Chronogram December 2022

This past October our NY governor announced financial support to innovative nature-based solutions that lower emissions and sequester carbon through novel products and services.

The current cold climate HEAT PUMPS are a smart and efficient way to keep your home comfortable throughout the year. Heat Pumps are your one stop shopping for heating and air conditioning and are environmentally friendly, very efficient and affordable.

Benefits of Heat Pumps

COMMUNITY PAGES, PAGE 44

Sculpture of Rip Van Winkle at the top of Main Street in Catskill.

Photo by David McIntyre

109

Goldricks Landing Court, Kingston, NY

Perched high above the Hudson River is a 5000+ sq ft unfinished home awaiting your finishing touches. The approximately 4,000 sq ft addition has radiant heat, with heated floors throughout, including the garage and basement floors. In addition to the Great Room, this home is comprised of 2 apartments, plus the original structure from 1920. One of the apartments has a special loft that could be used as a bedroom and walk-in closet or could be a child’s tree house! Spacious 24’ x 36’ 2-story barn. Swim in the aboveground pool overlooking the Hudson River. $1,210,000.

Contact Kathy Shumway, NYS Licensed Real Estate Salesperson – (845) 901-6555

231 Manorville Road, Saugerties, NY

One of Kind Mountain Oasis on over 11 acres with spectacular views of Four states. Come breathe in the mountain air and see all this property has to offer. Private ½ mile driveway leads to the main house which boasts 4 bright and airy bedrooms, M-bedroom with his/hers closets and bathroom with vaulted ceilings, whirlpool tub and skylight, plus an 1.5 additional bathrooms, 2 bonus rooms with a floor to ceiling setup for 2nd wood burning stove, spacious eat in kitchen and so much more. Full oversized walkout basement with 9 ft ceilings and almost 800 sq ft garage. Spend summer days in the pool and fall nights under the stars on the front porch. Separate guest cottage, a home office, writers retreat or a new venture space, just needs utilities connected. $1,499,999.

Contact Nadina Truini, NYS Licensed Real Estate Salesperson – (203) 223-9999

99 Bogardus Road, Acra, NY

Come enjoy this spectacular modern “Chalet Gem in the Catskill Mountains” on 110 private, mostly wooded acres just 15 minutes to Windham Mountain. The property shares a 1/2 mile border with the Great Northern Catskill Forest Park of 700,00 acres designated as forever wild. There are unmatched 360 degree breathtaking panoramic mountain and valley views. The home was lovingly hand crafted with the finest materials by this family of master craftsman. There are 3 large bedrooms, 3 full baths, gourmet cherry kitchen, cathedral ceilings, custom cedar and pine woodwork, 6 panel doors, yellow pine and ceramic tile floors. Unobstructed sunrise and sunsets can both be seen in many of the rooms in the home. Additional land is available. $1,990,000.

William “Chris” St. John, NYS Licensed Real Estate Salesperson – (845) 802-3638

1474 High Falls Road, Catskill, NY

Must see to appreciate outstanding estate located in beautiful Catskill region. Just 2 hours from NYC! Close to Saugerties, Woodstock, and Hunter Ski Center. 50 acres with ponds makes this a great venue for corporate retreat, year-round vacation rental, weddings, etc. Lower level (76x40) boasts an Olympic-size heated pool with new liner and de-humidifier system. There are a total of 11 bedrooms, each with full bath and fireplaces. Lower area has 6 bedrooms with outside exits. A billiards/game room with sunning stone fireplace. The Main kitchen is equipped with 2 stoves and 2 refrigerators. Leading to Formal dining room and bright, airy, spacious Living area with a Fireplace. There is also a 3 BR apartment in lower level at entrance. BONUS - separate 2 BR house with updated dining room and kitchen. There’s an 8-stall Morton Barn with fenced paddock at beginning of property with plenty of riding and hiking trails. This property is being offered as “turn-key” with furniture and appliances included. Special use permit will allow for Inn/Hotel, Tiny homes and more. 1,950,000.

Nadina Truini, NYS Licensed Real Estate Salesperson – (203) 223-9999

A detail of Midsection, Jenny Kemp, acrylic on linen, 2022, from the exhibition "Radical Chrome" at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent Connecticut.

