Green Door Magazine: Fall 2013 with Martha Stewart

A J O U R N A L O F R E S P O N S I B L E L I V I N G I N T H E C AT S K I L L S A N D H U D S O N VA L L E Y

martha stewart adventures in living

VOL 3 No. 3 FALL 2013 $4.99 WWW.GREENDOORMAG.COM

film, food & music issue DISPLAY UNTIL DEC 2, 2013

& fashion, photography, interiors...

COVER PHOTO: REPRINTED FROM THE BOOK LIVING THE GOOD LONG LIFE. COPYRIGHT © 2013 BY MARTHA STEWART LIVING OMNIMEDIA, INC. PUBLISHED BY CLARKSON POTTER/PUBLISHERS, A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC.

Fall 2013

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GREETINGS The Fall & Rise of Film

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FOLK Martha Stewart: Adventures in Living

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POETRY November Rare Sighting

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PHOTOGRAPHY The Secret Language of Flowers

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CLIPPINGS From Around the Region

ART Eva Drizhal: Nature into Art ACTIVISM Josh Fox LOCAVORE 15 Serving Our Guests the Best We Have 18 Cookery from Start to Finish 20 The Queen of Cakes 22 Cooper’s Table: Food & Finds 24 Pure Catskills Marketplace FICTION Edward Opulence Musician Extraordinaire INTERIORS Love Where You Live NEIGHBORS 32 Local Calendar 34 The Weather Project is Launched

35 36

TRAVEL A Match Made on Earth

40 42 44

THE BOOKSHELF Tania Grossinger

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52 54 56

WOODSHED 36 Tower Music with Joseph Bertolozzi 37 Laurie’s Story 38 Who is Obscure Face?

FASHION Mayer Wasner: Bespoke(n) For FILM Festival 14: Woodstock Film Festival CREATIVES 46 Vessel: PS 209 48 Paper Moon: Books as Treasure 50 Cutting Loose: Ramona Jan, Puppeteer HISTORY Of Angling & Autumn INTO THE WOODS Bethel Wood’s Fall Festivals ENDPAPER The Secret Language of Dogs

EDITOR Akira Ohiso PUBLISHER Ellie Ohiso ADVERTISING SALES Sharon Reich (845) 254-3103 William Grasso (631) 827-2114 MARKETING DIRECTOR Aaron Fertig COPY EDITORS Donata C. Marcus Jay Blotcher Eileen Fertig CONTRIBUTORS Tania Barricklo James Beaudreau Cooper Boone Brian Caiazza John Conway Siba K. Das Keith Ferris John Gruen Ann Hutton Sharon Israel Eugene Ivanov Bethany Keene Tannis Kowalchuk Sandy Long Michael McGlade Kelly Merchant Kirby Olson Nick Piatek Franc Palaia Garan Santicola Catie Baumer Schwalb Josh VanBrakle CONTACT US Green Door Magazine Inc. 34 South Main Street P.O. Box 143 Liberty, NY 12754 Email: info@greendoormag.com Phone: (845) 55-GD-MAG www.greendoormag.com facebook.com/greendoormag twitter.com/greendoormag pinterest.com/greendoormag RECYCLE THIS, SHARE WITH A FRIEND! Green Door Magazine (ISSN # 2161-7465) is published quarterly - Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter - by Green Door Magazine Inc. All rights reserved. Subscription rate is $14.95 annually. U.S. subscriptions can be purchased online at greendoormag.com or by mail. Every effort is made to avoid errors, misspellings, and omissions. If, however, an error comes to your attention, please accept our sincere apologies and notify us. Address all letters to editor@greendoormag.com. Postmaster: Address all inquiries to Circulation Department, Green Door Magazine, P.O. Box 143, Liberty, NY 12754. No part may be used without written permission of the publisher Š2013.

The views expressed in Green Door and in advertising in the issue are those of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion, policy, or endorsement of the publication.

GREETINGS | AKIRA OHISO

CLIPPINGS | AROUND THE REGION

The Fall & Rise of Film

Begging the Question

Last summer the Rivoli Theatre in South Fallsburg, NY started showing big screen movies again. The Rivoli Theatre smells like popcorn; the bathrooms are porcelain with ornate trim.

They have no sensor-activated flush toilets. The metal fold-up theater seats creak. The decor was once plush and grand with vermilion carpets and undulating drapes like in an Edward Hopper painting.

It’s a pre-war building that was built at a time when a theater was a place to gather, watch a film with the community and leave to discuss it. Like a communal dinner table, a movie theater experience does something for our sense of community. You may not talk to someone, but you are in a social space where anything can happen. There was a magic to the limitations of geography when you had to wait for a much-anticipated movie to come to your town.

It brought back memories of my childhood going to the Beacon Theater in Port Washington, NY. The Beacon was once a grand single screen movie house with a balcony. In the seventies, it became a triplex, then a quad, a five-plex and now a seven-plex to maximize choice and profits.

I started taking my kids to The Rivoli. We go regularly now, but the theater is often empty.

You Tube killed the movie star. Play stations, iPads and smart phones have become portable entertainment and ubiquitous, uneventful viewing.

Still, my kids love the movie theater experience. They are still too young to own the gadgets.

I see the wonder in their eyes. It’s a day out with the family, an event that cannot be captured from your flat screen.

Last year I attended several independent film presentations at the Woodstock Film Festival, films that don’t get seen in the big-budget chain theaters. They are special because they don’t cater to the masses. You are experiencing an event. The Woodstock Film Festival, now in its 14th year, continues to expand its “fiercely independent” spirit with intimate festival venues in Rhinebeck, Saugerties, Rosendale and Woodstock. WFF is in the process of building a film center at WFF headquarters that will become an integral part of the festival experience as well as a year-round community space for film events. This year the festival runs October 2-6.

The FilmColumbia Festival in Chatham, NY is also in its 14th year. The festival consistently offers audiences an early look at films that go on to garner major nominations and awards later in the film year. In 2012 they offered “Hyde Park on Hudson”, “ Silver Linings Playbook”, “Amour” and “The Sessions.” The festival’s Young Filmmakers Contest gives young filmmakers ages 13 to 18 the chance to have their works screened and critically reviewed by industry professionals. Three winners will screen their movies at the festival this October 23-27.

The Big Eddy Film Festival (BEFF) debuted last year in my own backyard of Sullivan County. The first annual Big Eddy Film Festival brought 18 new independent films to the historic Tusten Theater, including Jessica Yu’s “Last Call at the Oasis,” Matthew Lillard’s “Fat Kid Rules the World,” and “For Ellen,” directed by So Yong Kim and starring Paul Dano and John Heder. The festival returns September 20-22 in Narrowsburg, NY. “We are excited to build on the success of last year’s festival,” says BEFF Program Director Tina Spangler.

I’m excited to go to the movies again.

FOR MORE INFO www.bigeddyfilm.com www.filmcolumbia.com www.woodstockfilmfestival.com

The Graham & Co.

Graham & Co.’s latest brand accessory is a tee that begs the question: Hampton Jitney or Shortline Bus? FOR MORE INFO thegrahamandco.com

Beacon Reusable

Blackbird Attic

Michelle Caves curates a mix of modern and vintage clothing for men and woman. Her consignment boutique situated on the main drag in Beacon, NY is perfect for the eco-conscious shopper who likes to upcycle or reuse apparel.

You don’t need to shop at Anthropologie to look vintage and fashionable. Blackbird Attic is an independent small business where you can find affordable, one-of-a-kind pieces for the hickster hangout or the farm-to-table dinner party.

FOR MORE INFO blackbirdattic.com

Cookin’

Marc J. Switko Switko’s debut EP length album Cookin’ is misery’s company. It’s an insomniac’s 3 a.m. rumination in a crooner’s voice a la Nick Cave, Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen. Songs like “I’m Dead” and “I’m a Somebody” are sardonic, monosyllabic and visceral. You’ll be humming these dirges obsessively.

Pairs well with a cigarette and a bottle of whiskey.

FOR MORE INFO marcjswitko.com

adventures in living Martha Stewart travels to new places in a new book about living a good life.

INTERVIEW BY AKIRA OHISO | ANSWERS BY MARTHA STEWART

4 GREEN DOOR | FALL SUMMER 2013 2013

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FOLK | MARTHA STEWART

PHOTOS: REPRINTED FROM THE BOOK LIVING THE GOOD LONG LIFE. COPYRIGHT © 2013 BY MARTHA STEWART LIVING OMNIMEDIA, INC. PUBLISHED BY CLARKSON POTTER/PUBLISHERS, A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC.

Martha Stewart travels the landscape of later life as she has never done before in a new book. Living the Long Good Life is a comprehensive and practical guide for healthy aging in a society that views growing older as a bad thing. It’s a good thing.

Martha Stewart Living inspires us to live creatively. Your new book, Living the Good Long Life, inspires us to live consciously and holistically. What led you to this mission?

I have long been passionate about healthy living. I wanted to create a comprehensive guide - one that would address everything from diet, exercise and appearance to the latest on disease prevention and medical procedures.

There are sections on how to keep your brain alert and how to create a healthy home. I also included a section on caregiving, because it’s such an important role, and because making sure our elderly population is well cared for is critically important.

This book is geared towards an over forty demographic. Our society tends to portray aging, especially aging women, as a negative.

What positive impacts do you hope this book will have on the perception of the aging process?

My grandparents and my mother were also hugely influential. They all lived into their 90s and were healthy and vital until shortly before they died. I’ve always been interested in their longevity and wondered what they were doing right.

shared challenges we face as the world moves toward digital. Having just released this book, why is it that printed matter still matters?

At Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia we have moved our magazines onto digital platforms with enthusiasm and tremendous You founded The Martha Stewart Center ingenuity, but at the same time we know that For Living at Mount Sinai Medical Center choice is important. People like to access in 2008. How has your work at the Center information in a variety of ways. Having so many options makes this an exciting time to informed this book? be in the content business.

I have been inspired by all the remarkable work that takes place at the Center. The staff and We loved your recommendation to take a patients have created a very positive healing different route home every day – to challenge environment. When the center opened, I ourselves, to continually see things differently, chose the bonsai as its symbol because it’s a to get out of our comfort zone in order to work of art that is never finished - it becomes grow. Is there any part of the book that you more graceful and valuable the older it gets. particularly love?

That’s a perfect expression of my beliefs on The book was a labor of love that took me aging. five years to write, but it was a tremendous With all the advice you’ve given over the years, learning experience. I love the entire book. what makes this book so close to your heart?

At this point in your life, has the definition of The book pays homage to my mother, “a good thing” changed?

Martha Kostyra, who inspired me with her graciousness and resourcefulness in her older Your perception of everything changes as you years. I dedicated the book in part to her grow older. At my age, I appreciate so many more things than I did when I was younger. because of her profound influence on me.

I believe the accumulation of life experience You learned from your mother that everyday gives us greater awareness of the richness of routines and habits that may be perceived as life and its possibilities. There’s so much still mundane are in fact elements of an enriching to learn and accomplish. I plan on living a very life. In a time where there is an app for good, long life! everything, why do you think these simple tasks bring great joy?

I hope the book helps people understand that age really does comes down to spirit - your capacity for engagement, adventure and discovery. I hope it encourages people to use age as an incentive to live richer, more fulfilling lives, rather than an excuse to hold back. The aging experience can be rich with opportunity. It can be a time to make new friends and family connections, try new experiences, find new way to be valuable to your community. More and more retirementage workers are reinventing themselves and creating new careers. I believe all people have untapped resilience. I hope the book helps Daily tasks are important because they keep them find it. chaos at bay and lift your mood. Even small Who has been your greatest role model for accomplishments create a sense of wellbeing.

Morning rituals are especially important living the good long life? because they put you in a positive frame of There have been so many! I have had the good mind and prepare you for the coming day, no fortune to know a number of people, some matter what stresses lie ahead. of them close friends, who have remained creative and productive well into their 90s. As we both create magazines, we know the

FOR MORE INFO shop.marthastewart.com/Living-the-Good-Long-Life-A/A/0307462889.htm 2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 5

POETRY | FALL

Poetry

November

BY KIRBY OLSON

Rock fences litter Delaware county.

Driving, one sees smoke curl from chimneys into necklaces of geese gone south.

The town is empty at 6 am.

A lone bundle of clothes waits at the red light to cross, steam pouring from her mouth.

Rare Sighting

BY SHARON ISRAEL

Surnia Ulula more hawk than owl strayed from his boreal forest to hunt small prey in the Catskills for a while perched high on his lookout his yellow eyes surveying the land for voles and frogs he seemed ordinary enough grey and white not large or small his genius was subtle –

tiny serrations at the ends of flight feathers silenced his lethal loop quieting the hunt for unsuspecting prey

though he did have an unusual cry – a quick swelling ululation a large sound for his size Suddenly he took off swooping

down

fast talons out brushing past heads just missing eyes hands skin 6 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

PHOTOGRAPHY | THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS

the secret language of flowers PHOTOGRAPHY BY KELLY MERCHANT

This Image: Amaranth

These photographs are inspired by a long-neglected 19th century fad, known as the “secret language of flowers.” It was a lover’s language in which flowers became words. Messages could be passed between shy gentlemen and hopeful maidens once they knew the secret floral code.

Ms. Merchant. You might want to say, “yes” with a rose or “no” with a snapdragon. Or you might want to send someone a big bouquet of crocuses, scarlet pimpernels and lancaster roses to say, “It was a dream of folly, from which I wake to weep.” She began to look for ways to transform these ideas photographically.

Photographer Kelly Merchant first discovered this curious custom in an 1892 etiquette book that her husband had bought. It showed a list of flowers with corresponding meanings. The idea that someone could communicate with their lover or enemy by carefully selecting and arranging flowers intrigued

Ms. Merchant shoots with a large format camera and film. Each of her photographs contains a secret message which is only revealed by a key to the flowers’ meaning.

Find out the secret messages at kellymerchant.com.

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Palm, White Mum & Gloxinia Broken Corn, Withered Flower, Striped Carnation & Ice Plant Bay, Sumac, Walnut, Larch and Pine Pine & Clove Dead Leaves & Broken Straw Oak, Daffodil & Sweet William 8 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

PHOTOS: KELLY MERCHANT

From Top Left, Clockwise:

ART | EVA DRIZHAL

Eva Drizhal Nature into Art STORY BY SIBA KUMAR DAS

Eva Drizhal became an artist against heavy odds.

At first her family in the former Czechoslovakia objected. There is no future in being an artist, they argued.

Then, when she tried to join an academic art and design school, the authorities made it plain her family background precluded her from admission.

According to the Communist government, she lacked the proper political credentials. Eva abandoned her dream – but only for a while.

After spending five years as an office secretary, she applied to a new industrial design institute. For three years, she focused her natural creative talent upon rigorous instruction in art technique, graphic design, and weaving, the latter specifically for tapestries and lace. In 1979 she emigrated from Czechoslovakia to the United States, where she transformed her craft skills into artistic expressiveness.

Drizhal discovered early that the textures of things – carpets, cotton, silk, bark, tree branches, stones, pebbles, eggshells – intrigued her immensely. She took pleasure from a tactile world. Texture plays a big role in the multimedia ensembles she produces,

bringing painting and sculpture together by virtuosity of hand in a functional studio next to her artfully decorated house on a steep hill overlooking Callicoon, New York – a hamlet in Sullivan County nestled on a bank of the Delaware River.

“You can touch my art,” she tells visitors to her studio.

A passion for texture led Eva Drizhal to take inspiration from the art of contemporary Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz, who played a leading role in a key development in 20th century art: the transformation of a tapestry revival in the 1950s into a broad international movement using diverse fibers in multiple ways. Abakanowicz started out as a weaver of painting-like tapestries but soon branched off from flat wall coverings to fully threedimensional work using already-existing materials in the form of burlap, string, industrial hemp rope, birch twigs, and industrial tarpaulins, among other things. Curator and art writer Mary Jane Jacob has said that Abakanowicz’s art “possesses a remarkably powerful emotional intensity and mystery.” Viewing Drizhal’s art, one experiences a similar depth and a similar wonder, achieved through technical means different from those of the Polish artist.

“Gray on Orange” 36”x48”x16” Acrylic, acrylic matte gel medium, paper on wood.

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“White on Blue” 36”x44”x15” Acrylic, acrylic matte gel medium, paper on wood.

