A wintry mix composite esub

Explore Hudson Valley JANUARY 2016 • ULSTER PUBLISHING • WWW.EXPLOREHUDSONVALLEY.COM

A Wintry Mix

Facing fears & a new future How's the Hudson Valley now?

Do colleges have a big effect?

Are there lessons in coffee culture?

Will we still be able to afford a home?

What to do if it doesn't snow?

Why I'm Still Alive Today

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was ten in 1966. My Uncle Ian took me skiing, which was about as close to religion as we got.

Every weekend all winter long we drove up from Bearsville to Belleayre which had, and still has, the best beginner’s slopes anywhere around.

Sure, I learned to snowplow. Then promptly forgot. I remember looking down on the one steep section from the slow-grinding chairlift, craning my neck and planning my attack. With idiots falling all over and between the moguls, you had to have a couple of different strategies and be ready to switch them around fast. One reason I never skied in a racer’s tuck was that it didn’t allow for readjustment. Further, it advertised an addiction to speed for which Ian would smack me on the back of my head. So I stopped skiing with him.

Full story inside

2016 2 | Winter Explore Hudson Valley

A new year in the neighborhoods age is parkland belonging to tax-exempt entities. effect upon the outlook of local residents, who, for With Majestic at the helm, expect more emphasis example, worked together to put up holiday decoin the near future on making Gardiner enticing rations for the season. to business relocations and development-friendThe entire town is benefiting from the Walkly and less on protection of its world-class open way’s success, but it’s not the only success story. n an increasingly metropolitan world, space and natural resources.

Lighting company Zumtobel will be staying put, northern and central Ulster County stand which saves approximately 200 jobs, while fellow out as a locus of small, tight-knit municipali2016 in Kingston lighting firm Selux is looking to expand its opties where there are also lots of newcomers, Overheard at a recent public event at Kingston’s erations, and cleaning company Servpro will be as those of us who have not been born here city hall were a couple of real-estate types talking setting up shop in the industrial park on Lumen are politely referred to. You can’t really unabout how commercial vacancies were starting Lane. derstand the complexities to dry up. While that may or may not be true (reResidents have been of Ulster County without al-estate types almost always like to say their busiless than keen on massive understanding its local ness is booming, or about to boom) the coming housing developments communities, and you year looks to bring a number of substantial projplanned to provide for fusometimes you can’t unects — commercial, residential and heritage-oriture needs of those workderstand its communities ented — to all three of Kingston’s districts: Upers.

Lloyd town supervisor New Paltz Times without understanding town, Midtown and the Rondout.

Paul Hansut came units neighborhoods and its Uptown is in the midst of transition, with many comfortably close to being A window into her life In with Maya Gold’s parents share insights on her suicide, launch foundation to help youth hamlets. So Ulster Pubnew restaurants about to open their doors in 2016. turned out in November the new New Paltz Town Board lishing asked those with This spring, a semi-pro soccer team, Stockade in favor of Claire Winslow. begins year with changes their ears closest to the FC, will take to the pitch at Dietz Stadium, addWinslow ran on quesground, our editors, reing what could be a very big draw to spring and tions of development, and porters and correspondsummer Saturdays. Word has it that Schneider’s the support she received ents, how they would Jewelers will be adding a wedding-gown business may be signaling a demosummarize expectations in the space just vacated by a pet-supplies shop. graphic shift away from for 2016 in the ten municAnd while it may not quite be finished in 2016, the Republican old guard ipalities with which they a new green grocer/funky foods mart intended in Lloyd. were most familiar. Here’s for the former Woolworth’s on Wall Street got a what they came up with. boost from a million-dollar state economic devel2016 in Rosendale opment grant.

Some might say that Fresh off its Lace Mill artists’ live-work space 2016 in New Paltz there are two Rosendales: Stride and glide project, RUPCO is looking to further improve The town and vila dynamic downtown, New Paltz Chamber of Commerce will offer Midtown with its Energy Square endeavor, which lage governments of New visibly revitalizing since new cross-country ski race at Minnewaska will turn the former Mid-City Lanes bowling alley Paltz are poised to take the anchor renovation of into a mixed-use housing and retail center. Expect on an entirely different the Rosendale Theatre major work on the high school, in the midst of a shape in 2016, mostly beand largely populated $137.5-million restoration plan. The city is also cause the new leadership by 1960s counterculture expected to decide this year on Building a Better is pledging to work tohangers-on and recent Broadway, an ambitious plan to vastly spruce up gether and have an openhipster refugees from the city’s main drag, including (controversially, in door policy. First-year Brooklyn. And neighborsome quarters) dedicated bike lanes. Look for the mayor Tim Rogers, leader of the government of hoods where families have lived on the same land Kingston Greenline rail the village, wears the seal of the surrounding town for generations and have trail, along the old Ulster as a lapel pin as a reminder of the interdepen“Repeal the SAFE Act” Hugh SPEND Reynolds TIME & Delaware rail corridence the two governments share. Both governsigns stuck into their WISELY dor in Midtown, to make ments are currently working out the details for a lawns. progress as well. joint municipal center, and it is expected that Visible signs of a Downtown, the Rondnewly elected town supervisor Neil Bettez will well-entrenched proSPORTS out’s two main museums work with Rogers to shepherd that project into gressive streak in RosenBack home, and loving it — the Hudson River Marplace by 2017. dale’s political culture itime Museum and the Where the village and town are putting pipes mainly manifest in Trolley Museum of New is another part of the big picture for 2016: plans the form of a commitYork — offer interesting for the Pilgrim Pipeline to move oil along the ment to greening pubthings to anticipate in Thruway on one end, and plans to shut down the lic infrastructure. The 2016. The Maritime MuseCatskill Aqueduct for maintenance on the other. process started sevum looks to make progress Anticipating two ten-week shutdowns of the aqeral years back when on turning its new wooden ueduct in 2017, the town is moving toward creatthe rebuilding of the boat building school (the ing a controversial water district on Plains Road to Rosendale Community former Rosita’s Mexican provide a backup water supply to municipal users Center incorporated susrestaurant) into an addand an emergency backup to the village in general. tainable design concepts Girls basketball’s first game in town is huge win over Pine Bush ed attraction. The trolThe new supervisor has also pledged to mend and renewable energy ley museum is planning fences with SUNY New Paltz, which occupies consources. The next coua 9/11 exhibit around its siderable land and economic space in the town. ple of years will also see CITY GOVERNMENT CITY GOVERNMENT Day 1 for latest acquisition: the last The Park Point housing development would have completion of a numUndone Steve Noble Police commission subway car to make it out provided much-needed housing adjacent to SUNY ber of major projects cancels Gallo’s ‘Let’s get to work,’ of the World Trade CenterNew Paltz, but the tax breaks granted for the projto upgrade aging infralast-minute KPD says the new mayor, promotions promising openness station on that fateful day ect were too much for local residents to swallow, structure in Rosendale, and respect in 2001. and the project died following several lawsuits. including 100-year-old But Bettez seems to recognize the importance of This year may also fidowntown water mains, the school to its host community. nally see movement in the a water filtration plant One major ongoing issue that plagues both the effort to package Robert and water tower. Retown and village is the intractable traffic on Main Iannucci’s 100 acres of placement of the leaky Street and beyond. A proposed water park and a prime creekside parcels town pool is on schedule CVS/Five Guys on the east side of town and the for sale and redevelopment. A few months ago, for completion in time for the 2016 swimming Mohonk Preserve’s Foothills project and the River he announced what he calls The Kingston Riverseason. to Ridge trail west of the Wallkill — both gateways port Project, a mixed-use development including to New Paltz — have residents and elected officials retail, restaurants, residences and recreational fa2016 in Gardiner asking if this area is ready for the potential influx New Gardiner supervisor Marybeth Majestic, cilities. A marina is said to be in the mix. of new tourism dollars with more traffic and a lack though a political neophyte, is a member by marof parking. Full environmental impact statements riage of one of Gardiner’s most entrenched mov2016 in the Town of Ulster for both projects could shed some light on these er-and-shaker families. Only time will tell whethThe county’s major sector of retail activity and issues. er the crossover vote that helped propel her into an important source of sales-tax income to its office is a trend with legs or just a fleeting reaction government, is undergoing something of a lo2016 in Lloyd to a personnel issue that got way too personal. calized recession. As 2016 began, Hudson Valley Careful management of the town coffers has kept Mall anchor Macy’s announced that its local store In the heart of Lloyd, the hamlet of Highland is the Gardiner town budget consistently under the would be one of 40 nationwide to be closed as of flourishing at the beginning of 2016. Every storegovernor’s two percent tax cap, but that feat gets this spring. According to the Westchester Business front is full, and much of that is the result of Walktougher to pull off every year — especially in a Journal, the shuttering of Macy’s will, once its way Over the Hudson — the success of which contown where such a large percentage of total acrejoined the ranks of numerous stores in that mall tinues to outstrip expectations. It’s had a marked

Ulster County community forecasts for 2016

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Highland

New Paltz

Highland

Schools

Highland’s Hudson Ale Works eyes spring taproom opening

Wildberry Lodge plans poised for completion

The new Highland Pet Resort, a one-stop shop for pet owners

Looking forward with Maria Rice and Deborah Haab

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THURSDAY, JAN. 7, 2016 VOL. 16, ISSUE 01

One dollar newpaltzx.com

N E W S O F N E W PA LT Z , G A R D I N E R , H I G H L A N D , R O S E N D A L E & B E YO N D

by Terence P Ward

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HE 194TH TOWN Board of New Paltz was called to order Monday night by supervisor Neil Bettez for its reorganizational meeting, a sometimes tedious affair during which standard policies and business practices are tweaked or reaffirmed. It’s also a time for the new administration to switch things up in terms of appointed positions and liaison assignments. Bettez named Kathy Preston, who owned the Treehouse gift shop on Church Street until it closed last year, as his confidential secretary. Dan Torres will be assuming the duties of deputy supervisor and backup contact, should Bettez be unable to be reached during an emergency. The board also named former council member Kevin Barry as a special prosecutor, and appointed village Planning Board chairman Michael Zierler to serve on the town’s Planning Board, as well.

The appointment of Zierler wasn’t without some hiccups, first of which was likely convincing him to take on the additional duties. It’s perfectly legal for someone who resides in both village and town to serve on both boards, and Zierler made it clear he had no intention of resigning his position with the village.

