Explore Hudson Valley APRIL - JUNE 2016 • ULSTER PUBLISHING • WWW.EXPLOREHUDSONVALLEY.COM
Where to Guide
Encountering springtime Tourism professionals name their favorite destinations Info for home buyers, romantics, shoppers and seekers A region with a whole lot of places with history Four counties of musicians, foodies, artists, ghosts and pretensions
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• April - June, 2016
Explore Hudson Valley
Why on earth do they come here? Paul Smart speculates about why the Hudson Valley survives as a destination for new visitors
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s I drive around from job to job, often herding kids to a widening array of events, I like to remember what pulled me up here to the Hudson Valley. I also like to ask friends and colleagues who live elsewhere what they think of this place. I’ve been flummoxed for years now about the many requests for home exchanges we’ve gotten. People from sunny Rome wanting to spend the mud season here? Owners of a twelfth-century farm in Burgundy pining away for Catskill in July or August? Really? When I was newly settled in the Catskills, I liked to drive incessantly as a means of exploration. I loved the way mountain landscapes mixed elements of my previous homes in Alaska, Virginia and Ohio.
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WIKICOMMONS
Thomas Doughty’s View Towards the Hudson River was painted in 1839, and is part of Princteon University’s collection. The painter is known as the first American to have devoted himself solely to landscapes. He has a fondness for the Hudson Valley, where unlike many of his peers he was drawn to the region’s increasing cultivation, as well as its fabled wildness. There was also an urban residue and sophistication not encountered by me in other parts of the country. Friends would
come up regularly. We all seemed to have more time on hand in those days before omnipresent electronics, before careers
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instead of jobs. Or before kids. We’d hike trails up to long vistas, or past the ruins of storied 19th-century hotels. We’d take long drives to crossroads hamlets that felt like ghost towns, trying to see the strata of old land patterns, the era of settlement, the Empire-State booms of agriculture and industry followed by decades of stagnation. We delighted in finding hole-in-the-wall French or German restaurants opened by earlier transplants from the city, and peopled by similar exurbanites like us. My experiences increased my affection for the region.
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ow do we survive as a destination? This is where those new travel phenomena come in. In addition to home exchanges with families in Rome, Paris and Lisbon, and several in NYC, my family has entertained a stream of requests from Amsterdam, Germany, Hong Kong, Montreal, London, the Loire Valley, and Spain. Our Airbnb listing for a bedroom/living room/porch combination on our top floor has attracted visitors and inquiries from all over the world. What are they looking for when
• The Catskill History Conclave Saturday, April 30 from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm • Feral Honeybees in the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson Valley Sunday, May 1, 2016 1:00pm to 3:00pm • Controlling Hemlock Woolly Adelgid and Emerald Ash Borer in the Catskills Saturday, May 14, 2016 1:00pm 3:00pm • The Catskill Mountain Book Fair Saturday, June 4th from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm
All events are free and open to the public. CatskillInterpretiveCenter.org for more info
Maurice D. Hinchey Catskill Interpretive Center
5096 Rt. 28 Mount Tremper, NY 12458
845.688.3069 CatskillInterpretiveCenter.org
they come to stay? And what do we suggest they do once they are here? Most coming here from the Airbnb rental are looking to get out of the city for a night or two, or looking to break up their journeys while traveling between places. They like the look of the house as posted in our listing, and the porch view of the Catskills, even in winter. They note how close we are to Woodstock, Kingston and Hudson, which seem to be on the radar now. Curiously, they say they’ve heard a bit about Catskill, and not just mistaken the name of the village and town with
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the mountains. The exchangers from abroad are either visiting friends and family in the general area, looking for a bit of time outside urban areas, or looking for homes like their own that are big and roomy and good for kids, with access to fun things to do. They understand the attraction we feel for their places, be they in Amsterdam or the French countryside, or even in Rome or Lisbon. We’re talking casual abodes with lots of art and decent kitchens, toys and yards and places to walk to, like our Main Street, or views of the Hudson River
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a couple of blocks away. When they arrive, we give them a listing of local restaurants to try out, quiet places that aren’t too expensive. We point out our village’s old-style movie theater. We suggest some events happening within a half-hour radius, but then note how people would rather stick close to one place. We suggest trails, the brewery up the road, Friday-night art openings, and maybe a few small nearby museums. We also provide a library of travel books and histories of the region, local newspapers, and special sections like this one. You know what’s surprising? Just as old friends have retained a great sense of where we live through memory, vowing to make it back once their lives grow less harried (and we make trips to where they now live), so our own memories sharpen with each new guest who comes ... and each suggestion we make of a side trip
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they might find magical.
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rom where do those treasured experiences come? More often than not, they come from the deep reservoirs of memories and experiences that old friends have shared with us. We pass on to new people what we’ve decanted from old friends who for one reason or another no longer spend as much time here as they used to. When I ask old friends about my home turf, they fall back on memories. Working now in the city or Bay area, filing stories out of London or balancing childrearing and artist incomes in France or Florida, they note how hard it’s become to get up here as much as they used to. They bring up the quieter joys found in their memories: a picnic by the Hudson, cross-country skiing along an old rail-trail, sitting on the edge of a deep Catskills waterfall, or just hanging out over drinks and something
grilling in our, their or someone else’s backyard. They all see the area as “sweet,” whatever that means, homey with nice restaurants and a good crowd of people. They note favorite bookstores they’ve visited, quiet swimming holes we’ve taken them to, great restaurants and farm markets, good breweries, and a relaxed lifestyle they acknowledge as compensating for the lesser earnings we all make here. They acknowledge they’ve started coming up less than they used to, drawn away by frequent-flyer miles, by expanded wanderlust and by bucket lists. They head off elsewhere when they can. We tend to see them more often than not in the off seasons. The people in Albany where I keep a desk several days a week talk about restaurants in Hudson, skiing and hiking in the Catskills or the Taconics, and occasional field trips down to hear music
Contributors this issue include: Andrew Amelimnckx of Catskill writes about crime, food and art, but not neces-
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sarily at the same time Jennifer Brizzi writes on food and health for newspapers, magazines and books, and does recipe development, cooking demonstrations and teaching. Her website is www.jenniferbrizzi.com. John Burdick is a New Paltz-native who writes at length about music for Almanac Weekly and other outlets. He writes songs and plays guitar with the Sweet Clementines and also performs currently with The Trapps, Pecas, Pelican Movement, and Mark Donato. Elisabeth Henry, a writer and an actress who lives in Hunter with her husband, where they raised their children, has written for many local and regional newspapers and magazines. Paul Smart, a writer and editor for Ulster Publishing for a quarter century, has edited a number of other regional weekly and biweekly newspapers and has served as a radio host on WGXC-FM in Hudson, Catskill and Acra. He lives in Greene County, from whence he drives his son to school in Albany. Violet Snow, a journalist, author and frequent Ulster Publishing presence, specializes in history, genealogy, suspense fiction and nature, and also expresses herself through photography, video and music. Sparrow is an American poet, activist, musician, and rabble-rouser. He is
the author of several books of poetry and prose, is a frequent contributor to a number of publications, including the Woodstock Times and New York Times, and is known for having started the Slow Read Movement. Mike Valkys earned his master’s degree in journalism from New York University and was a staff writer with the Poughkeepsie Journal for 15 years. He is a freelance writer living in the City of Poughkeepsie and can be reached at mhvalkys@hotmail.com Terence Ward is a reporter for the New Paltz Times and longtime freelancer covering a number of complex subjects. He lives in New Paltz. Lynn Woods, long-time Kingston resident and Ulster Publishing writer, is coauthor of Adirondack Style: Great Camps and Rustic Lodges and co-director of the film Lost Rondout: A Story of Urban Removal. This issue’s cover, by Phoenicia-based photographer Phil Mansfield, is of the Paul Green Rock Academy, one of the region’s more energetic new entertainment and educational forces in the news as they start up a new facility, the Woodstock Music Lab, in the former Zena School. They hit the stage with many of the young players’ idols at Mountain Jam over the first weekend in June, among other upcoming gigs.
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around Woodstock or Bard. I hear about the rope courses that their kids like, and about tubing the Esopus. Those based in Albany who used to head north or west more often than not tell me that southward attractions have recently gained more pull for them. Some far off relatives, not the traveling kind, see where we live as “the sticks.” Excepting those annual occasions when
families gather to sit around on couches and laugh about their various life challenges, they head for bigger cities or more exotic locations. Those few that like to go places get a kick out of our local fairs and gallery scenes, chamber music outings and college campuses. They have grown tired of the many fireworks we can see from our front and back porches all summer long.
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• April - June, 2016
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What does Ulster have to offer? Terence P. Ward talks to a couple of tourism proponents
WIKICOMMONS
Mohonk Mountain House, high on the Shawangunk Ridge outside of New Paltz, has maintained its reputation as the nation’s exemplary ageless nature-embracing getaway since the 1870s, heads a revived resort and spa tradition in Ulster County and the rest of the Hudson Valley. he answers would vary if one asked people on the street what drew them to Ulster County. Some were born here. Some came here for college and never left. Others settled here for jobs and decided to stay even when their employers relocated elsewhere. There are the leafpeepers, rockclimbers and their ilk, the politically conscious and the spiritually aware. It’s reasonable to expect six or more opinions if you ask four people what the best parts of Ulster County are.
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What do the people who are paid to promote the county think are its best assets? Rick Remsnyder, who directs the county’s tourism department, has no difficulty finding good things to say about our local treasures. He often goes to travel trade shows, and a lot of what he does for a living is to sing about what’s unsung, and encourage people to visit and see for themselves. “Ulster County is a four-season destination,” he explained. “All of our advertising and marketing is geared towards getting people to come
here twelve months out of the year. It’s such a special place to visit.” “A lot of people have no concept of upstate beyond Westchester,” said Ward Todd, who is president of the Ulster County Chamber of Commerce. “It’s almost like being a used-car salesman. If you can get them in the seat, they will be much more likely to buy.” Todd believes that the work done in the county tourism office has been instrumental in raising awareness and thereby driving in the tourism dollars.