Like Abakanowicz, Drizhal started out training as an artisan. But, unlike the Polish artist, who put distance between her training and her art, Drizhal takes pride in her artisanal training, seeing it as a door to artistic achievement.

It is evident in her work ethic: nearly 200 hours of laborintensive work goes into each piece. “I don’t hurry,” she says.

Though she starts out with the germ of an idea, the concept of a work emerges in detail as she proceeds with her process.

“Each piece must surprise me.”

Drizhal made tapestries for nearly thirty years before moving on to the marriage of sculpture and painting she now entirely focuses upon. She takes a wood base and, using wet clay or foam, makes small forms, which she covers with a plastic sheet that is eventually discarded.

She then applies layers of acrylic matte gel medium alternating with paper – a textural build-up that is painstaking work. She finally crowns everything with acrylic paint layers applied on white gesso. What emerges is a painted sculpture for wall mounting that seems to pulsate with organic life. “I don’t copy nature but natural forms inspire me,” Drizhal says. “My art is about nature.”

Her piece Gray on Orange depicts a gray ovoid enclosed by a thicket of dendrite-like twigs glowing in chrome orange. A faint orange patch in the middle of the ovoid echoes the coloration of the twigs, which seem to be alive and may be pressing on the ovoid. Are they propping up the ovoid or will they slowly crush it? With great subtlety and economy of means, Drizhal has created an enigmatic drama that alludes to nature in action even as it enthralls you with the beauty of its color scheme.

Look now at Drizhal’s Turquoise on Dark Blue, in which a spherical world seems to be giving birth through a labial opening to another spherical world while floating on a dark blue sea. It is almost as if life itself is coming into being. Or consider White on Blue, where an offwhite ovoid, a biomorphic object, has descended upon another dark blue sea. Here, the viewer feels on the edge of something, something liminal, something just beyond a threshold.

Art itself is its own reason for being. It need have no philosophical or social purpose. But, at a time when the Hudson and Delaware Valleys are facing environmental threats, Delaware Valley artist Eva Drizhal skillfully produces objects of beauty that originate in aesthetic ideas culled from nature. By creating a sense of wonder at processes modeled on nature, she reminds us we are a part of an interconnected ecological world.

FOR MORE INFO www.evadrizhal.com Call to schedule a visit to Eva Drizhal’s studio at 845-887-5807.

“Turquoise on Dark Blue” 44”x59”x13” Acrylic, acrylic matte gel medium, paper on wood.

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JOSH FOX FRACKED WATERS RUN DEEP STORY BY AKIRA OHISO PHOTOGRAPHY BY KELLY MERCHANT 12 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

ACTIVISM | JOSH FOX

G

asland introduced Americans to horizontal hydraulic fracturing with scenes of ordinary people lighting their methane-laced tap water on fire. Gasland 2 contends a far more terrifying reality - the silent complicity of the American government with the oil and gas industry. “We saw a huge outcry from people across the country, a huge presence in the media on one of the most controversial issues of our times and fracking becoming a household word,” says Fox. “I wanted to know why no one in the government was stepping forward to protect Americans.”

Except for a smattering of local leaders like Maurice Hinchey, there has been a lack of leadership to stand behind science and with those Americans whose drinking water has been contaminated by nearby frack wells. “I wanted to investigate what the government was doing about it and why there was no action,” says Fox. “What I found was a whole other layer of contamination due to fracking - what I think of as the contamination of democracy.”

With no protection from the government, it has been the grassroots efforts of American citizens across the country reinventing democracy. The mobilization of the grassroots movement in New York State, mostly a collection of local anti-fracking groups, has fought tooth and nail to keep a moratorium in place since 2008.

Pennsylvania has gone in the opposite direction where the gas industry has been given the green light.

It has been a cautionary tale where a gung-ho gas industry with no initial environmental and health oversight has run amok. “You’ve got a government in Pennsylvania that’s wholly owned by the gas industry,” says Fox. Still, a recent poll indicates that two thirds of Pennsylvanians support a moratorium on fracking.

Gasland 2 opens with a helicopter view of the Gulf of Mexico where the BP spill floats endlessly on the surface. BP bought up large supplies of oil dispersants, which cause the oil to break up and sink below the surface. Out of sight, out of mind seems to be standard operating procedure. According to BP, Corexit, the most commonly used dispersant, was approved by federal agencies and the EPA. Three years after the spill, health issues are being linked to the use of Corexit.

PHOTOS: KELLY MERCHANT

GRASSROOTS PHOTOS: COURTESY OF JOSH FOX

The film follows Steve Lipsky, a Texas resident who can light his methane-laced garden hose on fire.

He claims his well was contaminated by Range Resources drilling operations a mile away from his home. At first, the EPA acknowledged Lipsky’s claim and the dangerous levels of methane in his water.

The EPA ordered Range Resources to rectify the contamination. An Obama Administration EPA study concluded a similar finding, but soon after, reversed its stance when Range Resources refused to cooperate, censored the study and didn’t explain its about-face. “It’s very scary when your government is afraid of a business,” said Steven Lipsky.

Ex-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is also featured in the film. Fox documents his plea to intervene in Dimock, PA where families have no safe drinking water. At first, Lisa Jackson gives promises of help to Dimock with a proposed municipal water line, but soon backs off and resigns from the EPA. Fox begins to see a pattern of dropped investigations by the EPA. Abrahm Lustgarten in a July 3, 2013 ProPublica article “EPA’s Abandoned Wyoming Fracking Study One Retreat of Many” states, “Environmentalists see an agency that is systematically disengaging from any research that could be perceived as questioning the safety of fracking or oil drilling, even as President CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

FOR MORE INFO www.gaslandthemovie.com @gaslandmovie facebook.com/gaslandmovie 2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 13

ACTIVISM | JOSH FOX CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE

Obama lays out a plan to combat climate change that rests heavily on the use of natural gas.”

In President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union he states: The natural gas boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence. That’s why my Administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits. But I also want to work with this Congress to encourage the research and technology that helps natural gas burn even cleaner and protects our air and water.

It seems like the shift has come from the Obama administration and the EPA has simply followed suit.

“It’s difficult to watch the process of Obama getting pulled onto the side of the gas industry and not the people,” says Fox. “Obama has met many times with the gas industry and I believe that those kinds of meetings with him and his administration have swayed their policy.”

With natural gas being positioned as a bridge fuel for America and a lucrative global commodity that will fetch higher prices overseas, it seems like the oil and gas industry has too much money and political influence even in the face of science and the health and environmental repercussions.

“President Obama needs to realize that it wasn’t the gas industry that voted him in,” says Fox. “It was a grassroots movement that was totally fired up by the idea that we would have a populist advocate in the White House - we can’t watch this president get co-opted by the gas industry.”

Still, Fox believes the grassroots efforts are having an impact. “Once you identify the problem and focus people on the issues then there will be some change,” says Fox. “The penetration in the media of how difficult, toxic and dangerous this industrialization is starting to get through.”

New York State is a model, where the governor, Andrew Cuomo, has felt the pressure and has delayed a decision on fracking while awaiting further health studies. “I think Cuomo has started to see how dangerous fracking is,” says Fox. “With any politicians, it’s very daunting to think about taking on the oil and gas industry and fighting it overtly, but at the same time, that’s exactly what we need.”

In July, Hess Corp. and Newfield Exploration Co. pulled out of Northeastern PA telling landowners their leases were no longer in effect. Many believe a three-year moratorium may have turned off the gas companies.

Josh Fox believes the focus of the fight is now on President Obama. “I am asking him to meet with the families in the film who are emblematic of thousands more. And (to tell him) what the scientists and engineers in the film are telling us - that this stuff cannot be fixed.”

The film features former gas industry engineer, Anthony Ingraffea, now a Cornell engineer, who released the Cornell Study with colleague Robert Howart. The study states that shale gas emissions may be far dirtier than coal. The gas industry strongly disputes this claim. Ingraffea has been outspoken about the fallibility of cement casings on gas pipes and wells, which can lead to groundwater contamination.

“The leakage rates of methane into the atmosphere make frack gas the worst fuel that we can develop with respect to greenhouse gas emissions,” says Fox. “These wells cannot be fixed, they will continue to leak at enormous rates and contaminate aquifers. There’s no way to fix that problem.”

While both Cuomo and Obama have been outspoken about climate change after Hurricanes Irene and Sandy, they have not framed carbon-based natural gas as a contributor to greenhouse emissions. “Cuomo knows very well 60 billion dollars in damages for Hurricane Sandy and people still haven’t recuperated,” says Fox. “Obama is earnestly trying to campaign on climate change, but the gas industry has gone in there and given him the wrong information.”

In a March 13, 2013 The New York Times op-ed piece, “The Facts On Fracking,” Susan Brantley and Anna Meyendorff state, “If fracked gas merely displaces efforts to develop cleaner, noncarbon, energy sources without decreasing reliance on coal, the doom and gloom of more rapid global climate change will be realized,” says Brantley and Meyendorff.

“What’s much more daunting and scary is where we are going to be in ten years, twenty years, if we don’t have political leadership taking on the oil and gas industry,” says Fox.

14 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

LOCAVORE | RECIPE

Serving our guests the best we have.

tell me what you eat, &i shall tell you what you are.

STORY & PHOTOS BY CATIE BAUMER SCHWALB of www.pitchforkdiaries.com

LOCAVORE | RECIPE

“T

o invite people to dine w i t h us is to make ourselves responsible for their wellbeing for as long as they are under our roofs,” declared famed 19thcentury French politician, lawyer and gastronome Jean Anthelme BrillatSavarin, in The Physiology of Taste. A hefty charge, but then again, of course.

There are few greater pleasures than cooking for a gathering of friends in my home, and little better than I can think of doing for the well-being than to serve up some of the culinary prizes of this area. Often without even making a point of it, but rather just sourcing the best food available, the meal is a culinary map of our surrounding counties.

Questions of “Which farm is this roast from?” or “Did (insert mutually familiar first name here) bake this bread?” are common as we eat.

With this region’s long, rich history of diary farming, we are so fortunate to have an impressive range of accomplished cheese makers and their dizzying array of artisanal cheeses always in very close proximity. A small cheese course, maybe before dessert, perhaps along side a salad, is a special way to easily round out a special meal of locally sourced treasures. Or even serve the cheeses for dessert in place of a more traditional sweet dish, or as a rustic full dinner for two, and they certainly make wonderful hors d’oeuvres for a crowd.

For a very basic rule offer three to five cheeses, starting with the most delicate and ending with the boldest. I gathered my three favorite local cheeses, made by my favorite local cheese makers for this particular cheese course. I started with the soft fresh chèvre from Sherman Hill Farmstead in Franklin, NY. Linda Smith is a warm and familiar fixture

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at many of our area’s farmers’ markets and her creamy goat cheese is quite special. Remarkably delicate in texture, but with those wonderful barnyard and mineral goat’s milk characteristics, that nuzzle up perfectly to sweets and fruit. Next I chose Old Man Highlander from Calkins Creamery in Honesdale, PA. A golden ivory cave-aged gouda from the Bryant family and their registered Holsteins on Highland Farm.

It is strikingly creamy and incredibly silky on your tongue, with a slight sharp finish. This one wants sips of wine or something a bit tart or acidic to compliment its luxurious richness.

To finish I have Beechwood Blue from Tonjes Farm Dairy in Callicoon, NY. This perfectly balanced blue made from raw cow’s milk, is incredibly creamy, with just the right amount of tang and crumble that keeps my knife dipping back in. A little nutty, bright and quite savory, this is one of my most favorite blues, and is magnificent alongside sweetened nuts or as the bright and rich addition to a salad—vegetable or fruit.

The question then is what accompaniments can I serve with these beauties that are worthy of the history and craft and countless impossibly early mornings that went into producing them. It certainly can be as simple as drizzling local honey over a large wedge or wheel, or bathing one in great olive oil, scattered with fresh herbs. Here I put together three garnishes that compliment the cheeses and offer a few other flavors on the plate: Roasted Grapes, Sweet Spiced Olive Oil Pecans, and Caramelized Onion and Red Wine Jam. Make one or make them all, but I urge you to explore the exciting cheese movement that is going on all around us. BrillatSavarin, who incidentally has a French triple-crème brie named after him, also said, “Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are.” From the dairy cows to us lucky consumers to diners under our roofs, I say we are all doing very well.

Sweet Spiced Olive Oil Pecans 1 lb raw pecan halves 5 tablespoons olive oil 1/3 cup, packed, light brown sugar ¼ cup white sugar 1 ¼ tablespoon salt 3/8 tablespoon Spanish sweet smoked paprika (Pimentón dulce) Heat oven to 375° F. In a small bowl thoroughly combine brown sugar, white sugar, salt, and paprika.

In a large bowl toss pecans with olive oil until evenly coated. Gradually add sugar mixture to the pecans, gently stirring to evenly coat as you go.

Transfer pecans and spices to two baking sheets lined either with a silpat mat or parchment paper. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes.

Allow the pecans to cool completely. Serve right away or store in an air tight container for up to a week.

Note: You can add other spices in place of or in addition to the pimentón. Adjust the amount you add to the recipe depending on their strength and flavor dominance.

Caramelized Onion and Red Wine Jam Yields approximately two cups.

2-3 very large sweet onions, sliced thin and evenly, yielding 8 packed cups 3 tablespoons olive oil 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar ¾ cup red wine ¼ cup light brown sugar 2 tablespoons butter salt and black pepper to taste Heat olive oil in a large heavy bottomed pot. Add the sliced onions and saute on medium heat at first, lowering to low heat as the onions reduce more. Cook gently, stirring every few minutes, until the onions reduce down and their sugars begin to caramelize, thirty to forty-five minutes.

If they start to color too quickly, turn down the heat more. You are looking for an overall deep golden caramel brown throughout, not any brown or particularly singed edges on any of the pieces.

When onions are thoroughly reduced and almost can’t caramelize any more, add balsamic vinegar and red wine, gently scraping the bottom of the pot. Keep the heat at medium-low and reduce the liquids, along with the onions, to a thick syrupy mixture. When reduced, turn off heat and add the brown sugar and butter, stirring to dissolve and combine.

Taste the mixture and season with a generous pinch of salt and a few grinds of black pepper, to taste.

Serve warm or at room temperature. The onion jam will keep for up to five days in the refrigerator in an air-tight container.

Roasted Grapes

PHOTOS: CATIE BAUMER SCHWALB

1 bunch seedless grapes, washed and dried well, on or off the stem, red or green olive oil several sprigs of fresh thyme salt Heat oven to 425° F. Gently toss grapes with olive oil in a large bowl to coat. Add the sprigs of thyme and a light sprinkling of salt and gently toss again.

Transfer grape and herb mixture to a shallow baking dish. Roast grapes for 30 minutes, until soft and fragrant.

Can be made up to three days ahead, stored in the refrigerator.

Serve at room temperature, with cheeses, over ice cream, or alongside baked goods.

2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 17

LOCAVORE | SUPPER CLUB

cookery from start to finish

BY AKIRA OHISO | PHOTOS BY NICK PIATEK

The Early Bird gets the farm to table dinner.

A farm to table dinner is what meals should be - local food, local people and local conversation around a long communal table. Sure you could get a farm to table dinner in Manhattan, but it would be shipped in from upstate and you’d miss the convivial small town magic that these dinners provide. A farm to table dinner in Manhattan is a novelty, a night out, but not an investment. In a small town, you get to know each other because you are all invested in weaving the community’s fabric and colorful patchwork. Early Bird Cookery hosts dinners May through October. The next dinners are Sept 28th and Oct 19th.

FOR MORE INFO www.earlybirdcookery.com

2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 19

LOCAVORE | CAKE DESIGN

Queen of

cakes

BY AKIRA OHISO

Four years ago, Kim Simons was watching a cake reality show on the Food Network. “I started freezeframing all the shows just to see what they were using on their shelves,” says Simons. She said to herself, “I can do that.” She bought everything the cake decorators were using and began to decorate cakes.

Six months later, she entered her first cake show at the beginner level. “The judges were swarming around my cake, I didn’t know what was going on,” says Simons. “They changed my name tag from “beginner” to “professional.” She took home first place in her very first show.

Simons didn’t grow up wanting to be a cake decorator, but she was always fond of art. Except for a short stint in art school, she is a self-taught artist. She paints realistic representational subjects that she says don’t get the same recognition as her cakes.

