / SPIRIT A Course In Miracles

7:30PM-9:30PM. Study group with Alice Broner. Unitarian Fellowship, Poughkeepsie.

229-8391.

Creature Feature

3:30PM. Meet the animals of the nature center. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston.

331-1682 ext. 132.

Explorers Session 1: What Do You Know About Snow?

3:30PM-4:30PM. Stone Ridge Library, Stone Ridge. 687-7023.

Mohonk Preserve Singles Snowshoe or Hike-Walkabout 12 9:30AM-3:30PM. Meet at the West Trapps Trailhead, New Paltz. 255-0919.

Open Mike Night

Call for times. Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling.

855-1300.

SPOKEN WORD Art Lecture by Ursula von Rydingsvard 7:30PM. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz.

257-3200.

Book Discussion

7PM. Based on the book How to Solve Our Human Problems. Barnes and Noble, Kingston. 336-0590.

THEATER Cabaret

2 PM. Set in Berlin in the early 1930’s. $10; $5 w/ Marist ID; Group discount for 10+. Nelly Goletti Theatre, Marist College, Poughkeepsie. (845) 575-3133.

WORKSHOPS Geothermal: A Solution to Rising Heating Expenses

2PM-3:30PM. Mohonk Preserve, New Paltz.

255-0919.

MON 19 KIDS A Day at the Barn

9AM-2PM. For children ages 7 and up.

Winslow Therapeutic Center, Warwick.

986-6686.

Winter Break Children’s Programs

1:30PM-February 23, 3:30PM. For ages 7-11.

Rockefeller State Park Preserve, Tarrytown.

(914) 631-1470 ext. 14.

Breast Cancer Support Group

6PM-7:30PM. Catskill Public Library, Catskill.

(518) 943-4230.

How to Solve Human Problems

7PM. Barnes and Noble, Kingston. 336-0590.

7:30PM. $7/$4 members. Museum of the Hudson Highlands, Cornwall-on-Hudson.

534-5506 ext. 204.

FRI 23 CLASSES 9AM-12PM. Shape, line, color, composition and space explored. Shuster Studio, Hudson.

(518) 828-0188.

DANCE With Teresa Broadwell and Thrivin on a Riff. $13. Poughkeepsie Tennis Club, Poughkeepsie. 471-1120.

EVENTS Culinary Adventure Weekend

Wine tastings and cooking classes. $395/ $240. Cedar Hill Farm Culinary Bed and Breakfast, Gardiner. 255-0554.

MUSIC Mambo Kikongo

10PM-1AM. Latin. New World Home Cooking, Saugerties. 246-0900.

Oregon

8PM. American roots improvisation. $24.

The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845.

Cafe Jazzbo’s

8:30PM. W/Sal Oliveri on woodwinds. Stella’s Lounge, Catskill Point, Catskill. (518) 943-3173.

SPOKEN WORD 1PM. Prophetic Practice in Ancient Israel. $16/$14 members. Bertelsmann Campus Center, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7087.

THEATER Sylvia

8PM. Presented by the Mohonk Mountain Stage Company. $15/$11 members. Unison Arts and Learning Center, New Paltz. 255-1559.

The Holocaust Kid

8PM. Staged reading of Sonia Pilcer’s novel.

Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438.

Treasure Island

8PM. NYCA Cabaret Theater, Hurley.

339-4340.

SAT 24 BODY / MIND / SPIRIT Winter Wellness Retreat

Call for times. Herbal medicine, reiki and chakras. Barclay Heights Bed & Breakfast, Saugerties. 246-3788.

The Forgotten Holidays

CLASSES

7:30PM. Lecture and slideshow. Hurley Reformed Church, Hurley. 331-4121.

WORKSHOPS

Painting Class for Adults & Teens

1PM-4PM. Shape, line, color, composition and space explored. Shuster Studio, Hudson.

(518) 828-0188.

Drugs in the Workplace

1PM-2PM. Burroughs Hall, Stone Ridge.

687-5192.

EVENTS

Exploring the Colors of Winter

3PM-8PM. Rosendale Recreation Center, Rosendale. 658-9347.

1AM-1PM. Creative writing for children and their families. Rockefeller State Park Preserve, Tarrytown. (914) 631-1470 ext. 14.

10th Annual Chili Bowl Fiesta

KIDS Creature Feature

THU 22 BODY / MIND / SPIRIT

Call for times. Olin Hall, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7512.

Zikrs

Poetry Open Mike

FILM

7PM. Featuring Eeo Stubblefield & Mermer. $4. Colony Cafe, Woodstock. 679-5342.

Planning is Essential!

Watersheds of the Hudson Valley

4PM-1AM. Preston Theater, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7222.