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WIKICOMMONS
The Catskills are old mountains. After centuries of habitation for leisurely seasonal and hardscrabble year-round residences, they are considered one of the great treasures bordering the Hudson Valley. Outdoor recreation first comes to Remsnyder’s mind. The county offers skiing and other winter recreational opportunities throughout, and as soon as the weather warms up there are many people clamoring to try out the world-class rock climbing in New Paltz. “The prime time for people to visit is summer, when schools are on vacation, and straight into leaf season,� he said. Recreational options include fishing, bicycling, lake swimming, boating and camping. Attractions and festivals continue to crop up throughout Ulster’s communities, attracting thousands of attendees, both local and those from farther away, to sample foods, crafts and arts. The county fairgrounds outside New Paltz hosts a rib fest, garlic is celebrated in Saugerties, cupcakes decorate Gardiner, and there’s also the Hooley on the Hudson. “Where else outside of New York City are you going to find a selection like that?� asked Remsnyder. Some other events include the summerlong horse shows at HITS, the frightfest at Headless Horseman Hayride & Haunted Houses from September through Halloween, and the iconic Mohonk Mountain House, where guests can experience high-class hospitality and access phenomenal outdoor opportunities at the same time. For a more family-focused indoor-outdoor visit, there’s the Rocking Horse Ranch in Highland. Golf is also one of the reasons people come to visit, particularly down from Albany and up from New York City, according to Remsnyder. It’s easy to make
the drive, the lines to play are all but non-existent, and the greens themselves
are excellent. He cited Lazy Swan in Saugerties and Applegreen’s in Lloyd as being two that he, a golfer, would recommend. Some foursomes, he said, are even coming up for the weekend, meaning that they’re booking hotel rooms, patronizing restaurants, and likely discovering many of the other hidden attractions off the county’s main roads. Arts are a significant part of the Ulster County experience, from the Woodstock Film Festival to the Festival of Voice in Phoenicia. Visitors and residents alike also are welcome to take in a Broadway musical at the Belleayre Conservatory, the doors of which have been reopened this year. The music scene has a long and storied history. That’s thanks in part to the existence of Woodstock, which gave its name to the granddaddy of all rock festivals, and has put a musical spin on Ulster County ever since. “We’re fortunate to have an iconic place
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like Woodstock,” Remsnyder said. “Everybody has heard of it.” That makes it easier for him to orient people on where Ulster County is located, and educate them on
what else is available besides good music. Todd also thinks that the live music being played locally continues to be phenomenal. There are so many places to see a
Places to stay, resorts and spas
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e no longer have the grand Catskills resorts and mountain houses which accommodated up to 300 guests, or the boarding houses that were really just spare rooms in residents’ Victorian homes. However, those popular turn-of-the-century lodgings have been reincarnated in the current era, with many kinds of places for visitors to stay, depending on taste and budget. Campgrounds are an option for those who want save money, cook outdoors, and sleep really close to nature. The next step up the price scale is the smattering of motels that offer convenience and basic accommodations. For more luxury, attentive hosts, and possibly a swimming pool, look for a small hotel or bed-and-breakfast. The old boarding houses have been replaced by home-sharing services such as HomeAway and Airbnb, which enable residents to rent out all or part of their houses for a weekend or longer. To save money, young people band together to stay in a house, families have a homey atmosphere to spread out, and most houses have kitchen facilities. Many family-oriented resorts from the mid-1900s still exist, usually offering packages that include meals, rooms, and access to swimming, hiking, tennis, recreation halls, entertainment, and other amenities, plus the opportunity to socialize with fellow guests. Another kind of resort is the spa, which generally provides exercise, saunas, massage, yoga and other health-oriented activities, all in the healing serenity of the mountains and often in the context of a high-end luxury hotel — not all that different from the old resorts that brought myriads of guests to enjoy the beauty of the Catskills.
The pages of Country Living magazine come to life!
June 3-4-5 The Dutchess County Fairgrounds, Route 9, Rhinebeck, NY
Great Shopping Seminars & How-Tos Meet the Editors
Violet Snow
Over 200 Vendors from 20+ States Selling Antiques, Vintage & Artisan-Made Goods
Special Guests: Brent and Josh, The Fabulous Beekman Boys, Joanne Palmisano, contributing designer for DIY Network and author of Salvage Secrets, Nancy Fuller, TV personality and author of Farmhouse Rules, Melissa Caughey, HGTV.com and CountryLiving.com writer, and many more.
Since 1969, we have led the effort to protect the more than 700,000 acres of the Catskill Park and Catskill Forest Preserve. We are the major force advocating for the Catskill region.
Photo: Andrew Ciccarelli
Visit
#clfair
CatskillCenter.org/donate
Visit countryliving.com/fair for Fair videos, photos & more! For advance tickets, hotels & Fair info:
to learn more and support our work!
1-866-500-FAIR • stellashows.com 10 a.m.-5 p.m. each day, rain or shine. Admission: One Day, $16/$13 advance; Weekend Pass, $20/$15 advance; Early Bird, $40 (early birds can enter at 8:30 a.m. on Fri. and/or Sat. for 90 minutes of priority shopping). Discount advance tickets are available until 5/31; TICKETS ARE ALWAYS AVAILABLE FAIR DAYS AT THE BOX OFFICE. Address for GPS: 6550 Spring Brook Avenue, Rhinebeck, NY 12572. Pets are not allowed on the fairgrounds at any time except for service/guide animals. Guests appearances and vendors subject to change.
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good show that it was beyond him to name all the ones he’d even heard about. One of his own particular favorites is Keegan Ales in Kingston, however. Three Thruway exits are an asset, in Remsnyder’s eyes, and make it possible for the antique shops and restaurants in Kingston to become destinations themselves for metropolitan residents looking for a quick getaway with some shopping on the side. Todd agrees, saying that the Kingston restaurant scene, in particular, has “grown exponentially” in recent years, offering a wide variety of meals. “People who have traveled all over the world tell me that there’s no better choice for food than here,” he said. In Todd’s mind, an important attraction for new permanent residents and businesses are the relatively low taxes in Ulster County. While locals might gripe and complain, he said, residents of New York City find that the cost of doing business lower than what they’re
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE EMERSON
The Emerson Resort and Spa, in Mount Tremper, mixes elements of classic elegance with regional artistic touches and an embrace of the Catskills outdoors. used to in the Big Apple. He points to Raleigh Green Inc., a services company which its eponymous owner moved here. Green has since become a cheerleader of sorts, Todd said, encouraging entrepreneurs and established business
owners to consider Ulster County as a serious option. “It’s an attractive place to move your employees and business,” Todd said. “You don’t have to make a hundred thousand dollars a year to live here.”
Entertainment Thunder in the Valley
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8293 Rt. 28, Big Indian, NY 12410
July 16th & 17th, 2016 Grand Entry: 12 noon Saturday, 10am - 6pm; Sunday, 10am - 5pm Rain or Shine
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Paul Taylor Dance July 22-23
The Fab Faux July 30
Host Drum: Spirit of the Mountain Singers Taino Drum: Wolfs Moon Medicine Drum The Martinez Family with the DEER DANCE from the Yaqui Nation
Head Dancers: Catrine Moore & Gino Platania
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Firekeeper Jack Balcom Cherokee Flute Player Chris Hunsicker Arena Director Tony Moon Hawk
Admission: Adults $6.00 Children 6-12 $3.00 • Elders $3.00
2016 Mahaiwe Gala: Alan Cumming July 18
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Buckwheat Zydeco Aug 20
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WIKICOMMONS
The Poughkeepsie cityscape, as focused on its popular train station, surprises many by being more verdant than one would expect from one of the region’s major urban areas.
Close to home Michael Valkys provides a list of attractions in Dutchess County
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rowing up in New Jersey, just 40 minutes from New York City, I was well into my twenties before I took the time to explore and visit the urban destinations that millions of tourists visited. Until friends from Europe came to visit, I had not taken in the wondrous view from atop the Empire State Building, strolled through Central Park, or visited the Statue of Liberty. I learned my lesson. I’ve now lived in Dutchess County for nearly two decades, and have been trying to take advantage of all the area has to offer. And there is
WIKICOMMONS
In addition to its rich riverfront, Dutchess County is also home to some of the Hudson Valley’s grandest country drives and rural havens such as Millbrook, Millerton and Pine Plains.
Shopping
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ome Catskills villages are even sleepier than they were a hundred years ago, with not much shopping besides a general store. While these communities have a rural appeal, you may need to head elsewhere if you’re looking to for stuff to buy other than household staples. Larger towns tend to be lively, with an array of boutiques and specialty shops. Each community has its own character, so drive around and see which places appeal to you. You might find an emphasis on history, with antique shops housed in magnificent Victorian buildings. Towns that cater to hikers, hunters, and fisherfolk have camping stores with plenty of supplies for outdoor recreation. Where the arts are celebrated, look for bookstores, art galleries, music shops. If craftspeople live nearby, expect stores with local handmade items. Some towns feature upscale boutiques with stylish clothing and decorative housewares. Almost every community has a gift shop with toys for the kids and Catskills souvenirs for the folks in the city. Actually, many Main Streets include all of these kinds of stores, with a tendency to feature more of one type or another. You will probably discover after one or two visits where your taste lies, but be sure to look around. Surprises await in all these quirky mountain hamlets.