Being an artist first, has worked for her in the cake world. “I don’t know what I’m doing with the materials; I just invent my own methods,” says Simons. “Having no training helped.” Those in the profession and on the cake circuit were stunned. “I came from nowhere and they had no clue who I was,” says Simons. She then took first place at the Garden State Cake Show, Best in Show and the People’s Choice Award. She won first place at shows in Virginia and Ithaca. In less than two, years she was moved to master level.

Her cakes are known for their realism and overall theme. Growing up in Sullivan County, nature has played an important role in her life and is expressed in her cakes. The Indian Peacock Wedding Cake (right) is one of her favorites. Her cakes are like works of art and can be viewed from all sides.

She was a featured contestant on the Food Network show Sugar Dome where her skills were showcased to the masses. Shows like Ace of Cakes and Cake Boss have helped popularize cake making as the cooking shows did years ago for celebrity chefs like Anthony Bourdain, Emeril Lagasse and Bobbie Flay.

Dessert Professional Magazine named her one of The 2013 Top Cake Artists in North America. She doesn’t compete on the show circuit anymore because she has reached master level, but when she attends she judges and teaches seminars on cake decorating. This summer she performed at a Busch Gardens Wine and Food Festival where the public watched her build and decorate a cake over the course of three days.

Simons recently moved back to Sullivan County. She is building a local clientele for whom she makes cakes for weddings and special events. In a region with a burgeoning wedding industry, the timing feels right. She is getting more respect in the culinary world for her achievements and meteoric rise. She says many culinary schools teach Fondant 101, an icing material used to sculpt decorative cakes, but no decorating skills. She believes the decorating field will become more professionalized as the industry incorporates decorating aspects into their curriculums.

She works by appointment only.

FOR MORE INFO www.cakesbykimsimons.com 20 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 21

Cooper’s Table FOOD & FINDS

explore STORY, PHOTOS & STYLING BY COOPER BOONE

PHOTOS: COOPER BOONE

gather 22 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

LOCAVORE | COOPER’S TABLE

Welcome to the first segment of Cooper’s Table. My name is Cooper Boone and I have this relentless passion for rescuing forgotten treasures and using them on my Pennsylvania farmhouse table with some killer recipes. Food and finds, that’s me.

I’ve always had a love for cast iron skillets as an iconic symbol of rugged Americana cooking, only being exposed to them via Western movies where “Cookie” the cook has a greasy skillet over the campfire while “rustling up some vittles for the boys.” My mom never used such a device in her kitchen. Hey, I was a child of the 1970s where TV dinners reigned and the microwave was as significant as Watergate. Cast iron? Never!

Well, it just so happens I was “junking” a few weeks ago and happened upon a crate of rusty old cast iron skillets sitting in a forgotten back corner. The price?

Twenty-five cents a skillet. I offered twenty cents and nabbed all 6 for $1.20 and zippity-zip headed home wondering what the heck I was going to do with these.

Enter Google search phrase: How to save rusty cast iron pans?

1. Place skillet in kitchen sink, sprinkling 4 tablespoons of salt, spreading evenly.

2. Take one end chunk of a potato and start scrubbing.

Rinse and repeat until rust is bye-bye. Pat dry.

3. Place on stove burner to eliminate any left over water.

Let cool.

4. Seasoning your skillet with 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil, rubbing, with a paper towel, all surfaces of the pan.

5. Place skillet on burner, low heat, for 25 minutes, remove and let cool.

6. Wipe clean with paper towel to ensure excess oil is gone.

Never use soap on your skillet again. Repeat steps 4-6 after each future use.

I decided the best way to test out these revived pieces of cookery involved having people over to the farmhouse for some sort of dish made in cast iron skillets.

Hmmm. Hmmm. I had six small skillets, so I decided to invite 5 people to the farm to have breakfast. I served my German Apple Pancakes in their individual skillets creating a chorus of “oh mys” and “whaaaats?” and “hell yeses!” It was a success!

Question: Does this make me “iron” man? (Insert smirk here.)

GERMAN APPLE PANCAKE Pancake: 3 eggs 3/4 cup milk 3/4 cup all-purpose flour 1/2 tsp salt 1 1/2 Tbsp butter Filling: 1 lb local tart apples peeled, cored, sliced 1/4 cup butter 1/4 cup sugar nutmeg optional: powdered sugar Instructions: Pancake: Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Beat together eggs, flour, salt and milk until very smooth. In a cast iron skillet, melt about 1 1/2 Tbsp butter. When hot, pour in batter and place skillet in the oven. Bake 15 minutes at 450 and then lower the temperature to 350 degrees. Continue baking for another 10 minutes until golden brown and bubbly!

Apple Filling: peel, slice and saute apples in butter and sugar.

Using a microplane or grater, grate nutmeg into filling. Apples should be medium soft.

Remove pancake from oven, pour apple filling into center and spread evenly. Sprinkle with powdered sugar if you like. Serve immediately.

2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 23

Every home has a table where people gather, eat, talk and tackle projects. From my 1866 Pennsylvania Farm House and Barn, I share my recipes, DIY projects, antique finds, crazy events and wandering thoughts.

Everyone has a place at my table.

FOR MORE INFO

www.cooperstable.com

LOCAVORE | MARKETPLACE

Elderberry Herb Farm

Bring the Farmers’ Market Home with Pure Catskills Marketplace

GTO Woodturning

Tabitha Gilmore Barnes Studio

Ideuma Creek Alpacas

STORY BY JOSH VANBRAKLE | PHOTOS BY TANIA BARRICKLO

After the scenery, what impressed me most when I moved to the Catskills in 2010 was the abundance of festivals. In the summer and fall, you can count on some kind of farmers’ market, craft show, or town fair just about every weekend. These events are wonderful for lots of reasons, but for me, they’re all about the food. I wander from booth to booth, trying all the local products – the hard cheese, the blackberry jam, the fudge sauce…oh, the fudge sauce.

As the calendar moves toward winter, though, these festivals wind down, and the vendors go with them. What’s a chowhound to do? Salivate until next year?

Thankfully, a recent fusion of technology and local fare lets you satisfy your cravings for the best regional products all year round no matter where you are. That fusion is Pure Catskills Marketplace, an online farmers’ market featuring products grown or made by small businesses in the Catskills and Hudson Valley.

“It’s a single website,” says Craig Cashman, the Council’s executive director, “but it brings together all of these small businesses that individually would have a difficult time getting noticed online. Cooperating in this way gives them a greater outlet to get their Catskills products into the hands of more people.”

Like many small businesses, Pure Catskills Marketplace began in 2010 with a simple idea – help farmers and customers find each other.

A business plan and three years of passion and 24 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

The vision of Pure Catskills Marketplace became reality in the summer of 2013 when it began testing with a dozen “pilot vendors.”

“We said to the vendors, ‘try to break it,’” Cashman laughs. “We wanted them to play with everything. The goal was to create a store that was as easy to use as possible.”

Customers purchase directly from producers on the Marketplace. To ease checkout, customers only need to pay once, even if purchasing from multiple vendors. The website automatically divides up the payment to each vendor involved in the sale. Customers can also view a vendor’s profile to learn more about their story, products, and farm practices.

All of the products on Pure Catskills Marketplace are grown or made in one of the six Catskills counties – Delaware, Greene, Otsego, Schoharie, Sullivan, and Ulster. The Marketplace will expand in 2014 to include producers from Dutchess, Putnam, and Westchester Counties.

With its number of vendors growing, the Marketplace offers a diverse and ever-changing mix of local products, among them alpaca yarn from Ideuma Creek Alpacas in Unadilla, turned wood bowls from Katrok Woodworks in Grahamsville, herbal soaps from Elderberry Herb Farm in Sharon Springs, and, to my sweet tooth’s immense pleasure, chocolate fudge sauce from Slickepott Fudge in Delhi.

But Pure Catskills Marketplace is about more

than just selling great local products.

“We wanted to educate local businesses about online marketing and e-commerce,” Cashman says. “There are a lot of options out there, but the learning curve can make getting started intimidating. With the Marketplace, we wanted someone who had never sold online before to be able to use this website successfully.”

The Marketplace eases rural businesses into e-commerce by assisting with marketing, holding demonstration workshops, and supplying vendors with a toolkit that covers topics from shipping to customer service. Vendors pay no monthly fees to participate, instead paying only a small commission on items sold.

In addition to helping the local economy and educating small businesses, purchases on the Marketplace support the environment and protect the Catskills’ rural charm. Research in the Catskills from Yale University found that the most common reason landowners, especially farmers, subdivided and ultimately had their properties developed was financial pressure.

Profitable farm and forest businesses help landowners cover their costs of ownership, keeping open space open and protecting the region’s aesthetics, wildlife habitat, and drinking water.

“The Council’s mission is to promote regional economic viability and protect water quality,” says Cashman. “With Pure Catskills Marketplace, we have a rare opportunity to do both at once.

That’s why we made the Marketplace’s slogan ‘Good Food. Quality Wood. Clean Water.’”

FOR MORE INFO www.purecatskillsmarketplace.com

PHOTOS: COURTESY OF PURE CATSKILLS MARKETPLACE

Founded by the Watershed Agricultural Council, a non-profit based in Delaware County, New York, the Marketplace allows regional farm, food, and wood products producers to sell directly to consumers over the Internet.

hard work followed. The U.S. Forest Service and New York City Department of Environmental Protection provided start-up support, but longterm, the Marketplace hopes to cover its costs through commissions generated by sales.

STORY | FICTION

STORY BY MICHAEL MCGLADE DRAWINGS BY EUGENE IVANOV

He appeared in the center of the theatre stage in a space where mere moments before there had been nothing.

Illuminated now by a blue spotlight and as the smoke cleared here for all to see was Edward Opulence Magician Extraordinaire.

could anchor the Titanic.

Cheap trick, really, but the punters demand a grand entrance.

Edward exploded from the center of a giant pinkfrosted wedding cake all the way across the theater and amid startled spectators who convulsed and clapped.

Edward noticed the small cupid balancing on a chocolate swing on top of the cake.

He bowed. The secret trapdoor bowed.

The audience roared. Applause echoed around the thousandseater auditorium, filled to capacity for the first show of his three-night run. Edward Opulence, after twenty years of back alley performances, had finally made the Big Time.

He jiggled, jived, danced to stage right for the setup of the next illusion. He noticed a small tear in his pants near the crotch. He’d caught himself on a pokey nail in the secret trapdoor.

That’s clumsy, Emma. You’re lucky you’re my wife – I’ve fired people for less than this.

Emma danced past him, all glitter and smoke. She and her chorus of dancers provided eye candy and misdirection. Their beauty bore a simple truth: no illusion succeeded without their particular magic.

Edward’s act had soared to this dizzying height because of the three years that Emma had been his director.

Forty-three girls pirouetted across the sprung deck of the picture frame stage.

Edward snapped his fingers.

A puff of smoke.

Ridiculous womanly flourish.

Emma might have invented this trick, but it’s mine now.

After the show, back in the dressing room, Edward stepped out of his bejeweled tuxedo and dragged his stumpy fat legs into some slacks. Emma entered the room.

“We’re in the big time, now,” he said. “No more messing up, you get it?”

“The girls and I immaculate tonight. we’ve ever been.”

were Best

He poked his index finger through the rip in his pants near the crotch.

“You’re there to assist, so assist.”

“Don’t point that finger at me.”

Two assistants wrapped chains around Edward’s chest and limbs. He was shackled, helpless. The dancers shimmied around his position. Long legs and sparkles. Hard to resist.

Edward swiveled his index finger away from her. “It’s not even loaded. I don’t know what you’re worrying about.”

A magician has needs.

“Or what?”

A cloth sack was placed over his head and his entire body threaded into it and the opening secured with thick padlocks and chains that

“Or I walk out and never come back.”

“Never ever point that finger at me again.”

Edward laughed it off, took her hand and kissed it. “Just 2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 25

Edward Opulence Magician Extraordinaire

kidding with you, pumpkin.

You were marvelous tonight.”

in some practice,” Edward said. “I don’t want to mess up my big break.”

“I know. And I’ll be better tomorrow night. We have some critics coming to watch.”

When Emma left, Edward scrutinized the chorus of girls gathered in the hallway outside his dressing room.

They glimmered magically in the subdued yellow light backstage.

Edward returned to the mirror, selected a spatula and scrapped off a thick layer of makeup from his perma-tanned face.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “What if we try the Disappearing Act?” Emma dry swallowed.

“We’re not ready. It’s too dangerous.”

“Pumpkin, we need to give the audience more—” “I know that,” she said.

“I’m the one that got us here. These are my tricks you’re performing. And the Disappearing Act is just not ready. OK?” Edward conceded with a barely noticeable nod.

Emma took a book called Pepper’s Ghost from the dressing table, placed it in her handbag and walked toward the door. “The taxi’s here.”

“I thought I’d stay behind a little while.”

Emma stopped but did not turn around to face him.

“I need to get

I wonder which one of them is the most suggestible to hypnosis? A girl with pearls for teeth smiled at him.

Hopefully all of them.

Edward checked his storebought hair in the mirror, popped a breath mint into his mouth and glided toward the refrain of girls.

On the second night, some national newspaper critics were in the audience, front row seats. A chorus of girls dragged The Iron Boot onto the stage. Edward was about to perform his favorite illusion. His feet would be clamped into the metal prison, but after a puff of smoke he would re-appear among the audience sitting next to the critics.

This trick w a s

his biggest crowd pleaser.

The actual trick was simple.

You see he had a clubfoot – two of them to be precise, and no one except Emma knew about it.

An unfortunate incident several years back had caused the deformity to his feet but with the aid of prosthetics he went about his everyday life unnoticed.

And it was this misfortune that Emma had crafted into their best illusion.

Edward, now strapped into the double leg manacles of The Iron Boot, snapped his fingers and a cloud of smoke obscured him from the audience. He went to slip his right foot free of the shackle but it wouldn’t budge. The strap had somehow tightened too much. He must have forgotten to flex his calf muscles when the girl had tightened the chains and padlocks. Edward struggled to tear his legs free from the restraints but when the puff of smoke cleared he was stood there, flapping his

arms around like a flightless bird, a corn-fed turkey in a thrift shop tuxedo.

My God, I’m dying on my feet.

43 assistants, conducted

by Emma’s long silky legs, caused a distraction when they can-canned across the stage. The curtain descended.

Later, in the dressing room, Edward stood admiring his naked physique in the fulllength mirror. His bejeweled thong would trick the untrained eye into believing he was not as stodgy as a bread and butter pudding.

Emma entered the room.

Did she just wince?

“I thought our sham marriage,” he said, “was the worst thing that ever happened me … until tonight. No one upstages me. Neither you nor your dancers.”

“I saved you out there,” Emma said. “I had to pay off the critics with the last of my savings because you’re too dumb to get a simple trick right.”

“Your girl tightened t h e

restraints too much,” he said.

“Did she? Or did you forget to do the only thing you had to do apart from snap your fingers?”

Edward’s perma-tan face reddened. “I’m the star of the show. Don’t ever forget that. There is no show without me. It’s my name in lights above the door.”

He wagged his index finger at Emma.

She dove out of the way, rolled like a cat and came behind Edward. “I told you never to point that thing at me.”

“Well, guess what, pumpkin, I don’t care. You upstaged me tonight for the last time.

We’re through.”

Emma popped him in the nut sack and he crumpled into a heap on the ground.

“I’m not fired,” she said, “I quit.” She gathered her belongings into a bag and sashayed toward the door.

“Tomorrow night,” Edward whimpered, “I’m doing the Disappearing Act.” Emma stopped. Turned to face him. “Don’t dare do it,” she said. “It would be a colossal mistake.”

“You’re the one too scared to do it, not me. I’m doing it.”

“The last time, three years ago, when we

tried to do the trick, five of my girls were maimed and you ended up with two clubfeet.”

“Which worked out in our favor,” Edward said.

“Don’t do the Disappearing Act,” she said. “Please.”

“You don’t know me at all,” Edward said.

Emma stormed out. Edward stood stiffly and checked to see if his testicles had descended from his stomach. He dressed and went to his favorite bar where women danced, took you to a back room when you bought champagne and were considerate enough to leave immediately upon the completion of his magic wand routine. He searched for the right dancer to be his prize trophy. A woman with lampblack hair came up to him.