Another wrinkle came from town clerk Rosanna Mazzaccari, who insisted that the e-mail from long-serving member Continued on page 9

PHOTOS BY LAUREN THOMAS

Left to right: Adin Gold, Elise Gold and Mathew Swerdloff with Maya’s cat Macabee.

by Frances Marion Platt

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N OCTOBER 2, 2015, the New Paltz community was shaken to its foundations by the suicide of a bright, lovely, vibrant, socially engaged 15-year-old girl who seemed, from the outside, to have

everything going for her. “It could have been us” was the message repeated by family after family as they reached out to young Maya Gold’s parents, Elise Gold and Mathew Swerdloff. Three months later, Elise and Mathew have been able to piece together some fragments of the reasons why Maya took her own life -- a

tragedy that no one predicted or even imagined. And they are taking proactive steps to foster dialogue among local youth to help prevent such a disaster happening to another family, via a foundation created in Maya’s name.

Though Mathew was out of town the Continued on page 8

by Sharyn Flanagan

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VERONICA O’KEEFE

A 10K, 5K and 2K cross country ski race will take place at Minnewaska State Park on Saturday, February 6. Pictured are Mark Ruoff and Veronica O’Keefe of the Shawangunk Nordic Ski Association cross country skiing at Minnewaska State Park.

LITTLE MORE THAN a year ago, a group of Hudson Valley cross-country ski enthusiasts filed a Certificate of Incorporation as the Shawangunk Nordic Ski Association, their intended purpose to promote and support crosscountry skiing in the Shawangunk Mountains and beyond. Now the group has aligned their efforts with the New Paltz Regional Chamber of Commerce to sponsor the Chamber’s first-ever cross-country race event, the New Paltz Challenge XC Ski Race 2016 on Saturday, February 6 at Minnewaska State Park. The inaugural event includes a challenging 10K, a moderate 5K and a family-friendly 2K suitable for all ages and beginners.

“We reached out to the Shawangunk Nordic Ski Association to help with the nuts and bolts of this,” says Kathy Prizzia, Continued on page 10

Reflections on Gallo Looking back on four years of good copy

with

Almanac Weekly

An inauguration to remember

Splendid party

Pics of Uptown’s celebration SOCIETY > 8

COUNTY BEAT > 15

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK > 11

KINGSTON TIMES

PHYLLIS McCABE

KHS’ Chloe Chaffin is guarded by Pine Bush’s Alexyss Conley in Tuesday’s game.

BY CRISPIN KOTT

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he Kingston High School girls’ varsity basketball team has been a force this season, opening with what amounts to a seven-game road trip while work continued in their home gym at

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Kate Walton Field House. They went 5-2 away, and after Tuesday night’s dominant 60-38 win over Pine Bush, they’ve given Tiger Nation something to cheer about.

It may not have seemed like it would work out that way early on, as the Tigers

fell behind 9-2 in the first quarter against their Orange County Interscholastic Athletic Association opponent, partly because of the Lady Bushmen’s 6-foot-5 junior center Kate Cain. Cain, who finished with a triple double (17 points, 13 rebounds, 10

blocks) scored eight of those nine early points and snatched six rebounds in the first quarter. But that’s when Coach Steven Garner’s Tigers solved the puzzle.

No one on Kingston’s roster, which grows deeper with every game, is six feet tall. Sophomore Jaid Harrell, a reserve forward, comes closest, listed at 5-foot10, but with a wingspan that made things difficult for Cain on the offensive end.

“Jaid did an amazing job on her,” Garner said. “We were double-teaming Cain until she came in and was fronting her.

And when they’d try and lob it in, she was stealing the ball.”

Harrell was one of four Kingston players in double figures, scoring 10 points along with her six steals and two blocks.

Harrell’s defense over the second and third quarters was a key factor in Kingston turning the game around. Cain scored just two points over that stretch, the rest of her points coming late in the fourth quarter when the Tigers were already up big.

The turnaround was also predicated on the Tigers shutting down Jenna Genco, the Lady Bushmen’s starting point guard.

“In the second quarter and third quarter we outscored them 31-16, basically keeping the play in the center of the court, pressing and taking away their one good ball handler [Genco], making others make plays they couldn’t,” Garner said.

Chloe Chaffin (three steals) and Erica Prindle (three steals) each scored 12 points to lead the Tigers, while Logan Brennan (10 points) and Hannah Dorrian (eight points, four blocks) also contributed.

The balanced scoring was important especially as Dehzelle Foster, who led the team in their previous game, went scoreless against Pine Bush. Over the last three quarters, Kingston outscored the Lady Bushmen 50-27.

Kingston’s lopsided win was fueled by their defense, in part because of Cain’s presence on the opposite end of the court.

But Garner noted that the Tigers were also facing an uphill battle in called fouls. (continued on page 7)

BY JESSE J. SMITH

BY JESSE J. SMITH

ayor Steve Noble didn’t skimp on the ceremony Friday afternoon as he kicked off his administration on New Year’s Day with all the bells and whistles

THURSDAY, JANUARY 7, 2016 VOLUME 11; ISSUE 1 ULSTER PUBLISHING, INC. WWW.KINGSTONX.COM ONE DOLLAR

PHYLLIS McCABE

With wife Julie by his side, Mayor Steve Noble takes his oath of office, administered by state Supreme Court Judge James Gilpatric, at City Hall Friday afternoon.

— or at least bagpipes and drums. Noble’s inauguration ceremony also featured an open-to-all buffet in the City Hall foyer and a speech where Noble laid out his hopes and concerns for the first year of

his administration.

About 300 people packed into Common Council Chambers at 420 Broadway for the New Year’s Day ceremony. The (continued on page 7)

O

ne of Mayor Steve Noble’s first acts as the city’s chief executive was to undo his predecessor Shayne Gallo’s final personnel decisions — an 11th-hour blitz of promotions in the police department against the wishes of a majority of the police commission.

On Saturday, Feb. 2, his second day in office, Noble convened the four-member commission for a special session. The (continued on page 2)

Winter 2016 Explore Hudson Valley

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of Vertis Printing, near to fall by the wayside, cost dated in 2016 with travelers who have suddenly the Thruway interchange 72 workers their jobs. found short-term lodging through Airbnb and behind a strip mall. PitMacy’s departure, as other services that allow homeowners to make cock’s business, which well as the Christmas Eve extra cash by renting out a room, apartment or a sells rigging equipment, shuttering of the nearby whole house?

Out with the old... ropes and the like, will medium-box Sports AuThat trend was evident in the northwestern coroccupy about a quarthority, further dinged the ner of Ulster County in 2015. The debate will go ter of the vast building. morale of mall supporters on, both locally and on a countywide or perhaps He’s confident he can fill and local shoppers. Furstatewide basis, as to whether the Airbnb lodgthe rest of it thanks to ther clouding the skies ing should be subject to local room taxes that are the building’s location, over Lake Katrine is the currently paid by the more traditional hotels and physical attributes and prospect of both the mall motels. his plan to charge lower and TechCity, which beMany say this form of visitation was to the ecorents than other owners gan tearing down some nomic benefit of the region, allowing more peoof persistently vacant old IBM buildings as part ple to participate in events such as the Woodstock relics of the region’s inof at least the second amWriters Festival in April, The Phoenicia Internadustrial heyday. bitious plan for the site in tional Festival of the Voice in summer, the SumElsewhere, an 80-unit the past decade, seeking mer Hoot and other events at the Ashokan Cenapartment complex in big reductions in their aster in Olivebridge, Woodstock’s Comedy Festival Glasco was approved by sessments. Supervisor Jim and The Woodstock Film Festival in the fall. It the town government in Quigley foresees a possialso kept the restaurants and music venues full One road dept.

Solar: Buy or lease?

What’s happening?

A tribute to Jack Rose December. The site is the ble $50-million loss from throughout the seasons. to rule them all same as an earlier, ill-fatthe town’s $1.1-billion tax The other side of the coin though, has to do ed affordable housing base. with local infrastructure. Is it adequate to handle plan, which proved so But all is not gloom. A greater amounts of people flowing through the controversial it decided new 94-room Comfort area? Woodstock is already debating its parking the fate of the 2011 town Inn on Sandy Road has fees, and what new businesses should be contribsupervisor election. For been proposed by Bipin uting in the event that they cannot create what PLUS: ALMANAC WEEKLY years, developers have Patel, the owner of the the zoning law says should be necessary in on-site been proposing affordQuality Inn on Route 28, parking. able housing apartment complexes in various parts as well as the former owner of a nearby Howard Woodstock will be replacing the Yerof the town, though none were built. The fact that Johnson’s, recently demolished to make way for ry Hill Bridge in 2016. Its new Community Center this latest project, called Farmhouse Commons, Begnal Motors. Up Route 28, there’s Etain, the is up and running. Town supervisor Jeremy Wilwill be priced at market rates is significant — in dispensary for medical marijuana derivative for ber allows as how the town’s main buildings are the wake of the recession, every developer has said those having prescriptions under state law. in good shape. a project of this kind needs government subsidies Also, a small plaza to be called Kingston ComNew executive directors are settling into some to work. If that’s no longer the case (assuming it mons is being pitched for the parcel off the traffic venerable institutions such as the Woodstock ever was), the market is roundabout near where Artist’s Association and Museum, The Center for improving. the county tourism caPhotography in Woodstock, The Catskill CenW T ALMANAC boose currently oxidizes. ter for Conservation and Development and the WEEKLY 8 14 2016 in Olive Its backers, the New JerWoodstock Land Conservancy. The Maverick sey-based SAI Capital Olive will be seekConcerts will turn 101 in the summer, as the arGroup, envision multiing to correct leaks at tistic scene evolves increasingly beyond Woodtenant retail space, a its current town hall, a stock to the wider region.

Cyber bank, a fast-food place former Kingdom Hall, bullies Onteora 2016 in Shandaken and a coffee-and-doughand will continue with parents are upset with In Shandaken, the emphasis continues on nut place. In other news, its quest to seek better latest incidents stream restoration made necessary by Tropical the town and the county broadband service withA Storm Irene. The Ashokan Watershed Stream were at year’s end workin the community. GovManagement Program just completed a project to ing toward a deal to ernor Andrew Cuomo halt bank erosion on the Stony Clove Creek near place solar panels at the has promised that there Lanesville through a 2500-foot corridor heavicounty’s Resource Rewill be more money in ly damaged during the storm. Restoration of the covery Agency. The prothe coming year to seek stream channel cost approximately $1.5 million. posed 8300-panel solar better broadband. The In 2016, the Ulster County Soil and Water Coninstallation could protown will also be manThe front lines Coping with kids and drugs on Tinker Street servation District will work with landowners at duce around 2.6 megaaging a transition to a the project site to tailor plantings to their properwatts of electricity. better funded, partially T ties and revegetate areas. They will continue monpaid emergency-services itoring the site.