Psychology Colloquium

SPOKEN WORD Bad Reproduction: Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and the Gothic Logic of Enlightenment

5PM. Dr. Hector Lindo-Fuentes on USsponsored education reform. Lecture Center 108, SUNY New Paltz. 257-3245

Lenten Luncheon Lecture Series

MUSIC

1:30AM-3PM. $7/$5 members. Museum of the Hudson Highlands, Cornwall-on-Hudson.

534-5506 ext. 204.

A Case Study in the Failure of Modernization Theory in El Salvador

FORECAST

The Chess Club

Maple Sugar Tours

4PM. Lecture by Dr. Susan Aberth. Villa Library, Mt. St. Mary College, Newburgh.

569-3179.

KIDS

New River Jazz Session Sundays

THE OUTDOORS

Women Surrealists in Mexico

Swing Dance

3PM-4:15PM. Young Artists Concerts, Woodstock. 679-8800.

7:30PM. W/Pamela Pentony. Stella’s Lounge, Catskill Point, Catskill.

(518) 943-3173.

SPOKEN WORD

Drawing Class for Adults & Teens

WORKSHOPS

3:45PM-March 28, 5:15PM. Grades 3-5. $80/$70. Museum of the Hudson Highlands, Cornwall-on-Hudson.

534-5506 ext. 204.

Young Adults Concerts

7:30PM. $24. The Egg, Albany.

(518) 473-1845.

Adult Nature Hike

3PM. Performance by Patricia Spencer and Tara Helen O’Connor. Olin Hall, Annandaleon-Hudson. 758-7900.

Saugerties Pro Musica

New Riders of the Purple Sage

THE OUTDOORS

Beethoven and Shubert Piano Sonatas 4PM. Featuring pianist Andreas Häfliger. $25/$12. Howland Cultural Center, Beacon.

297-9243.

MUSIC

5:45PM. $5-$10. St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church, Woodstock. 679-7215.

Movie Night

8PM. Oriole 9, Woodstock. 679-5763.

1:30PM. Get up close and personal with the animal residents. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston. 331-1682 ext. 132.

Super Saturdays for Kids

10:30AM. Featuring Fakoli Dance and Drum.

Kingston Library, Kingston. 331-0507.

MUSIC Cherish the Ladies

Call for times. Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling.

855-1300.

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HIGHEST QUALITY

DBR & The Mission

8PM. Funk, rock, hip-hop and classical music blend. $24. The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845.

Garfield Moore

3PM. Featuring Edge: Jason Kao Hwang, Ken Filiano, Taylor Ho Bynum, and Andrew Drury. Alternative Books, Kingston. 338-5984.

7PM. Romantic cello in song, dance and jazz. $8. Columbia-Greene Community College, Hudson. (518) 822-2027.

New River Jazz Session Sundays

Amelia Piano Trio

THE OUTDOORS

8PM. Debussy, Beethoven, Monk. Hudson Opera House, Hudson. (518) 822-1438.

Sunbird Snacks®

New Vangaurd Series

Lipstick Lovelies Cabaret

8:30PM. Burlesque for the 21st century.

Stella’s Lounge, Catskill Point, Catskill.

(518) 943-3173.

Jeff “Siege” Siegel Quartet

9PM. Jazz. $10. Rosendale Cafe, Rosendale.

658-9048.

SPOKEN WORD Gallery Talk: Molly Nesbit on Robert Smithson

8:30PM. W/Pamela Pentony. Stella’s Lounge, Catskill Point, Catskill. (518) 943-3173.

Maple Sugar Tours

1:30AM-3PM. $7/$5 members. Museum of the Hudson Highlands, Cornwall-on-Hudson.

534-5506 ext. 204.

Rhododendron Bridge Ski or Snowshoe

10AM-2PM. Mohonk Preserve, New Paltz.

255-0919.

THE OUTDOORS Maple Sugar Tours

1:30AM-3PM. $7/$5 members. Museum of the Hudson Highlands, Cornwall-on-Hudson.

534-5506 ext. 204.

Mohonk Preserve Singles Snowshoe or Hike-Millbrook Mountain 9:30AM-3PM. Meet at the West Trapps Trailhead, New Paltz. 255-0919.

THEATER Sylvia

8PM. Presented by the Mohonk Mountain Stage Company. $15/$11 members. Unison Arts and Learning Center, New Paltz.

255-1559.

Treasure Island

Treasure Island

8PM. NYCA Cabaret Theater, Hurley.

339-4340.

SPOKEN WORD China: On the Way to Becoming a Techno-Superpower?

7:30PM. Olin Hall, Annandale-on-Hudson.

758-7900.

2:30PM. Featuring novelist and short story writer Joanna Scott. Bertelsmann Campus Center, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7087.