ART EXHIBITS, PAGE 72

ARTS

56 Music

Michael Eck reviews Flow of Everything by Michael Bisio and Matthew Shipp and Inimitable by Michael Bisio. Jason Broome reviews Kenny Roby by Kenny Roby. Mike Cobb reviews A Very Unusual Head by The Slambovian Circus of Dreams. Plus listening recommendations from singer/ songwriter Sarah Perrotta.

57 Books

Besty Maury reviews Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America by Leila Philip. Plus short reviews of Santa Doesn’t Need Your Help by Kevin Maher; Solace and Sanctuary: the Ashokan’s Enduring Gifts by Kate McLouhglin and Gail Straub; Everything Else is Bric-a-Brac: Notes on Home by Akiko Busch; Design Flaw: Stories by Hugh Sheehy; and The Failure by Gregory D. Jaw.

58 Poetry

Poems by Vernon Benjamin, Ryan Brennan, John Grey, Mike Jurkovic, Margaret Medina, Branden Parisella, E. Pinter, Carson Pytell, Marlene Tartaglione, and Christian Walker. Edited by Phillip X Levine.

The No Ring Circus takes the stage at Hudson Brewing

“ Wilde About Whitman” at the Stissing Center in Pine Plains.

Alexandra Horowitz talks about puppy development prior to an appearance in Kingston on December 16.

“Jack Whitten: The Greek Alphabet Paintings” at Dia: Beacon captures a turning point in the artist’s career.

Live music this month: Pierre Kwenders at Tubby’s, DJ Logic at the Falcon, and Delicate Steve at No Fun

The Short List: The holidays make a strong showing.

Museum and gallery shows from across the region.

HOROSCOPES

Requiem for a Dream, or a Hallelujah Chorus? What the stars have in store for us this month.

PARTING SHOT

The Archives of Women’s Studio Workshop The feminist art collective tells its own story.

Carny, Chatham, 2017

WILLIAM BULLARD Photograph

William Bullard is an Ghent-based photographer inspired by the chaotic color of carnivals. His human subjects almost melt into the background, as exemplified by Man Blowing Balloon, which was taken at the Columbia County Fair. “I was drawn to the way the carny in hat, shades, orange jacket, camo wear, and with part of his face covered by the balloon—disappears into the garish, oversaturated color of the balloons and prizes. There is something predatory about his look and the allure of the prizes that complicates the allAmerican innocence of the scene,” Bullard says.

He is fascinated by how carnies are part of the American landscape and small-town traditions that endure unchanged. “I remember Shoot Out the Star games from my childhood 60 years ago. Technology hasn’t touched them, and the pleasure is purely analog and physical,” Bullard says. “It’s about skill and persuasion, the relationship between the ‘mark’ and the carny, and the lure of the big prize, which is both tawdry and seductive at the same time.”

He’s struck by the care carnies take in preparing the games, and describes the color,

arrangements of prizes, signage, lighting, and the busy, saturated aesthetic as being like the “plumage on male birds. It’s meant to win a passive competition for the eyes and attention of the hundreds of marks walking by,” Bullard says. “The carnies are camouflaged by the crazyquilt design of the booths. It’s like a lesson out of natural history—the prey is attracted by the colorful lure, which conceals a dangerous predator. You come to the booth attracted by the innocent big eyes and smiles of all those gigantic stuffed animals, and the next thing you know, you’ve handed over $5 to, maybe, win a prize worth $2 while listening to the friendly, reassuring patter of the carny.”

Also of interest to Bullard are the egalitarian aspects of how carnivals unite people from all classes, especially during such politically fraught times. “These fairs offer a respite from divisions. They are really for children,” he says. “Even in trying economic times, they seem to be about prosperity and commerce, about spending money freely to have fun.”