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

“We haven’t had sex in a year,” he said. “I’m not that good a magician – get lost, Cinderella.”

“You’re not that good of a magician.”

He pointed his index finger at her.

She stumbled back a step.

His magic finger often had that effect. “What will I do to you?”

He unleashed the finger – Poof!

The woman’s beautiful black hair became something slightly more dried and un-moisturized than it had been momentarily before.

Although it was quite possible that the natural occurrence of a breeze had done all the dirty work for him.

DRAWINGS: EUGENE IVANOV

The woman snapped her fingers at him and swanned off.

She used to have such soft hair. Maybe I still have a lock of it left in my cigar case.

Maybe I’ll sniff it later.

On the third night, without the yoke of Emma, Edward felt free, unfettered, able to shine. In the audience was

a scout from Las Vegas – there to bring him to the really Big Time.

Edward Opulence Magician Extraordinaire snapped his fingers and a giant wheel appeared in a puff of smoke.

It was lacerated with knife scars and hatchet fissures.

“Get off the stage you clumsy buffoon,” someone yelled. The crowd booed.

They jeered. They catcalled.

I’m through. Finito. Caput.

QED, douche bag.

“I call it my Rouault wheel.”

They watched. Stared. He wished he could simply disappear into nothing.

The silent audience stared at him.

Edward Opulence raised his index finger.

Obviously not French lovers, then.

They watched. Stared.

“It’s my Roulette Wheel of Death.”

The audience clapped like trained seals.

“I will be strapped to the wheel and only the Gods can decide my fate as fortythree women selected at random from the audience toss hatches, knives and bayonets at me.”

Edward’s new assistant clamped him onto the wheel. Her hands trembled.

She tugged too hard at the securing straps. The wheel rattled free from its double-hinge and toppled over. Edward found himself deposited unceremoniously on his ass. Something snapped. He prayed it was his underwear elastic, not his coccyx. The impact triggered his spring-loaded devices and knotted handkerchiefs vomited from his sleeves. The white doves Velcroed inside of his jacket escaped, circled above him and dumped their payload.

The gooey white critique trickled down his forehead and into his face.

He pointed his index finger at himself.

His hand trembled.

The air glimmered.

He sensed the slippage of reality. The nothingness around him became the thing that he would become.

He was nothing and would be nothing forever.

He couldn’t limp back to the side streets with the old routine of Three-card Monte, needle-throughthe-arm and razor blade swallowing. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

Index finger pointed at his heart.

Emma stared at him, openmouthed. She ran toward the stage, calling out, screaming but to Edward the movement had become slow motion and the sound had been muted. Already, he was within the prestige of the Disappearing Act. No turning back now. Others screamed. Pointed at him.

Ladies fainted.

Poof!

The audience gawked. All their eyes were on him, peering unblinkingly with unbroken stares, as they had always done before – willing him to have failed – and all he could do was wish he was elsewhere, anywhere, never wished anything as much in his life, stuck there on the stage in the cold blue spotlight with nowhere to go.

And he was gone.

Emma stood near the back.

She shook her head.

The audience roared for more.

“O my! Brave am…”

Edward’s mind went blank and the sentence trailed off.

But Edward Opulence Magician Extraordinaire was nothing ever more.

The audience watched the empty space centerstage where he had been a moment before in the translucent spectral haze of disappearance.

They watched in silence.

But he was gone.

Nothing.

0

2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 27

STORY | FICTION

“I had to pay off the critics

with the last of my savings

because you’re too dumb to get a simple trick right.”

INTERIORS | AT HOME IN THE COUNTRY

28 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

LOVE WHERE YOU LIVE

A new interiors book by Hammertown’s Joan Osofsky & Abby Adams.

BY AKIRA OHISO PHOTOS BY JOHN GRUEN

2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 29

30 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

Joan Osofsky has been an influential tastemaker in the Hudson Valley since 1985 when she opened Hammertown Barn, a home and lifestyle store in Pine Hill, New York. 28 years later, with three stores in Pine Hill, Rhinebeck and Great Barrington, MA, Osofsky shares decades of lifestyle and interior design wisdom in a new book she co-authored with writer Abby Adams. Love Where You Live: At Home In the Country highlights eighteen homes, each with an eclectic design palette from antique to modern to country chic. The homes are not aspirational because they are lived-in, gracefully restored and filled with the cherished belongings and thoughtful designs of the homeowners.

Children’s bedrooms have Basquiat-bombed chalkboard walls, a house of curiosities exemplifies “more is more,” a large square metal sculpture frames a bucolic landscape. When a home is truly yours, a lamp doesn’t need a night stand to illuminate sparse wood floors; stainless steel can marry barn planks; a utilitarian mess on a desk becomes charming. Big chunky books stacked like Jenga on stools, benches, floors, and, of course, bookshelves are upcycled as visual sustenance and interior architecture.

The homes perfectly reflect the homeowners’ personalities, which means anyone can design their home if they stay true to themselves.

In Love Where You Live: At Home In the Country, Joan and Abby offer useful design advice. And the beautiful photography by John Gruen, presents a diverse curation of homes - farmhouse, house in the woods, restored historic house, an out-of the-box modular. This book will inspire you to make your home one that truly reflects your lifestyle, personality and authentic self.

As Joan says in the book’s introduction, “I’ve learned that the best homes—the ones that are beautiful and comfortable and that weather the years—are those that truly reflect their owners’ passions.”

Published by Rizzoli, Love Where You Live hits stands September 17th.

You can pre-order the book at www.rizzoliusa.com . And if you want to see these pages come alive, visit Hammertown in person.

FOR MORE INFO www.hammertown.com 2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 31

NEIGHBORS HAPPENINGS IN THE CATSKILLS & HUDSON VALLEY SEPTEMBER 2013

1 Flea Market Antiques, jewelry, household goods and more.

Through October 31. For more information call: 800.545.3777. Route 17B and Pine Grove Road Bethel. Sullivan County.

1 Maverick Chamber Music Concert Daedalus Quartet with Rufus Müller, Tenor. 4 pm.

845-679-8217. Maverick Concerts, 120 Maverick Road, Woodstock. Ulster County.

1 Harvest Festival Farmers market, crafts, music at the Bethel Woods grounds, Hurd and West Shore Roads, Bethel. Sundays through Columbus Day. 845-2952448. Sullivan County.

1 Antique Show Stormville Airport Antique Show & Flea Market.

Stormville, NY. Dutchess County.

1 Bovina Farm Day Fun for everyone. 607-832-4418. Weber Road, Bovina Center. Delaware County.

1 Woodstock/New Paltz Art & Craft Fair Labor Day Weekend. Free parking. No pets.

Saturday & Sunday, 10 - 6 pm, Monday 10 - 4 pm.

Ulster County Fair Grounds, 249 Libertyville Road, New Paltz. Ulster County.

4 HITS On The Hudson Through September 8. 319 Main St, Saugerties, NY. Ulster County.

St., Saugerties. Ulster County.

6 Hickster Mixer: This DJ Be _______ 6 pm til the break of dawn. BYOB, BYOR(ecord), BYOi(Pod). Green Door Magazine HQ. 34 South Main Street, Liberty NY. Sullivan County 7 Hudson Valley Wine and Food Fest A two-day celebration of the gourmet lifestyle in the Hudson Valley. 11am to 5pm. Dutchess County Fairgrounds, Rhinebeck. Dutchess County.

7 Antique Engine Jamboree Antique engine enthusiasts. County Hwy 10 &12, East Meredith. Delaware County.

8 Farmstock Farm Tour Bridle Hill Farm, 190 Hemmer Road, Jeffersonville.

845-482-3993. Sullivan County.

8 La Scala Ballet Rosendale Theatre welcomes the La Scala Ballet in the HD cinema experience l’altra metà del cielo. $10. 845-658-8989. Rosendale. Ulster County.

8 Big Band Concert Boscobel Restoration, 6 - 8pm. $16. 845-2653638. 1601 Route 9D, Garrison-on-Hudson.

Putnam County.

9 Mid-Hudson Women’s Chorus Open rehearsal at 7:15pm. 845-382-2499. St. James United Methodist Church. Corner of Fair and Pearl Streets, Kingston. Ulster County.

5 Delhi Harvest Fest 10am to 4pm. Free admission. 607-746-6100.

Main Street, Delhi. Delaware County.

14 Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Tours Spirit on Hudson pontoon boat carries passengers to the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse. 11am to 3pm.

Athens Village Park Water Street, Athens. Greene County.

6 Cars Installation of Henrietta Mantooth’s Cars. 347387-3212. Imogen Holloway Gallery, 81 Partition

14 Mushroom Woodswalk 10am-12pm. 845-586-3054.

Delaware County.

32 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

Margaretville.

15 Taste of New Paltz 11am to 5pm. Ulster County Fair Grounds, 249 Libertyville Road, New Paltz. Ulster County.

15 Garden Tour Also on October 20, 1-4pm. 845-229-6432.

Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site on Route 9 in Hyde Park. Dutchess County.

17 Kingston Farmers’ Market 9am to 2pm on Wall Street in Kingston. 845-8538512. Ulster County.

20 Big Eddy Film Festival Through September 22, 2013. 845-252-7576.

Tusten Theatre, 210 Bridge St Narrowsburg.

Sullivan County.

21 Sharon Springs Harvest Festival Celebrate the local harvest. Sept 21 and 22.

Sharon Springs. Schoharie County.

21 Fall Festival Plant Sale 9 to 4, rain or shine, on the grounds of the Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site on Route 9 in Hyde Park. 845-229-6432. Dutchess County.

25 Scarecrow Festival 10am – 4pm. Veterans’ Memorial Park, Stamford.

Delaware County.

28 Hudson Valley Garlic Festival Two-day event. Cantine Field Washington Avenue Extension, Saugerties. Ulster County.

28 Cauliflower Festival Celebrating farming. Free. 10am - 4pm. 845586-2291. Village of Margaretville Pavilion, Margaretville. Delaware County.

29 International Wine Showcase A benefit for families living with autism. 845-4525772. Poughkeepsie. Dutchess County.

29 4th Annual Poetry Festival Performance at 2pm. 845-292-2394. Liberty Music and Arts Pavilion, N. Main Street, Liberty.

Sullivan County.

OCTOBER 2013

2 Woodstock Film Festival Annual independent film festival through October 6. Woodstock. Ulster County.

5 Octoberfest I Two days. Hunter Mountain, Route 23A, Hunter.

Greene County.

5 Colors in the Catskills Motorcycle rally open to all brands of bikes. 2 days. Hunter Mountain, Route 23A, Hunter. Greene County.

6 Parksville USA Music Festival The Lyric Quartet at 3pm. $18. 845-747-4247.

Dead End Cafe, Main Street, Parksville. Sullivan County.

7 Bluestone Festival Hudson River Maritime Museum, 50 Rondout Landing, Kingston. Ulster County.

11 Oktoberfest Great German cuisine through October 14.

Blackthorne Resort, 348 Sunside Road, East Durham. Greene County.

11 Heritage Craft Fair Bronck Museum, 90 County Route 42 (Just off Route 9W), Coxsackie, NY. Greene County.

12 Octoberfest II Two days. Hunter Mountain, Route 23A, Hunter.

Greene County.

12 Game of Logging Level 1 7:30am-5pm.

Pre-registration/pre-payment

is required. 845-586-3054. Catskill Forest Association, Arkville. Delaware County.

12 Fall Festival & Craft Fair Saturday & Sunday at Belleayre Mountain Ski Center, 181 Galli Curci Road, (Route 28/ Belleayre Access Road), Highmount. Ulster County.

12 Guinness Irish Festival Gavin’s Irish Country Inn, 118 Golden Hill Road, East Durham. Greene County.

Columbia County.

27 Halloween in the Hudson Valley Ulster Hose Company No. 5, 830 Ulster Avenue, Ulster. Free. Ulster County.

NOVEMBER 2013

1 Children’s Math Fun Mid-Hudson Children’s Museum. 845-471-0589.

75 N. Water St. Poughkeepsie. Dutchess County.

12 Taste of the Catskills Saturday & Sunday. 2066 County Rte 18, Delhi.

Delaware County.

8 Oak Summit Vineyard Tasting 845-677-9522. Oak Summit Vineyard, 372 Oak Summit, Millbrook. Dutchess County.

12 Roscoe Harvest Festival TroutoberFest street vendors and live music in Roscoe. Sullivan County.

8 Singles Dance Clarion Hotel at 8pm. 845-462-4600. 2170 Route 9. Poughkeepsie. Dutchess County.

19 CPW’s Benefit Gala Honoring Sandra Phillips. 4-7pm at Diamond Mills, Saugerties. Center for Photography at Woodstock. Ulster County.

9 Abbey Road Denny Laine presents The Beatles Abbey Road Complete. 9pm. $30. 845-679-4406. Bearsville Theater, 291 Tinker St., Woodstock. Ulster County.

19 Sheep & Wool Festival Dutchess County Fairgrounds. Rhinebeck, NY. Duchess County.

11 Works by Thomas Houseago Outdoor art gallery. 845-534-3115. Storm King Art Center, Old Pleasant Hill Rd. Mountainville.

Orange County.

19 Music Night 7pm. Phillipsport Community Center, located in historic schoolhouse next to Church in Phillipsport. Sullivan County.

19 Wine & Brew Fest Sample fine microbrews and wines of the Hudson Valley, Hunter Mountain Ski Bowl Route 23A, Hunter, NY. Greene County.

27 The Jay Vons and Lovesick SmashCrashBash party at the Half Moon in Hudson, NY, on September 27. Friday, September 27 / 9pm doors / $5 The Half Moon, 48 S. Front St., Hudson, NY 12534 (518) 822-1913.

25 International Pickle Festival Contests, prizes and plenty of pickles. Sunday before Thanksgiving. Rosendale Community Center, 1055 Route 32 South Rosendale. Ulster County.

Sign up for our weekly email newsletter, Green Bytes, on our website at greendoormag.com and get weekly events directly into your inbox!

To be listed, email neighbors@greendoormag. com by November 1, 2013 or anytime for our calendar: greendoormag.com/neighbors.php

2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 33

The Weather Project is Launched

BY TANNIS KOWALCHUK | PHOTO BY SANDY LONG

This summer, my theatre company, NACL Theatre launched The Weather Project, a massive community arts and science project designed to bring residents, artists, and scientists together around the subject of the weather and climate science. The project takes place over the next year with workshops, shows, and lectures, and culminates in August 2014 with an exhibition and a massive spectacular outdoor performance in the Town of Highland where NACL has been located for the last 13 years.

The mission behind The Weather Project is to provide, for those who live here, an opportunity to create and collaborate on a big artistic endeavor. When artists and scientists are engaged on a project, it is one of the most exciting and passionate of times for them. It is the best time of my life. We wish to share this particular kind of passionate engagement with our neighbors and friends. Not only do we hope to enliven our community through art, but we want to help inspire a civic conversation about our environment and the future.

The project is open to residents of Sullivan County and throughout the Upper Delaware Valley.

NACL is partnering with The Town of Highland, Sullivan Alliance for Sustainable Development, Western Sullivan Public Libraries, Delaware Valley Arts Alliance, Delaware Highlands Conservancy/ Eagle Institute, local schools, choirs, Catskill Arts Society, North School Studio, Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble, Spiral Q Puppet Theatre, Margolis Brown Adaptors and a number of professional theatre makers, visual artists and film makers.

WEATHER PROJECT WORKSHOPS NACL is holding Creativity Workshops every Monday from 6 to 8 PM at NACL in Highland Lake, NY. The workshops are interdisciplinary and focus on writing, research, acting, music, drawing, building, dancing, puppetry, stilt-walking, data collecting — the sky’s the limit. Everyone is welcome to join the workshops, anytime. Artists and scientists who wish to lead a workshop and skill-share, are encouraged to contact project director, Tannis Kowalchuk at tannis@nacl.org

300 UMBRELLAS NACL is collecting 300 umbrellas to be decorated and painted by students and families. The goal is to exhibit all the umbrellas at the exhibition, and integrate them into the performance. Each audience member will be given one to be used during the show.

Donations of used and working umbrellas are accepted at NACL, Delaware Valley Arts Alliance, Catskill Art Society, and the libraries.