Poetry Open Mike

7PM. Featuring Phillip Levine. $4. Colony Cafe, Woodstock. 679-5342.

The Intellectual Revolution That You’ve Never Heard Of

Introductory Jewelry-Making

WORKSHOPS

Magick, Mystery and Mayhem in the Minor Arcana

Removing the Stone from the Heart 7-9PM. Prophecy & teachings of the star beings with Grandmother Barbara Three Crow. Mirabai of Woodstock. 679-2100.

10AM-5PM Rhinebeck. The Cups with Tarot Grandmaster Rachel Pollack. (845) 876-5797.

ZoeMaat@hvc.rr.com.

Watercolor Workshop

12:30PM-3PM. For adults. Rivertown Senior Apartments, Athens. (518) 945-1751.

Integrating the Visionary Experience

2-4PM. A workshop on visionary states with Daniel Pinchbeck, author of Breaking Open the Head. Mirabai of Woodstock. 679-2100.

SUN 25 BODY/MIND/SPIRIT Psychic Faire

12-5PM. Benefit for Women to Women International, Poughkeepsie. 473-2206.

CLASSES West African Drumming and Dancing with Assan

1PM-1:30PM. $12. Living Seed Yoga Center, New Paltz. 255-8212.

TUE 27 CLASSES

1AM-1PM. $6/$4. Museum of the Hudson Highlands, Cornwall-on-Hudson.

534-5506 ext. 204.

6:30PM-9:30PM. Collage, embroider, draw, paint. $20. Call for location. 256-0754.

Book Worms

11AM. Stories and activities for children ages 3-5. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston.

331-1682 ext. 132.

Innisfree Piano Trio

8PM. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz.

257-7869.

SPOKEN WORD Breast Cancer Support Group

6PM-7:30PM. Chatham Village Hall, Chatham. (518) 392-5821.

THE OUTDOORS Adult Nature Hike

11:30AM. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston.

331-1682 ext. 132.

WED 28 KIDS

MUSIC C.J. Chenier & The Red Hot Louisiana Band

Call for times. Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling.

855-1300.

Irish Song and Tune Session

4PM. Rosendale Cafe, Rosendale. 658-9048.

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FORECAST CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

4PM. Preston Theater, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7222.

THE OUTDOORS Bimonthly Mid-Week Moderate Hike

Call for meeting place and time. 677-9909.

The Importance of Being Earnest

8pm. Effervescent comedy of manners.

Parker Theater, SUNY New Paltz. 257-3880.

FRI 2 DANCE Martha Graham Dance Company

8PM-1AM. $34/$30 seniors/$17 children.

The Egg, Albany. (518) 473-1845.

American Symphony Orchestra

8PM. Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, Annandale-on-Hudson.

679-7900.

Ernie Williams

10PM-1AM. Blues. New World Home Cooking, Saugerties. 246-0900.

SPOKEN WORD Lenten Luncheon Lecture Series

1PM. Prophetic Practice in Ancient Israel. $16/ $14 members. Bertelsmann Campus Center, Annandale-on-Hudson. 758-7087.

THEATER Community Playback Theatre

8PM. From the touching to the hilarious, personal stories told by audience members are brought to life by this seasoned improv troupe. $6.00. Boughton Place, Highland.

691-7795.

The Importance of Being Earnest

2pm. Effervescent comedy of manners.

Parker Theater, SUNY New Paltz. 257-3880.

SAT 3 MUSIC 2PM. Featuring Peter Schickele. $18/$8 children. High Meadow School, Stone Ridge.

687-4855.

THE OUTDOORS 11:30AM-3PM. $7/$5 members. Museum of the Hudson Highlands, Cornwall-on-Hudson.

534-5506.

Mohonk Preserve Singles Ski or HikeCastle Point 10AM-3AM. Meet at the Minnewaska State Park Preserve Awosting Lot, New Paltz.

255-0919.

THEATER

The Importance of Being Earnest

8pm. Effervescent comedy of manners.

Parker Theater, SUNY New Paltz. 257-3880.

SUN 4 MUSIC Continuum

4pm. Works by Part, Ortiz, Virgil Thomson, Sierra. Howland Center, Beacon. 297-9243.

Creature Feature

3:30PM. Meet the animals of the nature center. Forsyth Nature Center, Kingston.

331-1682 ext. 132.

SPOKEN WORD Religious Responses to Evil

5:30PM. Olin Hall, Annandale-on-Hudson.

758-7900.

THEATER The Importance of Being Earnest

2pm. Effervescent comedy of manners.

Parker Theater, SUNY New Paltz. 257-3880.

THE OUTDOORS Fahnestock State Park Cross-country Ski/Hike Call for meeting place and time. 297-5126.

