Explore JUNE-SEPT. 2016 • ULSTER PUBLISHING • WWW.EXPLOREHUDSONVALLEY.COM
Summer in the Valley
Summer artists in residence at Woodstock’s Byrdcliffe colony.
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ven without eating, and even without that cold beer/glass of wine, the elements of summer delight our flesh and senses. Get in a row boat and drift on a quiet pond. Listen to happy waters at creekside. Swim and sun bathe naked. Watch fire flies wink against a deep, dark sky studded with stars. Remember the Perseids in early August. Go deep, deep into the forest and feel the cool. (Bring something to combat bugs -fly spray, Skin So Soft, swatter, or get palsy-walsy with a guinea hen that enjoys hiking.) Watch how birds and animals love their summer life... As I sat on my upstairs deck, writing, my laundry flapped on the line behind me. All at once a dry cotton sheet swirled around my shoulders, billowing gently, like an embrace from Mother Nature herself. Here, most of summer’s climate notes are like that — gentle.” — from Elisabeth Henry’s “Sun-luscious Summer,” inside
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Inside this issue: Sunlicious summer Elisabeth Henry affectionately observes the warmest season ..................................4
June - September, 2016 • 3
WOODSTOCK
TENNIS
CLUB 2016 SEASON
Hey, kids, let’s learn glamping!
Tennis is a Sport for Life!
Paul Smart applies expensive concepts to affordable family adventures ............10
SUMMER CAMP FOR KIDS
Riding here Melissa Holbrook Pierson sees the region as a motorcycling nirvana..................14
Summer buying tips Sparrow provides 19 thoughtful suggestions to spruce up the season ................ 18
Summer cooking Jennifer Brizzi praises the availability of seasonal bounty .................................. 22
The gods await to delight in you Robert Burke Warren extols the experience of playing and enjoying music .......26
Canoe, kayak or tube Violet Snow describes her feelings of oneness with the creek ................................. 32
Running summer Chris Rowley presents some thoughts about exercise, fitness and fun................. 38
Confessions of a cultural couch potato Scott Baldinger has anxiety about summer’s performance schedule ...................44
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The things we unearth Annie Nocenti finds Donald Trump in an unexpected place .............................. 46
Art’s a challenge Paul Smart finds that the cultural scene has shifted ............................................. 48
Swimming-hole sutra Sam Truitt finds that our watercourses can be even loftier than our peaks .......52
My Southern summers K. Truitt provides the unvarnished and highly carbonated truth ....................... 54
Cover photo: Each summer, the Woodstock-based arts colony Byrdcliffe, founded in 1904, hosts artists In residence from around the world. Pictured are visual artists Alexis Elton, Amber Hany, Robert Kolhouse, Vanessa Madrid, Gabriella Sturchio and Bianca Sturchio; writers William Berger, Ashlie Kauffman, Michelle Welsch and Harriette Yahr; along with AIR program manager Meredith Morabito, a visual artist, and program assistant Lena Ziegler, a writer. Photo by Dion Ogust.
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WIKICOMMONS
Why so green? Watching a summer rain shower from one’s porch?
Sunlicious summer Elisabeth Henry is an affectionate observer of the warmest season
I
have always loved summer. I love the narrative arc of it, how it begins to wake with pink-tinted hues far off on mountain landscapes, where before there had been a static wall of grey and more grey, right around the time you see sap buckets hanging on nearby maple trees. I love the first night the peppers peep, knowing that soon the bullfrogs will cling to the backs of the lady frogs and sing to them. That sound is kind of like throat singing, without the anticipation of a belch to conclude. The bullfrog song is a manly trill, beginning with one lone swain who is joined by his brothers in a rousing (and aroused, I suppose) swell of l’amour which ends in an abrupt, collective silence. And then one fella starts again. I love how the ducks woo on the pond outside my living room window in early
May, how the mothers disappear later in the month to tend to the nest. The males keep coming back for a bit, but by June they stop visiting, perhaps because my pond is not duckling-proof. I know it is not. My oldest Labrador, Milly, wildly anticipating her fifteenth birthday, surprised me with a sopping wet, dead but unviolated muskrat corpse which she had been delighted to chase (when it was alive enough to qualify as sport) and vanquish. Last week. I knew a man who complained about Christmas at his friend’s house. “It’s always the same,” he griped, “How can they stand it?” This is how. The constructs of any tradition may appear identical year after year, but within that occur many distinctive stories and events. So it is with summer. This summer we have had an inordinate
number of male birds hurling themselves at our windows, ensuing at dawn. At first we were horrified, worried about one robin redbreast. He was large, and determined. And punctual. And bequeathed, it seemed, with an excess of some sort of exudite which he smeared on our window with every attempt. As I mentioned, at first we were worried. We anthropomorphically imagined that he imagined his lady love was captive inside. We did everything to dissuade him. After a few weeks, his rank refusal to go away convinced us he was a narcissistic asshole who wanted to join with what he saw reflected in our window. Himself. He finally went away, but not before he took a few shots, in the afternoon, at the glass door in our guest room. By that time he had moved his weird mating ritual to a more civilized 3 p.m. Just today, a little yellow finch was
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pleasuring himself in tiny thwacks against the window in my tack room. Omen of doom be damned. I have barn cats for whom a staggering, dazed bird, unlucky in love, can be a convenient way to dine al fresco, even if it means some of the fun is taken out of it. Perhaps word will get out in Birdville, and this bizarre act won’t repeat next year.
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iming is everything. As a kid I thought summer was a thing, like a UPS package dropped at my door. I could list its pleasures, but was unaware of the rhythms, the patterns, the deadlines. Now is the time to look for wild strawberries. They are so tiny, but so red, and so very, very tasty that they are worth the effort to harvest, knowing in the end that the point of it is the flavor, not satiation. Now is also the time to inhale the perfume of wild apple blossoms. They last only a few days, but the scent is so fine, and so delicate. Soon local crops will arrive. Cultivated strawberries do well here, and Story Farms in Catskill grows acres of them. Asparagus, beet greens, garlic and lettuce are also
Thunder in the Valley
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early crops, followed by all variety of corn, peppers, squash, beans, greens, beets, potatoes. What is better than a tangy tomato salad in olive oil, with garlic and oregano, basil and parsley. Of course, nothing here compares to a Jersey tomato, but there’s always trade-offs. Later we get apples, and that’s when the U-pick parking lots are crowded with Jersey plates. Anyhow, the green crunch, the clean taste, and the fragrance of this abundance can only happen now. Even if you do grill your food year-round, there is something in the soft, summer
June - September, 2016 • 5
air that cannot be duplicated in the “ber” months. Try, as I have, to roast marshmallow over the flame of your gas-burning stove during the dreaded “winter break” when you and all the children have cabin fever at its most relentless and unsparing stage. Not only does this create a mess, it doesn’t taste right. Roasted marshmallows require wood smoke and summer nights. The miracle is, given the choice, most often we crave healthy food now. There is no trouble fulfilling whatever is the recommended daily amount of vegetables.
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s! ith U W r e Summ Enjoy
And fruit. Watermelon is my absolute favorite. I regret what has happened to watermelon in these modern times. Where the hell are the oblong-shaped, seed-studded sweeties of yesteryear that cost, by the way, about a buck and a half? This transgression to the watermelon, which I regard as The Queen of Fruit, is an outrage. I recently purchased a weeny round one. Five dollars. I did the knock test. A good melon, when knocked, sounds just like the clop-clop of fake horse hooves on The Lone Ranger Radio Hour. This one sounded good and hollow, which normally indicates crisp, sweet, pink-red flesh within. Instead, the flesh was sour and looked like the anemic, toothless gums of the fiendish wife of the Scottish king. And the weird sisters. I comforted myself with handfuls of cherries. I can only hope some never-tobe employed political science major will suffer an identity crisis and vow to correct this desecration in organic farming experiments. Which reminds me. You don’t have to crank up your fossil-fuel-burning machine to drive and get food. Nose around in the field and forest edge for “ramps,” those deliciously tender and tiny miniscallions. You can smell them. This phenomenon points out another of summer’s wonders: serendipitous
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fruitfulness. I have a patch of ramps growing perennially outside my kitchen door. Who planted them? An elf. How do they survive dogs, cats, crows, horses, children? Magic. How else do you explain jacks-in-the-pulpit, black-eyed susans, wild pinkster bushes and ginseng? Mushroom hunting is a favorite pastime for many, but I am far too convinced of supernatural forces at work out there, for whom the onset of gastric distress, or death, to forest trespassers like me, is just too, too hilarious.
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J
ust as green things debut in early summer, so it is with baby animals. Hens are much more productive when the day is long. Fecundity loves the sun. Female horses are “long-day cyclers.” The pregnancy is held through the cold months, and concludes, at eleven months, when the weather is mild again. It’s been my privilege to witness this dramatic birth. The water breaks with a great gush, and the baby, a very large infant, looks as if to dive out, feet first. Within hours, the
exhausted mother appears recuperated and strong, grazing in the sun while her newborn totters about. The old wisdom was that the baby should gallop before it is three hours old. They are nomads, after all. Like deer. I once witnessed the birth of a fawn some hundred feet away. Once the birth was complete, the doe stood, and began to walk off. The baby struggled and scrabbled, but managed to catch up. Later that mother would instruct that baby to lie still and not move while she went off to eat her fill. And fawns do it. Don’t disturb the fawn you find staring up at you on your summertime hike. If it lies there, unafraid, it is very young and very obedient to its absent mother. She will come back. Don’t move the fawn. You can be forgiven, however, for swatting away a baby porcupine if one climbs on your head in your sleep, as happened to my dear husband some years ago. The little porky waddled off, unharmed, squeaking from the insult. We were grateful it was not a baby skunk. Soon enough all the babies will be old enough to be afraid. Summer goes by. The deadlines arrive. Once, when stacking hay in my barn, I discovered a bird’s nest high up in the rafters. I yelled that we should stop stacking and move to another part of the barn. One of the guys smiled and told me not to worry. He named the species of bird by nest recognition. That bird family had already been born, and taken flight. He said they begin their trip south by June 21, as though they had their own little SmartPhones to consult. And it was true. They were gone. Even without eating, and even without that cold beer or glass of wine, the elements of summer delight our flesh and senses. Get in a rowboat and drift on a quiet pond. Listen to happy waters at creekside. Swim and sunbathe naked. Watch fireflies wink against a deep, dark sky studded with stars. Remember the Perseids in early August. Go deep, deep into the forest and feel the cool. (Bring something to combat bugs: fly spray, Skin So Soft, swatter). Or get palsy-walsy with a guinea hen that enjoys hiking. Watch how birds and animals love their summer life. My horse buries her nose to graze, methodically nipping the blades with her front teeth, grinding them down with her back, never lifting her head. You can give the sound of this process a name: lush and juicy.