FOR MORE INFO www.nacl.org 34 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

TRAVEL | GREEN LODGING PARTNERSHIP

A MATCH MADE ON

EARTH Connect with locally sustainable lodging.

BY BETHANY KEENE

For residents and visitors to the Upper Delaware River region in New York and Pennsylvania, the marriage between a thriving tourism industry and our healthy natural resources is a strong and happy one. Likewise, for the nonprofit Delaware Highlands Conservancy and the participating hotels and inns in the Conservancy’s Green Lodging Partnership, it is an equally natural – and mutually beneficial – match.

The Delaware Highlands Conservancy works in partnership with landowners and communities to protect the healthy lands, clean waters, eagles and eagle habitat, and quality of life in the Upper Delaware River region. The Green Lodging Partnership directly connects locally sustainable lodgings with this conservation mission.

Sustainable farms, working forests, and tourism and outdoor recreation are the cornerstones of the sustainable local economy we enjoy. Our abundant outdoor recreational opportunities – from beautiful wooded trails for hiking and biking to rivers, streams, and lakes for kayaking, canoeing, and fishing – offer people of all ages the opportunity to connect to the lands and waters that sustain us all. Through the Partnership, visitors to our region are given the opportunity to make a direct investment to ensure that everything that brings them here will be here for them now and every time they visit in the future.

PHOTOS: COURTESY OF THE DELAWARE HIGHLANDS CONSERVANCY

The process is simple. Participating hotels add $2 per reservation to each guest’s bill, which is then donated back to the Conservancy.

Although guests have the option to opt out, very few choose to do so.

Sean Strub, co-owner of the Hotel Fauchere in Milford, PA, enthuses, “The Hotel Fauchere is proud to participate in the Delaware Highlands Conservancy Green Lodging Partnership. It is a way to engage our guests with our community’s consciousness about protecting the pristine natural environment in the upper Delaware River Valley and to support the Conservancy’s important work.

Our guests have overwhelmingly supported participation and many express appreciation that the Hotel Fauchere recognizes its responsibility to do our part to be a responsible steward in the region.”

Each of the lodgings in the Partnership is committed to local conservation and to acting sustainably, and are taking steps to reduce their environmental impact. From implementing recycling programs and encouraging guests to reuse their towels to installing low-flow water fixtures and high-efficiency light bulbs, each is dedicated to doing their part to protect their own properties and pieces of land. But

without protecting the natural assets that surround them, the future of these assets – and the sustainable economies they support – could be at risk. That’s where the Delaware Highlands Conservancy comes in.

“The lodgings in the Green Lodging Partnership are invested in the future of this unique region,” affirms Conservancy Executive Director Sue Currier. “The Partnership allows local businesses to promote their commitment to sustainability and local conservation to their guests, and the funds raised from the program directly support the Conservancy’s work to protect healthy lands and clean waters for residents and visitors alike.”

Participating lodgings in Pennsylvania include The Settlers Inn, Ledges Hotel, Woodloch Pines Resort, and The Lodge at Woodloch, all in Hawley; Hotel Fauchere in Milford; and the James Manning House B&B in Bethany.

Lodgings in New York include Apple Pond Farm in Callicoon Center; ECCE Bed and Breakfast in Barryville; and The Sullivan in Rock Hill.

For the Conservancy, the funds raised from the program support its Shop Local Save Land initiative, which, through free hardcopy guides and a searchable website, connects consumers to local farm and forest product providers. The Shop Local Save Land guides are easy-to-use one-stop resources for finding fresh, healthy, local foods along with wood products for building, decorating, and heating your homes. Shop Local Save Land means that working lands can stay working lands – now, and for future generations. It means that our working forests will continue to protect clean drinking water for us and for more than 15 million people down stream. And it means that they can continue to act as strong sources of local jobs.

Through initiatives like Shop Local Save Land and the Green Lodging Partnership, the Delaware Highlands Conservancy – together with a dedicated community of partners and supporters – strengthens the connections between everything we cherish about this region and the actions we must all take today to ensure its future.

By making conscious choices in our everyday actions – from shopping at a local farmer’s market or donating $2 through your stay at a locally sustainable hotel or inn – we all have the opportunity, and the privilege, to shape the future of the Upper Delaware.

FOR MORE INFO www.DelawareHighlands.org 570-226-3164 845-583-1010 2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 35

WOODSHED | TOWER MUSIC

tower music Beacon’s Joseph Bertolozzi Eiffel Tower music.

BY ANN HUTTON | PHOTO BY FRANC PALAIA

Composer Joseph Bertolozzi has always reached outside normal parameters to express himself musically. As a twenty-something concert organist, he went on tour to play some of the world’s great instruments and ended up sitting down at the keys of the organ in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. “If something was possible, I wanted to pursue it. But I could never have predicted I’d be doing this. ” The lifelong resident of Beacon, NY, is referring to his latest endeavor: playing the Eiffel Tower. This past June, Bertolozzi took a team to Paris – two engineers, a producer, a videographer, a photographer and a couple of production assistants – to scale the heights of the world famous monument and harvest sound tones off its many parts. Using a variety of sticks, mallets, even a large log, he struck the metal tower thousands of times and recorded its inherent “music.”

The team was given permission to go into all areas of the structure, so long as they weren’t obstructing traffic or doing anything ridiculously dangerous, like hanging themselves from ropes over the sides.

While Bertolozzi wielded the mallet or log as striking instrument, his two engineers positioned microphones and recorded the sound tone. Using an iPad Mini, another assistant noted how and where that sound was produced. “I want it to be possible for this to become a live event,” he says. “In order for us to find the notes again, we have to describe where to find each one of them with an enormously long explanation. So, we can tell someone, ‘Here’s a stick to go play a hinge on the north side on the face.’”

Sound tones were recorded straight from the microphone into WAV files, and cataloging was done on Numbers, a spreadsheet-like software application that was pre-programmed for quick and easy notation on the tower. “The wind was blowing at forty to fifty miles an hour. We were exhausted just from exerting the energy to climb stairs and hang on to our equipment.”

The project was four years in the making, starting from convincing Tower administrators that he was a legitimate musician to traveling to Europe and executing the sound tone collection. Now back home, Bertolozzi faces the less adrenaline-inducing task of sorting through the sounds. A tower is not a calibrated entity as is a musical instrument. He explains, “My job is to listen to them all – hard, medium, and soft tones – and determine what is the cleanest, most representative sound. It’s very time consuming to give each one a pitch name. I whittle it down to about four-hundred and build a virtual instrument of melody notes. I don’t change the pitches in the computer. That’s not what I want to 36 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

do. I want to play the Eiffel Tower, and you certainly couldn’t play it live if I was adding notes that didn’t exist on it.”

When this task is complete, he’ll start composing.

Bertolozzi actually hears music in his head using the sound tones. “I ask myself, what do these notes suggest to me? Once the instrument is defined, I write for it accordingly. For the Tower, I have to find out what the instrument is. I want to come to it as fresh as I can, let the sounds dictate where the music wants to go.” He scores this music on a computer, but has often done orchestral composing by hand. He points to example score sheets to elucidate. “Instead of saying ‘flute, oboe, trombone,’ it says ‘guardrail, spindles, post.’ I’m making this up as I go along.”

It was his wife, Sheila, who gifted the innovative musician with his first gong a few years back. He bought another and another, until he was forced to build a floor-to-ceiling scaffold to hold all sixty of these percussive instruments. “I took percussion lessons at forty-five years old, from two wildly different drummers,” says the composer of traditional orchestral, choral, liturgical, and chamber music. He went on to create work based solely on percussion, which can be heard on the CD The Bronze Collection, a sonic experience like no other. Unlike an inherently stationary organ, Bertolozzi’s collection of percussives can travel, and he’s performed his gong music in various venues. Supposedly, Sheila mimicked his whole-body, arm-flailing performance technique.

She took a swing at a poster of the Eiffel Tower and went “bong!” He said, “Of course! That would work.

Everything vibrates. Of course you can play the Eiffel Tower.”

Bertolozzi gestated this idea for awhile. “The Eiffel Tower looks like a bridge; in fact, Gustave Eiffel’s company built bridges.” Deciding he’d need to test his theory on a smaller, more local project, he contacted the NYS Bridge Authority and asked if he could use the FDR Mid-Hudson Bridge in Poughkeepsie. He proposed percussing the pylons, girders, and metal trusses that span the Hudson River and turning the sound tones he gleaned there into music.

They thought his idea was a bit crazy, but eventually gave him and one engineer access to the bridge to record its sounds. The resulting CD Bridge Music was created for New York’s 400th anniversary observance of Henry Hudson’s voyage up the river, and permanent listening stations were installed on both sides of the bridge where visitors can hear samples from April through October. Released in 2009, the CD reached No. 18 on the Billboard classical crossover charts. He calls it “a piece of architecture that we melted back into music.”

The success of Bertolozzi’s bridge project served as an example to offer SETE, the Eiffel Tower’s official operating company. Following a lengthy vetting process and an intense fundraising campaign, Bertolozzi and crew set off for Paris. They spent two weeks hitting the surfaces of the Eiffel Tower, even gaining access to restricted areas for three days.

“It was freezing like hell and raining the first week.

We went to areas that were under cover, but the rain was blowing sideways. During the second week it was very sunny, but still cold. We were nine hundred feet in the air, climbing stairwells in between areas with elevators. The concern was that we would drop something. And it turned out our producer was not happy about being up so high.”

Bertolozzi’s ultimate idea is to produce music that will be played live on the Tower, and he’s working hard to complete the cataloging of sound tones and the composition of an hour-long piece he’ll call Tower Music that might be performed to celebrate the monument’s 125th anniversary next year. Such a performance would require more than a hundred musicians and microphones to be installed all over the structure.

“It will take two months to go through the two thousand sound tones and perhaps nine months to write the music. Of course, SETE has concerns about security and the way it might be presented to the public, and so on. The Tower can’t be closed at any time. We’d have to raise 4 to 5 million Euros to pull this off ” he says.

The professional church organist-turned-public art installation producer has his work cut out for him. “This is what I’m known for now. I’m a musician. That’s a bridge. That’s a tower. What’s the connection?” he asks rhetorically. Then he quotes Goethe – Architecture is frozen music” – and lays responsibility for his outrageous schemes on his wife.

“She’s very careful what she says now because it could turn into anything.”

The fifty-something-year-old Bertolozzi, who received his B.A. in music from Vassar College and studied at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Westminster Choir College, and The Julliard School, has always maintained a full-time church job. He serves as Organist and Choirmaster at Vassar Temple in Poughkeepsie and at St. Joseph’s Church in Middletown, NY. “I think I bring a lot of nuance, something special to the worship experience. For me Tower Music is just the idea of using this structure; I have no ulterior motive, I just want to play. “ “It’s a cool idea, and it’s something I can do.”

WOODSHED | STORY LAURIE

Laurie’s Story

BY AKIRA OHISO

On September 28th, Laurie McIntosh, better known as Story Laurie, wraps up her 3 month summer tour at the Wildlife Festival in Blenheim, New York. For two decades, Laurie has been telling stories and singing songs to children of all ages. She travels to schools, local libraries and community events where she creates educational stories about gardens, sustainable living and local food themes.

And she doesn’t just sing about the outdoor world; when touring she forgoes hotels. She travels with a tent, guitar, some percussion instruments, a cooler and her jar of worms which she uses during her hands-on workshops.

When the sun sets, she simply finds a place, preferably near berries, and pitches tent. In fact, when she arrives for our interview, she brings freshly picked strawberries from a local farm. We sit by the Willowemoc River where I devour strawberries and she looks under rocks for caddisflies in earthen shelters and expounds on the extreme survival instincts of tardigrades.

I can’t help but think of Laurie in these terms.

Laurie was not always a Catskillian, but always knew she wanted to live in nature away from her middle-class upbringing on suburban Long Island. We joke about strip malls and “Long Guyland” accents, but she was never that person. While many of her friends ran home after school to watch soap operas, Laurie raced home to watch Little House on the Prairie and dreamt of being Laura Ingalls.

In her early twenties, a series of seemingly providential events led her to the Catskills.

Like most people in their early twenties, she didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life.

She worked at Spring Street Natural, a whole foods eatery in NoLiTa, where she often lied to her nosy customers to shut them up. “The lie I would tell them is that on my days off I was an apprentice goat cheese maker,” says Laurie.

Isaac Bashevis Singer once said, “When I was a little boy they called me a liar, but, now that I’m grown up, they call me a writer.” Laurie was already a storyteller, she just didn’t know it yet.

After hiking Wittenberg Mountain and Ashokan High Point, she fell in love with the Catskills. She returned to her job and saw a handwritten flier on the bulletin board: Don’t you wish you could get away from it all and move to the Catskills. She was offered a job at The Bear Cafe, but needed a place to live. Her boss at Spring Street Natural needed someone to house sit his home in the mountains. Turns

out his home was just four miles from the Bear Cafe. “A mere two weeks after I moved here is the first time the word ‘storytelling’ popped into my head,” says Laurie.

You can call these events coincidence or providence, but Laurie has the personality to make things happen. She leaps without a net, which is very much reflected in her creative process and performances and workshops today.

She goes into her performances with a loose structure but interacts with her audience where no two tellings of the same story are ever the same. “The gift of my show for kids is the questioning,” says Laurie.

As children, we believe that adults have all the answers, but find out that we know very little about the big questions in life. “I like to lift the veil and say that adults don’t know everything,” says Laurie. “We learn as much from you.”

Her workshops begin with a brainstorming session where kids begin to throw ideas around for a story. Laurie scribbles ideas on post-its, crosses things out and moves words around to help kids see and develop their song. “It’s a really thrilling process, at times very stressful,” says Laurie. “There are easy way outs, but I like to see what happens and hear what comes out of their mouths.”

In a school setting where structure and rote learning can stifle creativity, Laurie finds the group process to be alive. “It opens up their minds to the possibility that anything can happen,” says Laurie. “They develop a great belief in themselves.”

Last year, Laurie produced Neighbor To Neighbor: Family Music For Sandy Relief, a compilation album to raise money for neighborhood organizations on Long Island effected by Hurricane Sandy. This October will mark the one-year anniversary. Laurie reminds me that the recovery is ongoing and donations are needed.

Laurie is writing songs and plans to record a new album written collaboratively with children from her workshops. Her first album Groovin’ in the Garden is available on her website, CD Baby, Green Door Magazine HQ and at local retailers throughout the region.

FOR MORE INFO www.storylaurie.com 2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 27

WOODSHED | OBSCURE FACE

WHO IS OBSCURE FACE?

BY JAMES BEAUDREAU of jamesbeaudreau.com

I read a lot of music reviews. Most days I trawl a few popular websites, keeping an eye on what’s hot, sometimes finding new things to listen to.

Lately I’ve noticed a lot of albums showing faces in the cover art, faces that are obscured in some way. Whether it’s through double exposure or other graphic effects, or whether the face is hidden by something in the photograph, the result is the same: a distortion, or as I’ve come to call it, Obscure Face.

The first thing I wondered was whether or not there are enough examples of it to constitute a trend. I believe there are, and they’ve been coming with amazing frequency this year. The second thing I wondered was, how new is it? A quick survey showed that there have been examples of Obscure Face in pop album art at least since the 60s, but it has never really been a meme until now. And it has never had quite the same tone or effect as the current examples do.

The earliest example of an Obscure Face cover here is Andrew Hill’s Compulsion (1965) by iconic album designer Reid Miles.

The image makes sense.

Compulsion: the same thing over and over again, and in a haphazard, rough, beyond-conscious-control way. The illustration and title are a unified message.

With Trout Mask Replica (1969) we have a photo that is nonsensical, grotesque, and confrontational.

Captain Beefheart is posed for the camera, facing forward, sort of waving, but also thumbing his 38 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

nose at us. It’s playful and humorous, but aggressive too. The Captain is hidden behind a fish head, and his intentions are unclear, but he’s aware of the camera and is gesturing to us. The message is ambiguous, but there is communication.

Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters (1974) is a more playful cover. The head is like a tribal mask but it is also a piece of music gear.

There’s always something unsettling about the artist being masked. Designers know this and have a way of managing the discomfort.

If you look at the back of the album, there is a similar photograph, except that Hancock is unmasked. We want to know that it really is Herbie on the cover under that mask, and that he’s all right.