THU 1

De Capo Celebrates Bard

3PM-1AM. Olin Hall, Annandale-on-Hudson.

758-7900.

Psychology Colloquium

Maple Sugar Tours

MUSIC

10AM-3PM. Income tax preparation and financial literacy counseling. Ellenville High School, Ellenville. 331-2140.

1PM-5PM. Tarot, crystal and rune readings, proceeds donated to Women for Women International. $30. The Dreaming Goddess, Poughkeepsie. 473-2206.

7:30PM. $7/$4 members. Museum of the Hudson Highlands, Cornwall-on-Hudson.

534-5506 ext. 204.

Family Music Series

KIDS

Income Tax Prep Service Fair

Psychic Faire

Health and the Environment in the 21st Century

Artist’s Nest: Collage Escapes for Women

EVENTS Annual Pancake Breakfast

6:30PM-7:30PM. Palenville Branch Library, Palenville. (518) 678-3357.

MUSIC Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series

WORKSHOPS 10AM-4PM. $120. Firehouse Studio, Kingston. 331-6469.

FORECAST

MON 26

Call for times. The Discovery of NonEuclidean Geometry in the Age of Enlightenment. Olin Hall, Annandale-onHudson. 758-7512.

8PM. NYCA Cabaret Theater, Hurley.

339-4340.

Breast Cancer Support Group

THEATER

THEATER

1PM-2PM. Dia:Beacon Riggio Galleries, Beacon. 440-0100.

SPOKEN WORD

BODY / MIND / SPIRIT Zikrs

5:45PM. $5-$10. St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church, Woodstock. 679-7215.

WORKSHOPS Magick, Mystery and Mayhem in the Minor Arcana

10AM-5PM Rhinebeck. The Cups with Tarot Grandmaster Rachel Pollack. (845) 876-5797.

ZoeMaat@hvc.rr.com.

DAVID RODGERS

PALTZ’S STUDLEY THEATER.

FORECAST

KATE CLINTON WILL PERFORM ON FEBRUARY 9 AT SUNY NEW

THE L IS FOR LAUGHTER Generally, one does not think of comedy as a service industry—but Kate Clinton

I learned not to leave in a blind, murderous panic. And I am very prepared to

does. She has performed at hundreds of fundraising dinners for the National Center

do stand-up comedy. I have a routine that’s written down. I can improvise from

for Lesbian Rights, the Ms. Foundation, the New York City LGBT Community Center,

that, but I’m very much, “Thirty-five pages, that should be about an hour.” And

and many other groups. (Clinton's February 9 SUNY performance is a benefit for the

I’ve always been told that no matter how radical and punk I’ve ever tried to be,

Hudson Valley LGBTQ center.) Born in Buffalo, Clinton moved to Syracuse at age 10,

I always look like your English teacher.

and attended Le Moyne College. She taught high school English before beginning

Sparrow: And when you’re working on your new routines in Provincetown, you write

a career in standup comedy. Clinton has written two books, the most recent being

them down?

What the L? In the summer, she lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts where she

Clinton: And in the course of a week, some brilliant piece I’ve written that might

tries out new material at the Crown & Anchor.

be three pages long goes to one line. And yet something that’s one line —that’s

—Sparrow

just a throwaway line—can grow. So it’s written, but a lot happens in performance, Sparrow: How did you start performing?

when—blessedly—people hear things differently from what I thought. Either it’s

Clinton: I had taught high school English for eight years, and it was the beginning

a completely unintended double entendre, or I hear them laugh before I get to

of the comedy boom. And I had always been funny. I had three brothers, and I

the punchline. Because often I don’t know what a punchline is. It’s beyond me.

found if I kept them amused, they wouldn’t snap towels at me. So I was always

And when I hear them laughing, I think, “Oh, that was the punchline!” So in that

performing. And I just thought, “Oh, I want to try stand-up.” Truly, I talked about

sense, it’s a folk art.

it entirely too many times in front of my best friend, and she booked me in a

Sparrow: Gay people always know which famous people are gay. So I wanted to ask

club. She said, “You’re on in a month. I don’t want to hear about it anymore!”

you. You must know the secret inner lives of every...

And that’s how it started. I performed at a little women’s club in Syracuse in

Clinton: [Laughs.] Every one of them!

March of 1981.

Sparrow: And they’re all gay! According to my gay friends, every celebrity is gay.

Sparrow: So you were teaching in Syracuse?