Violet Snow
plenty. From the natural beauty of the Hudson River, numerous walking and cycling trails to top-notch restaurants and wineries, Dutchess boasts many offerings for visitors and residents alike. “There’s nothing like coming to the Hudson Valley,” said Frank M. Castella Jr., president and CEO of the Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce (www.dcrcoc.org). “And there are hidden gems even our locals don’t know about.” Accessible from New York City by car, bus and Metro-North Railroad, Dutchess’ natural treasures, historic sites, museums and great food make it a top destination for visitors from around the country and the world. What draws people to visit and live in the area? “I think it’s convenience and beauty,” Castella said. “We’re so accessible,” added Mary Kay
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Vrba, president and CEO of Dutchess Tourism Inc. (www.dutchesstourism. com), which oversees tourism and promotes the county. “We really, at the heart of it, have so much to offer.” Dutchess County draws four million visitors per year. Tourism generated $508 million in 2014, the latest data available. Here are some of the well-known, and lesser-known, destinations that visitors and Dutchess residents alike can enjoy. * Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park: (www.walkway.org) The once-dilapidated former railroad bridge opened to the public in 2009 after years of upgrades. The world’s longest elevated pedestrian span connects Highland in Ulster County with the City of Poughkeepsie in Dutchess. The one-of-a-kind views of the Hudson River from the walkway draw about 500,000 visitors a year, a combination of tourists and locals who use the span for walking and cycling. It’s a great spot to enjoy a brisk walk over the river. * The Culinary Institute of America: (www.ciachef.edu) The internationally known CIA, located off Route 9 in Hyde Park just north of Marist College, produces talented chefs, many of whom opt to live and work in the region after completing their studies. The CIA has a number of restaurants, bakeries and cafes
Entertainment
The 171st Dutchess County Fair Rhinebeck, NY
August 23 - August 28
With Special Guest!
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Wednesday - August 24 - 7:30pm
Special Advance Combo (Admission & Concert) = $30
Special Advance Combo (Admission & Concert) = $30
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to satisfy just about any taste. “We really are special when it comes to good meals and good dining,” Vrba said. * Dia Beacon: (www.diaart.org) You don’t have to travel to Manhattan to take in great art. Dia Beacon opened 13 years ago in a former Nabisco box printing facility on the banks of the Hudson. Today the museum draws about 75,000 visitors per year and features art from the 1960s to today. * Harlem Valley rail-trail: (www.hvrt. org) This hidden gem in Dutchess and Columbia counties features two sections that cover 15 paved miles for visitors and
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residents to enjoy. The trail for walkers and cyclists can be accessed at MetroNorth’s Wassaic station and continues into Amenia and Millerton. * Historic sites: If you are a history buff, Dutchess County offers myriad opportunities to explore the past and its impact on life today. Hyde Park boasts the Franklin D. Roosevelt Home and Presidential Library and Museum off Route 9, which offers interactive exhibits and more about the man who led America through the Great Depression and World War II. Not far away off Route 9G is Val-Kill, the
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Rhinebeck, as with many Hudson valley towns, has become a Mecca for discerning shoppers up from the City, as well as the region’s sophisticated new residents. home of Eleanor Roosevelt and the only National Historic Site dedicated to a first lady. Also off Route 9 in Hyde Park is the Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site. The Gilded Age home of Frederick W. Vanderbilt is a 54-room mansion. Its grounds, gardens and walking trails with views of the Hudson River are some of the best the area has to offer. For information on national historic sites visit www.nps. gov. A few miles south of the FDR Home, off Route 9 in Poughkeepsie, is Locust Grove (www.lgny.org), an Italianate villa built for famed inventor and artist Samuel Morse. The 200-acre estate includes a visitors’ center and walking trails with Hudson River views. • Innisfree Garden (www.innisfreegarden.org): This gorgeous garden in
Health
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Millbrook in eastern Dutchess off Tyrrel Road combines modern aspects with older Chinese and Japanese garden designs to offer a peaceful and eye-opening getaway for visitors and local residents. • Wine lovers should check out the Dutchess Wine Trail (www.dutchesswinetrail.com) in the eastern end of the county, which features Clinton Vineyards and the Millbrook Vineyards & Winery. The trail takes visitors to vineyards, farms and orchards and away from the hustle and bustle of more populated areas. • With spring here and summer not far behind, a number of great events are on tap. The Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Annual Balloon
woodstock’s own spiritual ashram right in the center of town barbara boris alison sinatra other great teachers see our website for classes events & workshops reduced-price classes available
all are welcome namaste
Festival is set for July 8 to 10, with hot-air balloon launches planned for a number of locations. Visit www.dcroc.org/balloonfestival for more information. The Dutchess County Fairgrounds (www.dutchessfair. com) off Route 9 in Rhinebeck, which hosts the 2016 fair August 23 to 28, is home to a number of other events throughout the year, from antique-car shows and arts festivals to food and wine showcases. • There are too many fine restaurants to mention here, but for a complete guide and information on cooking tours in Dutchess County, visit www.dutchess-
tourism.com. It breaks down the options, from fine dining to coffee shops and everything in between. • If you’re a baseball fan and want to catch some future major leaguers in action, the Hudson Valley Renegades are the Class A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays. The season begins in June and ends in early September. Home games are at Dutchess Stadium off Route 9D in Wappingers Falls. (www.hvrenegades.com). Check out what the area has to offer. You may be surprised how much you’ve been missing.
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• April - June, 2016
Explore Hudson Valley
PHOTO COURTESY OF HAWTHORNE VALLEY FARM.
Columbia County hosts many classic historic homes, but also a growing number of organic farms, including Hawthorne Valley, outside of Philmont, which is home to a Rudolph Steiner school and popular store and cafe.
Not to be missed Andrew Amelinckx suggests a few of the attractions of Columbia County lessed with stunning scenery, drenched in history, and providing shopping opportunities from antiques to handicrafts, Columbia County has a lot to offer visitors. Besides the obvious points of interest (Olana, Clermont, Lindenwald, Hudson’s Warren Street), lesser-known attractions are also worth your time. David Colby, the outgoing head of the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce, offered his insights. This is no means a definitive list, merely a dive into some of what Columbia County has to offer. Let’s start with the above-mentioned historical heavy-hitters. Olana, the majestic Greenport home of the Hudson River
B
School painter Frederic Church (18261900), is a state historical site showcasing the artist’s Middle Eastern-inspired home and the designed landscape Church carved out of a rugged hilltop as part of his grand artistic vision. The house tour shows off several of his landscape paintings adorning the walls. His studio gives a glimpse into the atmosphere in which this famous painter worked. Tons of trails offer gorgeous views of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains. Clermont, the home of the Livingston family, is a state historical site in the southern end of the county that shouldn’t be missed. Robert R. Livingston (17461813), the home’s most famous resident,
was on the committee that helped draft the Declaration of Independence. He administered the oath of office to George Washington, and helped make steamboats viable through his work with Robert Fulton. Like Olana, Clermont offers trails through which to explore woods and riverfront. Lindenwald, the home of eighth U.S. president Martin Van Buren (1782-1862), is a national historic site located near Kinderhook, in the county’s northern end. The 36-room mansion and grounds give visitors a taste of the early 19th century. Hudson has consistently been included in a number of magazine lists of the coolest small towns in America (even though
Explore Hudson Valley
technically, it’s a small city), thanks in part to the well-preserved buildings from a variety of periods. Walking down the city’s main drag, Warren Street, is like flipping through a living architectural encyclopedia. There’s the bonus of shopping for antiques and art, and the lure of a variety of eateries that offer farm-to-table fare, including Grazin’ Diner, the first animalwelfare-certified restaurant in the world (read: the cow that went into your burger
had a good, healthy life.) “A lot of people are coming to the county from places that don’t have cool, intact downtowns. We have Hudson, Chatham, Germantown and Valatie,” said Colby. “They all have great little downtowns that are historic, picturesque, and have a lot of shopping opportunities.” Many Columbia County towns indeed have downtowns that Disney’s Main Street USA only wished it could compete with,
Weddings
W
hat makes a romantic setting for a wedding? The Catskills are replete with splendor that will evoke a sense of awe and ensure that the ritual will be memorable. Many of the big resorts offer wedding packages that guests will find convenient, since they have the option of staying right onsite, perhaps at a discount; plus, the food will all be taken care of. You might seek a hotel on a mountainside with a spectacular view, perhaps atop a sweeping lawn. Or you could wed on the bank of a creek, soothed by the rippling sound of the current, or at the edge of a tranquil lake. Perhaps you’d prefer to tie the knot under a canopy of tall trees, breathing in the fragrance of pine. Similar landscape options might be available for less expense if you know someone who owns property in the area and is willing to open their home to you. Local caterers can be hired to handle the food. You’ll have to come up with strategies for seating and parking, but there’s a pleasant intimacy to marrying at the house of a friend. Almost every town has at least one old, picturesque church, where the echo of past weddings will inspire your own experience. If all the details and options are too overwhelming, ask for guidance from a local wedding planner, who will know the advantages and drawbacks of each venue and can help carry out your wishes, after a period of getting to know your tastes and personalities. The price is often worth the reduction in stress. The simplest wedding we’ve heard of was the couple who decided to marry on top of a mountain. They found a hiking minister online, invited two witnesses, and headed up the trail one brilliant fall morning with their dog. The ceremony was performed with only birdsong for music, the mountains and valleys spread at their feet. Not elaborate, but how much more romantic can you get?
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April - June, 2016 • 15
unlike numberless communities across the country where 1960s “urban revitalization” meant bulldozing any building over 20 years old. In some cases the same can be said for many historic structures. Not so in Columbia County. “What draws lots and lots of people here are the historical sites: Clermont, Olana and the Martin Van Buren home. They each have their own very unique story,” says Colby. “There are other things that are off the beaten path. We find people really enjoy the Fireman’s Museum. It’s just fantastic. I think it’s one of the gems of Columbia County.” The Firemen’s Association of the State of New York’s Museum of Firefighting, located in Hudson, has an amazing collection of antique equipment — including beautiful fire engines — photographs and fine art related to the fire service. Colby calls it a “very cool, unique spot” and was surprised to learn that it averages just 8000 visitors a year, considering what a great , kid-friendly museum it is. Another sometimes overlooked historic site is Steepletop, the Austerlitz home of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (18921950), where you can peek into the life of this famous writer (the house still looks pretty much how she left it when she died) and tour the gardens that helped inspire her work. Colby also highlighted some of the many scenic spots across the county, from the Hudson Waterfront Park, where you can have a leisurely picnic and watch boats float down the river, to Bash Bish Falls, a state park straddling New York and Massachusetts, with its scenic beauty and breathtaking views, to the Greenport Conservation Area, a great place to enjoy nature without a lot of strenuous hiking. “There are a lot of those opportunities throughout the county,” said Colby. “I’m seeing more and more people coming to do that. It’s kind of unique because you can do the downtown thing but can also connect with nature. You can see an amazing show at Club Helsinki in Hudson and are still only five minutes away from beautiful and scenic nature spots.” Ann Cooper, tourism administrator for Columbia County, directed me to the county’s tourism website. There’s also a free app that you can download to your smartphone from iTunes or Google Play that provides information on what to see and do, accommodations, restaurants, and a calendar of events.