It’s the same thing with the iconic Peter Gabriel cover (1980) by the Hipgnosis studio. If you know Peter Gabriel’s music, you know he’s got a strong subversive streak. He uses pop style to get a message across that is not necessarily “pop.”

On the cover, Gabriel is undermining the idea of the pop star by distorting the most recognizable, salable piece of himself: his face. He’s creating a divide between the music inside the album and the idea of the attractive, enviable person on the outside. The artist becomes a frightening sentry posted at the threshold of the music.

But there’s a limit to how much of this kind of distortion we can take, and like the Herbie Hancock cover, this one too has a photo of the non-distorted Peter Gabriel on the back.

Speaking of subversives,

Roy Harper is a nonconformist musical poet par excellence. It’s no surprise that we find him erasing himself on the Valentine (1974) cover, also designed

by Hipgnosis. Harper’s ambivalence about his position as a public figure, a commercial agent, and a commodity is as clear as can be.

The Soundgarden (1989) cover brings up another key element of the Obscure Face meme: voyeurism. The photo shows Chris Cornell lost in the music onstage.

He’s not composed, nor should he be, because he’s in the midst of powerful music. The photo captures him at a point where he’s completely wrapped up in performance and unaware of the camera. We have this feeling of looking in on a private moment, even though he’s on stage. This voyeuristic gaze gets more complicated in current Obscure Face designs.

The Dead Weather cover (2009) is the most recent precursor to our trend, and it shows another key theme: the artist as sacrifice. The Peter Gabriel and Roy Harper covers are speaking to us directly about ambivalence and self-sacrifice, but The Dead Weather artwork is not speaking clearly. The woman in the photo is blindfolded. Has she been kidnapped? She can’t see, though we can see her.

Why is she presented to us in this way? Why was a blindfolded woman, with an expression as if she just emerged from underwater, the choice for the central image of the album?

It is our culture’s obsession with fame that is reflected in the art: the self-absorbed

artist is beyond any direct communication with the public and ambivalent about his position. The abdication of the artist’s traditional role as storyteller and communicator leaves a hole, and the hole gets filled with an all-obscuring ambivalence: a lack of clear intent, and a lack of clear action. The artist makes an idol of himself and comes to us not for worship, but, because of the weight of the ambivalence, for sacrifice.

OBSCURE FACE TODAY Past influences in album design came from Hollywood, from LIFE magazine, from Andy Warhol, and from the advertising industry. The patron saint of this new trend, however, is Francis Bacon (1909-1992). His paintings present raw, anxious and emotionally challenging images of heads, bodies and faces in motion and in various states of distortion. Subjects aren’t solid in Francis Bacon’s paintings. The overall mood is one of horror, of images being unreliable and slippery.

Looking at the Beach Fossils (2013) or Benjamin Damage (2013) cover art, you see something like the multiplicity of faces and heads in Francis Bacon paintings. It’s the same with the James Blake (2011), Psychic Paramount (2011) and Mikal Kronin (2013) artwork. These are grotesque human conglomerations. In many cases, it’s hard to parse where one person, or feature, ends and where another begins.

The David Bowie (2013) example is particularly

heavy handed. The idea of the cover is to set aside the artist’s own past. But it doesn’t just do that; it is also obscuring a piece of our shared cultural history.

What is especially harsh is that the iconic image is replaced by nothing more than a white square with a line of text in it. This white box tells us that no more art is required; that half-thought-out design is adequate, and that we, as people and as a culture, deserve no more. The recent Kanye West album is another example of extremely under-designed packaging.

So what is Obscure Face telling us?

It’s telling us that the artist has forgotten that she’s here to communicate. It’s telling us that the artist can be partially observed and admired, but only under a controlled campaign of obfuscation. Obscure Face is saying that we are not participants in the music; that we’re expected to keep our distance. At best, Obscure Face is saying that the artist approaches us under cover, and that if we want to participate we have to accept the same conditions. The artists are disowning their art, and we are required to disown our need for human engagement.

Obscure Face is design that communicates without delivering any meaning. It presents sacrificial objects to admire, little shrines to fame, and closed loops.

The only remaining step left on the aesthetic trail beyond Obscure Face is for the artists to fulfill their promise of absence – and stop producing art at all.

0

ALBUM COVER KEY Controls Precursors Obscure Face Ricky Nelson, Ricky Sings Again: 1959

ALBUM COVER DESIGNS ARE COPYRIGHT OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS.

Billy Squier, Signs of Life: 1984

David Bowie, The Next Day: March 2013

Ornette Coleman, Change of the Century: 1960

Josef Zawinul, Zawinul: 1971

Bruce Springsteen, Darkness on the Edge of Town: 1978

Paul McCartney, McCartney II: 1980

Phil Collins, Face Value: 1981

Madonna, Madonna: 1983

Bjork, Post: 1995

Mos Def, Black on Both Sides: 1999

Andrew Hill, Compulsion: 1966

Deep Purple, Machine Head: 1972

Herbie Hancock, Head Hunters: 1974

Roy Harper, Valentine: 1974

The Fabulous Poodles, Unsuitable: 1978

Peter Gabriel, Peter Gabriel: 1980

Soundgarden, Louder Than Love: 1989

The Dead Weather: Horehound: 2009

The Psychic Paramount, II: February 2011

Dirty Beaches, Badlands: August 2011

James Blake, James Blake: October 2011

JMSN, Priscilla: January 2012

Beach Fossils, Clash the Truth: February 2013

Benjamin Damage, Heliosphere: March 2013

Waxahatchee, Cerulean Salt: March 2013

Carmen Villain, Sleeper: March 2013

Justin Timberlake, The 20/20 Experience: March 2013

Rachel Zeffira, The Deserters: March 2013

ST 2 Lettaz, The G… The Growth & Development: March 2013

IO Echo, Ministry of Love: April 2013

Bleached, Ride Your Heart: April 2013

Mikal Cronin, MCII: May 2013

The National, Trouble Will Find Me: May 2013

Coma Cinema, Posthumous Release: June 2013

Sigur Rós, Kveikur: June 2013

Montag, Phases: June 2013

Kirin J Callinan, Embracism: July 2013

Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica: 1969

2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 39

THE BOOKSHELF | TANIA GROSSINGER

Memoir of an Independent Woman Introduction Looking Back My life, by many standards, can be described as unconventional. I grew up as the daughter of a single mother at the famous Grossinger’s Hotel in New York’s Catskill Mountains; married early, briefly, and disastrously; beach bummed in Mexico; spent the best part of the swinging 1960s doing public relations for Playboy; wrote four books and numerous travel articles; had a long-lived affair with a married man; crossed paths with Ayn Rand, Jackie Robinson, Hugh Hefner, Betty Friedan, Tim Leary, and Elizabeth Taylor; and survived more dramatic escapades than I probably deserve. What I didn’t have, by choice, was a child.

As a teenager I assumed, as did most girls my age, that I would grow up, marry, raise a family, and, of course, live happily ever after. Real life intervened. It was not that I didn’t have maternal feelings, that my career came first, or that I never loved a man profoundly enough to bear his child. My decision was based on intuitive knowledge, a deepseated, almost molecular awareness that even as my biological clock gave me the choice, not having a child was the wisest path to take. The reasons run deep, as do most things of value in life, and only now am I beginning to understand how complicated they were.

As I reach the age where there is more to look back at than forward to, I can’t help but reflect on how different my life would have been had it gone in another direction, had I not been so dreadfully afraid, despite my many accomplishments, of not being good enough to raise a real daughter, of passing on to her the detritus of my emotional past. But that was years ago.

Things are different now, and though I proudly stand behind all the choices I’ve made, I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit to moments when I find myself starved for an emotional connection that only a child can bestow. That, of course, I will never have. As an alternative, however, I have Natasha—the daughter who exists solely in my imagination and heart.

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Knowing this will be my last letter to you, Natasha, saddens me more than I anticipated. Through this one-sided correspondence, I’ve made an attempt to share and make sense of my life, only to discover that lives may not be meant to be made sense of. Truth, I’ve learned, wears many costumes and speaks in many tongues. It does not automatically set one free, no matter how desperately one wishes it to. Memories can be tricks we play on ourselves, and reexamining my past has proven more complicated and challenging than I imagined. At times it’s been as if I’m writing about someone I’m meeting for the first time. I’ve been so many different people in so many different situations in so many different places that one needs the skills of a magician, which I most definitely am not, to pull it all together. I didn’t have a life; I’ve had lives. I’ve been many Tanias, some daring, some controversial, some exemplary, others embarrassing, but altogether it’s been one incredible ride, one on which I look back with amusement and pride.

Without doubt the most important choice I made was not to have a child. The desire to create a life, to bring a new person into the world who might make it a better place, to give love in undreamed of ways—that feeling never went away.

In my house of wishful thinking I always pictured a gaggle of kids. Our home would overflow with laughter and love; holidays would be filled with family and friends.

Everyone is entitled to their version of Oz. Oz was beyond my reach.

Having my mother for a mother, as you know, is the prime reason I never became one myself. Fear can be a very powerful force. Fear of turning out like my her, fear of turning into her. Motherly love.

Unconditional love. So many questions.

What if, because I was my mother’s daughter, I wasn’t capable? What if I didn’t do motherhood right? Would I learn from her mistakes or unwittingly repeat them? My mother wanted to have a daughter she could love, who would be her friend, but neither seemed to come naturally to her. What if I turned out the same way? If, as experience showed, my mother didn’t trust me, maybe my daughter wouldn’t either. Would I go overboard and fight too problematically for her love, as my mother in later life did with me? Would she follow my lead and turn away? Reject me as I rejected Karla? I didn’t mind making mistakes or taking chances with my own life, but I had no right to gamble with a child’s. A friend once suggested that the only way to prove I could be a better mother than my own was to have a baby of my own.

Motherhood as a competitive sport? What if I lost?

Memory cheats children.

Most psychologists agree that our brain cells don’t permit us to remember the very early years when, if lucky, we were coddled, cuddled, and cajoled and at the center of our parents’ universe. I have no idea how I was treated when I was a baby.

How desperately I wish I could have had at least one parent to whom I could say, “I learned about love from you.”

I never bought into the myths that unless I had a child I could never be a complete woman, that having kids was the meaning of life, that I had a social responsibility to reproduce for the good of the world, or even that children were good insurance for a parent’s future. It is the child’s responsibility, even before being born, to fulfill her mother, make her complete, and give meaning to her life? How frightening.

I never believed that the act of intercourse suddenly bequeaths nobility, that fertilization of an egg by a random sperm automatically confers maternal wisdom.

I cringed when the singer Rihanna said to her fans via Access Hollywood, “We’re reproductive machines; that’s what we’re here for.” Or when, in an episode of All in the Family, Archie Bunker’s wife, Edith, asked by her daughter, Gloria, what she would have done if she hadn’t had a baby, replies, “I don’t know. I can’t imagine.

That’s what woman was meant to do. That makes her useful.”

Giving birth is the ultimate act of faith.

No baby comes out of the womb with a returnable / refundable guarantee of “happily ever after” stapled on its bellybutton. Assurances are not automatic that he or she will grow up to be healthy, successful, thoughtful, kind, loving, and able to satisfy the parents’ as well as the child’s own needs. I actually love being around children. Maybe because I have nothing at stake, I am totally open to their innocence, spontaneity, emotional honesty, and purity of expression. When I’m alone, I do my best, if not always successfully, to nurture the child within, the one who views the outside world with trust and a sense of wonder, who sees both the forest and the trees and accepts the need to embrace both.

I feel such warmth watching parents interact with their children, especially when I see fathers cradle their baby girls. I wonder how old the baby is; is she less than six months? Did my own father hold me that close to his heart? I wish my mother had saved one photo of us together. Something I could hold on to in loco parentis. When I see families, I wonder what kind of father Neil would have been. We didn’t make a good husband and wife, but I have never doubted that he would have been a fine dad . . . with someone else. Art was the

EXCERPTS BY TANIA GROSSINGER

only other man I could have seen as the father of my child. He was the one man with whom I felt complete, who loved and embraced me so wholeheartedly that, had our situation been different, I might have even considered taking the chance. Easy enough to say, because I wasn’t called upon to make the commitment.

A life well lived does not mean not having made mistakes or wishing certain things had been different. I would not have married Neil as quickly as I did, if at all.

I’m sorry I wasn’t mature enough to pay attention to the warnings, to see things as they were rather than as I would have liked them to be. We should have gone for premarital guidance, we should have slept together before we married, but social mores were different then. And so was I. I still carry the hurt I caused Neil, that I verbally confirmed his deepest fear, that I told him he was unable to love. Even in dreams where he periodically appears, I try to apologize, and he pushes me away.

I always believed, as I’ve related before, that unless he forgave me, I would never be able to have a viable relationship with another man, and until I met Art, my suspicions were justified. If Art hadn’t come into my life, I can’t bear to think what it, what I, would have been like.

I still believe I made the right choice by not having a child. Weren’t there times I would have loved to have a family, loved ones with whom I could share my life? Of course. But I made a conscious decision to forgo that possibility and rarely looked back. Life is a series of trade-offs. Other people’s lives often seem more rewarding than our own. While I envied friends’ family get-togethers, they conceivably coveted my independence and freedom.

There is no right or wrong. We often wish for what others have. It’s very simple; we can’t always have those things. What we can do is make the best of what we have. That I believe I have done with a vengeance!

I do regret not giving enough thought, financially and emotionally, to what might happen when I reached a “certain” age.

Until recently, age was only a number: forty, fifty, sixty, sixty-five, seventy. But now that I’ve reached that “certain” age, I’m not quite sure how to see myself. I’m not sure how others see me. My mind is more agile than fragile, my sense of humor is intact, but my seventy-five-yearold body is taking on a life of its own.

Parts of it can’t be trusted (unstable knee, basal cell carcinomas here and there) and are attempting to dominate me. It takes more energy than I’d like to fight back. It hurts me that my body can’t be trusted.

Like when one realizes one can’t trust a lover. Or a friend. One can hopefully find a new friend, maybe even a loved one. But

where will I f i n d a new body? I inhabit it every day, every night. I hate it! Whoever coined the phrase “Golden Years” should be forced to live them.

My circumstances are different from those of my mother. I live surrounded by books, music, and memories in a rent-controlled apartment in the heart of Greenwich Village. It has been my home, workplace, and protective cocoon for more than five decades. My Facebook profile lists me as author, consultant, talk show guest, travel writer, and troublemaker, all of which I attest to with pride. I accept that being alone was my choice, and, please, take me at my word—the words “if only I had had a child” do not for a moment apply. I am not second guessing my life. It is wishful thinking, as unfortunately many people I know have discovered, that as long as one has family, someone will always be there for them. If only! I have had the good fortune at different stages of my life to be surrounded by treasured friends. I’ve lived through some painful deaths and was there when needed. I don’t want anyone to have to go through such traumas with me.

My close circle diminishes as time goes by, and I’ve come to realize that there are fewer and fewer people I can depend on. I’m not sure what the answer is, but hopefully I have time to figure it out.

I am also somberly aware that I am at the end of the line. No survivors to acknowledge in my obituary. My father and his family are long gone, as is my mother and hers. I stand as a testament to their being; no one stands to mine. My limited circle of life. Fini. I write these letters to have something of value to leave behind, to pass on, to leave my mark. And I look back on who I am.

And what kind of person am I? It is timely that I write this now, at the beginning of the Jewish High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Ten days of penitence. Days of awe. The one holiday that even secular Jews like myself observe. According to tradition, on the eve of the first night of Rosh Hashanah, the Book of Life is opened, and at the end of ten days, the fate of Jews all over the world are inscribed by God for the coming year. On the last day, Yom Kippur, the Book is sealed. Between those days, one looks into one’s self, prays for redemption and renewal, asks personal forgiveness of those one has offended, and seeks forgiveness of God. On the first day many perform the act of Tashlich, symbolically casting their sins (via nuggets of bread) upon the waters, in hopes they will be

forgiven. Yesterday morning, the first day of the Jewish New Year, I took the subway to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. In my pocket was a baggie of my multigrain sins. I had never done this before and found the symbolic cleansing of the soul rewarding.