2016 in Saugerties operation.

Phoenicia will welcome back its popular breakAs 2016 begins, SauIn 2015. Olive resifast spot Sweet Sue’s, but will mourn the loss of gerties doesn’t look dents willingly acceptMama’s Boy Cafe and the area will miss Tiso’s much different than it ed a larger tax increase Family Restaurant in Mount Tremper. The comin the town’s budget, did in previous years. munity will still be seeking ways to grow despite with the town board In the long view, and its lack of a sewer system, after citizens voted not overriding the state’s compared to some othto accept the free one that New York City had oftax cap, to facilitate er nearby communities, fered to build in recent years. the improvement in its it’s clear the economy is 2016 will also be the first full year of operations emergency services. continuing to improve. for the Maurice Hinchey Catskill Interpretive CenThe empty storefronts ter, as its programs swing into full gear. in the village 20 years ago are a distant memory.

2016 in Woodstock Today, Saugerties remains a go-to entry for travel Will Woodstock, Olive and Shandaken be inunwriters looking to put together a list of towns that are quaint and authentic, though not so authentic visitors can’t get a decent cup of coffee.

“It seems that each year tourism gets better,” says Rhianna Rodriguez, who owns Main Street Restaurant. Like most business owners, Rodriguez doesn’t rely exclusively on tourism. She esExplore your employment options with The Arc of Ulster-Greene, job opportunities where you make a timates that out-of-towners account for about difference in someone’s life, bringing your special talents or hobbies to work to teach someone a new skill.

30 percent of the restaurant’s business. The popWe currently have full-time and part-time positions available in Kingston, Saugerties, Woodstock, New Paltz, ular restaurant would probably fine without the Ellenville, Catskill and surrounding areas. Previous experience in the Human Services field is not required; tourists. But other local businesses would likehowever, experience working with individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities is a definite plus. ly find themselves in the red without the annual fair-weather cash infusion.

A HS diploma/GED is highly desired; an Associates or Bachelors degree in Human Services, Psychology The single biggest reason for this continues to or a related field is a plus. An acceptable NYS Driver’s license is required. We provide an extensive and be HITS, formerly Horseshows In The Sun, which informative paid new hire orientation in a comfortable learning environment. has been attracting the well-heeled equestrian set and their support staff since 2004. HITS presApply today! ident and CEO Tom Struzzieri built Diamond Human Resources Mills Hotel and Convention Center in the heart of the village at the site of an old mill in 2012, and 471 Albany Ave, Kingston NY 12401 recently acquired Lynch’s Marina on the Esopus, FAX (845) 340-0463 • e-mail: jobs@ugarc.org which he plans to expand.

The other big purchase of 2015 came four Visit our website at www.ugarc.org for a months earlier, when Kevin Pitcock, founder and complete list of our job openings CEO of West Hurley-based Peak Trading Corp., purchased the 205,000-square-foot former home

saugerties times Ulster Publishing • Vol. XXI, No. 1 • Jan. 7, 2016 • $1

d o ug f r e e s e

Saugerties rang in the New Year with a ball drop at the intersection of Main and Partition

NEWS

ENERGY

COMMUNITY

COMMUNITY NOTES

Town officials say it’s inevitable that the DPW and Highway Department will be consolidated; mayor disagrees.

Bob Berman examines all the options, updated for current prices and incentives. Not your typical solar power article.

Fallen fireman remembered at the rink where he used to play before fire fighting absorbed all his energy.

Doggy fashion show, students of the week, scholarship info plus upcoming local events and group info.

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Resolutions hard to keep

Centered on OODSTOCK IMES Senterman

January 7, 2016 1 Kingston’s angriest mayor

WOODSTOCK TIMES www.woodstockx.com

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DION OGUST

Vol. 43, No. 1; January 7, 2016

by Lisa Childers

Continued on Page 4

Did Jay Wenk really take the oath of office, or did he cross his fingers. More Woodstock Town Board, Page 5.

by Brian Hollander

he answers are vague, the ideas fleeting. They come and go in conversation, they’re almost abstract thoughts...here’s how you get addicted, these are the culprits, and here are the victims of the scourge — easily available, cheap, devastatingly destructive heroin that appears to be in almost every upstate community. It’s an equal opportunity monster, having killed two young men in Woodstock in the last two months, who, by all reckoning, were beautiful, once full of promise. But they got caught in the trap and were sucked down the drain.

“At Harold (Reilly’s) funeral (December 29), there were so many kids there the same as Harold. You want to shake them, say he wasn’t doing anything other than what you’re doing,” says writer Martha Frankel. “One thing I do know...not one of them is having a good time. There’s a lot of unhappy kids walking around.”

Come visit the front lines. Provisions, the not quite a year old delistyle shop on Tinker Street, couple of doors down from the Center for Photography, where Emily Sherry and Anthony Heaney serve up sandwiches and coffee, and gourmet offerings for reasonable prices.

They have a pay-it-forward board, where customers can put down a little cash beyond their own purchases so that someone else can claim a sand-

DION OGUST

lleged Cyber-bully threats stemming from Onteora Central School District High School students, toward others in the school brought out a handful of parents at the January 5 board of education meeting at Woodstock Primary School.

Details are sketchy since school officials and School Board President Bobbi Schnell would not allow details to surface publicly on the matter, with Schnell describing it as an, “ongoing strong investigation.”

But parents pushed the envelope of the cyber incidents, referencing details during public commentary, with Schnell often interjecting asking them not to provide specifics. Parents voiced concern that not enough was being done punitively against the alleged cyber-bullies and that too few prevention programs exist at the Middle/ High School. Parent Rivka Tadjer said, “By serendipity I have the transcripts of this cyber incident and the extent of the threats are rape, death, and are racist [of] a very big nature. So the idea that it is being categorized as bullying — I would like the Board to consider that it is bigger than bullying, that it is an actual threat to the community.”

In a separate interview, Tadjer said that the incident did not happen on campus and that law enforcement was contacted.

The transcripts were printed from Instagram; six pages in all were provided to Woodstock Times and contain extremely graphic threats toward one female and her brother. It appears five students are threatening and teasing in graphic manner. Aside from detailed rape threats in the transcripts, they’re peppered with a great deal of profanity.

The victim was also accused of being from ISIS, asked to leave the country, called a “dot head,”

Anthony Heaney and Emily Sherry.

wich, or just a cup of coffee.

“The kids come in here — on a low day, two or three of them, on a good day, 15 to 20 kids from all over town will come in here to eat.

Sometimes they eat for free, sometimes they buy their food. Sometimes they eat for free one day and come in and buy their food the next day,” says Emily. “They’re our kids. They are absolutely our kids, Woodstock kids.

The youngest one is 11, the oldest was probably Harold.” Reilly was 24 when he died.

“It changes, their faces change, but

there’s a core group of them that we see regularly. They are not necessarily kids without parents, or kids without people who love them. But they are kids who don’t necessarily feel as if they belong to the community, and they are searching. Some are troubled and some aren’t. Anytime there’s food involved — you’re always hungry, right? It brings people. And because we have the pay-it-forward board, they know they can come in here without money and still get their food. It kind Continued on Page 6

Discover The Arc of Ulster-Greene New Year ~ New Possibilities

2016 4 | Winter Explore Hudson Valley

PHOTO COURTESY OF WIKICOMMONS

This caravan park may be in Beer, Devon,anEnglsih second home community, but it could be an example of coming Hudson Valley housing challenges as housing prices rise and wages stay stagnant.

A limit to growth Continuing challenges slow the region’s housing market

by Chris Rowley

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eople from America’s wide diversity are moving up into the Hudson Valley. They may be Hasidim leaving Brooklyn for Kiryas Joel or the new development in Bloomingburg, or Latinos seeking work in the Hudson Valley cities and towns, or young professionals, even “hipsters.” Susan Barnett, of Gary DiMauro Realty, whose clientele is mostly at the upper level of the market in and around Woodstock and Kingston, says, “Eighty percent of my buyers are NYC expats. This is their new full-time home.

Young people are priced out of the city and come here. The second-home phenomenon was, in my experience, a far bigger problem twenty years ago.

Now you have young, enthusiastic transplants in love with their new communities.”

That in-migration has effects on local people at all income levels, of course. While Harris Safier of Westwood Metes and Bounds in Stone Ridge notes that many foreclosure properties are only now coming onto the market, homeowners in Ulster County still reported 14.4 percent severely impacted by the cost of their homes in a recent report from Newburgh-based Pattern for Progress.

For Ulster County almost 40 percent of people are paying more for their housing than the recommended maximum of 30 percent. In Orange and Sullivan, the figures were similar, with Orange showing an even higher percentage of renters and homebuyers in the severe category and only 57.3

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percent overall in the affordable range.

attern for Progress underlines an issue that continues to intensify in the Hudson Valley, and indeed across the US. In a nutshell, housing costs are too high for those in lower income brackets. And this has a number of ramifications and consequences.

The low-wage sector, the younger generation starting out, and the elderly seeking to downsize are getting hammered the most by the region’s rising housing costs.

In the Pattern report, authors Joe Czajka and Michael Welti quote from a recent study by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies that found that a quarter of renters, or 11.2 million households nationally, were paying more than half their incomes on rent. The Harvard report forecast that these numbers will grow by at least 4.2 million in coming years, and perhaps by considerably more than that. Home ownership, on the other hand, has declined to where it was back in 1967.

In the Hudson Valley the issue of affordable housing appears even more intractable. A combination of zoning that requires single family homes on sizable lots and a regional dearth of public transportation effectively rules out affordable, multi-family housing in many areas. Nor are new homes being built at anything like the rate they were in the boom period before 2007. There is very little in the way of new construction applications, even with a recent uptick.

While unemployment today is finally back to pre-recession levels, wages and salaries have not increased. Even with moves to raise the minimum wage, it remains true that a single person, working at minimum wage level can easily find themselves using most of their income for rent.