Clinton: Oh, sure! If you watch the Olympics at my house, my girlfriend thinks

Clinton: High school English, 11th and 12th grade. It’s the toughest work I’ve

everyone in the Olympics is gay. It’s amazing. I’m like, “How do you know?”

ever done. Sometimes when I play a smaller theater and I do two shows, they

Sparrow: Both the men and women are gay?

say, “Oh my God, how do you do two shows a night?” And I say, “Oh, please! I

Clinton: Whole teams of them! Then she says, "Well, you like to think the best

used to do five shows a day—and I had to bring papers home!”

of people."

Sparrow: Are teaching and comedy similar?

Kate Clinton performs at Studley Theater on the SUNY New Paltz campus on

Clinton: I learned things when I taught. For example, when it’s not going well,

February 9 at 7pm. (845) 331-5300; www.lgbtqcenter.org.

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Planet Waves EMIL ALZAMORA

BY ERIC FRANCIS COPPOLINO

THE HANGED MAN, AND VARUNA

N

ew Year’s weekend, we were met with the ominous news, and vision, of Saddam Hussein being hanged, ostensibly for his crimes against humanity. The execution lacked any of the solemnity or protocol that you would expect anywhere else—but seemingly not in Iraq. I think we are all still haunted by the vision of the black scarf being placed around Saddam’s neck, and of his face as he was being taunted by his executioners, guards, and witnesses standing on the gallows in his last moments of life. In one gesture, a notorious former dictator was turned to a martyr.

When I say ominous, I mean it in the true sense, as an omen. But the world has become so haunted with signs and omens that it’s difficult to see them for what they are. Consider that we don’t generally get to witness a public execution, much less a hanging. The only reason a hanging does not seem weird is because we’ve all seen so many of them from so many prior lifetimes. There is something fascinating about being able to witness intentional death so close up, and curiosity trumps the gruesome nature of what’s being done. But when you see one in the 21st century with the word “freedom” being flashed across the bottom of the screen, it’s a sign of things to come.

Speaking of trumps, if you read tarot cards, it was difficult to miss the archetype of The Hanged Man. This is probably the most perplexing card in the deck. To many, the symbol is more disturbing than Death or The Tower because it seems too hard to figure out, and feels so uncomfortable. The (exoteric, surface, or ordinary) energetic state is being suspended: waiting, not knowing, and having no control over a situation.

It’s not often that you turn on the television and see a direct reference to the tarot, but we all saw this symbol again and again. It is not often that an archetype reveals itself so vividly, with such incredible emphasis and such an ominous feel138 PLANET WAVES CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

ing. And I kept seeing that image and wondering, Okay, what next?

The card is associated with Neptune, and so it’s one of those “spiritual states,” which is a nice way of saying a test of patience or endurance, and also indicating a sacrifice of some kind, and we are seeing plenty of that lately. It is interesting that the next policy being used by George W. Bush to escalate the war in Iraq uses precisely that word—sacrifice. The service men and women who are being sent there to be shot at are human sacrifices; the Iraqis who die and lose children on a daily basis are human sacrifices; Saddam was killed as a sacrifice, as if in effigy, for all that has gone wrong.

All the human life being lost in Iraq is a sacrifice to the profits of the oil and arms industries.

Let’s look a little deeper into the symbol. In the tarot, The Hanged Man is trump 12, and it’s preceded by trump 11, Strength, also called Lust in some decks.

This is the card with a woman spreading open the jowls of a lion, right at about waist level—she is, symbolically, spreading her vulva. The throat of the lion also indicates a gorge or abyss, from which life emerges, and into which life falls.

The Hanged Man is suspended, as if over an abyss, connected by a cord, reminiscent of the umbilical cord. It is followed (logically) by Death, trump 13. The Death card usually means a big change of some kind is imminent, and that a point of no return is approaching. It is symbolically the card of rebirth.

So one of the messages of The Hanged Man is that a big change is about to happen. We were sent this message the last weekend of an extremely disturbing year, as if to sum up all that we have lived through, and to remind us of all we have ignored.

Two weeks later, coinciding with the hangings of two of Saddam’s codefendants, the United Nations reported that more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed in warfare in 2006, an average of 94 per day, and the US military

death toll reached 3,000. It should send a chill down your spine every time a member of the Bush administration opens its mouth and says “democracy.”

It was some time after the hanging that it occurred to me another archetype was showing itself, a lesser-known one called Varuna. Varuna is an ancient Arian deity who was paired with the deity Mithra. They were part of the same idea, somewhat like Jesus and Mary.

Varuna is depicted in many ancient illustrations as being driven on a cart, bearing a hangman’s noose in his hand, though his face is not particularly menacing. In fact, it seems serene and pleasant, as if he were perfectly comfortable with the fate he is delivering, or the basic fact of which he is reminding us. Varuna was also the lord of waters, ruling over oceans, rivers, streams, and rains—those things which give us life, and which so easily take it.