I consider myself to be a decent human being. I try not to hurt others and apologize when I have. Whatever grievous sins I’ve committed this past year, I’ve committed against myself and will seek my own forgiveness. I will fast on Yom Kippur, I will attend services, and I will say memorial prayers in honor of both my parents. “Thou hast gone from me, but the bond which unites our souls can never be severed; thine image lives within my heart,” reads the Jewish prayer recited in memory of a deceased mother. The meaning is inescapable; I will do my best to respect it.

As I walked on the beach toward the breaking waves, a few resolutions came to mind: I will act on my instincts.

I will be more understanding of others’ dispositions—we all harbor demons.

I will check tendencies toward being petty and judgmental.

I will try not to disappoint others.

I will try not to disappoint myself.

I will try to not take it to heart when others disappoint.

I will try to not be so impatient.

I will not expect more from others than they can realistically give.

I will remember, as Art taught me, that it is the journey, not the destination, that counts.

I will keep in mind that if I’m not living on the edge, I’m taking up too much space.

I will not waste time I don’t have.

I will always drink the good wine first!

And so, Natasha, it is time to take my leave. I will miss you probably more than I know. Letting go has never been my strong suit. I’m not sure I’m ready to say goodbye. Thank you for being my partner.

Thank you for letting me open my heart.

Your appearance has made a difference in my life.

With love, Tania 2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 41

FASHION | MAYER WASNER

Pam Mayer, co-owner of Mayer Wasner, a designer clothing boutique in Narrowsburg, has a mantra: Quality Over Quantity. “There is a locavore foodie movement, but when is the clothing movement going to hit?” asks Mayer. Many of us know where our food comes from, but we often don’t know where or how our clothing is made. Karl Wasner, her husband and business partner, says, “People have grown up for generations with mass-produced clothing, so they don’t know what it feels like to wear something that fits properly.”

As a small boutique designer, it may seem hard to compete with the lower priced chain stores. But, quality that endures delivers a dedicated clientele. “The truth is that mass-produced clothing only lasts about one or two seasons,” says Mayer. Mayer works, plays and lives life in her designs, clothing which evokes styles that women can wear for years.

Educated at Pratt Institute and trained and mentored at J. Morgan Puett’s Shack, Inc. in New York City, Mayer designs contemporary clothing for women. “We make clothes in all sizes and all shapes,” says Mayer. Her clientele range in age from thirty to eighty, which is a testament to the simply timeless quality of her clothing. Her pieces are approachable, avant-garde, functional and fashion forward.

BY AKIRA OHISO PHOTOS & LAYOUT

BY BRIAN CAIAZZA

38 GREEN DOOR | FALL 42 SUMMER 2013

For the past twelve years, their boutique known as Enochian has been the premier fashion and style shopping experience in the Catskills.

Recently they have changed the name of the shop to Mayer Wasner, a name that is more sophisticated and emblematic of the clothing Mayer produces.

In a small town like Narrowsburg, Mayer knows everyone by name.

In the same way your barber knows how you like your hair or a restaurant knows “the usual,” Mayer knows her clients’ style, body types and sizes, allowing her to hand-make pieces.

Mayer buys all her fabrics from small mills. Her fabrics are dyed at Colorworks, a small dye house, in Ellenville, NY where she experiments with different dying processes to create color patterns inspired by nature. At first glance, her clothing may look unassuming, but look closer and her pieces become more interesting. “I design patterns so all of the fit, all of the coolness is built in,” says Mayer. “I don’t embellish anything in to it.” For example her shirts may have a forward cut over the shoulder instead of a standard top-of-theshoulder cut. The forward cut is one piece as opposed to a front and back sewn together. It’s a subtle aesthetic feature, but a dramatic structural one that accentuates shoulders and feels soft, sophisticated and luxurious.

You can wear an earthy dress with heels and an ornamental necklace to attend the opera or change into wellies and a floppy straw hat and work in the garden.

Mayer Wasner also curates a selection of leather accessories, shoes and men’s clothing from around the country.

PHOTOS: BRIAN CAIAZZA

FOR MORE INFO www.mayerwasner.com

2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 43

FILM | WOODSTOCK FILM FESTIVAL

FESTIVAL

FOURTEEN STORY BY GARAN SANTICOLA

An expansive yet singular vision at the 14th annual Woodstock Film Festival.

The Woodstock Film Festival has always been intrinsically connected to the landscape and culture of the Hudson River Valley and Catskill Mountain Region. When Meira Blaustein and Laurent Rejto founded the festival in 2000, they saw a unique opportunity to expose filmmakers to one of the most beautiful places in the country to live, visit and make their movies. In their 14th year, this vision has become expansive in its scope yet remains singularly focused on connecting people who love great films to a sense of place in this bucolic setting north of New York City.

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The 2013 festival, which will run from Wednesday October 2nd through Sunday the 6th, will encompass eight venues in five different towns: Woodstock, Rhinebeck, Kingston, Rosendale, and a new location at the Orpheum Theater in Saugerties.

Blaustein talks about the importance of including these satellite theaters beyond their four venues in Woodstock. “Of course,” she says, “the Town of Woodstock is where the festival first began. But then, as the years went by, we kept adding new towns to the point where it has become very much a Hudson Valley affair.”

She says that by expanding their venues, the festival is able to place a spotlight on the entire region throughout the five-day period at the height of autumn when they show their films. Beyond these five days, the festival offers year-round programming and a raft of educational initiatives.

PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE WOODSTOCK FILM FESTIVAL

One such initiative that began this summer is the festival’s collaboration with BCDF Pictures to host filmmaker meet-ups at producer Claude dal Farra’s Vinci Farm, a 30-acre estate in Ulster County that was previously an Arabian horse farm. Shortly after purchasing the place, dal Farra decided to partner with his brother, Brice, to convert the farm into a state-of-the-art production facility. In the past three years they have made eight films, including hit films “Liberal Arts,” “Bachelorette” and “Higher Ground.”

It was the beauty of the landscape that first attracted dal Farra to the region, and BCDF, which stands for “Being Creative Down on the Farm,” is committed to shooting as many of their films in the Catskills and Hudson Valley as possible.

“It’s a great place to shoot,” he says. “There’s a very good New York tax credit incentive to get people to make their films here, which benefits the region tremendously because those who shoot here not only help showcase the state but they also hire a lot of local people.”

The meet-ups involve filmmakers from the East Coast who have taken part in at least one production and are looking to gain insight into new avenues for bringing future projects to fruition. They come together for a day at Vinci Farm to share ideas and address challenges that might stand in the way of success.

Dal Farra says, “It’s really something that is important in the independent community to realize how interconnected people have to be to make things happen.”

relationship that will be helpful towards them and helpful towards us and everybody will benefit.”

Dal Farra shares Blaustein and Rejto’s vision of fostering a vibrant community of filmmakers in the region and says these meet-ups provide yet another opportunity to showcase the locale, but also the chance to demonstrate to participants “how rich this region is in filmmakers, in artists, in musicians, in the kinds of talented people who might contribute to their projects.”

Blaustein reports that the first of these meet-ups, which occurred on July 13, was a soaring success: “Saturday’s Developing Your Film Meet-Up at BCDF Pictures was quite amazing: An all-day workshop, delving honestly and openly into eight different film projects by eight different filmmakers who came from Brooklyn, Manhattan and various points of Upstate NY to participate and spend a day in the country. Claude dal Farra, president of BCDF, offered his exceptional hospitality throughout the day along with invaluable mentorship. Thoughts, feelings, information and insights were shared while breaking down the project each filmmaker currently is developing as well as putting it in the context of today’s state and business of independent film.

I believe it was an inspiring, educational and fun experience for all and I hope to hold more sessions like this one in the future.”

While such activities extend the life of the festival throughout the year, they also lead back to the five days in autumn when numerous filmmakers and those who are passionate about the arts descend on Woodstock and the surrounding area for a celebration of music and film.

This year’s festival will feature a wide variety of offerings, from the cutting-edge documentary “State of Control,” which details the struggles of Tibetan people under a Chinese police state, to the East Coast premiere of “Winter in the Blood,” a film by the makers of the indie hit “Slaughter Rule.”

Also having its East Coast premiere at the festival is the romantic comedy “At Middleton,” starring sisters Vera and Taissa Farmiga, and Andy Garcia.

Films that feature local settings include: “The Cold Lands,” about an orphaned boy trying to survive in the forests of the Catskill Mountains; “Doomsdays,” a pre-apocalyptic comedy about a couple of vagabonds roaming the Catskills; “To

Be Forever Wild,” which follows a group of artists as they explore the Catskills; and “Aerodrome,” a short documentary that features the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome.

“Pasadena,” a film about an eccentric family coming together for a tumultuous Thanksgiving weekend, starring Peter Bogdanovich and Cheryl Hines, will have its New York premiere at Woodstock; Mariel Hemingway will be featured in Barbara Kopple’s “Running from Crazy,” a documentary about the history of mental illness within the family of Ernest Hemingway; and filmmaker Mira Nair will receive this year’s Meera Gandhi Giving Back Award for her philanthropic work in Eastern Africa.

Blaustein explains the electric atmosphere the festival brings to the area: “The palpable energy that is formed in the streets of the towns where the festival is held with all those filmmakers, actors, musicians, writers, producers, etc., hanging out in cafes, restaurants, streets and, of course, movie theaters. It’s quite amazing.” She also emphasizes the sheer number of films screening this year: There will be over 130, originating from all over the country and the world with a vast array of styles and genres, including animation, documentaries, shorts, music documentaries, world cinema, and poignant, edgy and artistic indies. Events will include parties throughout the week, concerts tied to the films in the program, and many special panels and talks featuring top industry professionals.

A full pass to the 2013 Woodstock Film Festival costs $750 and the benefits include priority seating for screenings and panels, as well as access to parties and the Saturday evening awards ceremony.

A number of other packages are available for those who contribute to the festival’s Capital Campaign. Tickets are sold separately for musical performances, and any single screening or event is reasonably priced.

The Woodstock Film Festival affords great opportunity to visit venues where fiercely independent filmmakers are sharing their latest work, and the fall foliage beckons you to an experience of viewing both landscape and film in mutual transformation.

FOR MORE INFO www.woodstockfilmfestival.com

Of their collaboration, Blaustein says: “We’ve done a lot of things together. We’ve shown a number of BCDF films and we are in very close contact. We’ve been trying to maintain and grow a symbiotic

2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 45

CREATIVES | PS 209

VESSEL PS 209 PS 209 Art Gallery in Stone Ridge, NY continues to explore thematic artistic interpretations with their third exhibition Vessel, which opened August 16th and runs through October 6th. Curated by Lori Van Houton, Vessel features the works of renowned artists Lara Giordano, Tim Rowan, Christopher Seubert and introduces emerging artist Joseph Pine.

PS 209’s Emerging Artist Program gives younger artists the opportunity to work with the curator to present a solo exhibit and run the gallery during the exhibition.

The four artists explore containment from varying view points and mediums. The work they produce is equally varied ranging from using the vessel as classical form to defining a person as a container of particular qualities or feelings.

Lara Giordano’s recent work explores the bridge between her long-time interest in sacred geometry and her continuing commitment to the reconciliation of opposites. Her passion for alchemy and philosophy inspires Lara’s artistic process and vision. “I am the scribe, sitting down with my compass

and ruler. I start with a simple geometric transformation and end up creating a link to the past, the present and the future.

Her recent work creates different realms, a vacillation between in and out, interior and exterior, space and negative space. “These Vessel drawings emerged from my practice of Sacred Geometry and my necessity to explore the ambiguity of the picture plane,” says Giordano.

“A vessel contains and bestows.”

Tim Rowan starts with raw clay and fires his pieces in a wood kiln.

He spent two years in Japan as apprentice to ceramic artist Ryuichi Kakurezaki.

The textures, color and surface vagaries he creates are reminiscent of a Japanese tea set or an ancient earthen container.

They are archaic and elemental.

“The vessel is a form that I have been interested in since my initial interest in pottery over 20 years ago. It continues to fascinate me. It is rich with metaphoric associations yet also may be experienced viscerally.”

Christopher Seubert is a contemporary painter, draftsman,

46 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

BY AKIRA OHISO

printmaker and educator.

He is a student of the old masters where the still life is process and masterpiece.

“By capturing the way light and shadow describe form, I create volume and depth in a two-dimensional space,” says Rowan.

“My objective is to create dimensionality, breathe life into my work, represent beauty and hopefully forge an intimate and fulfilling relationship with the viewer.”

Emerging artist, Joseph Pine, recently graduated from SUNY New Paltz with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He is a metalsmith who pushes the traditional meanings and uses of vessels. By employing techniques to deform and skew the utilitarian hollow vessel form, Pine’s work confronts and belies traditional designations.

“The vessel acts as a container of matter, memory, thought, and identity,” says Pine.

“By scrutinizing what it means to be a vessel, I attempt to challenge these designations.

Containment and interiority are linked in my work, exploring the wall as the point of discrimination between inside and outside, self and stranger.”

FOR MORE INFO PS 209 3670 Main St Stone Ridge pspace209@ gmail.com

From Top Left, Clockwise: Tim Rowan, Untitled, woodfired native clay, 7” x 10” x 14” Joseph Pine, Interior # 4, copper, 5” x 5” x 5”, 2012

Christopher Seubert, Clementine With Glass, Oil on Linen, 14” x 11”, 2009 Lara Giordano, Vessels, ink and graphite on paper, installation view, dimensions variable Ink and graphite on paper, 2013

M. SWITKO

CREATIVES | BOOK BINDING

PAPER MOON

Books as Treasure

BY GARAN SANTICOLA PHOTOS BY KEITH FERRIS

T

he Village of Hobart on the West Branch of the Delaware River has been transforming itself into a book town over the past decade, and the recent addition of Paper Moon Bookbinding seems to root their community in the tradition of book arts like never before.

Amy Morris Pickens says that when she learned of an open storefront in Hobart, she knew it was the perfect place to move her business. A visitor to the Catskills for many years, the veteran bookbinder was well familiar with the book renaissance taking place in Hobart.

She got into bookbinding after college and found work in libraries, archives and edition shops, where high-end books are produced by hand with the finest quality materials.

She says of these shops, “It’s really a strange subsection of the book trade, which has a lot more in common with the art market. These are books that are many thousands of dollars, so they all go to high-end collectors, libraries, museums, art museums, and places like that.”

Pickens refers to her craft as book arts in order to set her technique apart from mass-produced books. Hand bookbinding dates back for centuries in Asia, Europe and the Middle-East, and for a long time such tremendous creativity went into production that books were viewed as near priceless treasures. With the advent of factory bookbinding in the 19th century, the focus of publishing shifted from the artistry employed to create books to the utilitarian purpose they serve as vehicles for disseminating information.

48 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

PHOTOS: KEITH FERRIS

The work that Pickens did in edition shops, she said, enabled her to hone her craft as a bookbinder; this vocation demands not only high quality books, but also a high level of production. “After a few years,” she says, “your hands really sort of learn what to do.”

After getting married, Pickens and her husband moved to California where she started her own hand bookbinding business. Eventually, the couple decided to move to the Catskills.

Initially, she found no available storefronts to rent in Hobart, so she worked from home for awhile. As her business grew, Pickens set up shop in Andes until space finally became available in Hobart in 2012.

One year in Hobart, Pickens is exuberant about being part of the only community in the country east of the Mississippi to call itself a book town.

The very concept of a book town originated in 1961 at Hay-on-Wye, a small market town in Wales. The place was sleepy and overlooked until an entrepreneur bought several buildings and turned them into bookstores. Today, more than 30 independent booksellers populate the town, attracting scores of collectors of books, prints, and other works on paper.

The Hobart Book Village, as they now call it, is looking for a similar genesis. Adams Antiquarian Books was the first of the current shops to open in 2000, and today six used and antiquarian book businesses line Main Street.

Readers and collectors of all stripes can already find a wide variety of offerings to suit their interests.

An atmosphere of collegiality pervades the shops of Hobart.

“Everyone is very cooperative,” says Pickens, “As a book town we all work together for advertising, marketing, and organizing events, like our Festival of Women Writers this September 6th, 7th, and 8th, and our private seller’s day, which is held every summer.

And if someone can’t be in their shop on any given day, the other book sellers will try to be available to let visitors in and keep the shop open.”

Many book enthusiasts are

thrilled to find a traditional bookbinder in the same village where they come to quench their bibliophilic passions, and much of Pickens’s business results from simple foot-traffic.