P

Winter 2016 Explore Hudson Valley Where is government in all this? Doesn’t the federal government have a program to assist low income people with housing? Section 8 is a tenant based system that guarantees a landlord the rent and subsidizes that rent so that it is not more than 30% of the tenant’s income. It’s seen as an excellent program by some, because of its portability, the subsidy moves with the tenant, who can live close to work, or in the school district of their choice and so on. However, Section 8 is underfunded. Waiting lists in our area can stretch out to eight years. Conservatives generally oppose Section 8, and the currently composed Congress doesn’t favor expansion of the program.

Joe Stoeckeler Jr., village manager in Ellenville who also works in real estate, has experience with the issues. “There is a compression problem for landlords now,� he says. “Costs continue to go up, but the allocation from the Section 8 program has not kept pace.�

This tests the willingness of landlords to rent to those with Section 8 vouchers. Stoeckeler adds, “The number-one tenant would be a working couple, and after that, someone with Section 8.�

Colin McKnight of the Rural Housing Coalition notes that New York State is made up of a number of very different real-estate markets. Following 9-11, he says, “The Hudson Valley saw a huge in-migration of families from NYC, creating unprecedented housing demand that continues to this day.�

“Low-cost housing doesn’t have to be just large, dense types of housing,� states the Pattern report. “It can take the form of allowing ancillary apartments in existing homes, so-called ‘granny flats,’ and that can fit in perfectly well with zoning in rural communities.�

A lack of affordable housing may end up hurting property values, too, for a variety of reasons.

These could include a shortage of volunteers for local fire and ambulance services.

However, that’s beginning to change. Harris Safier notes, “We do see more liberal interpretations by zoning boards now for accessory apartments.

Special use permits ensure safe neighborhoods, and prevent negative impacts, as does off-street parking. Zoning boards have tended to be a little more liberal to allow these sort of uses than they were in the past.�

There’s also the matter of urban renewal in regional cities such as Newburgh, Poughkeepsie and Kingston. Might this change the equations in the Hudson Valley? “Those places are becoming attractive to those priced out downstate, but that

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doesn’t replace the need for affordable housing outside the cities,� Pattern notes. “There should be options for those starting out, for seniors who want to stay in the town they’ve lived in all their lives. There should be housing choice.�

Could the state alleviate the problem? “That would be part of the equation but it’s not the only answer,� says Joe Czajka of Pattern. “Options in rural areas would need to include more mass transit and we have to recognize that mass transit, everywhere is subsidized to make it work.�

Joe Stoeckeler in Ellenville reports a final promising trend. “In the past year, we’ve sold a few homes to people who were renting them. They ended up paying less. Most mortgages now are FHA, and with homes costing $140,000 or less with the FHA you need 3.5% down. So for between $5000 and $6000 you gain entry to the game of owning your own home.�

Sore Feet?

oning regulations in many Ulster County towns discourage multi-family and apartment building construction. Homeowners have a fear of losing property value if affordable housing, especially multi-family housing, is built in their neighborhoods.

However, the equation isn’t quite so simple.

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2016 6 | Winter Explore Hudson Valley

Dialoguing things forward Geddy Sveikauskas and Paul Smart talk about the Hudson Valleyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s future PS To start off, what should we consider the Hudson Valley?

GS The question is whether we include Westchester, and then Columbia and Greene. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s call it the nine counties. New York City is such a large part of the economy that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wise to include those counties closer to the city. Also, the number of people from Ulster County who commute to New York City is more than a couple of thousand, and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a considerable number. And those numbers are increasing all the time.

PS But do we include the Catskills? Sullivan County or Delaware County, where larger amounts of money are coming in through people with economic ties to the city?

GS Instead of people commuting to the city for work, these are people coming up from the city as second homers.

PS I remember coming up here 29 years ago and working for a newspaper out in Delaware County when all the stories we concentrated on tended to be about uncovering the older, lasting elements of the Hudson Valley and Catskills. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shifted in recent years to coverage of all the new things happening, and the new people moving in starting businesses, making art, and so on.

GS Give me an example.

PS The way that the City of Hudson has changed, or here in Uptown Kingston. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m thinking of this new food-court project in the old Woolworthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, or the rethinking of Midtown Kingston around UPAC into an increased arts presence.

GS Ulster County and the whole Hudson Valley have become part of the New York metropolitan area. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re the exurban part of it.

PS Has that become more pronounced?

GS Yes. PS If you think of the river as an estuary, and how thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a point where the salt water comes up from the sea, has that point shifted in terms of

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Uptown Kingston, also known as The Stockade, is becoming one of the Hudson Valleyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s centers for new businesses and residents, as well as drinks and dining. Good luck ďŹ nding parking.

New York Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s influence in recent years?

GS Economically, it did move up river. In the last three years New York City has increased its number of jobs by 100,000 each year. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s enormous; I think the city went over four million jobs in the most recent numbers from the Labor Department. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s two and a half percent a year.

Here, up in the Hudson Valley, we are lucky to get one percent. Ulster County, 25 years ago, had employment of something like 63,000 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s people who worked in Ulster County -- and now that figure is 65,000. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no growth, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 40 [more]

people a year.

PS During the time youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been up here, have you noticed any great shifts in the characteristics of the eastern side of the Hudson versus the west?

GS In general, the characterization Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve tended to make, which is broad-brush, is that the people from the East Side of Manhattan end up on the east side of the river and those from the West Side end up on the west banks of the river. That probably has changed to some degree.

PS Now that we have more people moving up from Brooklyn?

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Winter 2016 Explore Hudson Valley GS Exactly. In Woodstock for instance, most of the people who ended up here were from Greenwich Village and the Upper West Side, and Manhattan for certain, but now many more are coming from Brooklyn and from Queens.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s one economy nowâ&#x20AC;?

PS So what youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re getting at is that to see trends up here, you have to observe whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happening down in the city?

GS Exactly. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how I see it, and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s typical of a large metropolitan area. You have to look at the commuters or whatever. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all one economy now. It used to be that Ulster County and the entire Hudson Valley were much more isolated, and you could talk about the valley as a separate region. Pattern for Progress [a regional think tank based in Orange County] did a plan about ten or 15 years ago that was a disaster. It treated the Hudson Valley as a separate region with import and export trade not only in regard to New York City but the whole world. The proportion of economic connection between the city and here is so enormous a part of that total pie that you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t consider ours a separate region, really. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a part of the biggest metropolitan area of this country.

The city has about eight and a half million people now, and the number is still increasing quite rapidly. New York will continue to get more people, but thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a limit. There just isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t enough housing ... so more people start to live in north Jersey, in western Connecticut, or in the Hudson Valley.

PS Does the fact of the commuter trains coming up the east side of the Hudson shape all this?

GS To some degree. But I still think that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more a cultural difference than access to transportation that defines the two halves of the Hudson Valley. But there are those who keep an apartment in the city and a home in Rhinebeck...

PS Politically, do you see the Hudson Valley continuing its trend towards becoming more Democratic?

GS Of course. I believe Orange and Dutchess both have Democratic pluralities now, which was unheard of ten or 20 years ago. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reached a tipping point and tipped over. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going on in Columbia, but do know that Greene is one of the few remaining Republican counties.

Since the Democrats are more numerous in the five cities of Yonkers, Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse and Albany, and probably Binghamton. There are more urban people than there are rural, and hence there are more Democrats. And I think that trend will just accelerate.

Looking northward PS What sort of role is the Capital District playing on the Hudson Valley?

GS I believe that commutation to Albany has

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probably not changed much. Since politics is the business of Albany, who controls the power controls the jobs. It used to be these Kingston people were in [the Department of ] Taxation and Finance in Albany.

PS From the northern end, where I live, it seems thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been growth in the medical world around Albany.

GS Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a good point. If you look at the health industry, both in terms of its insurers and hospitals, the bureaucracy is there [in Albany], and it exerts some stimulus. The healthcare industry has become like banking -- more consolidated.

PS Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also been growth in the number of colleges concentrated in the Capital District, from the community colleges.

GS It could be that because of the emphasis on nanotechnology itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s become more of a sub-region.

PS And what about that huge company that moved in north of Albany, Global Foundries, and the talk of new feeder businesses building up around it?

GS It turns out that as IBM has shrunk they [Global Foundries] have taken up that slack. Or something like that.

PS What kinds of businesses are going to rule the Hudson Valley?

GS Look at it by sector. I believe that manufacturing is not going to come back in any meaningful way. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dropped two to three percent in New York just in the past year. They talk about specialized manufacturing. There will be niche manufacturing of some kind, but I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t foresee that as being as important as some think it could be.

And thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s because of the infrastructure; the education is here but the entrepreneurs are not. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a strange situation. SUNY New Paltz, for instance, is prospering as an institution. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s growing nicely but there havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been many businesses, or entre-

preneurs, starting successfully -- or unsuccessfully -- out of New Paltz. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dead, in other words. They havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been able to fill their incubator space so far.

PS As for the other niches in our economy?

GS Health and education are going to prosper to some degree. The real niche that needs to be

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2016 8 | Winter Explore Hudson Valley future is going to be, or where there will be a new cluster or focus.

PS Is Marist growing?

GS Yes, Marist is ambitious, and growing, as is Vassar Brothers Hospital, and Health Quest as a whole, which is in something of an awkward situation now that other New York hospitals have been expanding upstate. I don’t know whether they’ll be big enough, with Dyson money, to remain an independent, fairly fast-growing hospital chain or whether at some point they’ll throw in the towel.

PS What will happen to the large campuses of IBM and the like?

GS What happened to their campus in Kingston. We’ve all seen the pictures of the better buildings being torn down for tax purposes. White elephant doesn’t begin to describe it.

PS Does the southern half of the Hudson Valley become more commuter-driven?

Location, location, location

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Over the years, New York City’s draw as a world city has increasingly defined the entire Hudson Valley. focused on instead of tourism and retail, which will take care of themselves, is probably business services. New York City is the center of the world for business services.

PS … Meaning the financial industry.

GS That’s part of the prosperity of New York and what this region needs to do, because of the changes to communications technology, is to have a group of people who are successful in financial services with second homes who decide to go down [to New York City] once a week. When you have a sufficient number of them, you start developing entrepreneurial niches within business services that can be pursued from a distance. They’re very high-paying. It makes for a hell of a lot better future than tourism or retail.