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• April - June, 2016
Explore Hudson Valley
Greene is truly green Elisabeth Henry explores the life and times of her home county
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reene County rolls up from the Hudson River, north of Kingston and south of Albany, to some of the highest peaks in the Catskills. Then it levels out, reaching for Delaware and Schoharie counties, once long ago the premier breadbaskets of America. Green it is, but not named for its dense deciduous trees and pine forests, but for Nathanael Greene, second in command to George Washington. Zaddock Pratt built his tannery empire in 1824, using the bark of the plentiful hemlock trees and employing thousands of Irish immigrants. The Catskill Mountain House, perched on an escarpment on South Mountain, was the destination for the nation’s power elite and fashionable celebrities, who loved the view, the air and the water. They perceived the site as thrillingly close to the wilderness. Private communities sprang up for that same reason, peopled by “free thinkers,” artists and writers. These communities — Twilight Park, Onteora Park and Elka Park — still thrive today. The Hudson River School of artists flocked here, gazing upon the landscape and composing work that depicts this place realistically but
WIKICOMMONS
Greene County has a dramatic scenic diversity, from quiet riverside haunts along the Hudson River to its Catskills-surrounded Mountaintop area, home to some of the area’s top ski resorts. Seen here is the approach up Route 32 from the New York Thruway. romantically, infusing in their paintings details suggesting that man and nature can co-exist in harmony. Thomas Cole, founder of this movement, lived in the town of Catskill; his house has been pre-
served, and is now the site of the Thomas Cole Museum. Although the Catskill Mountain House went out of vogue in the early 1900s, the area remained attractive for its beautiful
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April - June, 2016 • 17
Explore Hudson Valley
vistas and clean air and water. Joe Louis, beloved boxing champion and national hero, built the first resort for African Americans in Hunter. In the years leading up to and through America’s great wars, life in Greene County quieted down considerably. It seemed to be receding into the wilderness from which it had sprung. J.V.V. Vedder wrote of Greene County, in his book, Historic Catskill, “Its early history is that of the silence of the wilderness — an overabundance of fish in its waters, and game under the giant trees and tangled underbrush along its banks.�
T
his silence of the wilderness is what actress and designer Kay Stamer encountered when she moved from Manhattan to raise her daughter and renovate the Salisbury Manor in the early 1970s. This was before the Internet, of course. Communication, and knowing what was going on in the neighborhood, was hard to achieve. The neighborhood consisted of 660 square miles. “Friends asked me to attend a theatrical event at the Lexington Conservatory The-
ater,� Stamer says, smiling at the memory. “They had to force me to go. I held out
no hope of seeing anything worthwhile. I was so wrong! It was a dynamic, talented,
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brilliant ensemble doing original work, and I was blown away.� Soon after, the Lexington Conservatory Theater moved, and became The Capital Repertory Theater Company in Albany.
Explore Hudson Valley
But Stamer was encouraged. She is now the director of the Greene County Council of the Arts, celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. The Bridge Street Theater in Catskill
is finishing work on its 84-seat theater. Bridge Street has mounted many notable productions on its temporary stage and in its art gallery. The American Dance Institute plans to open its door on Water Street in Catskill in 2018. Both these endeavors promise to attract large audience numbers.
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olf, according to Arnold Palmer, “is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated; it satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time rewarding and maddening — and it is without a doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented.� If you agree, you have probably been to plenty of golf courses with sweeping fairways, manicured greens, and the pleasant color contrast of curving sand traps. But not many courses have the breath-taking mountain views that make golfing in the Catskills so pleasurable. Many area golf courses are located at resorts which offer packages for a golf vacation, including room and board, so the golfer can devote her or his complete attention to the game. If your schedule allows, you can save money with a mid-
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Explore Hudson Valley
ADI’s vision is to create an incubator for new work. It has identified the need for late-stage residency. Once a project takes form, and gets on its feet, it still needs space and time. There are details that can only be addressed in performance. Sadly, many dance and theater works can afford merely to create, learn, and
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week special. Most courses have day passes for those seeking variety and wishing to try out different courses, as well as season passes for golfers who expect to stay around all summer. Golfing lessons, a pro shop and a restaurant are usually available. Some golf resorts present pro-am events, where golf professionals are teamed with local amateurs, and fundraising tournaments. If you’re looking for challenges like elevation changes and naturally-occurring obstacles, you’ll find them at these courses, many of them historic in origin and designed by respected pros. Choose from nine-hole, 18-hole, and 36-hole courses.
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Explore Hudson Valley
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If Rip Van Winkle had tried his hand at golf instead of bowling with Dutch dwarves, he could have chosen his namesake course in his former hometown of Palenville, among many in Greene County and the region. mount the piece, perform in haste, and then move on. ADI intends to make a space where performers can absorb the work, and creators can tweak, safeguard and finish their art before sending it out. We locals will be able to see these pieces just before the New York premiere.
Bridge Street Theater hopes to offer educational opportunities for area youth, with many schools having curtailed their arts programming. The Catskill Mountain Foundation, headquartered in Hunter, hosts many sterling events, like the Twyla Tharp
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concert scheduled for April 16 in the Orpheum Theater.
T
he ski industry emerged as a common-sense progression of economic growth for the area after World War II. Both Hunter Mountain Ski Resort and Windham Mountain opened in 1960. These ranges, with topography at 1600’ above sea level and summits more than 3200’, attract thousands of winter sports folk every year. Both resorts offer four-season delights. Hunter boasts the longest and highest zipline in North America. Windham is graced by an 18hole golf course open to the public. Hunter hosts the largest and longest running tap-brew festival in the country which kicks off April 23. Hunter also hosts major musical concerts. Mountain Jam will happen June 2 through 5, and Taste of Country June 10 through 12. The Celtic Festival is August 6, and the German Alps Festival August 13. October Fest is every weekend starting September 9 and ending October 16. Windham, once the site of the World Cup Mountain Bike tour, this year welcomes the Pro-GRT Downhill Race. The World Cup is expected back next year. Windham offers a mountain-bike park that is liftserved. The Fly Fishing School is part of Hunter’s summer program. Both resorts offer hiking and lift rides in the warmer months.
A
h, the warmer months! The winter-sports enthusiasts love the rugged majesty of this place: the rocky cliffs, the great stalactites of ice that cling to the walls of stone that line the cloves, the many feet of snow that may come in October and stay until May. But in summer this is the land of fairy-tale
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Explore Hudson Valley
forests, water falls, hidden lakes and sparkling creeks. On just about any hike you will find yourself in a cathedral of trees, walking on a thick carpet of pine needles or leaf litter. There, on the forest floor, staring up at you, may be a newborn fawn, camouflaged by spots, waiting for mother’s return. Or you’ll hear the hammer of woodpeckers and the trill of a wood thrush. Just ahead perches a great horned owl (keep your cats inside). Maybe you’ll see a big black bear squatting near a wild blackberry bush. He is no more afraid of you than you of him. Do not try to take a selfie with him. Some swear that mountain lions are here. I did hear a scream at dusk one night, though only once. It was loud and terrifying. They say the great cats
Home & Garden
pass through, looking for mates, each cat claiming a territory of 58 to 350 square miles. They are ambush predators and, like all cats, obligate carnivores, meaning that they need to feed exclusively on meat to survive. You are meat. If you like being solitary, Greene County
may suit you just fine. It is sparsely populated. The townsfolk are happy to leave you alone as long as you leave them alone. Much of civic life is devoted to school districts. Graduating classes in all the districts (Hunter-Tannersville, Windham, Catskill, Greeneville, Cairo-Durham, and
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Coxsackie-Athens) are small compared to more urban areas, and the buildings themselves are attractive and immaculate. The volunteer rescue squads do admirable work, and their members actively pursue the necessary knowledge and skill to care for clients. The volunteer fire departments are equally devoted.
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he social fabric in these small towns is tightly knit. No Angie’s List is necessary. If you need a good carpenter, and you ask around at any diner, you’ll get an answer. If you mention a name that has murky details attached to it, the response will be silent. Coffee mugs will be lifted to silent lips. Don’t press. Maggie’s Krooked Cafe in Tannersville serves up tasty breakfast and brunch fare. The pancakes are rated one of Ten Best in America! Amy’s Take-Away in Lanesville provides delectable meals that you can pick up and take home. Her soups in winter are especially appreciated, when they make for an easy supper in front of
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April - June, 2016 • 23
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the fire. Other recommendations include The Millrock in Windham, the Deer Mountain Inn in Tannersville, the Fernwood in Palenville, CrossRoads Brewery in Athens, and Wasana in Catskill. Please make note of Story Farm in Catskill. Irene Story opens up her farm stand in late May or early June. Jim Story is the farmer, and he is helped by his strong sons. They grow lots of what you can buy at the stand, and whatever they don’t grow, they purchase from other nearby farms. They also sell flowers,
eggs, bread, baked goods, and some packaged foods. They take great pride in everything they offer for sale, and stand behind their products. They are kind and honest. They embody everything one imagines a holesome life in the country ought to be.