June - September, 2016 • 9
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s I sat on my upstairs deck, writing, my laundry flaps on the line behind me. All at once a dry cotton sheet swirls around my shoulders, billowing gently, like an embrace from Mother Nature herself. Here, most of summer’s climate notes are like that. Gentle. Not like what happens in winter. Winter makes me feel like Mother Nature hates me, like she has a scope trained on my back. And winter will come. We must, with reverence, acknowledge that in summer, just as fruits and vegetables are traveling from farm to market, they leave behind the pigs, chickens, beef, turkey and geese to be butchered in the fall. The animals have had the benefit of stress-free temperatures and plenty of food. Winter comes, and winter wants Thanksgiving turkey, Hannukah brisket, Christmas goose, and ham on New Year’s Day. Oh, but let’s be grasshoppers, and leave all the worries for now. Let’s wake to birdsong and fall asleep to the sound of leaves rustling outside, curtains wafting in the same breeze. Let’s drive with windows or tops down, listening to Al Green. Let’s keep it simple. We don’t have to cook. Just
pick up a peach. If you must work, work in the dirt. I love summer so much that I confess I do love the work of it. I love mowing and planting and turning over compost. I love brushing my dogs and horses and helping them shed. I love helping to shear sheep, and helping turtles cross to their destinations across the road. I love creek damming and getting in hay. I love hanging my laundry
out on a line because it smells like heaven when it’s dry. I tell time by the sun and never count the hours. I make no money. I don’t care. I love it when the wild blackberries and raspberries appear, although I know it means that summer is at its very brief peak, and soon the sunsets will have something sad about them. But not yet. Not yet.
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Hey, kids, let’s learn glamping! Paul Smart explores applying the concept to affordable family adventures
ALL IMAGES WIKICOMMONS
Camping in the backyard has always had an element of luxury to it, complete with parental servants and the possibility of different tents for different functions. y boy spent a lot of time planning a field trip with his class these last months. Plotting may be the better word. He and his ten-year-old pals wanted to be far enough away from home that they felt a bit grownup. But they also wanted to be picked up fast should they not be able to sleep at night. Their teacher suggested Cape Cod and Maine, the Adirondacks and Queens, and raised funds for the trip. Each kid had reasons to naysay -- they’d been to Cape
M
Cod amd Queens already, and Maine was too far. They didn’t want to have to put up tents because they were worried they wouldn’t do it right. They wanted ziplines, gift stores, fancy playgrounds and s’mores. Plus beds and their secretly-stashed stuffed animals for comfort’s sake. They finally went to Cape Cod last week. Our kid called the first morning to say he needed to be picked up. By the afternoon, however, I was getting photos of him and his pals soaked and sunburned at the
beach. When I picked him up the next evening at school, he was raving about Beyonce and Lukas Graham, yurts and glamping. lamping? Wasn’t that a mashup of the disconnected words glamor and camping, and a hipster version of turn-of-the-Gilded Age-century upperclass safaris, without the cheap help? I immediately started adding up how much I’d already spent this year on magic cards and music downloads, at trampoline parks and at sneaker stores.
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During the Gilded Age, the world’s wealthy took to exploring nature in style. Among the greatest early glampers were European aristocrats getting a glimpse of the world’s natural wonders. I told the kid I’d heard the term tied to rich people from New York looking to camp close enough to New Paltz, Hudson, Woodstock, Millerton and Phoenicia to make for fun shopping and loca-
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June - September, 2016 • 11
vore dining where reservations might be necessary. But for the under-12 set? When I was a kid, overnight camp was when Iwe tended to slept on cots and bathed in bath houses. Food was served in a dining room. Glamorous? Not if my memory serves me right. It was nothing like tent-camping out of car trunks, or a long-hauled backpack, for that matter. Our own family camping since the kid’s arrival ten years back included air mattresses and breakfasts at a nearby diner. We roughed it with flannel sheets and real blankets and pillows. Non-glamorous camping stopped when the kid grew tired of being squeezed between his parents while listening to every
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Amy Taluto, Beaver Lake House, 2016, ink on paper
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The prices weren’t that other family in the campsite much more than the cost argue about bedtimes, of summer camp, for one bugs, and the benefits of kid only. It was a good staying still until asleep. deal when one considers We camped out in a forest that most overnight camps filled with snores. A slow frown on parents’ trying to leak in the air mattress share their spawn’s bunk would leave me rubbing space. up against roots and rocks come dawn, while my wife and son hovered atop the as this what we mattress balloon to the wanted for our left of me. young one’s summer eduGlamping must mean an cation, though? In those improvement on all that, really young years you even if a bit more expen- Early glamping experiments didn’t have websites. Gamecan thrill kids for hours sive. A website, glamping. changing celebrities Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone and Thomas at children’s museums, com, listed sites and types Edison are seen here chowing down in an “informal” tent. McDonald’s play areas of glamping experiences all (ever tried to pull fighting meals and mini-bars. Prices ranged from over the world. Those included five sites three-year-olds out of the upper tiers around $100 a night for the basics (think around New York State (all in the Adironof one of those?), backyard tents, two Thoreau in the back yard) to $1000 for, dacks or out Ithaca ways). Some places bucks and an hour making kid decisions well, I didn’t even want to look. were bring-your-own, others had catered in a Dollar Store aisle, or anyplace with water. As the kids grow, it gets much harder. Hikes, creek adventures and mountains are all fine now, but only after much argument and pouting unless other kids, or a dog, are offered for companionship. Most of the glamping spots in the Catskills and Hudson Valley are still in local planning-board pipelines, or already booked up by city hipsters with bank accounts not siphoned off by camp tuitions and other kid expenses. We figured that maybe local campground cabins are sort of like glamping. Unfortunately, they’re all booked up about a week after summer ends the previous year. That news had us looking for new air mattresses, and maybe even a biggerthan-pup-tent experience. A bright idea, based on my wife’s and my younger camp experiences, came to mind. We liked it. We went for it. How about pretending we’re camping, mixing the hardiness of day-camp experiences out in the region’s long-heralded wilderness with a dash of glamor, or at least comfort, at home? st We realized we could augment this experience with a night or two in some friends’ fancy treehouses around the area, and possibly a few days in a rustic cabin at my godfather’s spread in the Adironth – th dacks. We could mix in some kayaking and hiking to places that have a sense of magic about them similar to those in the www.MaverickConcerts.org fantasy flicks we had parked the kid and 120 Maverick Road Woodstock, NY 12498 his friends in front of for years. We’d talk
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June - September, 2016 • 13
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giants, dragons, knights and ogres hiding in gnarled, moss-encrusted dark places during the day, search out big piles of rocks for ascending and hiding in (beware of steep slopes and rattlesnakes), and the allure of streams, ponds and any sort of watercourse. Then we could rush home for spaghetti and a bit of all-on-the-couch telly before plotting our next bits of day-glamping (or gliking. We learned ages ago that a stovetop s’more’s as good as one made over any fire. We thought about a variant even more attuned to the adventures of my own childhood. How about just looking at maps (remember them)? Or driving around with kids scanning the landscape for suitable trailheads, creeks and rock formations? Before you know it, everything could be transformed. In my book, exploration and improvisation produce as much fun as any glamping destination anywhere can.
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INSPIRING GENERATIONS THROUGH PEACE, LOVE & MUSIC
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14 DARIUS RUCKER
WITH DAN+SHAY & MICHAEL RAY
IN THE PAVILION
20 SMOKEY ROBINSON IN THE PAVILION
28 GAVIN DEGRAW & ANDY GRAMMER WITH AARON TVEIT
IN THE PAVILION
SEPTEMBER
10
IN THE PAVILION
16 JIM GAFFIGAN: FULLY DRESSED IN THE PAVILION
17
MICHAEL MCDONALD & AMERICA
IN THE PAVILION
20 TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND WITH LOS LOBOS & NORTH MISSISSIPPI ALLSTARS
IN THE PAVILION
22 ZAC BROWN BAND
WITH DRAKE WHITE & THE BIG FIRE
IN THE PAVILION
23 SAWYER FREDERICKS WITH MIA Z
IN THE EVENT GALLERY
24 KIDZ BOP KIDS
24
DON HENLEY
IN THE PAVILION
JOHN WAITE & THE AXEMEN LESLIE DINICOLA
IN THE EVENT GALLERY
OCTOBER
29 BLUES FESTIVAL AT BETHEL WOODS IN THE EVENT GALLERY
NOVEMBER
05 THE DRIFTERS
IN THE EVENT GALLERY
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IN THE PAVILION
Art Gallery 69 Main St. (2nd oor) New Paltz
Summer Exhibitions
• Stacie Flint “Paintingsâ€? 6/18-7/13 • Laszlo Andacs “Variations, Relations and Photo Constructionsâ€? 7/16-8/11 • Marcia Cole “Meditations on Encausticsâ€? 8/13 -9/11
29 ARETHA FRANKLIN IN THE PAVILION
30 HEART WITH JOAN JETT & THE BLACKHEARTS AND CHEAP TRICK IN THE PAVILION
31 DION WITH RONNIE SPECTOR IN THE PAVILION
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• June - September, 2016
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Riding here Melissa Holbrook Pierson sees the region as a motorcycling nirvana
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here is only one question: Which direction today? When heading out on a motorcycle in the Catskills, this is the sole determination the rider must make. It really doesn’t matter which. Beauty will arrive at every turn. And on a bike you are in sensual contact with it all. There is an immediacy to the smells — suddenly, lilac! Honeysuckle! Fresh-cut hay! You wear it like a silk shawl for a moment or two. Then the moment changes and you have new garb — upon which you rise into the cool with an imperative throttle. Aftergliding through the sweepers, you are delivered back to a valley three degrees warmer, all of which is a gentle touch on the skin under your gear. The sun urges out a chartreuse promise in the landscape. The rain washes away the highway department’s leavings of sand in the most inviting corners, and then you’re away and riding into newness. If they’ve recently repaved, smoothing out the frost heaves in your favorite road, only a light touch is needed to pull the satin ribbon that unwraps the future. For the city motorcyclist, who battles the vehicular army known as “the cagers” every weekend for an hour just to get to Bear Mountain (along with every other rider in the metropolitan region), the idea of being able to turn out the driveway directly onto the kind of road written about in books is a wish in the same general category as unexpectedly receiving a check equivalent to six months’ mortgage.When spring comes to the Catskills bringing a new riding season, the first day out tastes all the sweeter for those who have spent icebound months in yearning. We don’t take it for granted. We know it’s a rare gift. Throughout the year we congregate on a regular schedule, on the Tuesday mys-
COURTESY GREENE COUNTY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
Hudson Valley touring offers remote highways close to delectable hotspots patronized by other motorcycle enthusiasts. teriously designated nationwide (and by what god?) as the night for motorcyclists’ dinner. We meet in towns up and down the Hudson to talk not about much but everything: trips to come, trips that are in the rearview mirror now. We are a U.N. of two-wheeled conveyances, spanning nearly every marque and historical period. We become (even if arrived by car out of necessity) that ideal increasingly absent in a divisive world, the tribe united by essential humanity.
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ertain places are magnets to our bikes. On summer weekends, it seems the entire population of Phoenicia consists of motorcyclists. Bikes line both sides of Main Street while their owners pause for a break against an emerald backdrop of mountain. Soon they’ll head up the curves of 214 and their elevation gain that is like nature’s air conditioning on a sultry day (or nature’s little joke, as I found on a recent
spring weekend when the bits of white landing on my visor turned out not to be petals but snowflakes). Woodstock, too, is a mecca, if only for the low speed limit that turns it into the village square of yore, where the afterdinner hours are devoted to slow perambulations that permit full assessment of the marriageability of passersby. In this case it’s horsepower. The hipster element has their own destination, Moto Coffee Machine, in Hudson (if that isn’t redundant). Fuel for the bloodstream — two ways. Summer’s riding highlight, for those in the know, is the annual vintage ride out of Woodstock. The best part is not the ride itself. It’s the pre-ride tire-kicking in this museum of functioning history, the chance to spot the rare and the refined — the BMW R69S, ancient Moto Guzzis, the Nortons and Triumphs that once made London streets echo with their potent thunder. The trip to lunch
Explore Hudson Valley
June - September, 2016 • 15
COURTESY OF NYS GOVERNOR’S OFFICE
Motorcycle touring in the Catskills got a boost last year when governor Andrew Cuomo announced funding for the region while on a biker’s holiday on local roads. at a just-disclosed location is the dessert at the end of a visual feast.