PS Which is what’s fueled what’s been going on around the San Francisco Bay area.

GS Right. You can’t just do it automatically, but I think that should be the target.

Finding the right niches PS How do you market and promote that?

GS Well, let’s look at what Ulster County has done really recently. Peter Fairweather has just done a report that I’ve been looking at and writing about. He has identified certain things: food and agricultural stuff, niche manufacturing, tourism, arts services and this final little category -- digital

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design, I think they called it. And that’s a link: the little companies that come up, and which Fairweather recommends [for Ulster County]. Some aspect of that trend could prove a niche that could constitute a growth industry that brings good money to Ulster County.

PS Would you include something like Etsy, which has had a large effect in Columbia and Greene counties but involves retail as much as anything digital, in that latter category?

GS It could be, but I don’t think so. I don’t know what niche within digital design that Kingston or any other small city could occupy, but I do think there are such possibilities. I think individual communities each have their own kind of weird little thing that they best do, like Woodstock is different from Kingston which is different from New Paltz.

PS I’m wondering if you’ve noted any trends in Dutchess. I live near Hudson, and have seen how that community’s train service fueled an antiques industry that brought up the fashion and interiors industry from the city, and then businesses like Etsy and a number of retail stores, which in turn shifted the money there and in Columbia County just as Hudson’s manufacturing was dying and the county’s agriculture began to change from what it had been for generations. Now, much of the economy seems to be fueled by people spending the nest eggs they’ve put together elsewhere.

GS Much of what you speak about goes back to that idea of the East-Side culture I brought up earlier. There’s the railroad, for commuting purposes.

There does not seem to be any kind of compelling category in Dutchess that I can identify where the

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GS That is what may happen. Oddly enough, if you look at job patterns of the last five or ten years, the number of jobs in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam [counties] has not increased very much. Partly it’s because of the recession, but partly it’s because people would rather go farther away if they’re going to relate to their offices digitally. That way they don’t have to pay the relatively higher housing costs; you go 50 miles further and you have less population, it’s prettier, it’s cheaper... it’s a better deal. So you see the work population increasing up here where it isn’t down there in the inner circle.

PS So is that a bigger trend, with people moving in to the city and then out, up in to the Hudson Valley?

GS I don’t know. That may not continue. There may be more high rises in places like Fort Lee in New Jersey, with all the people going across the river for jobs. There’ll be the classic commuters and then the digital commuters.

PS And then Manhattan, as well as Brooklyn and Queens, just continue becoming more upscale.

GS Yes. That seems, right now, to be definitely the case.

PS So again, the model becomes the San Francisco area...

GS Well... San Francisco, first of all, is a gorgeous and interesting city with its own culture.

Secondly, it’s got Silicon Valley next to it, which makes it different.

PS Berkeley and Stanford are not Marist and Siena.

GS Exactly. I could have noted that myself.

PS But this brings us back to the ways in which people think of Napa Valley, or Silicon Valley, as entities unto their own. Are they really or are they similar to what the Hudson Valley is?

GS Well, they want to call the Hudson Valley ‘the second Napa Valley.’ Like any metaphor, this one has its imperfections. I think they wanted to refer to the bounty of agriculture, and how agriculture and food are connected. Agriculture is still a low-wage, low-employment industry that makes for a very attractive metaphor. In Ulster County two percent of the economy is agriculture, and many of these are part-timers.

PS So the same is true, after a fashion, with tourism, no matter whether you put an eco-, art, or historical definer in front of it?

GS ‘Locally sourced’ has a great cachet. You want to eat a carrot that’s been grown within 100 miles. But I think that stuff can go too far.

Winter 2016 Explore Hudson Valley PS So how do these bigger changes, and non-changes, end up affecting life as we know it in the Hudson Valley?

GS I’m from Woodstock and have attended innumerable planning board meetings there, where I’ve found that what worried people there back then is what worries people in other communities. Woodstock has become even shmancier than it once was. All those concerns about the great quality of life and those great unwashed hordes of people who come up here with all their money but still don’t get it. I remember meeting people on the street who were from the Woodstock of the 1920s who’d tell me, “You don’t know anything about nature or community. Why, when we went to the Maverick Festival.” Et cetera.

PS So you’re saying that’s all cyclical, or continuous.

GS Yes. And I think that that’s kind of what’s happening now. People seem addicted to thinking about the negative consequences of change.

And once you get off on that, there’s always plenty to do. But I notice that there’s not an increase of population at all, just a changeover. Secondly, the new people very often have more respect for the environment and nature and small-town life than the natives who would cheerfully cash in were someone to offer them enough money. There are certainly negative consequences to people moving up, but there are positive ones too. With my point of view, I just watch it.

PS Will something like that, which is also happening in Kingston and Hudson, say, also start happening in Poughkeepsie or Ellenville?

GS Yes. But it’s kind of hard to predict when. I would never have guessed that Hudson would be as hot as it’s become. There will have to come a time when people realize that all the crime talked about in Poughkeepsie is actually concentrated in to about 20 blocks, and the rest of it is suburban paradise.

“It’s a matter of decades”

GS I think it’s premature to suggest all may move in a homogeneous direction. Just because there’s areas that do get gentrified does not mean that all places like that are going to be gentrified.

The process is a long one and very often contracyclical trends occur somewhere to change that movement. It could happen in the city, you know.

One well-placed bomb could change New York’s position in the world.

PS There’s a good ending for this piece!

GS Any economic change, cultural change. Basically my lifetime has seen New York as originally a melting pot, and now it’s a world city.

PS I remember, when I moved up here to start working with newspapers nearly 30 years ago, how entrenched many of the local politicians seemed.

But then there was a sea change with the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement between New York City and the towns of the Catskill watershed, which changed the city’s investment here.

GS I think those were symbolic things. Many of those politicians such as Gerry Solomon and Charlie Cook represented an upstate politics from the time of Nelson Rockefeller, and there was a different population here. Also, while the city’s investment up here seemed like a lot, it’s still only peanuts. I think when you see New York City paying local residents money for their water, then things will be different.

PS Can the Hudson Valley position itself as a leader in the new effort to wean ourselves off of carbon-fueled energy?

GS Well, as you must realize, most of America is just not into railroads, or anything but cars. The change in supporting infrastructure, including human infrastructure, is so slow in our society that the trends necessitating and underlying it often disappear before projects get completed. All they have are these endless fixes for the physical infrastructure, like water and sewer lines, that will go on and on and on.

PS Will Metro North ever be able to push beyond Poughkeepsie?

GS It’s a matter of decades. You improve what’s there and every once in a while a doped-up conductor crashes a train, and then they improve the rail.

PS But with the Hudson Valley becoming more liberal politically, is there any possibility of it becoming a leader in these big global shifts that have been called for. Or will it all become caught in the same stasis that affects us?

GS Well, the stasis is there. Technological change will continue, with consequences for the

stasis. We don’t know what those consequences will be. They’d have to be pretty profound to speed up the stasis.

PS So it’s not political ....

GS Right. The engine of it won’t be political. You can make everyone in the Hudson Valley a Democrat and it won’t make a damned bit of difference.

| 9

Different paths, different arts

PS Has the creative population in the Hudson Valley grown?

GS There have been several studies by the Center for an Urban Future about the increased number of tech people and artists in New York City.

The number of people in the arts categories has

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PS As all of this progresses of its own accord, how will people be getting information about the world they’re inhabiting?

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Winter 2016 Explore Hudson Valley to have become the general determinant of cultural direction.

PS Would you have ever imagined a thing like Facebook coming along?

GS No. Only I think that’s but the beginning of that rearrangement. I’m interested in how you transfer a cultural artifact to new media. That has to be done once in a while, and whether that new medium still has any relevance to the culture is something I don’t know about. In classical music or jazz, the audience becomes a thin niche, and more people turn to hip hop instead.

PS So does that mean less people being involved in local politics, in local governance?

GS I wouldn’t be surprised if politics went the

way of classical music or jazz. But no, it’ll probably achieve a different form because there will still be politics. Government is a sufficiently large piece of the overall culture and has this weird way of descending into totalitarian directions.

PS Go you see that as a general direction?

GS I see some very rough passages. This is almost like when the extremes grew in Germany in the 1920s.

PS In terms of local meetings, which we both still attend, are you seeing fewer people involved?

GS There never were many. But I think there are fewer now. Social participation always takes different forms. At one time in Woodstock people would gather around the village green for the vote.

| 11

When IBM was strong in the area, it asked its employees to be involved in public affairs, which made them a force. And now people are on Facebook and Twitter.

PS So what does this new year look like, 2016 in the Hudson Valley?

GS Well, I have a calendar over there. It’s blank.

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2016 12 | Winter Explore Hudson Valley

Why I’m still alive today A bon vivant writer/actor gets at his sporting roots

By Tad Wise

I

was ten in 1966. My Uncle Ian took me skiing, which was about as close to religion as we got. Every weekend all winter long we drove up from Bearsville to Belleayre, which had, and still has, the best beginner’s slopes anywhere around.

Sure, I learned to snowplow. Then promptly forgot. I remember looking down on the one steep section from the slow-grinding chairlift, craning my neck and planning my attack. With idiots falling all over and between the moguls, you had to have a couple of different strategies and be ready to switch them around fast. One reason I never skied in a racer’s tuck was that it didn’t allow for readjustment. Further, it advertised an addiction to speed for which Ian would smack me on the back of my head. So? I stopped skiing with him.

The sight of any steep slope made me nauseous, a fear-laced excitement I didn’t talk to anyone about. As I got older I eventually experienced a version of it known as stage fright. Stage fright felt like it could kill you.

The desire to ski faster would never kill me, I knew. It could only make me truly alive, and it would never hurt me — or at least not beyond my ability to heal.

The following year I was taken to the mid-station. Here you skied down off the chairlift (which moved a whole lot faster than the chairlift serving the novice slope) from what was called the mid-station mound. You were nervous and might drop a pole getting ready. A lot of people fell skiing off the chair from mid-station — especially, for some reason, on really cold days. When the chair would stop, you’d ask yourself how long you could sit there before your toes froze or your nose got frostbite from the wind. You wondered whether you could jump from the chair without breaking a leg.

By the time I’d mastered the top of the mountain, I did stuff like that. Jumped right off the chair into a pile of powder as a distant ski patrolman yelled, “Hey, you! Stop!” And then? Sure.