T
his is ancient land shaped by shifting glaciers and creased by ceaseless waters that patiently carve
into the rock. The Catskill Park is one of the oldest “forever-wild” preserves in the world. The name “Catskill,” applied to the county seat of Greene County, to a famous creek that runs throughout, is also applied to the gentler slopes to the south that incubated the careers of Morey Amsterdam, Jack Benny, George Jessel, Totie Fields, et.al. I was surprised to learn the name originates not from panthers or wildcats, but from Jacob
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Explore Hudson Valley
Cats, a Dutch poet. In his book, The Catskills, T. Morris Streth writes, “But it must be remembered that, at first, one little stream was called Cats’ Kill, which was named in honor of the poet of Brouwershaven. In his day Jacob Cats cut considerable figure at the Dutch bar. He was made the Chief Magistrate of Middleburg and Dordrecht, the Grand Pensionary of West Friesland, and finally the Keeper of the Great Seal of Holland. He is found in our libraries today. At the very time that Hendrik Hudson was eating roast dog with his red-faced hosts
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near the outlet of the brook that was to be Catsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Kill, Mr. Cats was penning amatory emblems behind his native dikes.â&#x20AC;? So it started, and so it goes. Life here requires a stout heart and many cords of wood. But it also means waking up to beauty, and slipping into slumber beneath a blanket of stars. You may have to drive 20 or 30 miles to buy an iPhone, but it will be pretty all the way. And there will be little traffic.
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Revising regional history Lynn Woods writes about the connections among the past, the present and the future s one of the oldest settled regions in America — Dutch traders arrived a few years after Henry Hudson’s journey up the river that bears his name in 1609 to obtain beaver pelts from the Native Americans — the Hudson Valley has an exceptionally rich history, whose longevity is responsible for a preserved rural landscape. The region’s villages, towns and to some degree cities also serve to encourage time travel back to earlier centuries. The plentitude of historic sites and the
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flux of material culture, in terms of what is expendable and what gets saved, also provide opportunities for contemplating many strange twists and turns in the historical narrative. The history of preserved history is a process that’s often laced with irony. In this history-conscious region, it seems to me, age is routinely accorded higher respect than it always deserves. One very recent example: While citizens are attempting to save a dilapidated 19th-century rubble stone building in Kingston’s Rondout, the destruction of the
steepled building of the former Howard Johnson’s on Route 28, an icon of my own childhood, occurred with nary a whimper. he nation’s initial stabs at commemorating its history began with the landmarks of the Revolutionary Warm and had its genesis right here in the Hudson Valley. The nation’s first publicly operated historic site was a stone house in Newburgh where George Washington lived for over a year in 1782 and 1783. It’s where Washington defused the threat of mutiny among his officers over pay and pensions, rejected the suggestion to institute an American monarchy, and eventually issued the proclamation of peace that ended the war. The 7000 troops of the Continental Army, encamped a few miles to the southwest, were sustained on grain grown and milled by Hudson Valley farmers. Acquired by the state in 1850, Washington’s Headquarters preserves that pivotal moment of leadership and incipient nationhood even as outside the iron fence
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PHOTOS COURTESY OF MYSTERY SPOT AND DUTCHESS COUNTY FAIRGROUNDS
History in the Hudson Valley is brought to life in museums and old villages, as well as some top antiquing opportunities. While some are drawn to the high end shops of Hudson, or a number of longstanding local auctions, still others flock to Homer & Langley’s Mystery Spot in Phoenicia, or such big regional fairs as the growing Country Living extravaganza at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds in Rhinebeck each Spring.
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along its perimeter the City of Newburgh was buffeted by the storms of time. After becoming a prominent industrial center and one of the birthplaces of the Romantic movement, Newburgh fell into precipitous decline. That’s one of the ironies. The city spawned the notion of the suburb, a concept that proved very successful, particularly after the advent of the car. Ensuing sprawl a century later sounded the death knell for this pioneering city, displacing substantial chunks of old Newburgh as it suffered precipitous economic decline. From their base in Newburgh, landscape architect and author Andrew Downing and his colleague, architect Andrew Jackson Davis, looked back to the medieval past in fostering the idea that homes should resemble fanciful Gothic cottages nestled in a setting of naturalistic plantings and fronted by a bit of green lawn. Before dying in a steamboat crash on the Hudson River in 1852, Downing had recruited Englishman Calvert Vaux as his protégé. Vaux became a distinguished architect, a few of whose dark-colored, gabled, and elaborately detailed houses in the region survive. He was also the designer of rambling, country-like urban parks, of which the most famous was Central Park (After winning the commission, Vaux hired Frederick Law Olmsted to help him with the design). Vaux is buried in Kingston’s Montrepose Cemetery, which was designed by his son Downing and is located a few blocks from my house. The more you learn about the history of this area, the more you find yourself stumbling over its constant digressions. Newburgh remains afflicted by some of the nation’s highest rates of poverty, following the closing of its industries and an urban renewal plan that wiped out its commercial district. But a further irony may yet await. The city’s rundown streets, which remain an embarrassment of riches of 19th-century Victorian architecture, may be on the cusp of massive gentrification by priced-out New Yorkers. Like in other small cities such as Poughkeepsie and Hudson, concerned citizens have reacted by creating historic districts to save what was left. The splendid mansions with fabulous views of the Hudson on Newburgh’s Montgomery Street are part of such a district. The hope is that a century from now these fabulous artifacts of New York State’s heyday of commerce will be preserved.
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t is fairly new, this idea that not just colonial Dutch-influenced stone houses are worthy of preservation. But even today, books about the historic architecture of the Hudson Valley tend to focus on the colonial period. It is true that Ulster County has more Dutch-influenced stone houses than anywhere in the world except the Netherlands. A short street of old Hurley is lined with them, and on the second Saturday in July you can go inside a few of them on Stone House Day. Though the granary lofts on the second floor have been converted into bedrooms and modern kitchen appliances surround the massive hearths, you can still get an inkling of what domestic life was like for the prosperous farmers of an earlier era, who grew much of the wheat that was milled and shipped on sloops to New York City. Similar houses and a striking square-plan church built by pioneer Huguenots along the Wallkill River are preserved in New Paltz’s Historic Huguenot Street district. While many of the stone houses became Anglicized over the decades, the Jean Hasbrouck house in New Paltz contains a reconstructed 17th-ccentury Dutch-style jambless fireplace, whose lack of sides and massive overhanging hood conjure up the Middle Ages. Many of the old stone houses housed African-American slaves in their cellars before slavery was finally eliminated in the state in the 1840s. The sense of history as a pragmatic progression, in which styles of architecture, art, fashion and types of commerce shifted
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as needs, budgets, ideals and population changed, is excellently conveyed at the Ulster County-restored stone Persen House in Uptown Kingston, which is open free to the public on warm-weather weekends. In a section of dirt floor is preserved one of the holes for the stockade that New Netherlands governor Peter Stuyvesant had built here in the late 1600s as protection against the restive native Esopus people. Artifacts dug up on the property, including pre-settlement ancient projectile
Antiques
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n cafes, antique shops, yard sales and attics alike, Hudson Valley furniture embodies the area’s history, from the colonial Dutch period to the heyday of the Catskills hotels. With the housing market turning around, furniture prices are still fairly low but may be about to climb, so it’s a good time to buy. And every piece contains a history lesson. At area antique shops you might find a table with the typical “New York leg,” featuring a smooth, ovoid shape, with narrow rings and rectangular blocks above and below, characteristic of 17th- and 18th-century Dutch woodwork. Bentwood chairs with Art-Nouveau lines were common in Catskills hotels during early the 1900s. Iron bedsteads, arts-and-crafts bungalow furniture, metal lawn chairs and period fabrics have a nostalgic kick for baby boomers who visited the resorts in the 1960s, when the old furnishings were still in place. Specialties of the region include products of Woodstock’s Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, which turned out fine handcrafted furniture, pottery, textiles, prints, photography and paintings, while establishing Woodstock’s identity as a haven for free-spirited creative people. The colony’s arts and crafts still filter through the region, often ending up at art galleries, along with paintings by Hudson River School artists. For those on a budget, yard sales are abundant in the Catskills on summer weekends. Sharp-eyed shoppers can find furniture, china, glassware, farm implements and other treasures that have just been cleared out of attics and old barns after years of hiding in the dark. What a pleasure to rescue a bit of history and give it a new home!
Violet Snow
Shopping Zaccheo’s Gunsmithing We buy and sell new and used guns Repairs - Scopes Ammunition - Outdoor Gear Hunting Supplies - Shooting Supplies Hunting & Fishing Licenses Ph: (845) 514-0921 215 River Road ext. Tillson, NY 12486 www.zaccheosgunsmith.com zaccheosgunsmith@aol.com
points and a stylish early 19th-century shoe, are displayed in glass cases. The house demonstrates how a building constructed by a 17th-century Dutch surgeon from New Amsterdam was expanded and adapted to new uses through the centuries. It’s located at the only intersection in the nation that has pre-Revolutionary War stone houses on each of its four corners. The Persen House’s conceptual restoration, which doesn’t seek to re-create a period interior but rather features open
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walls enabling you to partake of the building’s metamorphosis through time, is a relatively new type of interpretation. Back in the 1920s and 1930s, when the colonial-revival style was all the range, architects were not only inspired by colonial houses but sought to improve upon them. Kingston-based architect Myron Teller added charming dormers, buildins and even pancake iron hinges forged by contemporary artisans to a few of the houses (ironwork no less splendidly crafted than the Dutch originals). One example of a “Tellerized” room is the kitchen at the Bevier House, headquarters of the Ulster Historical Society in Marbletown, which clearly explains in its interpretative signage that some of the colonial features are fake). ne theory as to why the Hudson Valley hasn’t experienced the population explosion of northern New Jersey or Long Island is that the feudal-like land settlement pattern along the Hudson River left vast swatches of land relatively uninhabited. Under this system, individuals, first under the Dutch and later by the English, were granted enormous patents. Even today, much of the
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east bank of the Hudson consists of baronial estates, a few of which have been preserved as house museums. The most visited is the home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Hyde Park. The grandest of those estates was Clermont, which started out as 160,000 acres granted by the English crown to Robert Livingston Sr. in 1686. His son constructed a great house overlooking the river in the mid-18th century. It was rebuilt after being burned by the British in the Revolution. His grandson was Thomas Jefferson’s minister to France, helping
negotiate the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The grandson, known as “The Chancellor,” also bankrolled Robert Fulton’s new invention, launching a new, revolutionary form of transport on the river that for years, thanks to the scheming of the two friends, enjoyed a monopoly. Today the dignified white house with the spacious dormers and tall chimneys is a particularly fine, well-proportioned example of a Hudson River estate house, lacking the oppressive, institutional formalism of the Mills Mansion or the ostentation of the Vanderbilt estate farther downriver.