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he connoisseurs of Catskills roads can be secretive, but you can hardly
See Events & Sale Info Online
Ward’s Where Gardeners Grow
Bear Mountain Native American Pow Wow & Festival
2 Days of Singing, Dancing, Music, Crafts, Jewelry, Birds of Prey, & More... by Native American Artists from across the Americas
August 6th and 7th Anthony Wayne Rec. Area Harriman State Park Exit 17 on the Palisades Interstate Parkway
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16
• June - September, 2016
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formed into ecstatic joy when on a bike. Cross the river on the majestic span between Kingston and Rhinecliff — stand up on the pegs, air rushing above and below, the Hudson glittering far underneath invisible wheels. This is what a bird must feel. The machine becomes as weightless as wings, beating fast. After a passage in Dutchess County, with its distant views of elegant riverside estates, you ride for the hidden surprises of Co-
blame them when it comes to holding close the most desirable of prizes: the little-trafficked country road that offers it all. This horn of plenty contains curves, the delight of changing views, a sense of expansiveness. And, especially, no minivan ahead: total possession is what we crave. In Delaware County it’s possible to ride for an hour and count the passing cars on the fingers of one hand; what might otherwise feel lonely is trans-
Camps & Educational Activities Bring your newborn, toddler, or preschooler to one of our fun-filled classes. Explore musical play, child-friendly instruments, songbooks, and CDs that you use at home. And find out how nurturing our research-based music and movement program can be.
Call for more info 845-382-1020 www.TLGKingstonNY.com
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JUNE 30 - AUGUST 15, ED AGES 5 - 16, CO-ED STONE RIDGE CAMPUS - Tennis • Science of Nature Yoga & Performance • Game Design & Programming Baseball • Adventures in Art • Photography & Creativity • Senators Basketball • Mad Science • Snapology KINGSTON CENTER OF SUNY ULSTER Digital Photography • Game Design & Programming Mad Science • Snapology RONDOUT VALLEY HIGH SCHOOL - Youth Athletic Development
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• sunyulster.edu/campulster
Private & Group Adventures Daily
New Paltz, NY 845-658-3094
info@alpineendeavors.com
Let the Inner Wall and Alpine Endeavors introduce you to climbing in the world famous Gunks - indoors and outdoors! In addition to daily programs, we offer summer camps as well as trips to other areas across the country.
Gunks Adventure Camp Sessions: July 11 - August 19, 2016 234 Main St., New Paltz, NY
June - September, 2016 • 17
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lumbia County. There, with its vast web of county routes, lies the invitation to get happily lost. In the wise words of a motorcyclist I know, GPS is how you get home, not how you leave. Turn it off and take the corner for any road marked with a blue-and-yellow county route sign. The reward is the ascent of gentle hills, the progress into the shadows of overhanging trees and back out into the generous compass of farmland. On the way back, if you’re lucky, there’s
June 27 - July 29
Unique and exciting experiences in the arts, athletics, and open-ended play for children ages 4 - 12.
a hamlet and the café of your dreams: fresh-brewed caffeine — and, of course, a cookie; you deserve it — taken on a patio within sight of the parked bike that brought you here. (Yes, Murray’s in Tivoli, I’m talking about you.) In the coming summer, the season that is as fond as a wish, I will ride the roads of the Catskills and I will find something new. Every time, fresh wonder. Even if I have ridden this way before.
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18
• June - September, 2016
Explore Hudson Valley
PHOTOS WIKICOMMONS, EXCEP T FOR BASEBALL GAME CARE OF HV RENEGADES
Sparrow believes one ne should purchase sungla sunglasses, comic books, a harmonica and tickets to a baseball game at the Hudson Valley Renegades in Dutchess County.
Summer buying tips Sparrow provides 19 thoughtful suggestions to spruce up the season elcome to summer! No doubt your first question is: “What should I buy?” Luckily, this essay will resolve that vexing dilemma. 1) You obviously need a brim hat. And that hat should have a funny slogan on it. The one I’m currently wearing says: “Catastrophe Team,” beneath the red umbrella logo of Travelers Insurance. This cap is a cautious beige, allowing the bright umbrella, embroidered in red thread, to stand out like a fire on a bamboo plantation. 2) Also you really need a pair of sunglasses. Try to find ones that don’t strain your eyes, yet make you resemble a dashing Argentinian embezzler. 3) A harmonica is an absolute necessity of summer. Even if you have no musical
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talent (like me), buy one! Only this instrument conveys the terrible vastness of the lonely American soul. Hearing a mouth harp – originally invented in Germany in 1821 – one feels an aching nostalgia for a semi-imaginary cowboy kingdom that you glimpsed, at age seven, on a flickering TV screen. 4) Other musical instruments are also a good idea. Even if you can’t play them, leave them lying around for your seminomadic friend Jeff to pick up while he’s visiting, so he can regale you with “The Catapult Waltz”! Live music is better for the human body than B vitamins, studies have shown. 5) Get a hose. Hoses are quite useful in summer: for cleaning horsefly corpses off your Datsun, for watering the garden, and, if you have a five-year-old girl, for
holding the hose while she dances in the stream of water. (Occasionally you must place your thumb over the hose’s nozzle in order to spray her.) For some reason, this is the most fun a kid can have. 6) You’ll need a bathing suit because, let’s face it, you can’t always go skinny-dipping. One warning: don’t buy a see-through suit, unless you possess the type of body people enjoy inspecting. I have yellow polyester bathing trunks which are highly revealing of my anatomy when wet, and I’ve learned that no one wants to imagine me with a penis. 7) Send postcards! What is more postally delightful than a cheery rectangle bearing an image of Cape Cod or Gibraltar? Even the most generic postcard message feels personal in this age of ceaseless electronic chatter. For example:
June - September, 2016 • 19
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Dear Maurice: Greetings from The Ensign. Room service in this dump is highly uncertain. I asked them to send up two towels, and three hours later received a dying onion. Miss you, Horace 8) In my youth, summer was notable for its cuisine. The staples of my diet – meatloaf, bologna sandwiches, joyless carrot sticks – were suddenly sweetened with cantaloupe, fresh corn, cherries. And besides that Gil, the Good Humor Man, would drive up offering ice-cream sandwiches and strawberry pops. So splurge on some toothsome summer treats! One of my long-term goals: becoming an expert on the ripening of plums. 9) Men, buy a razor and shave off your beard! There’s no reason to look like a lumberjack at a swinging beach party. Conversely, women shouldn’t shave their legs in summer. Thigh-hair is pleasantly vine-like in this lush season. 10) Read comic books! They are the perfect literary form of the season. The
Taste
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3110 Rt. 28, Shokan Square Shokan, NY 12481 (845) 657-8959 Hours: Open Early ‘til Late 7 Days Per Week www.olivescountrystoreandcafe.com
trick to summer superhero-reading is to learn which movies will be showing at the Cineplex. Even if you don’t actually see them, you’ll feel more au courant reading the companion comics. (Already this year we’ve had Superman vs. Batman and X-Men: Apocalypse.) Summer comics should be epic, cosmic, but also jocular, sexy, thrilling, disorienting. Mutants should mutate further, into
double-mutants. 11) Now is the perfect time to tape a poster to your wall. In winter, a poster looks saturnine and lifeless, but in summer one sparkles. But whose picture should you choose? I suggest Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, author of: O summer day beside the joyous sea! O summer day so wonderful and white, So full of gladness and so full of pain!
Let the Tavern at the Beekman Arms provide both the location and the culinary expertise to make your special day an event to remember. Lunch 11:30pm to 4pm Dinner 4pm to 9pm (Fri & Sat 10pm) Sunday Brunch 10:30 am to 3:30 pm GIFT CERTIFICATES AVAILABLE
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• June - September, 2016
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Pair Up Our Olive Oils & Balsamic Vinegars With Your Favorite Foods! Coming Soon...
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Forever and forever shalt thou be To some the gravestone of a dead delight, To some the landmark of a new domain. 12) Add a touch of estival glamour to your wardrobe! [”Estival” is the adjectival word for summer.] Purchase a small accessory that electrifies your minimal post-Memorial Day costume: a purse made from candle wax, or an anklet with the colors of the Taiwanese flag. (You can sell this adornment at a yard sale on Labor Day!) 13) And a t-shirt! Recently I was walking on Delancey Street in Manhattan when a 26-year-old woman passed me in a tshirt with the message: “CATSKILLS VS. HAMPTONS.” I laughed out loud, right on the sidewalk. (Of course, she didn’t notice.) Why don’t you buy that shirt this coming season? 14) Summer calls out for cool, bracing drinks. If you’re a Muslim-style alcoholabstainer like myself, try: Sparrow’s August Refreshment 4 ripe strawberries 1 tablespoon fireweed honey 5 raisins (soaked) 3 drops lemon juice 2 cups organic pear juice Soak five raisins for two hours, while refrigerating pear juice. Blend ingredients together and serve.
Download our app at the app store — Chops Grille
New Mid-week Spring $21 Prix Fixe Menu Served Tuesday - Thursday only 4:30 - 7:30 pm APPETIZER SELECTIONS Baked Goat Cheese in Puff Pastry • French Onion Soup Guacamole Stuffed Onion Rings with Chipotle Aioli • Caesar Salad
ENTRÉE SELECTIONS Merlot & Stout Braised Lamb Shank Served with Basmati Rice Pilaf and French Beans
Grilled Salmon Au Poivre Served with Baked Potato, Asparagus and Dijon Peppercorn Sauce
London Fish & Chips Fettuccini with Filet Mignon Meatballs & Fresh Basil Marinara Southern Fried Chicken
Served with Creamy Mac & Cheese & Red Cabbage Slaw
DESSERT SELECTIONS George's Homemade Rice Pudding • Cheesecake All Natural Greek Yogurt with Honey & Walnuts
Gastropub • Dining • Events Eclectic American Cuisine with an Irish Twist! Featuring Chef Josh Paige
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215 Huguenot St., New Paltz (845) 255-7888 Open Tues. - Sun., Noon - 10 pm Best Guinness in the Hudson Valley
June - September, 2016 • 21
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15) This is no ordinary summer, but our quadrennial electoral spasm. Make sure to budget some of your money to support your favorite neofascist or dogged feminist icon. I can’t tell you whom to vote for, but be generous; our media-savvy candidates desperately need your PayPal account. 17) Buy a silly board game! What is more fun than sitting with two friends on your porch playing Bunny Bunny Moose Moose? (That’s an actual game, in which players dress up like bunnies and moose to avoid being shot by a hunter.) 19) My Lord, you must go see a baseball
Any other three-hour period of your life will almost certainly be more expensive. Clip out this handy guide, and stick it to your refrigerator with a cheerful magnet shaped like a celery! Check off every point you follow! Enjoy summer!
game! There are many options, ballparkwise. For example, we have a wonderful minor league team in Fishkill known as the Hudson Renegades. It’s so cheap to see a minor-league baseball game, you actually save money sitting in the stands.