Game on.

B

y now I was a nut job. I skied in a World War One flying ace helmet and was known as The Mad Bomber. If they caught you taking a jump off the mid-station mound or skiing down a closed trail, it was said that they’d take your season’s pass away. That’s what they said.

I didn’t believe it. For one thing, I had a reversible parka that was red on one side and blue on the other, and I could always find a place to hide out, stuff my helmet in a pouch, and switch sides of the

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Ski areas in the Berkshires and Catskills are becoming part of industry conglomerates, bettering the odds for less snowy winters. coat. For another thing, there was no way a ski patrolman would ever catch me. They just wouldn’t hang it out over the edge as far as I would.

Once you’d memorized all these little exits and entrances from one slope to another, you became the phantom of the mountain. You could get around without anyone ever really spotting you for more than that 20-second burst. You’d break out down the lift-line and hear the chair go silent and feel every eye on you, just waiting for you to wipe out. Once in a while you’d make that long arcing stop and throw a pile of snow, just to prove to those above that — of course! — you could stop any time you wanted.

But who’d ever want to? Instead you’d slip into one of those phantom trails slicing diagonally through the trees. They’d get coated with ice, these trails, and they’d have these monster bumps at the end that no adult in pursuit could ever handle like a kid did. Just couldn’t be done.

Watch this.

You’re thrown up six or eight feet in a short, fast burst, so you do a spread-eagle to get your balance back, but you’ve been tossed way out — 15 feet or more out into the middle of the trail, usually smack on top of another particularly huge mogul. Coming down off of that would increase your speed to the limit. By now you’re skiing too fast to

fall, because if you fall now crazy shit’ll happen.

You’ll hit a tree or fly face-first into an icebox.

You’ll hear one last sound — your skull cracking into concussion. Or you’ll put a tooth through your lip or rip out a nostril.

A couple of times I jumped over some idiot.

And yeah, there was probably one occasion I took somebody out. Maybe two. Actually, make that three.

One time a guy actually came after me with a ski pole trying to skewer me like a piece of meat on a shish-kabob. I think I laughed at him, as I bounced back up like a lightweight before the ref could even count to one.

My crowning glory however came after a monster dump of over two feet. The zig-zag track over which the Snow Cats diagonally make their way up the very steepest section to the top would get these crazy high walls. I even required an accomplice to pull off the stunt. If you didn’t have another hot-shot spot for you, somebody could actually could get killed. It would never be me, mind you.

But “somebody” getting killed wasn’t cool. There were limits, okay? We may have been nuts, but we weren’t crazy.

The new chair--called that even a decade after it was built--ran up and down between the edge of this zig-zag track and about as treacherous a slope

Winter 2016 Explore Hudson Valley

| 13

inches and at best 135 pounds, with legs like titanium toothpicks.

I’ll never really know how I did what I did, except that — well, I liked scaring myself to death.

That was what life was about back then. But a certain measure of finesse was needed. Hit it hard but not too damn hard. And yeah, I had to trick my brain to initiate at the base of the zig-zag wall as though I were aiming to land straight into the oncoming chair, though it came into sight only over the very top of the jump. Beyond that I had to trust my calculations, blind.

As luck would have it, I was completely committed by the time an older woman sitting in the next oncoming chair came into view. That nausea I told you about when I was ten? That fear-laced desire? By now it was this wave of bile engorging my throat while a sucker punch of panic lightning-kicked my gut.

Skating out of my waiting position I felt like I’d surely puke and shit myself at the same instant. I’d never been so scared in my life.

Except that there was one thing that scared me even more: the idea that I was a skinny little chickenshit who didn’t have the balls to do what no else in their right mind would do. In other words, that I was just like everybody else.

That was the single most terrifying thought ever to enter my brain. And so — fighting it —there I was, specifically not glancing at Odie as I started up the face of the jump, centrifugal force gathering in my feet, weighting them as I rode up the scoop-like wall.

I suddenly became convinced I wasn’t moving fast enough, that I’d been too cautious, and so, yeah, I’d prematurely ejaculate into the many monster moguls just over the rim. I’d crack a few ribs, and reveal myself as a total chickenshit without the guts to reach out and grab destiny by the tits.

So I bent my knees deep into the natural compression of that awful scoop and sprung up with all my might just as I was clearing the edge, only to realize the lip alone had launched me all I’d need. Instantly I was up there, really fucking up there. So my fists were doing eggbeaters and I’m tucking my tails up underneath me with my tips down, trying to get my shit together while sailing out a whole helluva lot further than I’d planned.

Odie let out this orgasmic whoop, and here’s why that helped. He could see my trajectory and he whooped. You don’t whoop when the jump is going wrong. You whoop when it’s going right.

Sure, I was shooting out further than I’d planned but I wasn’t going up so high as to tangle with the PHOTO COURTESY OF WIKICOMMONS

Freestyling may be a new sport in the Winter Olympics, but for several generations of skiers it’s just a fancy word for what they were trying to do as teenagers on the slopes. as Belleayre offered. It was steep, narrow, and often incredibly icy. The moguls on it got about as monstrous as anywhere on the mountain. But with two feet of fresh powder I figured I could land any jump anywhere. Even if I wiped out, the profound depth of snow would prevent serious injury. Of course, landing in Eastern Powder is pretty hairy, because it tends to be heavy and wet.

Never mind that for now. The coolest jump on the mountain, naturally, would come off the last of the zig-zag’s crazy walls created by the monster snow and the Snow Cats powering up and down.

Coming off that largest wall would put you up so high you’d need to negotiate the chairs going up the mountain and those coming down. To pull off the stunt was like the guy diving off the monster cliff at Acapulco, you had to initiate it the very moment your conscious mind told you, “This is certain death.” In the diver’s case, that moment came with the rocks fully exposed as the big wave is winding up and getting ready to spill up the beach. In my case, the moment came as I hit the jump like I was aiming straight at an oncoming chair.

A

kid named Odie spotted for me the day I sailed off the biggest wall of the zig-zag.

All he had to do was perch himself at the top of that monster and assure me there was no one coming from above, down the main trail, just the other side. The fact that he was perched there, spotting for me, meant that I couldn’t back out of the stunt. Except that jump didn’t exist yet as a stunt. I’d made it up myself.

Year after year I’d puzzled it out, over hundreds of passes on the new chair, with me craning my

neck just like when I was ten and planning out my attack of the one steep section on the novice slope.

But this wasn’t a novice slope any more. This was no man’s land. One winter into the next, I assured myself it could be done. Before talking myself out of it again, only to re-convince myself. It could be done. It had to be done. At least once. And that once had to be now.

Odie’s arm, signaling the all clear, rose as I skated out of my waiting position, moving neither slow nor fast. That’s the tricky part in attempting a stunt that’s never been tried before. The variables are all unknowns. If you hit it too hard, you could jump as high as the chairlift cable itself and break your neck. If you didn’t hit it hard enough, however, you’d land in the minefield of tightly clustered monster moguls, a confusion of levels and angles only some Swiss champion with legs like twin pythons could ever land standing.

Me? I was what? Sixteen. Maybe five feet eight

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PHOTO COURTESY OF HUNTER MOUNTAIN

PHOTO COURTESY OF BELLEAYRE MOUNTAIN

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SKIER’S MANIFESTO

There are those that treat skiing as a science, with research into the perfect alignments for greater speed and agility. Then there are those who see it as a test of will, fearlessness and intuition. It's fun either way, and a great way of enjoying our region's high peaks, as well as the joys of winter in the greater Hudson Valley and Catskills. cable. Not quite.

So there I was. Waiting to peak and start down but instead just hanging — and I mean just ha-a-aa-nging — up there. When suddenly this terrified scream pierces my eardrums and echoes across the mountain. So I look. Sure enough, there’s this old lady in the oncoming chair who doesn’t have the slightest iota of an idea that I’ve been planning this jump for years. I mean, like a fucking bank robber plans a heist!

But she doesn’t realize that. Instead she’s scared out of her brainbox that I’m going to land in her goddamn lap. Of course, I’ll miss her by an easy twelve feet — but she doesn’t know that. Still she fucks up my concentration with her goddamn scream. But it’s okay. I’m out in front between her and the next set of chairs coming down. Now all I have to do is land this fucker.

S

o I spread my skis ten inches apart, bring my tips up and my tails down. Thing is I’m hurling far deeper down the trail then I’d ever planned. Running out of steep, and that’s not

good. Because you don’t want to land on the flat — not from this height. But it’s going to be what it’s going to be. And it’s going to be ... right now.

The snow is so damn deep and heavy I’m realizing just as I hit how nuts I am to try land in this soup. But I win the coin toss of hitting the downhill side of the last bump of steep. I’m thrown forward ’cause the snow is so slow. Both my fists hit.

There’s a burn on the back of my right heel which I’ll feel beyond the next decade. I fight and bring my torso up as speed is finally conveyed from air to snow, and in fact the fear around the burn seems to help me hold course through the choppy shit ahead. There are a couple of lonely screams of congratulations down the sparsely filled chairlift and another shout from Odie with my name attached to it.

I don’t know how bad I’m hurt or if I’ll be able to ski to the bottom, but one thing is for sure — I can’t stay visible. So I whisk out of sight through the woods over to next trail, taking most of my weight on my left foot and angrily realizing that lady’s scream could have cost me my life.

It turns out I didn’t tear my Achilles’ tendon, though I must have come pretty close. The unfortunate part is I couldn’t get the sound of that lady’s scream out of my head, try as I might. Worse, I started to see the whole stunt from her point of view, whereupon I realized how truly terrifying it must have been for her. When suddenly — bam! — it happened.

And I finally realized that indeed sometime, somewhere I’d slipped over the edge and gone from nuts to full-on crazy. And from then on, things changed.

Over the next twelve years or so every time I pushed too hard I’d feel my right heel burn. By the time the burn went away, I was pushing thirty. A sense of mortality dawned on me like a hangover I couldn’t shake. Whenever adrenaline started calling my name even without the burn kicking in, I’d hear that old lady scream, and suddenly the voices would diminish. I’d put the brakes on and gradually slow down.

And I suspect that’s why I’m still alive today.

Winter 2016 Explore Hudson Valley

| 15

Winter blues A 15 year old reports on teen hibernation habits

By Lily Comerford

I

n the cold winter months, all of us try our hardest to make the best of the weather.