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Boscobel, another relatively modestscaled manor house located in Garrison, looks as if it’s spent the last three centuries on its patrician bluff. It was actually re-assembled there in 1961, after being dismantled from its original site 15 miles to the south. The allee of gnarled maples, apple orchards and formal rose garden are among the delights surrounding the temple-like façade, which is odd for another reason. It’s the only preserved Hudson
Open Wed - Sun, 10 am - 4 pm April 17 through November 13, 2016 Guided Tours at 10:30, 1:15 and 2:45 Reservations recommended for guided general tours; required for group tours. Discounts for children and seniors, groups of 10 or more and Channel 13 subscribers.
(845) 236-3126 11 Mill House Road Marlboro, NY 12542 Gomez Mill House, home to Jewish pioneers, Revolutionary War patriots, gentlemen farmers, artist-craftsmen, and social activists, was founded as a trading post by Colonial Jewish leader Luis Gomez in 1714, and is the oldest standing Jewish dwelling in North America. Located in New York’s Historic Hudson Valley, it is the oldest house in Orange County, on the National Historic Register. Visit us this vacation to see the House Museum and the Dard Hunter Paper Mill.
Picnic tables available in a beautiful historic setting.
email: gomezmillhouse@juno.com website: www.gomez.org
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River estate commissioned by a British loyalist, States Morris Dyckman (granted an amnesty by the American government in 1789). The house’s columned façade is typical of the mansions that once graced the river’s bluffs, wowing the passing traffic of sloops and steamboats. ust as the smoke and noise of industry was beginning to sully the shores of the Hudson and denude the surrounding forest, artists were celebrating the vanishing wilderness as a sublime, divinely inspired vision. Paralleling the Romantic movement in architecture heralded by Downing, Davis and Vaux was America’s first school of landscape painting. Two of the Hudson River School artists’ homes survive and are must-visits: the Thomas Cole House, in Catskill, and Olana, the elaborately painted castle of Cole’s pupil Frederic Church, who designed his eclectic
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Come out and play at Mohonk Preserve!
hilltop mansion based on architectural styles he encountered in his travels in the Mideast. Cole’s Federal-style house preserves the views he painted out its large windows. Olana is unique in that much of the original furnishings remain intact, including Church’s art collection and the petite desk, still bearing water stains from a potted plant, of his wife. (The $12 tour is a terrific value, taking in the magnificent entry hall, Church’s large studio, and the dim, cavern-like dining room and touching on the lives of the servants who resided in the attic.) The biggest irony of all may be that the Hudson, integral to the building of the nation’s wealth, the wellspring of its painterly inspiration as well as the key focus of the 20th-century conservation movement, is today mostly silent, except for the wind and splash of waves, the squealing of the gulls, and the roar of an occasional tugboat. A reminder of its seminal role in the region’s and nation’s history can be found at the Hudson River Maritime Museum, located in Kingston.
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photo: John Verner
Discover great hiking, biking, birding, climbing and more. Our Visitor Center is open daily 9am-5pm and the land from sunrise to one hour after sunset. Memberships and day passes are available at all trailheads. 845-255-0919 mohonkpreserve.org
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The collection consists of thousands of photographs, paintings, boat models and maritime artifacts of a vanished world, such as the decorative lunette that once covered the paddlewheel of the famous Kingston-based steamboat Mary Powell. Resting on a dry dock adjacent to the museum’s bulkhead on Rondout Creek is perhaps the most palpable connection to the story of the river: the Clearwater, a replica of a Hudson River sloop commissioned to a Maine boatbuilder by Pete Seeger in the late 1960s, intended to serve as a powerful symbol of the river’s role in American history and its inherent value as a resource that needed protecting. The boat is currently undergoing repairs, but by June it should be back out on the river, acquainting passengers with the exhilarating experience of being out on the water under sail. Pete Seeger understood how a piece of forgotten history could stir the imagination
and forge a link to something fundamental that had been lost — our relationship to the physical river, whose tides, currents and wildlife signify a broader, more sweeping span of time and a richer tapestry of narratives than we could otherwise conceive of. He understood that a connection to the past is perhaps the most effective way of understanding where we are now, and what that means for the future.
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• April - June, 2016
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JENNIFER BRIZZI
Artichokes and asparagus are among the first delicacies of the Hudson Valley Spring, alongside fiddleheads and garlic rapes, and the foundation for an increasingly inventive locavore cuisine.
Sumptuous spring supping Jennifer Brizzi celebrates a magical time indeed
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nticipating all that appears as the earth comes back to life at this time of year, we welcome the transition from frozen, packaged, processed, dried and far-flung foodstuffs to the fresh and new foods of springtime, Some items spring forth on the plates dished out by local restaurants. Some come from our own gardens or the greenhouses or row cov-
ers of local farms. Others shoot up in the woods and fields, waiting for the eager forager. Spring is a rebirth, a new year, foodwise. Not only do we welcome back the familiar harbingers, but our favorite eateries, food markets and food artisans also bring forth exciting new things they’ve been working on. Fortunately,. a lot of that spring bounty
works well for the thorough cleansing our bodies crave at this time of year, as tonics that detoxify our blood, liver and kidneys, skin and respiratory system. Although those systems detoxify themselves naturally, the boost from spring greens — like dandelion greens and asparagus — helps make us closer to good as new. Dandelions are probably the best in that regard, whether foraged or the cul-
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tivated kind bought from a market. Not only diuretic and good at flushing us out, they have more calcium than milk, more iron than spinach, more potassium than bananas. and more beta-carotene than carrots. Asparagus often makes an appearance on Easter and Passover tables. Other early crops like artichokes, radishes, garlic scapes, fiddleheads and early peas make an appearance in markets and the menus of our local restaurants. At The Village Tea Room at 10 Plattekill Avenue in New Paltz, for instance, a recent menu offered cod cakes with roasted local asparagus and lemon herb mayo. At Crave at 129 Washington Street in Poughkeepsie you’ll find grilled asparagus with preserved lemon and soft poached egg as a “small plate.” During the recent Hudson Valley Restaurant Week, Diamond Mills at 25 South Partition Street in Saugerties paid homage to spring with many spring ingredients, like an asparagus risotto with crispy Kurobuta pork jowls, preserved lemon, pecorino aioli and cured egg yolk.
The spring menu also offered potato ravioli with nettles, morels, spring garlic and toasted hazelnuts, as well as a dish of
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on menus, and in zillions of imaginative preparations at Hudson’s annual ramp festival (as of this writing the date has not been set, but it’s usually early May). Although summer and fall are generally mushroom seasons, the elusive, scrump-
Restaurants
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JENNIFER BRIZZI
Dandelion greens. For foragers, spring is a heavenly time, with all outdoors ripe for picking nettles, wood sorrel, poke and the now über-
trendy ramp, all delicious. For those who’d rather have these goodies come to them, ramps at least are found in markets and
Taste
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century ago the Catskills were dotted with farms, many farmers rented rooms out to summer guests, who ate just-picked food cooked by the farmwife. Modern agribusiness has pretty much done away with that lodging option, but a growing number of Hudson Valley farms remain to supply today’s restaurants with fresh ingredients. Spring through fall, vegetables and fruits, free-range eggs, grassfed beef, wild trout, goat cheese, maple syrup, honey and other locally sourced foods provide the foundation for dishes high in vitality and flavor. Farm-to-table restaurants specialize in these products, but many other eateries serve them as well. Eating-out options run the gamut from pizzerias and diners to steakhouses, ethnic cuisine, and vegan food. Many restaurants and bars also carry locally produced alcohol — microbrewed beer, artisanal liquor and organic wine. You can expect to find high-end restaurants where the chef has been lured away from a tony Manhattan joint by the pleasures of mountain air and a less cutthroat environment. East of the Hudson River, the Culinary Institute of America turns out talented chefs who choose to stay in the area and staff local restaurants. Before heading out to eat, always check the hours of your target establishment, since many restaurants serve breakfast and lunch but no dinner, or vice versa, and some are closed midweek for part of the year.
Violet Snow
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tious morel is an ephemeral treat that shows up all too briefly in spring. Herb growers love the way the versatile chive shoots up before anything else. At the new Indoor Organic Gardens of Poughkeepsie it’s spring year-round. They grow luscious microgreens of herbs and vegetables that pack stupendous amounts of nutrition and flavor into a tiny package. Proteins associated with the season
OPEN Fri & Sat Eves till 8pm
include eggs, spring lamb, goat and shad. The layers in the henhouse who may have slowed down production in the colder months are producing in earnest again. Lamb is found on many an Easter table, a tradition that originated with the first Passover when a sacrificial lamb was eaten
with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Mediterranean: The Beautiful Cookbook by Joyce Goldstein (HarperCollins, 1994) offers regional variations on a classic spring preparation from that part of the world that I’ve cooked many times to celebrate spring: lamb or kid (or chicken
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• April - June, 2016
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DION OGUST
From The Bear Cafe in Woodstock to Mercato in Red Hook, Bees’ Knees Cafe in rural Greene County and eateries up and down the entirety of Hudson’s Warren Street, Hudson Valley restaurants are becoming known for their inventiveness and sense of relaxed fun. or rabbit) with artichokes, peas, fava beans and/or asparagus, plus fresh dill, mint, marjoram or parsley (or a combo) and an egg-lemon sauce. Whichever the variation, it never fails to delight. Unfortunately the shad is no longer available for harvesting. Years ago I could buy it fresh or smoked from a shad shack
down the road, and the area abounded with seasonal shad festivals. Before plum and peach and apple seasons come our spring fruits: strawberries and rhubarb -- which luckily complement each other, in that rhubarb pie. Rhubarb is technically a vegetable. You’ll also find it in savory preparations like The Village Tea
Room’s pan-seared salmon with rhubarb and red cabbage braise and Diamond Mills rabbit sausage or Hudson Valley foie gras with sweet and sour rhubarb, honey ginger chips, chervil and green garlic puree. Diamond Mills restaurant week menu also offered as dessert a lime curd with rhubarb granite, strawberries,
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basil syrup and pink grapefruit sorbet. We know it’s spring when all these good things pop up on menus. We find them again in the markets, reappearing like long-lost friends. Olde Hudson Market in Hudson is one such source. Mother Earth’s Storehouse’s stores in Kingston, Saugerties and Poughkeepsie are good spots for plenty of spring produce — and all organic — as are Adams’ four stores in Kingston, Poughkeepsie, Wappingers and Newburgh. When Del’s opens in Rhinebeck (midMarch every year, so relatively early), you know that winter’s over, or will be soon. Our many local farmers markets and farmstands open, one by one by one, until there is bounty at every turn. When the food trucks come back to Hudson, it’s the same kind of thing. Spring means finally filling our bellies with the wonderful foods that we’ve missed so much since last spring. A magical time indeed. Your palette’s pleasure is truly our pleasure!