Mountain Brauhaus RESTAURANT • BAR • ENTERTAINMENT Winter Clove Road • Round Top, NY
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JOIN US FOR SUMMER KICK-OFF WEEKEND - JUNE 24 - 26 Friday • 7 pm - The Cabaret Duo Saturday • 8 pm - The Mountain Brauhaus Band
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Catering for all occasions 1 East Market St. Red Hook, NY 12571
T: 845.758.9030 F: 845.758.9003 jjgourmet2006@yahoo.com www.jandjgourmet.com
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989 Broome Center Rd Preston Hollow, NY 518-239-6234
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Wednesday - Saturday 5-6pm Sunday 1-5pm
Hours: Wednesday - Saturday 5-10pm Sunday 1-9pm
845-331-6800 www.reservoir-inn.com
“Wunderbar” www.BavarianManor.com 518.622.3261
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• June - September, 2016
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WIKICOMMONS
Summer salads make use of homegrown greens, or those picked up from the local farm market.
Summer cooking Jennifer Brizzi praises the availability of seasonal bounty “By summer cookery I do not necessarily mean cold food; although cold dishes are always agreeable in summer at most meals, however hot the weather, one hot dish is welcome, but it should be a light one, such as a very simply cooked sole, an omelette, a soup of the young vegetables which are in season.” --Elizabeth David, Summer Cooking (Museum Press, 1955)
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s the weather warms, whether you live to cook and eat or whether you just put in that half-hour getting food on the table out of pure necessity you become a different kind of cook. As nature unfolds in all its green and multicolored splendor, so does the food on your plate. No longer do you linger over simmering stews and rich braises for hours, seeking the comfort of the stove’s warmth and the deep aromas. Now you want in and out of the
kitchen as fast as you can; the outdoors awaits, and a myriad of summer activities. So this time of year you think of takeout barbecue or dinner on a restaurant patio, or if you’re in charge of the kitchen something you can do in stages: cook the grains tonight, chop the veggies tomorrow, toss in some protein and a good dressing just before eating, and call it a meal. Dinner this time of year is no longer about three hours in the kitchen and two more lingering convivially at the table. It’s about fast meals, sourced as close to the earth as possible, from your garden or a nearby one, and the foods quickly grilled or even raw, to be consumed easily and simply in order to best move on to other activities. So, instead of baking that sweet potato you peel it and cut it in slices, coat it in olive oil, cumin, salt and pepper, and throw it on the grill. Instead of throwing a can of tomatoes into that sauce or potage, you slice ripe heirlooms thick, put them between slices
of your best cheese and best bread, and call grilled cheese “dinner.” Or forget the bread. Just salt it and eat it, fresh mozzarella and basil optional. If you like to bake bread or cakes, now is the time to let someone else do it. Probably soups and stews and braises are not as satisfying right now to eat, even if you are not the cook in the family. What you may be hankering for is the cornucopia of fruits and vegetables as they come into season and are at their peak of freshness, locality and flavor: strawberries, peaches, leaf lettuce and other cut-and-comeagain young greens from mustard to lacinato kale, spinach, radishes, summer squashes. I’m likely forgetting something that will suddenly show up at the farmers’ market and farmstand to remind me how joyous to rediscover it each year when it comes into season. I like once-a-year foods. At my age the years go by so fast, and I like variety so much (never order “the usual” anywhere) that there
Explore Hudson Valley
June - September, 2016 • 23
are certain things I absolutely adore but am content to have but once or twice a year, like turkey stuffing, corned beef and cabbage and Halloween candy. And local baby zucchini and their flowers, tender sweet Asian eggplants, those fat and pricey heirloom tomatoes with their perfect sweet-tangy balance. Some things are worth waiting for and best savored at their peak and only then. I rarely buy eggplant or tomatoes out of their season because they are so perfect when local and at their peak. I’m not nuts about modern corn because when I was a child before the supersweet craze we had it straight from the garden. It had a much deeper flavor. Not only is the variety wonderful in the summertime, but the rich, inviting colors make it easy to eat that rainbow of foods that the health experts recommend. Not only the flavor, but even the intoxicating aromas — like of fresh herbs or strawberries -- intensify the inviting nature of summer foods. When it comes to summer eating, simplicity is best. Ingredients are so perfect that spotlighting them without too many fussy sauces brings out the best in them. Cold terrines or pâtés or one of the zillion types of burgers, vegetarian or non-, are as complicated as things should get, I think.
JULY 1 – AUGUST 14
BARDSUMMERSCAPE 2016 Opera, Theater, Dance, Music, Film, Cabaret, and the 27th Annual Bard Music Festival Puccini and His World
845-758-7900 | fishercenter.bard.edu Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
©Peter Aaron ’68/Esto
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• June - September, 2016
Good summer dinners are those things that get you in and out of the kitchen fast, like pasta and frittatas, ideally featuring one seasonal ingredient like asparagus or young zucchini. Eggs are usually quick to cook whether that frittata, an omelette, or any other way. Fish and seafood when impeccably fresh doesn’t need much fussing in the kitchen or on the grill, and although I appreciate that subgroup all year round, it is especially good around now.
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When I had more mouths to feed I used to grill almost every night in fine weather. I devised ways to make most of the meal out there, with main and sides and everything but the salad cooked out there on the Weber. Over the years I cooked many a sweet potato, zucchini and asparagus, along with all those pork chops, beer-can chickens, salmon steaks, shrimp, and even tofu. I experimented with different spice combos and smoking woods
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LANEY JONES
SIMI STONE
THU JUN 23 8PM
FRI JUL 1 9PM
OKKERVIL RIVER SHAKEY GRAVES SAT JUL 16 9PM
TUE JUL 26 8PM
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and found it a very diverting way to spend a fine summer evening. Summer salads come in endless variety and are just the thing for warm days. Besides refreshing green ones based on all those uniquely flavored leaf lettuces, there are maindish salads that keep a day or two and include all the food groups, with protein in the form of anything from shredded poached chicken to any kind of beans, with rib-sticking carbs in the form of rice, farro, pasta, even cubes of bread, and the most gorgeous vegetables you can find, either lightly cooked or raw, whatever brings out their best qualities. But the best ingredients will fall flat if the salad’s not properly seasoned. It needs just the right amount of salt and pepper (those amounts vary
Sun June 26 at 7pm
Sat July 2 – Sun July 3
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June - September, 2016 • 25
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WIKICOMMONS
The grill is indispensable to summer cooking. Try some potatoes next time you’ve got it fired up, a perfect side to whatever main dish you’re serving. person to person so I usually seek a middle ground, keeping in mind that diners can add more to taste and that if the salad is chilled before eating it will likely need adjusting) and the correct quantities of oil and vinegar and/or citrus juice. Not too oily or tangy but just right. Maybe what’s best about summer food is how it brings us together, coaxes us to emerge from hibernation, and get together to celebrate the season’s bounty, to gather on patios and decks, in farmers’ fields and on mountainside picnic tables, to get out there and get together and eat great summer food.
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VLADIMIR FELTSMAN, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
ER
MM U S O N IA
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FESTIVAL · INSTITUTE 2016 / JULY 9–29
FESTIVAL CONCERTS McKenna Theatre Visit newpaltz.edu/piano for complete program information
FACULTY GALA July 9 at 8:00 p.m. Vladimir Feltsman (Brahms) Paul Ostrovsky (Bach) Phillip Kawin (Schubert) Alexander Korsantia (Beethoven) Susan Starr (Chopin) Robert Hamilton (Villa-Lobos) VICTOR ROSENBAUM RECITAL July 16 at 8:00 p.m. Maestro Rosenbaum will give a rare and invigorating recital of extraordinary music by Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert. DARIA RABOTKINA July 23 at 8:00 p.m. She possesses “clearly prodigious musical gifts” (The Washington Post). Audiences find her to be “the real thing” and “spellbinding in everything she played.” (The Boston Musical Intelligencer). (Schumann, Prokofiev, Manual de Falla)
SYMPHONY GALA with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic Vladimir Feltsman conducts July 29 at 8:00 p.m. Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise” and Brahms’ Symphony #3. Concerto by the 2016 Jacob Flier Piano Competition winner.
INSTITUTE EVENTS Recitals, piano competitions, master classes – all open to the public.
Box Office 845-257-3880 Monday-Friday: 11:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Online tickets: newpaltz.edu/piano Faculty Gala - $35, $30 Victor Rosenbaum recital - $30, $25 Daria Rabotkina recital - $30, $25 Symphony Gala -$45, $40
S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E W Y O R K
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The gods await to delight in you Robert Burke Warren extols the experience of playing and enjoying music udson Valley life affords me more opportunities to play music in front of people than any other place I’ve lived, and that includes New York City. The Catskills, in fact, feel like one big stage, with accommodating spirits hov-
H
ering, encouraging, constantly offering chances for musicians and music lovers to step out of everyday life and into the timelessness of song. I completely understand why Dylan, the Band, Hendrix, Sebastian, Van Morrison, Rundgren, the B-52s, Bowie, and many other mu-
sicians have lived – or still live – here. And why Woodstock (in Bethel) happened in these hills, and why its scope and vibe has never really been repeated elsewhere. In his poem, “The Laughing Heart,” Charles Bukowski wrote, “The gods await
COURTESY OF LEVONHELM.COM.
Levon Helm’s Barn in Woodstock was built as a state-of-the-art recording studio and gained renown as home to the late legend’s Rambles.
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to delight in you.” In our rolling, mysterious hills, this notion feels quite real. Our local gods, in the rocks, the waterways, and lush mountainsides, await to delight in us, musicians and music-lovers alike. Their desire is palpable. peaking for myself, I came here with my family fulltime in 2002, and because I tend to accept the muse’s call more often than not I’ve performed in many types of surroundings. Consequently, I am more confident as a musician than I’ve ever been, ready to bust out tunes in front of footlights or a crackling woodstove. I can’t imagine this happening elsewhere, and I’m deeply grateful to my environment for making it so. I’ve actually lost track of the venues in which I’ve performed. The list runs the gamut from the Bardavon and First Steps Preschool to the Bearsville Theater and the Woodstock Farm Festival. Almost every church. Definitely every school in the Onteora system. Mountain Jam? Did it, more than once. Santa’s arrival on the Woodstock Green? Played that, with my band, on a flatbed truck, with Santa himself on lead guitar. Adoption ceremony in Delhi, at which foster kids officially became family members? Check. Garlic Festival? Several times, ate the garlic ice cream. Glenford Church? I turned fifty on that stage. New World Home Cooking? Yes, broadcast on WAMC. Utopia Soundstage? A lot. Levon’s Barn? God, yes, with Levon on drums. Harmony Café? Yes, and walked off with a cannabis-scented, crisp
S
New Paltz/Gardiner
fifty-dollar bill, pressed into my hand by a very friendly, very high dude in a Grateful Dead hoodie. Also: Kleinert/James, Byrdcliffe Theater and Barn, Colony Café, Tinker Street Café, every bookstore in the region, every library, Proctors, The Linda, Rosendale Café/Street Festival/Theater, Clearwater (Sloop and Fest), Taste of the Catskills, Belleayre, summer and winter hoots, Tinker Street Cinema, Shandaken Theatrical Society, Empire State Railway Museum, Woodstock Animal Sanctuary, Woodstock Community Center, ’Cue, BSP, Market Market, and probably your neighbor’s house. Maybe even your house. Every venue offers something different, and affects music, music-maker and audience. As a musician, you become accustomed to how you sound while practicing, usually at home or in some hovel. But once you play out, that sound changes. The music takes on characteristics of the room (or the outdoor space), the people, the communal vibe of the day, which is nigh impossible to predict.