Whether it’s raining, snowing, or hailing, we need something to do. Being a teen can be hard in the winter. Many of us have a lot to juggle: messed-up sleeping schedules, school, homework, sports.

As a 15-year-old with no car, I try my hardest to occupy myself in the cold months. Usually that means staying in and binge-watching eleven seasons of a single television show. I doubt many other teens share the same level of introversion and dedication to a tv show as I do.

For those of us that like to stay in, it is important we get some human interaction outside school, such as hanging out with friends or family. There are plenty of things to do together. Cooking or baking is fun to do with friends, for instance, if you can get past the arguing and the chaos. This type of activity, almost like playing a game of Monopoly, can make or break a relationship.

I recommend having someone experienced nearby, like an adult or Google, if you are cooking.

Someone needs to sort out whether the instructions suggest a cup of sugar and a teaspoon of salt, or a tablespoon of baking soda and three cups of brown sugar.

Board and card games are good pastimes too.

Just beware of the arguing that is bound to accompany them, especially if you’re snowed in.

Other people love being outside in the winter: skiing, snowboarding, sledding or even ice skating. Our area is great for these things, what with the mountains, hills, and even the lakes and ponds when they freeze over. If you are going to the mountains as a family, it will make it harder for the angsty teens to escape.

Lots of people love skiing and snowboarding. Be careful, though. Last time I went I got a little bit lost from the people I was with at a fork in the trail.

Sports are also a huge activity that teens especially love. In the winter, there is a wide variety of indoor sports. School or recreational teams require a big commitment to practices and games.

Lots of kids play indoor basketball, soccer, track, wrestling and ice hockey. While these activities take a lot of time, they keep you in shape. They’re also great for being with and meeting new people.

We all need a little more of that.

Clubs and groups outside and after school are great for those of us who aren’t really into the sports scene. Just like with sports, they connect you with people who have similar interests to yours. There are so many, like language clubs, art clubs, and even college-prep clubs, at many schools. These activities can also be really useful on resumes.

The majority of teens spend a lot of their time at home, whether it’s with friends, family or just alone. It is safe to say lots of us end up either making a huge mess or cleaning one up. You know what I mean: pulling anything and everything out, clothes all over the floor, tissues piled next to the bed because of that cold, dishes everywhere.

Eventually, it all ends up getting cleaned up, the floor becomes visible again, and there are actually dishes in the kitchen. But the cycle will recur over and over again.

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While binge watching television may be the new snowboarding, a bit of snow can still draw out the kid in all of us.

A lot of us end up hibernating in our rooms, buried under the blankets because it costs a lot of money to turn on the heat. The only time we leave can be to shower and get more food. We brood and experience the constant need for sleep.

The most favorable way to spend out time is inside, but of course not inside our own house. Going to the mall, the movie theater, out to eat, or even just to a friend’s house fills the bill for teens.

It is always nice to relax away from your house, especially with friends. Everyone knows that at

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2016 16 | Winter Explore Hudson Valley

Searching out the perfect ‘work’ buzz Paul Smart’s endless search for the perfect third place

I

need to write but I’m traveling. Between meetings, kids, and chores, I’m headed from Catskill to New Paltz and Kingston, and then to Woodstock, Rhinebeck and Red Hook. Later I need to pass through Poughkeepsie, Rhinebeck, Germantown, and Hudson. Over the coming week I’ll have to find places to keep writing while headed out to Millerton, Beacon, Newburgh and Highland. My kid’s got a playdate in Phoenicia. I’m supposed to stop by Athens.

The seats at the Starbucks located at the center of downtown New Paltz are comfortable. The music is pleasant and not intrusive. The people standing in line for specialty coffees and treats pretend they’re unrecognizable, even though I know several names. But unless one arrives with an entourage, which explains the high spirits in about half the room, the place thrives on anonymity. The other half tip-tap away on computers or work their cellphones. Few books or newspapers are read, and there’s no one just staring off into space. The crowd’s a mix: college students and faculty, townies, families out for a few hours, and solo birds.

At The Bakery, a couple of blocks away and tucked off the street just enough to make the place feel like a find, some people are actually eating.

There’s still furious scattered typing on laptops or handheld devices. One person’s even reading a book, a half-finished bowl of soup and the crumbs from a spinach pie in front of them. People nod to each other from table to table, or stop by and chat.

I’m playing out one of those theories I read years earlier, Ray Oldenberg’s late-1980s theory about third places where, as contrasted with our homes and places of work, we form our identity and cement our ties to community. I’m also anxious about what might happen to me after too many cups of coffee. And getting my work finished while shopping, checking in on story leads, stopping in on various staff meetings, and making sure I’m there whenever my kid needs me, wherever.

How might Oldenberg’s theories have shifted with the advent of virtual third places? The original “Great Good Place,” published in 1989, amended its original subtitle of “Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, General Stores, Bars,

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Rev (top) and Moto (left) left are classic comfy and upscale chic coffee destinations in Hudson, while Outdated (right) centers daytime life on Kingston’s Wall Street.

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Hangouts, and How They Get You through the Day” to “Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community” by the late 1990s.

I realize that, similarly, the more time I’ve spent in these haunts, the more people I’ve met who have been transformed from recognized have-mets to real acquaintances to actual friends.

Moreover, my habits seem to have reinvigorated both my work and my social feelings.

Consider the scene at Outdated in uptown Kingston, a few doors down from the Ulster Publishing offices on Wall Street. It’s got a sense of fullness at all hours, and yet there always seems to be a spare seat and tabletop. People leave each other alone, and yet share camaraderie. The music is louder than many places, but never too intrusive, with its mix of recognizable tunes and hipster anthems. The prices are often rounded off, the service people are smiling, and the sense of a busy hub is palpable.

Not quite as all-working, even among those in conversation, is Uptown Coffee in the next block, until recently Hudson Valley Coffee Traders.

Monkey Joe’s on Broadway in midtown, which has habitues coming and going from the nearby YMCA, provides a fun scene that’s not too intrusive, yet affable. It’s actually filled at times with Old-School pageturning readers.

Down in the Rondout, Grounded -- on lower Broadway -- must pull its crowds in waves; it doesn’t feel as homey, as much of a hangout meeting place, as the Uptown coffee spots, even though it’s clearly as nice, with great coffee.

Winter 2016 Explore Hudson Valley

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port motorcycle shop; uptown Rev, where the once regionally-ubiquitous Muddy Cup and then The Parlor were, is full of various comfy rooms and a WiFi system that tends to overload, and then slow by the time people wake each afternoon (Hudson being one of those kinds of places). Many swear by Spotty Dog, which also has beer and wine and live music at night, when its book-and-arts-supplystore vibe rules the roost. During daylight hours, the working atmosphere at the bar and assorted tables and couches set the tone.

Augmenting the “local” scene are tea shops, which seem to be a whole different breed from what coffee draws (more sedate, handled in couples or more, and dainty-themed), bakeries with fine pastries (Cafe La Perche and Bonfiglio, soon to open a branch in up-and-coming Athens), and bonafide controversies (now closed Swallow sued two Brooklyn spots with similar names, then closed).

hat does this mélange of experiences all add up to, besides a lot of fast thinking and the scary realization that driving (as well as writing) after too many coffees can be as dangerous as walking after one too many beers? First off, drive-to coffee scenes are nice, but apparently fated to follow into oblivion the old roadside bars that once populated our area’s back roads. Proper coffee-oriented hang-outs need a walking clientele and all those other elements that Oldenberg and others who’ve studied great third places mention: regulars, an overriding sense of unpretentiousness, an element of egalitarianism.

Think “Cheers,” or those Barbershop movies, with people all feeling good about themselves “working” on their phones and laptops. Or feeling even better after getting into short conversations, and maybe even friendships, with similar “working folk” out for their daily fixes of caffeine and conviviality.

Can communities survive without such places these days? Maybe for a while, but perhaps not for long as far as we could see, observing how coffee shops keep coming into being in Catskill and Phoenicia, the various gentrifying parts of Poughkeepsie, and wherever younger people are looking to feel better about their decisions to live in smaller cities, towns and villages.

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A caffeine buzz and a decent WiFi signal is all many want, and need, to complete enough work to justify at least part of a regular income these days. Or at least the appearance of such.

Out by Kings Mall on Ulster Avenue, meanwhile, the Starbucks seems to be a place where quite a few go to work and gather, unlike the one in New Paltz. Across the road, another Starbucks in Barnes & Noble gathers folks with new purchases, actually reading. And the new Bread Alone headed north on 9W towards Saugerties seems to be an every-coffeeshop for those willing to drive a spell.

It’s become a meeting spot for lunch, for solitary working lunches, and for readers.

ow do other communities stack up in this growing could-be Balkanization of the working coffee scene?

Woodstock’s Oriole 9 has a great mix of shared larger and smaller solo-friendly tables, but not the best Internet. It’s built around table service, which breaks third-place aloneness protocol, and is prone to both tablehopping and straying-eye conversations. People are checking out who else is around, always. Bread Alone, up the street a bit, is smaller and faster-paced, with only a counter serving coffee and food. But even though it draws its own clientele of regulars, it seems to cater to more working sorts. So does the stand-alone Sunfrost’s beautifully sun-lit juice and coffee bar, with a few side tables, located en route to Bearsville.

Woodstockers go to hang a bit on their own and type, making sure to keep a sense of who’s coming and going and attaching themselves to interesting conversations.

Over in Rhinebeck, the area’s biggest Bread Alone sits catty-corner from Samuel’s, an older combo coffee shop and candy store with a few stools to sit on, some with prime window viewing potential. There’s a mix of bigger parties there for meals (they serve wine!). Front counters seem to fill up with caffeinated workers through the morning hours. Interesting thing to note here: the numbers of obvious city dwellers talking about their time off, and the number of other area businesses (from Woodstock in particular) that have opened up branches along Rhinebeck’s two main streets.

Up in Red Hook, the once-busy Taste Budds seems to have lost its allure and its typing crowd to the classic old diner up the street. As Otto’s in Germantown readies to sell, it’s crowds have thinned, too. Could this have something to do with the community being less work-oriented, as with farther afield Millerton’s Irving Farms phenomenon, busy at all hours, or Bank Square and Ella’s Bellas on Main Street in Beacon, rambling

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We hear there’s a scene building in Newburgh, and also stopped in to try some writing at the bar at Underground in Highland, where the craft beers draw more attention than the coffee on weekends and afternoons. The presence of a television disturbs the true working nature of a new third-place vibe.