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• April - June, 2016
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PHOTO COURTESY OF ART OMI
Home to such stalwarts of contemporary sculpture as Storm King and Art Omi (pictured), as well as a growing number of residency art programs and artists’ residences and studios, the Hudson Valley’s art scene is both historical in scope, and continuously edgy in its embrace of the new.
Staring at art Sparrow ventures up and down the Hudson Valley
A
rt in the Hudson Valley is in conversation with our forests and mountains. The Jervis McEntee show last year at the Dorsky Museum at SUNY
New Paltz helped me appreciate late fall where I live, at the base of Romer Mountain in Phoenicia. McEntee (1828-1891) grew up in Rondout before it was incorporated into Kingston, captured the
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bleak browns and grays of November in the Catskills woods. In his paintings, you see the thoughtful mood of our foliage, as though nature were pondering the interval between living and dying. William Blake wrote: that “A tear is an intellectual thing,” and so is a half-naked apple tree. The Dorsky has been showing neglected masters of our region for decades. Unbelievably, it and a smaller companion show at the Friends of Historic Kingston on Wall Street in Kingston were McEntee’s first solo shows in history! In 2014 I was fascinated by the work at the Dorsky of Woodstock painter Eugene Speicher (1883-1962), whose meticulous, quietly dramatic portraits were famous in the 1930s (when Esquire called him “America’s most important living painter”) but are forgotten today.
W
hich reminds me, you must always visit the back room — the
April - June, 2016 • 39
Explore Hudson Valley
Towbin Museum Wing — of the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum at 28 Tinker Street in Woodstock. Every one of their shows is worth a look. The current offering is “Director’s Choice: The Responsive Eye.” The Woodstock art scene before the 1970s was one of the most democratic art cultures in America. It produced few “stars,” but that wasn’t the goal. Local artists painted affectionate portraits, nudes, canvases of heroic workers unloading barges in the Rondout, outraged images of lynchings in the South. Perhaps the greatest Woodstock painter, Philip Guston (1913-1980), was an abstractionist until he encountered the underground comics of R. Crumb in the 1960s, and began painting cartoony figures — mostly men, some dressed in Ku Klux Klan outfits, often smoking cigars and watching television. Guston’s nameless characters — usually outlined in red or black — have a stark solidity. One day I realized they are the boulders and outcroppings of the Catskill Mountains, translated into human form. For more old-time Woodstock art, visit the Fletcher Gallery at 40 Mill Hill Road. As a teenager in 1967 I slightly knew John
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In “The Area: Interesting Historical Events of Ulster and Sullivan Counties”, local author Robert LaPolt addresses the Laurentide Ice Sheet of 20,000 years ago and the effects upon the townships of Denning in Ulster County, and Neversink in Sullivan County, the roads from Denning to today’s Rt. 28, the Hardenberg Patent and the man responsible for developing the road from the Hudson River to the Delaware River via the Esopus Valley. He also addresses the Ku Klux Klan and it’s history in the Northeast, particularly in New York State, and Ulster and Sullivan counties. Robert LaPolt is a retired educator who has two previous publications to his credit. To purchase a copy of the book, please email a request to: robertlapolt@hotmail.com and mail a check for $26 to: Robert LaPolt, 1 Pamal Lane New Paltz, NY 12561
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• April - June, 2016
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PHOTO COURTESY OF DIA: BEACON.
Among the region’s museums are such world-class destinations as Dia: Beacon in Beacon, home to an influential collection of large pieces including a basement filled with Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses. G. Ernst, who’d trade a post-Impressionist landscape for a bottle of whiskey. At the time, Ernst’s work looked childlike to me. Now it seems as valid as Gauguin. And the Fletcher has it!
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At the moment four of my drawings are on display at my favorite Woodstock showplace, the Woodstock Framing Gallery at 31 Mill Hill Road. It’s an actual framing shop, with several rooms of art.
Owner Sneha Kapadia has an eye for wit and adventure — abetted by gleeful Norm Magnusson, who curated the current show, “What is text-based art?” Mount Tremper has the only gallery I know of that’s open 24 hours a day. It surrounds Bob Jacobson’s trailer on Route 212, just south of Wittenberg Road. Bob is a sculptor and painter who creates rainproof aluminum “canvases” hanging on his exterior walls. Since I moved to the area in 1998 I’ve seen Jacobson’s work evolve. At first he showed portraits of a young woman who looked vaguely English. These were replaced with geometrical abstractions in the bright colors of children’s blocks. (I prefer the latter work.) Bob’s sculpture is carved wood, and looks a bit like undulating body organs: giant pancreases and livers. Bob is a fascinating guy who listens to Finnegans Wake on CD, and reads The London Review of Books (to which he once – full disclosure – gave me a free subscription).
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His art is the product of a happy mind. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t forget my own hometown gallery, Arts Upstairs at 60 Main Street in Phoenicia. The gallery has the same personality as Phoenicia itself: impudent, erratic, untamed. I recommend Ann Byersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; necktie-sculptures, Dave Channonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sunny, post-apocalyptic landscapes, Bronson Edenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Tantric eroticism, and Astrid Nordnessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; unnerving ceramic lions. One of the best Hudson Valley galleries is also one of the newest: The School in Kinderhook (25 Broad Street, only open Saturdays). This is one of the few galleries on earth that fills a former school. (PS 1 in Queens is a museum, with many curators, not a gallery that actually sells art.) Gallerist Jack Shainman seeks out startling, intelligent work â&#x20AC;&#x201C; some dolllike, some monumental. At the last show, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Winter in Americaâ&#x20AC;? (named after a Gil Scott-Heron song), one immediately confronted a ten-foot-high head of Fidel Castro made from door hinges, by Yoan Capote. Of course, this wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t automatically recognizable as Fidel; it appeared to be a Greek god. But which god? Mercury? Is he the deity most closely associated with door hinges? Was Jack Shainman suggesting that his gallery is an ancient temple? A great curator asks nine questions at once. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t miss their gala opening May 22. One of our underrated venues is the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art at 1701 Main Street in Peekskill. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d call it the â&#x20AC;&#x153;youngestâ&#x20AC;? of the major arts venues â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the most willing to be messy and dissonant. (As it happens, most of the best contemporary art is messy and dissonant.) The HVCCA encourages installation, performance, collaboration with the Peekskill community. But it also hosts one of the great living masters, Olafur Eliasson, whose reflective tunnel,
â&#x20AC;&#x153;Your Repetitive View,â&#x20AC;? is installed at the Riverfront Green by the Hudson. He also has a work not far from the Gehry theatre building at Bard College in Annandale. The most mystical art locale in the our region may be the Seligmann Center in Sugar Loaf, former home to Kurt Seligmann and his wife Arlette. Seligmann was one of the first Surrealists to escape to America, in 1939. He was the author of a history of the occult, a professor at Brooklyn College, and a small-scale farmer. The Seligmannsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; house and gardens still glow with surreal hospitality, and its exhibitions are thick with dreams. Well, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve run out of room without mentioning Dia: Beacon, Storm King, Olana, the Thomas Cole House, the Cox Gallery, the Woodstock Center for Photography, the Hessel Museum at Bard College, the Loeb Art Center at Vassar, and the Kingston O+ festival. And other venues. I apologize to them all!
Art
April - June, 2016 â&#x20AC;˘ 41
Woodstock Photography Workshops
Image: Gabriel GarcĂa RomĂĄn
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For a complete listing of classes and workshops visit woodstockschoolofart.org
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June 18th, 5:30-10:00 @ Saugerties Performing Arts Factory Cocktail reception, hors dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;oeuvres provided by New World Home Cooking with meats by Fleishers Craft Butchery, live jazz by Perry Beekman, buffet dinner, OLYH DXFWLRQ UDIĂ H GDQFLQJ WR D OLYH SLHFH EDQG ZLWK PHPEHUV RI 6RXO 3XUSRVH and Little Gems, original works by our artist members for $100 each. Tickets $85. For info and to buy tickets visit woodstockart.org or call 845-679-2940 :RRGVWRFN $UWLVWV $VVRFLDWLRQ 0XVHXP 7LQNHU 6WUHHW :RRGVWRFN 1<
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• April - June, 2016
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Music roundup John Burdick reports that what we have is no scene once asked Kingston musician and BSP booking agent Mike Amari whether we have a scene in the mid-Hudson region. How does one define a scene? Should we worry our heads about it? They are paradoxical, elusive beasts, these scenes. In the minds of the purists, they die the very second they are declared. The urban refugees follow the scent of mountain air and the new vistas of hip, flocking upstate to bask in a spirit of scene. Sensing their arrival, the scene has already fled to the next hardscrabble neighborhood showing signs of life in the cracks. Pretty shops and real-estate offices, by this logic, are the headstones of scenes. Rinse and repeat. With the ambitious booking of a happening national room on his resume, along with his part in the revitalization of uptown Kingston, Amari could be credited with being one of our scene-
I
PHOTO COURTESY OF MOUNTAIN JAM
Mountain Jam, the Woodstock Radio event that runs at Hunter Mountain the first week in June, carries on a tradition of musical festivals stretching back past 1969’s big event through Soundouts to the Maverick bow-outs of the early 20th century.