Her services include repairs and restorations as well as original bookbinding for those looking to publish one-off works of art.

And the front section of her store features specialty items such as handmade notepads and custom stationery.

The Hobart Book Village seems similar to the type of keepsake book that people often bring to her for restoration. It is worn with age, but it is also well-loved, and now it is in the process of being revitalized, so that the place and its immense collection of special books can be treasured for years to come.

In the current digital era of Kindle, Pickens sees a shift back to the idea of published books as treasures. She says, “If the digital revolution, like the industrial revolution, changes books, that’s okay with me. If single-use books go largely to the digital world, I think that’s great. If people are reading digital books for information or entertainment or convenience or for travel, that’s terrific, because it means there’s less production of stuff that is only going to get used once and thrown away.

“But I don’t think that means the end of books as art, or books as décor, or books as an experience in the same way that sometimes you dress up because it feels great and you look great and you’re doing something special.”

0 FOR MORE INFO On Main Street, State Rt. 10 Hobart, New York Paper Moon Bookbinding papermoonbookbinding.com Hobart Book Village hobartbookvillage.com 2013 FALL | GREEN DOOR 49

CREATIVES | PUPPETEER

STORY BY AKIRA OHISO PHOTOS BY KELLY MERCHANT

cutting loose Puppeteer Ramona Jan lives with no strings attached.

A suburban teenager from Livingston, New Jersey, Ramona Jan would sneak into Manhattan, unbeknownst to her parents, to play guitar and sing on the streets of New York. Raised on Punk and New Wave, Jan played in bands like The Comateens, Dizzy and the Romilars and Venus Flytrap.

She became a seasoned street busker when she toured Europe with Venus Flytrap. “We were three girls before the Go Go’s were around, playing instruments and singing three part harmony,” says Jan. “We dressed like whores and raked it in.” They were arrested on several occasions back when it was illegal to perform on the streets for money.

Still in high school, she auditioned for the Herbert Bergdorf Acting Studio and was accepted. She says she was not a very good actor, but had a knack for putting

50 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

herself out there. Call it her punk sensibility, but Jan is fearless and quite comfortable with falling flat on her face - like stage-diving into a Tuesday night crowd at CBGB’s.

“I’m the kind of person that if I get an idea I don’t think beyond that.”

When Jan lived on the Upper West Side, she had a first floor balcony, which she thought would make the perfect stage. Her two roommates were Stanislavsky method actors. “Every day there was this whole barrage of women with baby carriages going to the park,” says Jan. “We need to do a puppet show!” she exclaimed.

Reality Galaxy Puppet Theatre was born. They made their own puppets, performed two shows a day and actually made a living.

In 1997, she moved with her husband and child to Damascus, Pennsylvania. Jan opened Vintage Bling, an industrial art boutique, where she curates repurposed found objects. She has her own line of hats, lamps and handbags that patchwork her many lives as punk rocker, puppeteer, actress and artist. The beauty of her work rests in the overt histories

and the DIY philosophy. I can see Betsey Johnson or Johnny Depp wearing one of her hats or see one of her lamps in Marilyn Manson’s den.

She is a member of Yarnslingers, a local acting troupe, where she performs regularly. For one of the Yarnslingers’ performances she made a marionette and a crudelybuilt control mechanism. Soon she was approached to build a twelve-foot puppet for a local high school’s production of The Little Shop of Horrors.

In the world of puppetry, the control mechanism is a trade secret and very hard to master. She bought and studied six rare out-ofprint books on marionettes. She then found a series of YouTube videos by Dublin’s Grafton Street Puppeteer. She reached out to the puppeteer, but learned he was a recluse. She contacted Hannah Gorman, a puppet maker in the Czech Republic, where a traditional marionette scene thrives. Gorman had a control mechanism she was saving and gave it to Jan. The director of the renowned Harlequin Theatre in

London was reluctant to share trade secrets, but finally sent Jan some schematics on control mechanisms.

In the United States there is very little interest in marionette work.

Except for the movie industry, marionette work is not done on a small scale. “There is no one on the streets of New York doing it,” says Jan, surprisingly, where almost anything goes and competition is high.

Traditionally, marionettes talk to each other, but Jan’s puppets are cabaret performers. Her puppets have no set routine except performing their song.

The daughter of a jazz bebop saxophone player, improvisation has always been a part of her creative process and her life. “You have to study it like it’s a new musical instrument,” says Jan. “The puppets are a string instrument with drums because you have to do the rhythm as well.”

While her control mechanisms are crude in comparison to skilled puppet makers, they do what she wants them to do. Sometimes

PHOTOS: KELLY MERCHANT

on a life of their Like a modern-day take own. “In the middle of building them you Dr. Frankenstein, see they are going in a whole other direction; might want a her puppets are an you juggler but you get an alchemy of parts ice skater,” says Jan. She makes all her marionettes from with artistically found objects and materials. crude delineations. upcycled Like a modern-day she controls a puppet that would ordinarily take two or three puppeteers to maneuver, but, because she knows no other way, she just does it. “The best marionette operators are not always the most technically skilled,” says Jan. “The best marionette operators are people who wanted to be actors.”

Decades later, the self-proclaimed bad actress is finally acting. When Jan is on, the strings disappear and her audience forgets she is there.

One of her puppets, Lucinda Sparkle, started as a Burmese marionette from the 1930s. “It was a man and I turned it into woman,” says Jan. Her puppets

Frankenstein, her puppets are transmuted from common parts to a magical creation with artistically crude delineations. Her puppet, Dagney Steambrink, was once a Brat Doll. She searches eBay for doll appendages. When Jan performs her puppets hang from a macabre metal frame, still, lifeless, until the hands are lifted and the spirit takes over.

Jan’s stringed troupe awaits.

0 FOR MORE INFO

ramonajan.wix.com/somestringsattached

HISTORY | ALFRED B. STREET

Of Angling & Autumn in Sullivan County

BY JOHN CONWAY, SULLIVAN COUNTY HISTORIAN

W

hile the tourism industry has prospered in Sullivan County for over 150 years now, the concept of fall foliage as a tourism tool is a relatively new one. The idea of promoting the changing colors of the leaves on the trees to encourage tourists to visit an area did not exist much at all before the late 1930s, and although both the Berkshires in Massachusetts and the Poconos in Pennsylvania were promoting fall foliage tours as far back as the 1940s, the Catskills did not begin to cash in on the idea until the 1950s.

Alfred Billings Street was born in Poughkeepsie on December 18, 1811, and moved with his family to Monticello in 1825.

There, his father, Randall S. Street, formerly a Major in the U.S. Army and a prominent Dutchess County politician, set up a law practice on what is today Broadway. Alfred published his first poetry at the age of fourteen, when William Cullen Bryant included several of his works in the New York Evening Post.

Street practiced law with his father for a time, was New York State Librarian, served as editor of the Northern Light magazine, and was one of the most sought-after orators of his time.

“The literary fame of (Street) fully warrants the propriety of the following pages,” Quinlan wrote, “We are aware that

Left: An original illustration from the book, The Poems of Alfred B. Street, Clark & Austin, 1845. The caption is a line from Street’s poem, “The Falls of the Mongaup,” and reads, “Rocks, woods and waters, wild and rude-- A scene of savage solitude.” (A.W. Graham) Right: The Mongaup Falls, the subject of two of Street’s most well-known poems, was touted as the third highest falls in New York State. (Souvenir Post Card)

in awarding unqualified praise to Alfred B. Street, we transgress our rule in regard to commendation of the living; but in this case we but echo a universal sentiment, and therefore do not fear censure.”

Like his father, he was politically active, a Whig loyal to Henry Clay and a vocal proponent of Clay’s “American System” of tariff protections. It was a position which sometimes proved unpopular in Sullivan County, which at the time was a stronghold of Andrew Jackson supporters.

Street was so identified with and appreciated for his word-portraits of nature’s majesty that in reviewing one of his volumes of work, “The Protestant Churchman” noted that “he describes nature as seen in the depths of our noble forests, by the side of our glorious rivers, on the lakes and mountains, and he thus strikes a chord to which every heart responds.

Street wrote most of his poetry – as well as numerous articles on fishing for various sporting publications – in an era before the tanneries, the railroads, or the resorts, and spent a good part of his life promoting the beauty of the area by writing glowingly about it. Even before tourism made its initial impact on the region’s economy, his vivid depictions of the attractiveness of local landscapes, and of the abundant fishing opportunities here did much to encourage the earliest vacationers to make Sullivan their destination.

“With all his truthfulness and life-like painting, with all his vivid and spirited sketching of nature, animate and inanimate, we feel that his genius would have been wasted and misapplied upon any other than home (American) scenes and events, and we are so far jealous of his muse, as to hope that his fine poetic powers will never be diverted from illustrating the history and scenery of his native land.”

His rise to prominence among American poets, even in England, which seemed to harbor a disdain for anything from America purporting to be literature, was meteoric, and before long Street 52 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

Street himself acknowledged that he preferred to write about nature, and he credited spending his formative years in and around Monticello with inspiring him to do so.

“The early life of the author was spent in a wild and picturesque region,” he wrote of himself in the preface to the first collection of his poems.

“Apart from the busy haunts of mankind, his eye was caught by the strongly marked and beautiful scenes by which he was surrounded, and to the first impressions thus made may be attributed the fact that his subjects relate so much to Nature and so little to Man. Instead, therefore, of aiming to depict the human heart, he has endeavored to sketch (however rudely and imperfectly) the features of that with which he was most familiar.”

He wrote often of such well-known Sullivan County landmarks as the Mongaup Falls – which rated two of his better known poems – White Lake, Kiamesha Lake, the Willowemoc and the Callicoon Creek.

The changing world of autumn was one of his favorite subjects. The collection of his works published by Clark & Austin in 1845 includes such titles as “A September Stroll,” “An October Ramble,” “An Autumn Landscape,” “Indian Summer,” and “The Callicoon in Autumn.”

Perhaps none of Street’s poems better illustrates his preference for the fall than October Ramble, written around 1840, before Sullivan County’s natural beauty had been spoiled by the rise of the tanneries, the railroads and the resorts.

A glorious afternoon; the moving shades Have wheeled their slow half-circles, pointing now Toward the sunshiny east; a shadow haze Trembles amidst the azure overhead, Deepening to purple at the horizon’s skirts.

Nature is smiling sweetly, and my feet Are wandering in the pleasant woods once more.

Keen nights have told of Winter on its way, And Autumn from the dark gaunt trees has drawn, (Save a few shreds upon the beech and oak) His gorgeous robe, and cast it o’er the earth For Indian Summer’s glimmering form to rest Awhile upon it, ere the blighting frost And muffling snow. More golden is the sun Than in its summer radiance, and it throws Its charm on all around. Along this path I tread, light-hearted, glad to be alone With nature. Beautiful and grand art thou!

The poem continues for more than two pages, with each line providing a look at the majesty that nature bestowed upon the county as only Alfred B. Street could.

An avid sportsman, who spent much of his adolescence hunting and fishing throughout Sullivan County and then writing about it, Street’s articles and poems about those sports were among the first to extol the virtues of the forests, lakes and streams of the region.

THE MONGAUP FALLS: SOUVENIR POSTCARD ; AN ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATION FROM THE BOOK, THE POEMS OF ALFRED B. STREET, CLARK & AUSTIN, 1845.

That is not to say, however, that Sullivan County’s autumnal beauty went unappreciated before then.

As early as 1825, the poet Alfred B. Street was an unabashed booster of the natural beauty of Sullivan County in general, and especially of the magnificence to be found in the forests of the Shawangunk Mountains and the Delaware Valley, of the Beechwoods and the Neversink Gorge as the leaves took on a wide array of colors under fall skies.

was regarded among the finest descriptive poets of his day. Critics rated him at “the top of his class” and ranked him with Bryant and Emerson and Longfellow. Such were his attainments that James Eldridge Quinlan, in his History of Sullivan County, willingly violated his cardinal rule that “it is not the province of the local historian to write freely of the living” by devoting a number of pages to Street.

One of his best known poems about the sporting life is entitled, simply, “Angling” – other titles include “Deer Shooting” and “Fowling”– a short piece that first appeared in print in 1845, when it was included both in the magazine, American Angler’s Guide, and in the aforementioned Clark & Austin anthology, entitled Poems of Alfred B. Street.

The poem begins: The south wind is breathing most sweetly today, The sunshine is veil’d in a mantle of gray, The spring rains are past, and the streams leap along Not brimming nor shrunken, with sparkle and song; ‘Tis the month loved by anglers– ‘tis beautiful June!

Away then, away then, to bright Callikoon!

It goes on to describe a fruitful day of fishing on the Callicoon Creek in an era when it was considered among the most productive and picturesque trout streams in America.

This poem, or portions thereof, has also found its way into print other times over the years, including in the 1867 Hurd & Houghton collection entitled The Poems of Alfred B. Street in Two Volumes, as well as Genio C. Scott’s Fishing in American Waters (1869), Charles Goodspeed’s Angling in America, and Ed Van Put’s Trout Fishing in the Catskills (2007).

Street wrote an article for Spirit of the Times magazine in 1845 entitled “A Day’s Fishing in the Callikoon,” and two years later wrote one for “Graham’s Magazine” he called “A Day or Two’s Fishing in Pike Pond,” about his exploits on what we know today as Kenoza Lake.

Alfred B. Street died on June 2, 1881, and while the landscape he admired so did not endure the lumberman and the tanner of the late 19th century saw to that - it has been reincarnated, to some extent at least, and a day or two’s fishing in Sullivan County, or a visit here in autumn is still awe inspiring.

PHOTO OF STREET COURTESY OF JOHN CONWAY

FOR MORE INFO www.sullivanretrospect.com

INTO THE WOODS | WINE & BEER

Fall Festivals

Autumn at Bethel Woods is a celebration of the earth’s bounty with exciting festivals.

BY AKIRA OHISO

Reaping What We Sow The annual Harvest Festival is a favorite regional event that takes place five Sundays in September. Each week features a theme: Rosehaven Alpaca Festival, Sullivan County Heritage Faire, World Celebration Day, Earth Day in Autumn/Live Well Be Well Event and Rustic for Home. The festival features local farm goods, artisan crafts, festival food and live music. The kids will love the arts & crafts, the corn and haze mazes and the pony and stagecoach rides. It’s the perfect day trip or weekend finale for city folks in the Catskills.

Hip Hops The first annual Craft Beer Festival and Chili Cook-Off will take place October 12 at 12:30pm. In a county where craft brewers and distilleries are popping up, this festival is a sign of the times in Sullivan County. 25 breweries will be available for sampling. Admission packages include access to live music, local foods, guest speakers and brewery products and merchandise. Check the website for admission packages and brewery lineup. A $15 designated driver ticket is available and includes admission to the Museum.

Grapes of Carafe

FOR MORE INFO www.bethelwoodscenter.org 54 GREEN DOOR | FALL 2013

PHOTOS: PROVIDED BY BETHEL WOODS

Wine connoisseurs rejoice! Now in its third year, the annual Wine Festival is officially a tradition in Sullivan County. It takes place Saturday, October 6 from 11am to 4pm. 20 wineries from the Hudson Valley and Finger Lakes region will be available for tastings and for purchase. There will be specialty foods, cheeses, craft vendors and live music to entertain guests sampling the fruits of our local vineyards in a historic picturesque setting. The tasting fee admission ticket is $15, which includes a complimentary wine glass. The designated driver fee is $5.

In a county where craft brewers and distilleries are popping up, this festival is a sign of the times in Sullivan County.

ENDPAPER | PETS

AMOS & WINTERBERRY PHOTO BY KELLY MERCHANT “SECRET LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS” SERIES www.kellymerchant.com

Amos had lymphoma and we knew he was going to pass, but he was well and happy most of the time. I knew I wanted to photograph him for the series, but I kept putting it off because I didn’t want to face his oncoming death. Two days before he passed I decided it was finally time. I set up the camera and was just about to call him when he jumped off the sofa and laid down exactly where I wanted him to be for the photograph. I placed the winterberry on him and he sat and looked directly into the camera the whole time. When I was finished he got up and went back to his sofa.

Winterberry means eternal life in the Secret Language of Flowers. This project has brought me so much, but this photograph of Amos is something I will treasure for my lifetime.

- Kelly Merchant

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PHOTO: KELLY MERCHANT

The Secret Language of Dogs