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There’s fine education potential in this valley But as mom Elisabeth Henry recalls, it comes in all forms

T

he colleges and universities of the Hudson Valley are as rich and diverse an aggregate as any prospective student, inquiring parent, or savvy guidance counselor could want. But even if I had the good fortune to be a graduate of one of these (many would have been a better fit than my alma mater, I daresay), I would be hard-pressed to provide an intimate stroll from one hall of learning to another, since my college years were roughly synchronized shortly after that era in which Dylan switched from acoustic to Fender Stratocaster.

A lot has changed since then. Had I attempted to interview current students, it would not have gone well. I am put in mind of Margaret Mead’s foray into Samoa, clad in pith helmet and khaki shorts, clipboard in hand, querying adolescent girls on their social lives. Of course they lied.

Try that from the driver’s seat of your Subaru someday when you’re providing transportation for your daughter’s eighth-grade traveling soccer team. Add to which, my own children opted to attend colleges which required expensive and exasperating sprints to LaGuardia Airport at every holiday and semester break.

That being said, for this piece I relied on introductions to interviews, well-placed questions, and visits to the premises for a good look-see. It was a very nice ride, but exploring the opportunities in the Hudson Valley spawned inspiration tinged with regret. Had I but known!

Each university, college and community college has much to offer. And that’s good.

What makes one mutter “Zowie!” is the sheer wealth of offerings. There are almost 40 schools in this consideration. I include places that are as far north as Saratoga and as far south as Purchase.

The northern bit may cause consternation to those persnickety about labels and topography, but I refer to the authority of common knowledge.

We here in the Hudson Valley are very familiar with the names Skidmore, SUNY Albany, Union, Schenectady CC and Troy’s Hudson Valley CC (there you go!). Plus, they are all within spitting distance of the Hudson River. Since the Hudson does flow from Lake Tear of the Clouds to Upper New York Bay and Lower New York Bay, I feel it is permissible to make the leap.

Vassar College’s Main Building, listed as a National Historic Landmark, is one of many highlights on what is acknowledged as one of our nation’s most beautiful campuses... in Poughkeepsie.

W

hat does the college experience in the Hudson Valley look like? Well, if one refers to Bard, even a graduate of said school must admit that Bard looks very different than it did just ten years ago. Enrollment is up to 1900 undergraduates and 200 graduate students.

The student body is very diverse, and candidates apply from all over the world. There are seven institutions for high-school students on a fast track, (in Manhattan, Harlem, Queens, Newark, Cleveland, Baltimore and New Orleans). There is a graduate center in New York City, and a campus in Berlin. Of course, Bard retains an impeccable reputation for a focus on art, literature, theater, and music.

The exquisite Fisher Center, designed by Frank Gehry for theater and dance, is one of the premiere performing arts centers in this nation.

However, Bard is and has always been a place that offers a rich liberal arts education. In fact, the social-work major graduates a big percentage of enrolled underclassmen, and science students enjoy the benefits of the big, new and very cutting-edge, science building. Bard is also the location of one of this country’s Centers for the Study of Drones. a program spearheaded by Bard students. The architect of these changes and improvements is Dr. Leon Botstein, who assumed the presidency of Bard in 1975. The longevity of his devotion, as much as his vision, is seminal to the success of this enterprise.

Vassar is listed as one of the most beautiful campuses in a rural area in the United States. All 1000 acres of Vassar College are considered an official arboretum, with 200 species of trees, a native

Bard College may be known for its growing collection of contemporary architectural masterpieces, but it's still home to the likes of the Stevenson Library's ode to Greek Revival style. A similar mix characterizes the institution's academic offerings. plant preserve, and a 400-acre ecological preserve.

Located 75 miles north of New York City, Vassar features manicured lawns and formal gardens on the main campus and meadows and woodlands on the 500-acre Vassar Farm. Buildings range in style from Collegiate Gothic to modernist, including two National Historic Landmarks: The Main Building and the castle-like Thompson Memorial Library, a Perpendicular Gothic structure designed by architects Allen & Collins and completed in 1905.

SUNY Purchase is a design-orientated campus reflecting the eclectic and creative sensibilities of its student body and professional staff. Each building signifies a particular focus of study.

While we are blessed to have a school that offers majors in performing arts, with a reasonable tuition, in close proximity to New York City, the administrators there were quick to remind me that it can boast laudable majors in the humanities and creative writing.

SUNY Albany’s campus has been critiqued as lovely in summer, with carefully placed gardens

and rows of trees and sparkling fountains. In winter, it is something of a wind tunnel. There is also the complaint that the buildings are identical blocks of grey cement. However, in defense of its architect, the notable Eduard Durrell Stone, budgetary concerns axed some of the most poetic elements, namely nine domed arches. And necessity required the plan to include acres of parking lots, which defy beautification.

P

arking lots abound at most community colleges as well. They all tend to resemble Columbia-Greene CC in being reminiscent of public high schools There is no Harvard Yard.

Or ivy.

And while it is necessary to mention that Skidmore, Union and Marist are beautifully and traditionally designed, let’s stray from architectural considerations in favor of discussing the purpose of academic life. Here we must salute the community college, parking lots and all.

“As a whole I found the staff/teachers at Ulster to be much passionate and caring,” says Dan H.

Winter 2016 Explore Hudson Valley

| 19

SUNY New Paltz's student center has become an icon of the diverse school whose popularity with urban students is increasing each year.

“The teachers truly cared about educating the students and were good at their jobs.” After completing his associate’s degree at Ulster, Dan has gone on to complete advanced degrees, but he remains adamant that the community college experience was indispensable.

This is a comment we heard repeated about every community college in our consideration. This advantage is what makes the community college such an essential institution in our educational system. Not only do they provide support and perhaps, remediation, for struggling young people, the cost per credit is wonderfully budget-minded.

Do not make the mistake that the community college experience offers mediocrity. The nursing program at Columbia-Greene is so sought after that acceptance is highly competitive. At Schenectady Community College, the culinary arts program has, for seven years, earned exemplary accreditation from the American Culinary Federation, and graduates from that two-year program are the most sought after candidates for Disney World. The cost per year is approximately $3500.

Most community colleges do not offer on campus housing, but that is changing. For instance, Dutchess Community College now offers housing.

O

ther attributes that grace the list of virtues in education in the Hudson Valley are things like The Powerhouse Theater project at Vassar in summer, which attracts luminaries from stage and screen to premiere or workshop new work, and which offers classes to aspiring young performers. There is the world-famous Culinary Institute of America, long regarded as one of the most prominent culinary schools in the world. As testimony to the collegial atmosphere that permeates the region, CIA now offers premiere performances of work by local playwrights in their several dining rooms.

SUNY Albany boasts the New York Writer’s Institute, which hosts readings and screenings of work by today’s significant writers and filmmakers, as well as offering master writing workshops led by noteworthy writing masters, one of whom is Lydia Davis, winner of the Mann-Booker Prize in 2013. Your college freshman is eligible for this opportunity, if qualified, at no cost.

One cannot ignore the fact that the U.S. Military Academy is also in the Hudson Valley. And Marist, Albany and West Point can boast triumphant Division One sports teams.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has bragging rights as the oldest technological research univer-

sity in the United States, but it is also the place that takes seriously the task of easing college freshman into the first year. Their president, Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, outlined her program on the local public radio forum as we drove our theater major daughter to her first year at NYU. “Great Caesar’s ghost,” I had reason to mutter to myself many times that fateful year as my daughter struggled with a vast university in a vast city where there was no student center, “why couldn’t she want to build robots?”

A little-known feature in Poughkeepsie is that Adelphi’s campus there has been a center of excellence in its graduate degree for social work for 40 years.

A

cademics aside, the area offers magnificent landscapes, nearby mountains for skiing in winter, hiking in summer, rivers and creeks for kayaking, fishing, tubing, and boating. The city kid will learn about the vicissitudes of county living: the heat of a wood stove, strawberry supper at a local church, fresh produce, silent nights, that relentless rooster across the way, and yes, that skunk beneath the porch. And the occasional black-bear incursion. But the air is sweet, and so is the water.

You will probably, at some point, need to purchase a car for your degree candidate. That’s part of life here, too.

No discussion of college life is complete without at least some mention of where the bars are.

They go. You may hover like a helicopter right up to the moment you drop him off at his college dormitory, and you may have provided him with a healthy lifestyle replete with team sport, chess, and the bassoon, but none of this will stop him from perfect attendance at the college hangout.

In Albany, it’s Pearl Street. The strip on Mamaroneck Avenue in White Plains comes alive around eleven at night with kids from all the surrounding schools. Kids from Bard, SUNY Ulster and Vassar have a working knowledge of Woodstock: its movie theaters, performing-arts venues, Sunday drum circles, and bars. Kingston is becoming more hip with every weekend, as New Yorkers discover the low rents and sturdy buildings.

They come to get away, and they open businesses. Hip businesses. In Poughkeepsie it’s Mahoney’s, River Station, Union Tavern, or Market Street. There are perils, of course. I recall that once, at 2 p.m. my phone rang and the caller ID showed my daughter’s cell phone number. Rap

music pulsed relentlessly from my receiver. My daughter was a John Mayer fan. I made frantic unsuccessful calls to her roommate, her sorority house, and was two seconds away from calling the police department when I heard a familiar giggle, and then click.

Apparently while at her favorite college hangout, she mistakenly speed dialed Ole Ma, and nearly did me in. My son, a college football player, almost broke his ankle, but not on the ten-yard line. He jumped from a bar to a pool table, and missed.

My eldest daughter was nearly arrested while arguing with her boyfriend, a beautiful Philippine medical student. They were part of a mass celebration that got out of control in one of Albany’s student bar areas. It was Halloween. She was dressed like Morticia Adams, he like Dolly Parton.

The police mistook them for hookers. Welcome to Where Parenting Feels Like a Hellish, Lonely Obstacle Course, the last frontier.

But as you crawl up that final precipice, when you have written that last check, discarded all the FAFSA forms, burned the MLA handbook, you see before you a world peopled by hopeful, intelligent, resourceful young men and women, only too happy, and very well equipped, to take the burdens of the world off your shoulders.

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