In total, this is a rich image, evoking a bit of Pluto, some Neptune, some of the Hanged Man and his cousin, the hanging Nordic god Odin, a bit of The Chariot and a little Shiva for good measure. And we have some of Jesus, the most famous “hanging god” of our current era. The thing to remember is that Varuna is older than all of these other gods and symbols, and was for a brief eternity considered the supreme deity beyond it all—the very Heavens Himself. Yet Varuna (unlike Pluto or Shiva) is, in his essence, a creation deity. His function is to create, initiate, and renew life with his divine waters.

His mythological counterpart, Mithra, worked to actively hold society together by being the lord of agreements and contracts, which are so important to human coexistence. Mithra seems to be a kind of dharmic figure, focusing on right action rather than the consequences of bad faith.

Varuna seems a bit more karmic, concerned with what we have done, and the consequences, but offering a warning for future action. The main drift of this pair was, You better keep your word and abide by your contracts, or the punishment is death.

Varuna is the name given to one of the newer planets orbiting our Sun, in 282 years, a little beyond Pluto (248 years) and not quite as far as Xena/Eris (557 years). Varuna was discovered in 2000, the last year of the millennium, so it carries the implications of that transition in its original coding. It was also given minor planet catalogue number 20,000, so both by discovery year and by identity, it reduces numerologically to 2, which translates to relationships.

The symbol of Varuna is that which is too large to comprehend. In this respect, it has some attributes of the 12th house and Pisces—overwhelming or incomprehensible aspects of life that act out of sight or in the deep background. When they rise to the surface, making a rare appearance, it’s good to notice.

One astrologer who has done some interesting work with Varuna is Juan Revilla of Costa Rica. In an e-mail conversation a few years ago, Juan explained to me his interpretation that Varuna is “behind everything”—a potent and ominous force lingering in the far reaches of our lives. Astrological associations noted by Revilla include the impersonal laws of nature (as opposed to human nature) and the incomprehensible cosmic order (as opposed to the order of society).

Questions of the gain and loss of reputation, and the issue of immortality through fame, seem inevitable with this planet. Varuna (discovered in water sign Cancer, and still there) addresses the punishment of liars and those who violate contracts.

It is interesting that, later in history, Varuna was demoted from a supreme creation deity to one ruling a quadrant of the heavens, with the specific theme of water. Some astrologers thus feel he is the lord of “demotion,” though I prefer to think of him as the Equalizer.

So here, we have an interesting image of Saddam Hussein appearing in the form of Varuna.

The last memorable appearance of this archetype was in the summer of 2005, when we had two Full Moons in Capricorn, at the midpoint of which was a New Moon in Cancer, conjunct Varuna, the karmic lord of waters with his noose.

Hurricane Katrina happened a few weeks later, and after that, Hurricane Rita. Thousands of Americans died, a vast region of the country was destroyed, and the government broke its contract with the people. I think it’s fair to say this was truly a low point not only in the Bush administration but also in our lifetimes and in the life of our nation. Any other president would have been tarred and feathered for such incompetence. But we have learned to set our standards so low with this presidency that such a catastrophe seemed normal.

Yet I don’t think we have seen the worst of the Bush years. Indeed, we are just getting warmed up. As senators lined up against his proposed escalation of the Iraq war in late January, Bush was adamant that he had the right to do whatever he wanted: send in as many troops as he wanted, threaten Iran if he wanted, and act against the wishes of Congress if he wanted.

My sense is that this is just a hint of the constitutional crisis to come, and Saddam’s death is an omen of precisely this. Bush came into office riding on a constitutional crisis, and he will most surely leave office on one. What is at stake is not this sorry person himself, but whatever integrity may remain of our system of governance, which was designed to be something better than monarchy and better than tyranny.

There is a famous story, told in 2000 by Rep. Ron Paul of Texas among many others, though I will quote from Rep. Paul’s speech, taken from the House of Representatives website.

“At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, a Mrs. Powel anxiously awaited the results, and as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the long task now finished, asked him directly: ‘Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?’ ‘A republic, if you can keep it,’ responded Franklin.”

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Horoscopes February 2007 Eric Francis Coppolino

ARIES

(March 20-April 19)

Compelling events and turning points, particularly involving your established social circle, are boldly announcing that a long phase of your life is drawing to a close. But the new phase will not begin immediately; it is still taking form in ways that you cannot see. We can, however, sum up the ending effectively by saying that you have grown too serious and too devoted to your own cause for certain people you once knew; you have been taking solid steps as an individual, and this, too, is setting you apart from others. I suggest you get used to it. It is one thing to be different; it is another thing to be unequivocally yourself. Having ideas and opinions comes at a cost, and it brings a rare kind of profit. Meanwhile, I suggest you consider this. Your ideas are not new and different; rather, they are old and different. You are seeking to preserve something traditional, while others are the ones going off in a new direction.