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June - September, 2016 • 27
After some time, you learn to gauge the space, the people, and adjust. You learn to pivot. Sometimes the venue is charmed, and energizes, imbues you with power. Alternatively, even in our music-friendly region, a space can work against you, with bad tech, crappy acoustics, and/or a clueless or hostile crowd that’ll make you feel like you’ve been thrown to the lions. At which point you must suck it up and play on. In my experience, the local venues I’ve loved playing are, not surprisingly, often the venues in which I’ve also seen some unforgettable shows. Best acoustics? Easy: Levon’s Barn. Thick, rough-hewn wood, few windows, and somehow, even though you feel you’re in someone’s home (because you are in someone’s home), the barn features top-notch sound equipment and sound operators – usually Brendan McDonough. When I played the Kids Ramble in 2007, I stepped onto the thick rugs of the performance area and recalled how,
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• June - September, 2016
three years before, I’d seen Levon sit in with Ollabelle at the first Midnight Ramble I attended. We’d been told Levon couldn’t sing, due to his cancer treatments. But to everyone’s astonishment, he did sing, in duets with his daughter Amy. The energy between them was magic, a glowing thing. And like I say, it all sounded fantastic; perfect volume, all instruments discernible as individual waves, but also part of a whole, touching the audience’s insides, enlivening us, making us one. Because most of us listen to music on substandard speakers, earbuds, or through bad systems operated by amateurs, you forget how great amplified sound can be. So excellent live sound is often revelatory. And that’s what you get at the barn. And by the way, Levon was not supposed to play at that 2007 Kids Ramble gig, either. But he did. Elizabeth Mitchell
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DION OGUST
COURTESY OF ROBERT BURKE WARREN
Left, a stalwart venue of the local music scene is the Bearsville Theatre in Woodstock, seen here before the recent Bob Dylan 75th birthday concerts; right, the author plays bass with numerous local acts, as well as performing his own adult material and performances as Uncle Rock, who the under-ten set still raves about. He recently published his first novel, Perfectly Broken, about a rock musician who moved to the Catskills.
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June - September, 2016 • 29
and You Are My Flower, with whom I, as Uncle Rock, shared the bill, played the Velvet Underground’s “What Goes On,� and they drafted me to play bass an arm’s reach from Levon, who laid down a funky beat and grinned at me like a Cheshire cat. I will take that one with me when I go. hen folks talk – and/or post – about “best concert(s) I ever saw,� I always include Richard Thompson at
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• June - September, 2016
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“The best way to experience the Hudson Valley”
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the Bearsville Theater, solo acoustic, Rumor & Sigh tour, 1991. (My wife and I were weekenders then.) First time I saw him, first time I heard his now classic “1952 Vincent Black Lightning.” The sold out, 400-person capacity room was the perfect venue. Any bigger, and it might’ve lost some intensity; any smaller, and the crush of people would’ve distracted. His songs, jaw-dropping fingerpicking wizardry, and quiet charisma mixed with a mysterious element he conjured among the congregation, a sense of community. I’ve seen many shows in this room, full bands and solo performers, and I’ve played in various configurations – solo, band, huge band – and for me, the Bearsville Theater excels with smaller-scale acts. Again, much wood makes for good acoustics, the vaulted, church-like ceiling gives a sense of quiet grandeur, and the separate space for the bar means no glasses clinking during quieter moments. When I finally played Bearsville Theater about fifteen years later, my first thought was, “This is where I saw that amazing Richard Thompson gig.”
Pools, Spas & Patio Furniture 1606 Ulster Avenue, Lake Katrine (Next to Adams) • 336-8080 604 Rte 299, Highland (Next to Lowes) • 883-5566
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F
inally, around one in the morning., I grew tired and took my leave
ONCERTS & ONVERSATIONS
darkness of the parking lot, where I reluctantly re-engaged with modern life, i.e. my car. Just before I turned the ignition key, I could also hear, ever so faint, the laughing of the delighted gods.
PIANO PERFORMANCE MUSEUM FESTIVAL WEEKEND! TWO VERY SPECIAL EVENTS BY DISTINGUISHED GUEST ARTISTS, PLAYING ON HISTORIC PIANOS
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to drive home while I still could. The circle kept singing, barely conscious of me, piling on logs, sending sparks aloft as they engaged in song after song after song. I could still hear them from the
Tickets Purchased Ahead: $25; $20 seniors; $7 students
2016
y favorite local gig of all – one that I played – was impromptu and just three years ago. I’d performed at Mike and Ruthy’s inaugural summer hoot at the Ashokan Center, first on the Toshi Seeger stage, then throughout the grounds over the course of the day. It was a perfect summer day; ideal temperature, few bugs, verdant surroundings. The hoot was well attended, with great food, reasonable prices, and much spontaneous fun for kids and adults. It was the kind of day that makes everyone a better person. I was officially done, and Mike Merenda asked if, after Natalie Merchant’s set, I would commandeer a “song swap” at a bonfire atop the hill overlooking the Pete Seeger stage. It would be an alternative for folks who didn’t want to go dance at the Killian Pavilion, an opportunity for the many campers who’d brought instruments to play together. I said sure, thinking, “No one will come. Everyone will go dancing.” I was wrong. The perfect day melted into a perfect Catskill summer evening, starlit, no sounds of heavy industry audible, dew in the air. Someone had just lit a huge bonfire on the hill, as Natalie said thank you, good night. The crowd below dispersed into the deepening dark. To my surprise, a wave of people ascended the hill, and campers stepped into the firelight with guitars, mandolins, banjos and ukuleles. The congregation swelled quickly, from twenty to fifty or so. Maybe more. The crowd, as an organism, was initially bashful. I was wondering how to engage everyone, and out of the darkness, a woman’s voice asked, “Anyone know ‘I Love Rock N’ Roll’?” “I do!” I said. And I played it, and everyone sang, and we were off. As the hours passed, people grew ever bolder, singing folk songs, country, rock, punk, and originals that ranged from a cappella emo laments to crusty sea chanties. As goes it with a successful song swap, a momentum asserted itself, and young and old alike settled into our temporary little firelit tribe, tapping into ancient strands of collective memory. Humankind as a species has spent much more time singing songs around fires than any other activity, and a sense of familiarity takes hold, a constant déjà vu.
(Prices valid until 5 hours before the performance)
THE FREDERICK COLLECTION OF HISTORICAL PIANOS Edmund Michael and Patricia Frederick, Collectors Yi-heng Yang, fortepiano
SUNDAY, AUGUST 21 @ 2:00 PM Tickets: $10 adults/seniors; $7 students
At the Door: $30; $25 seniors; $7 students
Doctorow Center for the Arts • 7971 Main Street, Village of Hunter Tickets available at www.catskillmtn.org or by calling 518 263 2063 Catskill Mountain Foundation is funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation, the Samuel and Esther Doctorow Fund, The Greene County Legislature through the Cultural Fund administered by the Greene County Council on the Arts, Bank of Greene County, Greene County Youth Fund, Marshall & Sterling, Stewart’s Shops, Windham Foundation and by private donations.
28th Annual Aug 5, 6 & 7 Dodds Farm 44 County Rd 7D Hillsdale NY
Three Days of Folk Music & Dance at the foot of the Berkshires Concerts, Dancing, Camping, Workshops, Craft Village, Activities 4 Kids, International Food, Thurs Pre-Fest Tastings Day w/ Farmers Market & Lounge Stage, Accessible & ASL Interpreted
Tom Rush, The Felice Brothers, Vance Gilbert, SONiA, Professor Louie & the Crowmatix, Patty Larkin, Sarah Potenza, Green Mountain Playboys, Gaslight Tinkers, Metropolitan Klezmer, The Slambovian Circus of Dreams, Brother Sun, Mike + Ruthy Band, The Storycrafters, others www.FalconRidgeFolk.com - 860-364-0366
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• June - September, 2016
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Canoe, kayak or tube Violet Snow describes her feelings of oneness with the creek
“
T
his isn’t a lazy river,” said Phoenicia resident Carol Seitz about the Esopus Creek. “Tubing here is an
action sport.” But there are other rivers in the Catskills that are lazy, as well as glassy lakes and the massive expanse of the River That Runs Both Ways, a.k.a. the Hudson. Whether
PHOTOS BY VIOLET SNOW
Colleen Fox President
82 Vineyard Avenue, Highland, NY 12528 845-691-6600 • 845-256-1300 845-331-7111 • 845-452-5000 845-566-5203 • FAX: 845-691-2447
Many local creeks, such as the Esopus (above and right), are best paddled at higher tides, and with care for those also using the waterway for fishing and inner tubing. you prefer kayaking, canoeing or tubing, the excitement of rapids or the calm of gliding over a still surface, our bodies of
water can carry us to places of pleasure. As a beginning paddler, I have savored a variety of these rides in the past few
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the arms but by the turning of the body’s center, awakening the core. You choose whether to paddle slowly and serenely or with a power that shoots the boat forward in a satisfying glide. The lazy creeks make for an easy paddle, but I wouldn’t go out on the Hudson River without an experienced guide. Luckily, my friend Tom Rough, who kayaks the river even in the winter, took me out several
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times one summer. The Hudson’s challenges include the changing tide, waves that can get fairly steep when the wind picks up, drunken people on Jetskis or pleasure launches, and, most dangerous of all, the commercial barges that ply the shipping channel and can’t easily brake for the heedless paddler. I felt safe with my observant friend warning me whenever such dangers were approaching, and
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Boat Home years, always in the company of experts (or at least people with more experience than I). Friends took me kayaking on the Wallkill Creek, starting out near New Paltz and meandering several miles north along the river’s placid curves to the covered bridge in Rifton. The water was a clear green, the willows hung gracefully over the banks, and we chased a heron that kept reappearing around each bend and then hoisting its heavy body into the air to fly ahead. I rented a kayak one September at the Ramshorn Sanctuary near Catskill for a similar kind of voyage. It slipped me into the bliss that gentle motion and natural beauty conspire to produce when the mind is sufficiently soothed. There’s something about paddling a kayak that helps to induce such a state — the steady, sideto-side movement, powered not just by
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• June - September, 2016
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there were many sights to compensate for the risks.
W
e often saw bald eagles flying overhead or cormorants sitting on rocks and diving completely into the water to chase fish. Tom knew the history of the river and pointed out relics along the shore: cement and brick factories, barge graveyards, tumbledown Bannerman’s Castle, icehouses and
pumphouses. Each time we went out, we put in at a different place, so I saw the beauties of many stretches of the river: the dramatically bald hills across from West Point; the lawns sweeping up to the mansions of Hyde Park; the bridges at Poughkeepsie, Kingston, and Catskill; the long, narrow island near Hudson; the sturdy lighthouses. After four or five hours on the expanse of water, under the big sky, I was happy for
June - September, 2016 • 35
days — except for the longing to get back out on the river. Last summer, my friend Carla Shapiro and I rented a canoe together at Wilson State Park, in the western reaches of Woodstock. Paddling is different in a canoe -- I still need more lessons. But we enjoyed the teamwork, the peaceful dawdling in the afternoon sun, the turtles that occasionally loomed up through the water. Best of all was the stillness that
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• June - September, 2016
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crept over us when we stopped, closed our eyes, and let the canoe drift. I’ve never gone tubing, so I asked the experienced Carol Seitz to describe what it’s like to ride down the Esopus on a giant inner tube. The stretch near Phoenicia has some slow sections, where you can enjoy
a moment of repose, but what makes tubing fun is the rapids. “It tosses you,” Carol explained. “You’re a little out of control, but it’s okay. The biggest thing is to remember to relax and try to maintain your balance. The more you relax and let the water take you, the more fun it is. If
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you get turned backwards, just go with it.” She’s taken many friends out for their first tubing expedition. Some say they’ve never been more frightened in their lives, while others called it an exhilarating, lifealtering experience.