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makers extraordinaire. His response to my question surprised me, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s only grown more resonant in the years since we spoke on the record. â&#x20AC;&#x153;No,â&#x20AC;? he said. We donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a scene. We lack the population density as well as some of the requisite economic and demographic conditions â&#x20AC;&#x201D; meaning, I guess, droves of young people and jobs. What we have, Amari said, is a rich supply of locally residing and working artists, performers, and the oft-overlooked venue bookers, program builders and arts administrators. With a virtuoso-to-audience ratio approaching one to one, we are simply not equipped to support this cultural infrastructure, What a mess. Most towns have a jazz cafĂŠ, of course, but it is not Jack DeJohnette, Joe Lovano and John Abercrombie, or Rebecca Martin and Larry Grenadier swinging in them on a weekly basis. Or Matt Finck, or Perry Beekman, or John Menegon, or so many others who help create this dangerous illusion of ours. The theme of our music scene â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and this extends to the visual and other arts
as well â&#x20AC;&#x201D; is disproportion. We enjoy a night-to-night grade and diversity of programming that is wildly out of scale with our numbers. This makes it both a dizzying and, in some ways, a depressing time to be a working critic and musician in this environment. You just canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t cull enough people from these hills to attend all this genius. Oh, well. This also means that any cultural roundup like the one you have stumbled upon is doomed from the start and must begin with apologies for all the glaring and
inevitable omissions.
The start I could begin at the Olive Free Library, a modest and comfortable multi-purpose space out in the sticks that has quietly become the site of some genuinely worldclass classical music. I could have started a survey of the areaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rich serious music landscape elsewhere. Bard would have been a logical choice, a leader in performance and canonical/ cultural studies whose SummerScape
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• April - June, 2016
program is so dense with thematically integrated concerts, theatrical performances, lectures, and exhibits (focusing on Puccini and his world this year). Its concise press release runs about ten pages with hardly a hint of hyperbole or fluff. I could have begun with the venerable/ radical Maverick Concerts in Woodstock, whose boutique and adventurous summer chamber-music concert series (in a one-of-a-kind venue) is one of the longest-running and best-curated in the country. Or I could have begun with any of our numerous and enduring chamber music societies, who routinely lure in elite string quartets and solo performers to local churches, like the Ulster Chamber Music Series, now in its 48th season of performances at the Church of the Holy Cross in Kingston, or the Rhinebeck Chamber Music Society’s concerts at the Church of the Messiah on Montgomery Street, now in its 37th season. Nor is it all churches: The acoustically pristine Howland Cultural Center in Beacon hosts a great piano series and frequent chambermusic programs. It’s also where many fine classical recordings go to be made. I could have (and, as a New Paltz homer,
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Paltz). On the theme of longrunning native ensembles, how about Dr. Edward Lundergan’s wonderful Kairos: A Consort of Singers, the artists-in-residence at Holy Cross Monastery, fearless and wide-ranging in their repertoire. I could have begun with the salient fact that our region is a global hot spot of new and PHOTO COURTESY OF BARD COLLEGE experimental serious music: auIn addition to rock, folk, r&b and jazz music, dacious, and envelope-pushing, the Hudson Valley is home to top chamber multimedia-paired sound art music festivals, as well as Bard College’s of the kind that emanates from many programs in its Frank Gehry-designed Basilica Hudson, throughout Fischer Center, where the coming months are filled with a host of concerts and recitals. the radical Mt. Tremper Arts Summer Festival, the Phoenicia Festival of the Voice, the avant-garde probably should have) led with a shout star-studded environmental music proout to SUNY New Paltz’s elite Piano gramming at Manitoga in Garrison, and Summer, the flagship master class and finally in the shiny new shrine of radical performance series that dates back to music that is EMPAC, the Curtis R. Priem the hiring of virtuoso Vladimir Feltsman. Experimental Media and Performing Or the Pone Ensemble for New Music, Arts Center on the campus Rensselaer a relatively stable group of ace players Polytechnic Institute in Troy. who have been singular in their focus on So what does the Olive Free Library of20th- and 21st-century works for over fer? From the outside, one would guess 40 years (and who also haunt a church: the regular events programming might inThe United Methodist Church in New clude voter registration drives, bake sales and field-stripping workshops. Instead, it features appearances by heavyweight chamber-music ensembles, such as the all-female early-music ensemble Siren Baroque, and a truly formidable tradition of solo piano concerts originally founded and curated by Grammy-nominated composer George Tsontakis. That is just so us.
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All that jazz This is jazzland and always has been, mostly because of our proximity to the Big Apple. In recent years, the jazz heavies in our midst have been playing out locally a lot more. There are several reasons why, the most obvious being that the dire commercial state of the genre (and of the music industry in general) requires even the established names to leave no revenues unrealized. The other main reason can be stated pretty simply: The Falcon. The venture outgrew Tony Falco’s barn loft (where one might go to sit at the feet of Brad Mehldau and a grand piano) and has fully grown into its current spacious
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flavors of retro and roots, the Rosendale Café has established itself as a center of swing and other traditional jazz styles. On the other end of the style spectrum, Quinn s, the crazy ex-luncheonette in Beacon, has become a hive of notable avant-garde jazz, under the curatorship of James Keepnews, who also produces the Beacon Jazz Festival, the lineup of which includes the Sun Ra Arkestra this year, under the leadership of original member Marshall Allen. Jazzstock is neither a venue nor a festival, but a jazz advocacy and promotional group founded by Teri Roiger, John Menegon and Dan Leader. As an event promoter, Jazzstock has really been hitting its stride in the last half-year. Their primary venue is the Woodstock Community Center, though a few shows have been bumped up to the Woodstock Playhouse. Upriver, the Catskill Jazz Factory is another serious jazz incubator, a jazz advancement and preservation league of sorts that works closely with Bard College on state-of-the-art, conceptual performances. DeJohnette, Holland and Abercrombie
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— The Gateway Trio — were early jazz settlers of the region. Their presence here no doubt attracted many more to come stay and, eventually, play here. But, oddly enough, the relative flatlands of Orange Country have become a jazz’ burbia themselves (with the great tenor man Joe Lovano as the anchor). As a result, the exquisite multiple spaces of the Sugar Loaf Performing Arts Center often feature high-grade jazz.
Rock and, furthermore, roll For the purposes of this story, I also polled local rock musicians and fans. Where was the music really happening? Most answers included BSP in Kingston, blending a steady stream of national acts from the indie rock and electro worlds with sympathetic locals, and the Bearsville Theater, even more a mixed bag than usual lately, but as ever a tremendous and historic space capable of booking outsize names. Watch out for the Colony Café, advised Woodstock native and (now Beaconbased) scenester Alex Law of Bearquilt. Surprises are taking shape there. To the north, The Half Moon and the Spotty Dog rock along in Hudson, re-
flecting different aspects of that town’s arty personality, and of course Helsinki Hudson, trafficking in singer-songwriter folk and rock, roots music, and, increasingly, cabaret — risque and otherwise. Way to the south, the venerable Towne Crier in Beacon caters to much the same circuit as Helsinki, sans the cabaret, and Quinn’s with the outré. Nearby in Cornwall-on-Hudson, 2Alices is the little café that could, regarding live music. Dan Brown’s The Wherehouse on Liberty Street Newburgh, one of the anchors of the revitalization of Broadway, continues to serve nightly blues, rock and psychedelia. New Paltz remains a vibrant bar rock
Where to Guide April - June, 2016 An Ulster Publishing publication Editorial WRITERS: Andrew Amelimnckx, Jennifer Brizzi, John Burdick, Elisabeth Henry, Paul Smart, Violet Snow, Sparrow, Mike Valkys, Terence Ward, Lynn Woods EDITOR: Paul Smart COVER PHOTOS BY Phil Mansfield LAYOUT BY Joe Morgan Ulster Publishing PUBLISHER:
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PHOTO COURTESY DOUG ELKINS CHOREOGRAPHY
The Hudson Valley is home to a number of summer theaters presenting serious new drama, classic musicals, and new productions still being workshopped. This time of year, local schools and colleges present yearend works while community theaters kick into rousing high gear. Also, the region’s dance presenters, from Kaatsbaan in Tivoli to the brand new American Dance Institute in Catskill, take top troupes in for residencies designed to create new works, with sneak previews for local audiences. Pictured are Doug Elkins Choreography, who will perform at ADI’s groundbreaking events in early May. scene, with Snug Harbor, Oasis, Café and Bacchus as the main loud rooms. As I was reminded by my bandmate Manny Yupa, the basement and house shows of the village are not mere child’s play. Several bands who came from that milieu or at least passed through, including Porches, Diet Cig, Quarterbacks, and Breakfast in Fur have gone on to various kinds of national recognition. Basement shows are a funny thing,
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though. They don’t tell you where to go. You just have to know. Veteran songwriter and rocker Frank McGinnis (Frankie and His Fingers, who practically were the DIY scene back in the day) reminded me that record
April - June, 2016 • 47
stores are venues too: Darkside Records in Poughkeepsie, Rocket Number Nine and Rhino Records in Uptown Kingston, Rhino and Jack’s Rhythms in New Paltz. It was inevitable that this story would degenerate into name checks and shoutouts. The High Falls Café is a hidden jewel of a venue with an unshakable commitment to live music and a handpicked roster of roots and rock acts. Market Market Café in Rosendale beat everyone to Brooklyn hip around here, note it well, and the Tributons are still the wildest nights on the local calendar. The Anchor in Kingston may have cleaned up the scene from its days as The Basement, but the wild spiritual energy of that venue is still very much in effect there. Is all this scene? Only if you make it so. Sometimes a surfeit is worse than a dearth. Too much to do becomes an emotional rationale for doing nothing. Tony Falco at the Falcon has his mantra: “Support living artists,” he gravely intones every night out, and he has certainly put his money where his mouth is. I have a mantra, too: Attendance is activism. You don’t have to do it all, just your part.
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