TAURUS

(April 19-May 20)

Difficult decisions are finally beginning to show their value, which is financial, creative, and social. What rewards you see today will take their time manifesting to full fruition, and are likely to transform a number of times in unexpected ways. Yet you are doing your part to write the future in a way that you can actually live with. The thing about pioneering any part of your life is that the territory is necessarily unfamiliar, and it involves accessing inner resources that are not as comfortable or routine as eating and going to the store. You may feel caught on a track of growth that is difficult to break free from, though this is something inherent in all true commitments. We do not just make them; they make us, and a relationship develops, and it’s never quite clear where that relationship is going to go. But it is going someplace, and taking you with it, which is more than we’ve been able to say plenty of times in the past.

GEMINI (May 20-June 21) A professional situation is going to develop rapidly, but in times when it seems like it’s undoing itself, or proceeding according to some other plan than your own, you may pause and wonder. Don’t pause for too long, however, because any development can be turned to your advantage. Change is a state of flux, and that opens up the potential to shape the world in a new way. This is, however, the opposite of winning the lottery; in essence, we are talking about creating potential or tapping into a thermal heat source rather than cashing in on a structured form of return. Potential will express itself to the extent you are able to match it with spontaneous creativity. By this I mean not a set of premade instructions, nor anyone’s particular by-the-book philosophy. Rather, you must see every moment as an opportunity to create the right thing for yourself and for the world you live in; they are the same.

CANCER

(June 21-July 22)

While you are making an inquiry into the integrity of someone else, check in with yourself. The chances are you will determine that you are standing on solid ground and working with honest motives, but your self-inquiry will assist you in proceeding with a clear conscience. There are indeed too many possible turns where people can allow themselves to mislead in this world, so the gentler you proceed all around, the better—and you can be glad that everyone is shedding their reliance on illusions, granted, one at a time. In part due to your foresight, the damage is both minimal and reparable, and you can, at this point, keep your faith that people will get it right the second time. That is better than not getting it right at all. You are no worse for the wear, either. It takes many experiences with people to add up to wisdom, and many more to know when and how to apply it. www.planetwaves.net 140 PLANET WAVES CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

Horoscopes Eric Francis Coppolino

LEO

(July 22-Aug. 23)

You can stand your ground, or you can review the situation and figure out how you got where you are. Actually, it’s not such a bad place to be, though you may be feeling stuck, or convinced that your creativity could be better invested. The ongoing meeting of Saturn in your birth sign and Neptune in your opposite sign, Aquarius, are suggesting that at this point, your judgment is not all that it could be, and you might want to pause before deciding some things are not worth it. Indeed, their value has yet to reveal itself, and certain facts that will inform the situation have yet to come to light. Meanwhile, there is plenty to do, and you can count the ways your effort is contributing to the world on more than the fingers of one hand. For the moment, I suggest you invest your energy into establishing what is a tangible fact and what is a projection of your mind. The distinction will be helpful.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) You may need to go back to the drawing board a few times on a financial arrangement that is slowly taking shape, but this will be a valuable process. And it is likely to end up somewhere entirely different than it began, though oddly, much closer to your original intentions than it might have otherwise. With Mercury, your ruling planet, soon to be retrograde in the sensitive financial angle of your chart, now is not the time to make lasting commitments.

Indeed, I would suggest you wait till some time after the equinox, when the Sun enters Aries and the new astrological year begins in late March, to make any plans, intentions, or commitments firm. There is too much that’s going to come out in the spin cycle, and that is information you will wish you had waited for if you commit to anything too permanent too soon. In the end, if you follow the stars, you will save time, not waste it.

LIBRA

(Sep. 22-Oct. 23)

You’re in a phase of life where the clearer you try to be, the less clear you’ll actually be. Things may seem to make sense now, but gradually you’re likely to notice a kind of mental fog surrounding you that looks like letters, numbers, and random sounds. If you relax into the flow of your observations and observe the data that percolates to the surface, you will be able to follow the subtle but meaningful guidance of your intuition. The essence of the situation is that you cannot make sense out of information in this form in any conventional way. You need to observe from a different level, a different state of mind, and without trying to grasp for certainty. You are in a sense creating the meaning as you go along, which is why you won’t really find it outside yourself. But what you perceive and observe will spur the process and lead to some creative developments that get the “beyond interesting” rating.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) You are stretching that boundary between the concept of something and trying that something out in reality. Concepts are safe; concepts of safety are safe. Experiments where you are compelled to let go of fixed ideas and beliefs are not so safe, or at least, not as far as those notions are concerned. Their very existence depends on you keeping your faith in them, and when you have the inclination to move onto more adventurous territory, they’re likely to rebel. But you may want to question who or what exactly is rebelling. Existing ideas must have a basis in the past, but what you’re unlikely to be recognizing is just how far in the past, or who they are connected to. Look for the connections and you will discover who you may feel you’re betraying if you allow yourself to have a new point of view, or experience a new state of mind. www.planetwaves.net 2/07 CHRONOGRAM.COM PLANET WAVES 141