O
ne summer afternoon, seeking relief from hundred-degree weather, Carol rented a tube from Town Tinker Tube Rentals. While riding the Tube Taxi (a decommissioned school bus) to the dropoff point, she fell into conversation with the driver and owner of the business, Harry Jameson. This past fall, thirteen years later, they married. Romance aside, I have experienced the Esopus rapids as well, but in a kayak. Last year, whitewater enthusiast Vincent Bilotta took me out twice to paddle the creek, with plenty of instruction to get me oriented. The first time, my kayak got stuck, glued to a rock by the current, and I had to climb out and stand in the rushing water as I tried to dislodge my craft. After a five-minute struggle, I freed
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Hours: Fri. & Sat: 9 - 5:30, Sun. 10 - 5 or call for an appointment www.hoffmansbarn.com email: hoffmansbarnsale@yahoo.com Buy & Sell (845) 758-5668
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June - September, 2016 • 37
For families and beginners, there are plenty of slow, meandering water courses to choose from for canoeing and kayaking adventures. it, took a deep breath, and jumped in to let the rapids carry me onward. The second venture occurred on Halloween, in 49-degree water. Vincent loaned me insulating clothing made of neoprene. I did not expect to end up in the water, but the kayak flipped me out in a tricky section of rapids. Warmed up from paddling, I didn’t even notice the cold as I desperately struggled to turn the boat over, maneuver it around the rocks, and then hold onto it long enough to clamber back in. An egg-sized bruise on my leg felt like a badge of courage. The adrenaline high lasted the rest of the day and well into the night. I loved the sense of release, the excitement of facing a modest amount of danger, and most of all, the sense of oneness with the creek — especially standing within it and absorbing the power of the current. Now I have a whole new relationship with the Esopus. I hope it continues.
Our author notes that on the region’s feistier creeks and rivers, including the Hudson, whirlpools, rapids and other challenges make safety a key concern.
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PHOTO COURTESY OF MOHONK PRESERVE
Running in the region is a burgeoning sport, complete with a growing number of competitive races and trails for all levels of expertise and stamina.
Running summer Chris Rowley presents some thoughts about exercise, fitness and fun n nice days there’s nothing I would rather do than run. At some point during the day, depending on how much time might be available, I will want to get out on the trails and put in either a quick three-miler, or if there’s time for it
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a longer, more reflective jog, perhaps to six or eight miles. I’m not a marathoner, I don’t even attempt half-marathons. At my age, that kind of distance tends to exhaust me and leave me feeling weary the next day. I don’t like that. But I love the feeling I get from
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a good run within my limits. Even a run on a rainy day leaves me with a runner’s high and a positive feeling about the rest of the day. This effect has been demonstrated in scientific studies. A 2006 study published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise noted that even mild exercise, half an
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hour of just walking, could lift the mood of someone suffering depression. Other studies have confirmed that physical activity is an effective way to treat depression. That runner’s high comes from the production of endocannabinoids, hormones that make you feel great. But I think it goes much farther than that. Regular aerobic exercise, getting your heart beating hard, your lungs working to full capacity, your muscles hot and the sweat running, tunes the body up. That alone leaves you feeling good. And there may be positive physiological feedback from the effect on your muscle mitochondria, the little “engines” in our cells that burn carbs and give us energy. Regular aerobic exercise increases their number, and the more the merrier, because more mitochondria means better energy production, hence an easier time exercising, setting up a virtuous upwards spiral. here’s no question that vigorous physical exercise is work, and hard work, too, especially for those who are out of shape and perhaps have never been in shape. Many are they who shrink from the very idea of getting running shoes on and heading out to run. Or a bike ride, a hike or a swim. That route path can descend into less and less physical capability and even immobility. We all end up there in the end, but why hasten the end? The difficult truth, hard for many to accept, is that we evolved to live hard, physically demanding lives. Making a living two million years ago on the plains of East Africa was stressful. Covering a lot of territory was part of finding enough to eat.
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The bodies we’re blessed with now are full of the results of the evolutionary processes that began with the shift from the way of life of our forebears, the australopithecines, who were as comfortable in the trees as out of them, to the hominid way, which involved searching out food on the ground in a drier climate with fewer trees. That lifestyle was not all about running. In fact running was probably a minor component. Mostly people walked. However, now and then, they ran, either to get to something before the hyenas ate it all, or to get away from something or someone threatening danger. Indeed, that was a dangerous, albeit, beautiful world. And it left us with bodies that need to be worked, that need aerobic exercise to feel really at their best. The health effects of running or of any vigorous exercise are well understood now. Exercise burns calories, and while our bodies do become very efficient when
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we exercise regularly, exercise still burns calories. Our whole body becomes more efficient. For instance, aerobic exercise is good for the brain. Fitter, older adults resist mental decline. And there is even evidence that regular exercise helps prevent some kinds of cancer. Okay, so running can be good for you.
But there is also evidence that too much running can be not good. Not that this is a problem for very many people, but those who like to marathon or ultra-marathon do need to be aware of risks. For most of us, especially those who run for fun, the body parts we most need to take good care of, if we want to run, or be fit, are
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the knees. The basics are simple. Lose weight, reduce everyday stress on those precious scraps of cartilage and tendon that make knees function. Exercise, too, because that increases blood flow in the body and that nourishes cartilage. And, very important, do exercises that build muscle around the
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knee joint, in other words give those knee joints a helping hand. For those who want to keep running and exercising into their senior years, other things to think about are running on soft and irregular surfaces. Road running may be fine for you, but running on
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trails makes you much more conscious of balance and it also keeps your leg and foot muscles working in different ways to keep you stable as you run. A softer surface can usually be found at your local high school’s running track, which can offer a good alternative to hard pavements.
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ommitted runners, endurance and distance runners, will often promote trail running over road running. Todd Jennings, for instance, a wellknown name in Hudson Valley distance running, says, “The softer surface of trails, and the irregularities are pluses. The irregularities develop lateral stabilizers, muscles, from trail running. At first, when someone starts running on trails, it feels awkward because they haven’t developed the musculature for it. But as you keep at it, your muscles adapt and it gets easier and more fun.” Jennings has cut back on his running distances due to knee problems. He feels that every set of knees has a certain amount of miles in them. “Luckily, I didn’t start running until I was 40, so that let
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me run distance for a good span of time.” Jennings has advice for anyone who has found they like running and are thinking, “Well, should I get into that?” “Running is great exercise, but if your running owns you, then you have a problem,” Jennings says. “You PHOTO BY KELLIE MCGUIRE want to own your running, not be beholden Hiking has long been a stalwart of the region, but now many are finding greater oomph in such magnificent trails as that making its way to it.” And finally, “Don’t do along the Shawangunk Ridge between Rosendale and Port Jervis. anything that drains the fun out of it.” And that’s the most important point of all. When I put on my running shoes and head out to run on the mountain trails, I’m looking forward to the exertion and
also to the views and wildlife sightings along the way. Being out of doors, away from a computer screen, with nothing to do but run for as long as time allows, that’s a kind of paradise. When a red-tail hawk starts up from the short tree on the right and goes crying “Keee-whit!” ahead of me up the mountain, that’s really fun, the best kind.
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Confessions of a cultural couch potato Scott Baldinger castigates himself for either staying at home or sticking close to home he year was 1817. A French writer named Marie-Henri Beyle (aka Stendhal, author most famously, of The Red and the Black) took a break from his authorial toil with a cultural trip to Florence. Visited the basilica of Santa Croce, where Machiavelli, Michelangelo and
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Galileo are buried, he saw Giotto’s frescoes for the first time. He found himself not only in ecstasy but suffering “… palpitations of the heart and an attack of nerves, dizziness and disorientation. Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.” This dramatic mental disorder is now
acknowledged by psychiatrists by the appellation Stendhal’s Syndrome. If you’re a full- time or weekend resident of the Hudson Valley, you might be forgiven to feel some of these symptoms, if the not the whole megillah, long before you make it to your artistic destination: Just looking at the vast lineup of first-rate performance
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Dance has become a major component of the region’s cultural offerings each summer, as evidenced by performances and festivals at Kaatsbaan, Mt. Tremper Arts, the new American Dance Institute in Catskill, and the Wassaic Festival in eastern Dutchess County, seen here. events taking place at admired venues throughout the Hudson Valley can trigger the syndrome in you even before you leave the house. For someone like me, who doesn’t particularly care for evening drives over country roads to even the most acclaimed of performances, the Stendhal effect is sometimes overwhelming. It can lead me to an evening of watching movies I’ve missed (and many you haven’t) on Turner Classic Movies, or even tawdry, formulaic true-crime documentaries (Women With Knives, Nightmare Next Door) on the Discovery channel, the latter – oddly, I must admit — good for lulling me to sleep. (If M*A*S*H or Boxcar Bertha, Martin Scorsese’s first commercially released feature films, is on past midnight, I find myself wide awake ‘til the wee hours of the morning.) What is it about the rolling expressively beautiful environs of the Hudson Valley that makes it such a deep well of performing-arts venues, high, middle and low? What causes the consequent guilt about not feeling up to attending them? It feels so unlike a Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney movie in which someone has said, “My dad has a barn we can use!” As one very sophisticated transsexual joked to me once, “My dad has a little hippodrome we can use!” The summer is a wellspring for these cultural events, which I see as a form of religious ceremony in the gorgeous environs in which they take place. Why would I not attend? There’s a constant mix between community musicals and high-end avant-garde
dance and performance art. Start to count: Music Mountain’s chamber music in Falls Village, dance at Kaatsbaan in Tivoli, Art Omi in Ghent, Mt Temper Arts, Wassaic, Basilica Hudson in Hudson and the reliably profession classical delights at the Spencertown Academy. Add Grazhda, Windham’s Music in the Mountains, and the Catskill Jazz Factory. Smaller events at new community theaters, like the new Ancram Opera House, pop up like ragweed. Add, of course, what Bard’s Fisher Center, the other colleges and Saratoga Performing Arts Center present. And that’s just the beginning, as you don’t have to remind me. Other than a prescription for Xanax or Adderall, what can counteract the attacks of existential dread that come on when one is thinking about attending one of
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these numerous celebrations of the arts? A ride with someone helps, particularly when you think you might be drunk with excitement over hearing a favorite piece of music live. Living around the corner from the venue or down a small, flat stretch of highway helps. The idea that you don’t have to get dressed up or even have reservations for many events is also helpful in getting one off one’s rear end. So is guilt about having suddenly become an uncouth couch potato. While dressing up is a silly concept when you are going to be sitting on a hill in the dead heat of summer, I for one feel the need to wear something other than jeans and a shirt with a chocolate stain when I’m seeing or hearing something in a gorgeous building like Frank Gehry’s Fisher Center. What if you don’t even have a shirt without a stain on it? If you don’t watch TV, you tell yourself, you might miss an episode of something on the level of Roots. Or Trump might go further up in the polls. Sometimes the best choice for someone both picky and lazy like me is choosing something modest in size and relatively local: a community-oriented theater nearby that provides an equivalent quality of fare to the larger organizations. The diminutive Ancram Opera House, newly owned by theater professionals Jeff Mousseau, a director whose work has been widely seen, and actor Paul Ricciardi, teacher of acting and voice at the City University of New York/Kingsborough Community College, fits the bill. Mousseau and Ricciardi know their own size: around 90 seats in all, and there is, as of yet, no Moliere or truncated production of Marat/ Sade on the menu -- or Mame, for that matter.
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The things we unearth Annie Nocenti finds Donald Trump in an unexpected place
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pulled out of the river to onald Trump” feed a hundred people. is staked to a Then they’d look around tree along the the property as if expecting creek. He’s got to see the ghosts of parties long horns, an empty skull, past, sigh, get back on their and his infamous hair hangs bikes and leave. windblown between hollowed It made me sad to think eye sockets. Where did this bit I’d ruined the revelry for all of accidental political art come these hedonistic nomads. from? A year ago a farmer But it did explain why arfriend dumped a bull’s head cheological digs into this in my yard (don’t ask) and I land invariably unearth not buried it. When I dug it up a just large quantities of beer year later, the bugs had done cans full of bullet holes, their stealth job and cleaned but also illegal electric the skull. It still had one flop and plumbing lines that of dirty blond hair, and resemsnake around every inch bled The Donald. of the property, little staI don’t have a TV, so when tions of power for camper a chipmunk peeks out one of hook-ups. the Trump skull’s eyeholes, or Things get buried and a woodpecker natters away at things get dug up. I’ve the bugs in his belfry, I’m getfound arrowheads here, ting all the savvy, grassroots but also guns, phones, dolls, election-news commentary animal traps and chicken I need. The Trump skull has feeders. The Native Ameribecome especially beloved by cans that settled here were visiting children, who tumble called were the Esopus Inout of cars and rush over to say dians by the Dutch. Others hello to Trump and see how PHOTO BY ANNIE NOCENTI called them the Tongores, he’s doing. He seems content In an election year, everything gains added meaning. and the area around nearby to sneer down at them from his Young visitors to the author’s creekside home labeled this find from the creek for the GOP’s presumed nominee Olivebridge was previously high perch on the tree. called Tongore. One legend Life on the Esopus Creek pro- even before he’d announced his current run. claims a Chief Tongoras vides me with a lazy, never-endwas buried with a pot of gold (or perhaps hopes of finding more heads. ing string of spontaneous summer parties. British coin) at his feet, somewhere in the This two-acre plot was, long ago, NativeThe hotter the day, the more friends stop flatlands along the Esopus Creek. Chief American turf. According to the oldtimers by to swim. Kids are fascinated by the Tongoras allegedly killed Chief Ashokan in on my road, it was for a while a boxing skull’s resemblance to Trump, especially a battle over (of course) a woman. Other camp. Just before I bought the property, the young ones, who, like receptive little historians trace this bit of historical myth it had become a summer encampment for tuning forks, feel the cloud of giddy anxiety back to a wealthy Dutch settler named bikers. Once in a while in the first years I and hilarity that emanates from adults Gizbart Krum Van Tongoren, who most lived here, a few motorcycles would pull when they speak of The Donald. Children likely did have a pot of British coin. in the drive, the bikers asking where the are also curious about where and why the big bash went. They would tell me stories head was buried and resurrected. They Whatever the truth, the buried gold story of huge bonfire parties, with enough fish like to dig in the hole it came out of, in gets visiting children digging and hoping
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for gold that is most likely, along with Dutch Schultz’s treasure, never to be found. The myth of the Catskill Treasure Map endures. But in digging for one thing you can find another. One ten-year-old friend, in pursuit of gold, dug up a vintage Pepsi bottle he later sold for eight bucks on Ebay. Other strange things have been buried and unearthed from this property. Last spring, when digging a new herb garden, I found a small stuffed bunny, a racecar, and a pair of Seventies-style mod sunglasses, all buried together. Buried together for some reason? Or left out after a picnic and buried by the happenstance of nature and forgetfulness? I wonder about those that were the caretakers of this land long before I came along. What did they witness? Is there a word for a kind of wistful longing for someone else’s life and memories? Vicarious nostalgia? William Faulkner famously said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Do
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buried things gain power, like childhood traumas stuffed into the unconscious and forgotten? Does everything need to be unearthed? I have impulses to bury things just so that they can be unearthed decades
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later, for others to wonder about. Inspire vicarious nostalgia in the next caretaker of this land. I wonder what they will think of the Trump effigy staked to a tree, with its hollow eyes and thousand-yard stare.
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Art’s a challenge Paul Smart casts a jaded eye on the changes in the cultural scene ainted sawed-off log seats. Samplings from a collection of 2500 photos and clippings collected over a lifetime. Flat portraits on a spackled, seemingly unfinished gallery wall. A mass of watermeasuring tools. Assembled beach balls
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Jack Shainman’s The School, in Kinderhook, draws NYC art aďŹ cionados for its exhibits, such as the current compendium of four one-person shows that opened last month. mechanically moving around an undefined central point.
The Hudson Valley art scene has lost many of its familiar moorings. Landscape
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still plays a significant role in what’s being created and shown from Westchester to Albany. The nods to older traditions of aesthetics and craftsmanship continue, though often in self-consciously contemporary ways. The crowd artists and curators wants to attract is savvy, worldly in its interests, and as often as not tied to New York City. There are ways in which today’s Hudson
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Valley art scene is just as mercurial as the art-fair hits and misses that drive the high-end of visual-arts sales and creation in New York and London, Miami and Basel, Beijing and Mexico City. The image of a raffish bohemian subculture has been pushed to the edges by something
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more tony and weekend-home-driven. It’s the cocktail talk that art instigates that reverberates, more than the measured contemplation of how new pieces might fit in one’s home, or with one’s collection of previously collected local art. Gallery openings remain a weekend
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COURTESY OF JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY
Who comes up for the cutting-edge art pf the Hudson Valley each summer? Critic Antwaun Sargent and Jewish Museum curator and Instagram artist Jiajia Fei, as seen at a recent Columbia County opening.
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social event in Hudson, Woodstock and a few other remaining outposts of the last wave of art sales. The bigger draws are splashier: private installations, outdoor shows, grand seasonal openings. Sure, one may still find many wearing all-black to such soirees. Something’s shifted in the art world’s dress code. Linens, and even a smattering of shorts, pastels and sporty summer hats, are defining a new Upstate arts look. How does one get invited into this shifting scene and get a corner on who’s rising up around here, or in from the city or further abroad sharing their wares and vision? What are the big names to know and to drop? Where’s the cool amongst all this heat? hile most seasonal rentals start next month, along with the biggest art shows and events, some major exhibits has already landed with a splash, with more coming in the coming weeks. The late-May opening of this summer’s big show at The School, Chelsea gallerist Jack Shainman’s Columbia County museum-quality outpost, drew a cool thousand people to its four solo exhibitions of artists from around the globe. Top gallery directors and curators from the Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn
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COURTESY OF WOMEN’S STUDIO WORKSHOP
Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale has gained recognition for its residencies over a 40-year history. This summer it’ll be running its second annual au-gust festival, featuring experiential works such as this augmented pathway created by WSW co-founder Tatana Kellner. Museum and Jewish Museum were there. Similar crowds delighted in the new Judy Pfaff installation at CR10, also in Columbia County, and the invitationonly T Space in rural Dutchess County, where new musical compositions were performed in tandem with an opening of works by the legendary Pat Steir alongside the granting of an annual poetry prize. And if all that wasn’t enough, there was also the big inauguration bash for the season at Art Omi, in Columbia County. Last weekend was the opening of the summer exhibitions at the Wassaic Project in eastern Dutchess County, which hosts a hipster festival of music, performance, film and art the first weekend in August. This coming weekend will see the opening of this year’s iteration of the Samuel Dorsky Museum’s annual compendium
of Hudson Valley artists, grouped around a camping theme. Next weekend the monthly get-togethers up at the Byrdcliffe Colony in Woodstock start up. Buses will bring crowds up from the City for the brash new shows at Bard College, tied in to exhibits at MOMA for the summer. Also back, and widely anticipated this summer, is yet another “Cowgirls of the Hudson Valley” exhibit of women working in the region, from kids to Kiki Smith. Its block-party opening has long been one of the highlights of the region, arts- and society-wise. Numerous, more localized events will come in September, such as the O+ Festival in Kingston and the numerous events still being worked out at Basilica Hudson, Mt. Tremper Arts, and pop-up locations all around. Women’s Studio Workshop is planning for its second an-
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nual au*gust festival in Rosendale. Bear in mind that many of the region’s mainstay galleries and arts institutions have new directors ready to take them in new directions, while simultaneously working with what’s already here in new ways. The Woodstock Artists Association & Museum, Center for Photography at Woodstock, Clermont, the Catskill Center will be building this year off changed and charged-up new exhibitions programs. Add in the growing influence of such stalwarts as the Greene County Council for the Arts, Saugerties’ Cross Contemporary, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Peekskill, plus the R&F and One Mile galleries in Kingston and the maturing scenes in Hudson and Beacon. Though one will see old favorites throughout the coming busy season, plenty of fresh faces will be visible at the various venues’ regular schedule of openings. While the big focus may stay on the always-new these days, the local old guard may be getting more adept. We’re talking here not only about established contemporary artists showing regularly at Elena Zang’s and Carrie Haddad’s galleries in Woodstock and Hudson respectively, but also those who practice the Hudson Valley’s classic landscape and other neo-realist representational genres. These can be seen at Albert Shahinian’s gallery in Rhinebeck, Mark Gruber’s in New Paltz, the Woodstock School of Art, and several other long-lasting galleries with strong collector bases. Look for new works from the chestnuts showing in all these places, alongside the further fringe projects coalescing around Catskill or the deep Catskills, from guerilla stream-andfield works to Facebook- and Twitterpublicized pop-up galleries and events. Remember that we’re in the midst of a wild year filled with politics, great tectonic fears, increasing student unrest, major issues from racism to income inequality, and an increasing fluidity between downstate and upstate. And is no longer just visual, gallery-bound, or tied down to two or three dimensions. It’s as old as it is young, and everywhere it wants to be seen as cool, hot, hip or whatever. It’s all about style. The right openings end up giving one a sense of what the Hudson Valley is, can be, but also has long been. Wear what you will. If you’re in the right place, after all, you’ll be part of the scene, and part of art’s influence on everything else.