Horoscopes Eric Francis Coppolino

SAGITTARIUS

(Nov. 22-Dec. 22)

You are safe, but that’s hardly all that matters. Indeed, how others feel about their own condition is essential to your peace of mind now, though sometimes you have a way of picking and choosing who gets to be under the umbrella of your protection. It’s a large umbrella; there’s no shortage of space, and this month, like no other, your choices have implications that go far and wide. On what basis are you making your decisions? On whose precedent, and in accordance with which philosophy of life? You’re being given an opportunity to be a fair judge. You’re being given an opportunity to see life in a way that is based on present reality, not something that happened during some odd byway of history. You can, with a single thought, or idea, indeed, with a few words, establish a world where freedom and sanity abound, and at nobody’s expense. As you give, you will be given to.

CAPRICORN

(Dec. 22-Jan. 20)

The strength of your doubts is a reflection of the strength of your potential. All feelings are connected to an energy source, and if you keep an open mind, you may notice what direction it’s coming from. However, the astrology says this: It’s not time to push the issue, but rather let yourself be guided by it gradually. The hard-line position being taken by another person will go a long way to reveal the extent of your own need to clarify your values. For a time, you’ll be figuring out what you hold dear and true based largely on the discovery of what you simply cannot abide. Yet this will push you into a reasoning process at first based on an elimination of what is false, deducing what must be true for you. This will take longer than scratching a lottery ticket, but at least you’re pretty much guaranteed to win.

AQUARIUS

(Jan. 20-Feb. 19)

Saturn in your opposite sign Leo makes the second of three rare alignments to Neptune this month. This transit, truly a world transit that is speaking to you personally, is gradually awakening you to certain key facts about your relationships. Fortunately, the growth and adjustment that this transit is necessitating have been underway for nearly a year, so it’s not like you’re being caught by surprise. In truth, what you need to do to complete this particular stage of growth—indeed, this rather narrow passage through the straits of reality—is more of what you’ve been doing so far: insisting on clarity from yourself and from others; making your own definition of integrity, and sticking to it; maintaining your awareness of your emotional climate; and most of all, keeping your mind on the widest possible context. The fact that certain people are expressing concrete needs does nothing to allay their confusion, or yours; something else will have to do that.

PISCES

(Feb. 19-March 20)

You may well ask why simple things need to be complicated, and why others do not perceive elementary facts about your life. You would go a long way toward finding your happiness if you wrote those basic facts of your life on a sheet of paper and hung it on the bathroom mirror. You are the one who needs to remember: what you need, what you don’t need, and what you’re working toward. This way you will always have a sound means of contrast to know how others are actually treating you, if they can step out of their dream of existence for a moment and enter yours. This is a serious and sober moment, a get-real moment; a time for honesty, and not for make-believe. It may be that the rewards of your taking the straight and narrow way today seem long in the future. Yet there is a future, and there is a way to get there—but you must find it. www.planetwaves.net 142 PLANET WAVES CHRONOGRAM.COM 2/07

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Parting Shot

Christina Mazzalupo, Other Mentals, ink on vellum, 14”x17”, 2006.

Rather than letting the passing clouds of time and space soak up ordinary moments, Brooklyn-based artist Christina Mazzalupo clings to banal daily experiences and engages them, producing a creation on their behalf before letting go.

“There is importance to every moment in every day,” says Mazzalupo. “I try to make sense of the tiny moments before they get lost.”

Often, these fleeting periods, like getting a coffee at Starbucks or compulsively checking her e-mail, materialize as images in her mind as she tries to sleep or during her dreams. Sometimes they pummel her, and at other times they come in bits.

“I lose a lot of them,” she says. “I bring the ones I can onto paper.”

Mazzalupo works in collage, paint, and pencil and ink. This piece is part of “Hey Get Mental,” a series that explores the collision between her waking and dreaming lives. Whether the motivation to create these images is an inescapable part of her life or if she creates because she knows the comfort the process will bring, the personal reward is always the same.

“When I’m in the process, I am my truest self,” she says.

Christina Mazzalupo’s work is on view at the Main Street Bistro in New Paltz through February 4.

(845) 255-7766; www.mainstreetbistro.com.

—Peter M. Laffin

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