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Swimming-hole sutra Sam Truitt finds that our watercourses can be even loftier than our peaks – metaphorically speaking
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etaphorically, which after a certain threshold of human maturity we realize is synonymous with “actually,” life’s a swimming hole. We live in a certain shape bound by our senses within which we swim — and sometimes float or tread and even drift, letting a current take us. I think the objects of my senses are stable, but “I think” is often a gloss, conforming to a train of continuity of picturing. My raw senses, however, know “all is flux” — Pantarhei, as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus termed it — and the rush of my thoughts is a chaos. The sooner I accept and build this knowledge into the blueprints of my days, the sooner I will be free. My day is generally full of fixities and fixations, trying to make things add up, and deadlines more than lifelines. Linked causations, in which I do this in order to get that, and getting that I can’t quite let go of it all, and might be getting dragged along and sometimes down. I try to keep my head above the flux and swim. These are the kinds of thoughts I have dropping into swimming holes. As jewels of elemental grappling, they are the undisputed summertime throne rooms of the Catskill Mountains, even loftier than its peaks. Reaching a summit we’re compelled, where we can land a break in the tree canopy, to look away into a vista, and sometimes with mixed emotions. In and around a swimming hole, however, the look is immediate and in our grasp — more often than not a handhold. Swimming holes are formed of stones,
PHOTOS BY DION OGUST
The author, a poet and publisher, feels there are metaphoric lessons to be learned from the right swimming hole, which is also a perfect route to chilled-down relaxation. boulders and the faces of quarries and cliffs. One is always clambering around a swimming hole investigating its water and sound and rock sculptures, the type and arrangement of which (when no human intervention) constitute a map of accident and time, a wilderness meditation. It’s the substructure of rock that distinguishes a swimming hole from the less distinguished, sometimes muddier, swim spot, which may encompass any variety of aquatic bodies. It’s a hole because these rock-furnished domiciles of the spirit are something we look through. In the Catskills, they give us insights into
the hearts and minds of mountains. Catskill swimming holes are mountainimmersive. We get inside mountains via the veins of their watercourses. The dreamy summits seem so elsewhere and so horizontally diminishing. We have to hold onto swimming holes, particularly their creek- and river-based varietals. They can be dangerous. They require vigilance, which further deepens their interiority, even to the extent that in the symmetries of swimming-hole investigations we lose track of ourselves, which is simultaneously how we find them.
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etting lost is important to swimming-hole beatitude. They represent not just the symbolic uncoupling of normative constraints. They suggest we should literally get off track. We can follow “Catskill swimming holes” to any number of drop-in points, and they are fabulous. On a hot summer day we can discuss them with the crowd assembled there. Inspiration is a good starting point for the initiate, but what we want to do is to strike out on our own. A headline swimming hole, if it’s on a river or creek, is within an archipelago of potential drop-in points. Work upstream toward its headwaters away from the valley and its cultivation. Solitude is at the heart of swimming-hole excitation. Being alone baffles conditioned behavior. We start to get into sync with something deeper. Isn’t the point of going into the wild to become part of it, if even for an afternoon or an hour? Strip away each identification of gender, race, status and creed? Enter into the primordial? That’s perhaps the real swimming-hole danger and subversion: getting in touch with something greater than ourselves, like a mountain.
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any trails lead to summits, but only one leads to ourselves in the one place and time of our own making. Even for a moment, we find ourselves holding a ledge of rock with white water crashing down from above. We may put our heads under into a cavity, the water falling now over our shoulders, and breathing in an air pocket speak with its tongue. There is drone all around us, some deep throb perhaps continuous with the heart and mind of a mountain. What about “swimming” there? I personally don’t think it takes much— it’s not like we’re looking to do laps. If metaphorically we can’t swim in an inch of water (though I hear we can drown), we can float in a foot and facing a strong current hold our place doing a shallow breast stroke. My take is that there is no hole more fabulous (bigger, deeper or purer) than another. It’s more about what we bring there bobbing in the water, than what we find. The one unnoted key element is light. In searching out our swimming holes, we want best to work stretches wide enough for the tree cover to break. The sun in its passage may flood and surround us. We need that contrast. The water is cold, and the dark of mountain slopes is very dark.
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The perfect stream spot has rapids and a bit of depth. Just be sure to look very carefully before you leap! There’s a stand of birch. There’s the massive, almost-square boulder in the center of the creek around which the water folds, and at its base forming a pool deep enough almost to stand in, though only my arms’ breadth wide. I came off the road a half mile or so down the clove, and I’m here now, on May 28, holding this lifeline at two in the afternoon. The sun near midheaven breaks through. I can almost see at my feet the stones accumulated there, some revolving in the current that roars around me. It’s quiet. “The heart and mind of a mountain is light,” I think. There’s nothing
for me to do but get out and write that. But I can’t move.
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WIKICOMMONS
Cooling down during Southern summers, the author finds, is different when it’s so hot you have to walk house to house on grass so you don’t burn your feet. Yards all connect in kids’ search for the right sprinkler, pool or watergun battle.
My Southern summers K. Truitt provides the unvarnished and highly carbonated truth
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he South isn’t a monolith, and because we moved several times while I was growing up my experience of summers in the South vary. Though Texas is where I am from originally, my memory of those early years is vague, mainly consisting of nights spent watching my father play in his company’s tough football games. The sidelines were littered with coolers of Coke (to a true Southerner every carbonated beverage is called a “Coke” whatever the brand, though we’d never drink a Pepsi) and the hissing sounds of aerosol cans of Off for the mosquitoes. I also remember occasional trips to Galveston Beach. When we moved to the Tampa-St. Pete area of Florida, summers were all about the beaches, the pools, and the insects. Florida has swarms of lovebugs (which are actually two insects that mate and attach
for life) and gnats that like to fly into your eyes, nose, and mouth. Families would get together at semi-private beaches that only locals knew about, with picnic lunches. I’d wander the isolated sand, looking for hermit crabs that dive into their hole as you approach. The Gulf has no waves, which made it safe to coast far out on a floaty with my friends without our mothers calling us back. At least once every summer we’d go to Disney World a couple of hours away. But the Atlanta summer is what I know best. Typically by June, temperatures hover in or near the high Nineties and often exceed 100 degrees through September. And it is densely humid. By contrast, I’ve seen it snow in the Hudson Valley many times in May. The winters here, notoriously long and cold, set me on edge by spring. At that time of year I’m dreaming about signing away my
home and my life to move South again. But I can’t. My kids have school and lives of their own. I complain a lot. It’s the only way I survive. I currently live in a house built in the early Forties in Lake Hill. It has no airconditioning, and I like it that way. By my standards, it’s a rare occurrence for temps to rise to the degree that requires AC for any significant length of time. In my family, growing up we never used AC despite the lengthy heat. Instead, we had windows and an attic fan that pulled the cool air in and circulated old stale air out. Our home was always comfortable. I’ve never understood why my New York friends who complain all year about the cold flip on the AC as soon as it hits 72 in the spring. Cars in the summer were a metal oven sitting in 100-degree sun. The steering wheel and stick shift (I had
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a manual) would burn my hands. The seats would burn my thighs if I was wearing shorts, and I could not touch the metal door handle. Despite this, I resisted using AC except when I needed to arrive at my destination without having sweated or with messed-up hair on a very hot day. Most of my friends were the same way. As a kid I spent all of summer outside and unscripted. I’d wake in the morning and help myself to cereal and TV cartoons before wandering outdoors with no set place to go nor any indication that I would be required to give up where I might be going or when I might be returning home. My mom already knew, more or less, because the neighborhood was crawling
Summer in the Valley June - September, 2016 An Ulster Publishing publication DION OGUST
Editorial WRITERS: Scott Baldinger, Jennifer Brizzi, Lisa Carroll, Elisabeth Henry, Annie Nocenti, Melissa Holbrook Pierson, Chris Rowley, Paul Smart, Violet Snow, Sparrow, Kim Truitt, Sam Truitt, Jack Warren, Robert Burke Warren EDITOR: Paul Smart COVER PHOTO BY Dion Ogust LAYOUT BY Joe Morgan Ulster Publishing PUBLISHER:
Geddy Sveikauskas
ADVERTISING DIRECTOR:
Genia Wickwire Lynn Coraza, Pam Courselle, Pamela Geskie, Elizabeth Jackson, Ralph Longendyke, Sue Rogers, Linda Saccoman DISPLAY ADS:
PRODUCTION MANAGER:
Joe Morgan
PRODUCTION:
Diane Congello-Brandes, Josh Gilligan, Rick Holland CLASSIFIED ADS: Amy Murphy, Tobi Watson CIRCULATION:
Dominic Labate
Summer in the Valley is one of four Explore Hudson Valley supplements Ulster Publishing puts out each year. It is distributed in the company’s four weekly newspapers and separately at select locations, reaching an estimated readership of over 50,000. Its website is www.explorehudsonvalley.com. For more info on upcoming special sections, including how to place an ad, call 845-3348200, fax 845-334-8202 or email: info@ ulsterpublishing.com.
Pools and backyard sprinklers are great fun, but the region also offers some of the best natural swimming sports anywhere. Give them a try, but safely. with kids of various ages doing the same.
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ist of 17 things for an eight-to-eleven-year-old to do in the suburban South of the late Seventies: 1. Meet the next-door neighbor girl and walk barefoot through the mud; wash feet in the outside hose. 2. Play in the hose. 3. Pick wild blackberries on the undeveloped property next door. 4. Go to the spring (fresh water that you could drink from). 5. Follow the creek by walking though it to the lake through ferns and cattails. 6. Catch minnows; set them free (I once caught minnows in a jar, kept them in my room for a few months, and then returned them to their home once my curiosity was satisfied). 7. Watch for water moccasins. 8. Go to the dock on the lake for swimming (this was on the neighbor’s property but nobody cared). 9. Walk across the dam along the back way through the woods to my friend’s house on the other side; knock on the door to see if she was home. 10. Swing on vines. 11. Play on the neighbor’s trampoline (permission once granted meant there was never any need to ask again). 12. Swing on the vine next to the tram-
poline and drop from high onto the trampoline. 13. Enjoy a frozen Coke (I’m originally a Texan and this is a Texas thing, the execution of which requires near-perfect timing to avoid a messy bottle explosion. We always used the old glass bottles, and I’ve cleaned many freezers in my time). 14. Ride my bike in the mornings to swim team practice at the community pool. 15. Stay at the pool all day and eat from vending machines. 16. Go to block parties (either on our culde-sac or some other; everyone welcome). 17 Play kickball on the cul-de-sac with neighborhood kids till dark.
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ou might have thought, if you are a Northerner, that sweet iced tea would be on that list. It is not, because iced tea isn’t a summer thing for the South. Any season will do. All the restaurants serve it year-long. Nowhere will you find instant iced tea, and a native will not drink it. My mother was ritualistic with the making of it daily, with the kettle cooling on the stove for hours with the tea bags inside, into the pitcher when it was still warm enough to melt the sugar, and then the fridge. I currently keep the sweet iced tea tradition going with my own family but add mint from the garden.
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â&#x20AC;¢ June - September, 2016
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The 171st Dutchess County Fair Rhinebeck, NY
August 23 - August 28 With Special
Guest Star
OLD DOMIN
THIRD EYE BLIND
PARMALEE
ION
Tuesday - August 23 - 7:30pm
Wednesday - August 24 - 7:30pm
Special Advance Combo (Admission & Concert) = $30
Special Advance Combo (Admission & Concert) = $30
HOTEL CALIFORNIA
CHASE RICE
(The Original Tribute to the Eagles)
Friday - August 26 - 7:30pm
Thursday - August 25 - 7:30pm FREE SHOW
Special Advance Combo (Admission & Concert) = $30
FAIR SPECIALS! Tues. Aug. 23 - $10 ALL DAY Admission Wed. Aug. 24 - $25 RIDE ALL DAY Wrist Band Thurs. Aug. 25 - $7 Admission After 5pm