He first started photographing carnies as “landscape portraits’’ in 2014 at the Dutchess

County Fair in Rhinebeck and the Columbia County Fair in Chatham. Over the years, he’s photographed dozens of carnies from all over the United States and has learned they are on a migratory circuit that begins in Florida in the early spring and usually ends in upstate New York and New England in the fall. “Many of them have homes in the South and Florida, where they spend the winter, living off of their earnings from the fair season. They make a decent living, and most seem very happy,” he says.  Bullard is also working on an ongoing street project called “Pictures at an Exhibition’’ that collects portraits of visitors in art museums. He’s drawn to how certain shows create spaces for an audience that, once stilled by the camera, becomes part of the exhibition. “As a street photographer who is constantly photographing strangers without asking permission, I try to make photographs that honor my subjects, photographs that they would be happy to own,” he says.

Portfolio: Williambullard.com

—Mike Cobb

Albany Medical Center | Albany Medical College | Columbia Memorial Health Glens Falls Hospital | Saratoga Hospital | Visiting Nurses

EDITORIAL

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Brian K. Mahoney brian.mahoney@chronogram.com

CREATIVE DIRECTOR David C. Perry david.perry@chronogram.com

DIGITAL EDITOR Marie Doyon marie.doyon@chronogram.com

ARTS EDITOR Peter Aaron music@chronogram.com

HOME EDITOR Mary Angeles Armstrong home@chronogram.com

POETRY EDITOR Phillip X Levine poetry@chronogram.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Anne Pyburn Craig apcraig@chronogram.com

contributors

Andrew Amelinckx, Winona Barton-Ballentine, Jason Broome, Mike Cobb, Michael Eck, Amadeus Finlay, Austin C. Jefferson, Lorelai Kude, Betsy Maury, David McIntyre, Naomi Shammash, Sparrow

PUBLISHING

FOUNDERS Jason Stern, Amara Projansky

PUBLISHER & CEO Amara Projansky amara.projansky@chronogram.com

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT Jan Dewey jan.dewey@chronogram.com

BOARD CHAIR David Dell

media specialists

Kaitlyn LeLay kaitlyn.lelay@chronogram.com

Kelin Long-Gaye kelin.long-gaye@chronogram.com

Kris Schneider kris.schneider@chronogram.com Sam Brody sam.brody@chronogram.com

Starting November 18th!

Get ready, it’s time for Back Friday at Warren Kitchen & Cutlery! November 18, and as long as supplies last.

Just in time to Cook, Entertain and Gift. We’re the Hudson Valley’s favorite place to shop for the latest and greatest in Cookware, Cutlery, Coffee Making, Bakeware, Barware, Kitchen Tools, Accessories and Serving Pieces.

Jared Winslow jared.winslow@chronogram.com

Come on in, and check out the selections from Zwilling for this season. Knives in sets and individually , including Block Sets. Staub cast-iron enamel cookware in a range of colors, and discounts. And new Enfingy world-class Coffee Making Products. Plus this season we’re featuring exclusive USA-Made Cutlery and celebrated Hestan Cookware from Italy.

Our staff is on site to help you choose the best for your needs and budget. That’s why we’re the Hudson Valley’s most popular Kitchen Store. So stop in and find Everything for Your Kitchen!

by Jason Stern

The light has sunk into the earth: The image of DARKENING OF THE LIGHT. Thus does the superior person live with the great mass: She veils her light, yet still shines.

I-Ching, hexagram 36, Wilhelm/Baynes

Working in a cafe, I become aware of two men sitting at a nearby table. One is older than I, in his 70s and vital with a full head of gray hair. He is speaking loudly to the other, who is ancient, sitting in a wheelchair, missing one leg from the knee down, and apparently partially deaf. The younger man is skimming a newspaper.

“Do you read the New York Times?”

“Eh?”

The younger man repeats his question again, only louder.  “Nah.”

“Well, it’s all bad news in the world.”

“All the bad news that’s fit to print!” the elder replies, with a mostly toothless grin. That was a few days ago and the conversation keeps returning to my thoughts like a comet periodically returning to visibility on its irregular cycle. Something about the exchange seems meaningful. I think it has to do with the power of narrative to impose a layer of meaning on the perception of life and experience.

Bad news is not the only news, but it is the time-honored practice of news organs to focus on provocative topics that will capture readers’ attention and keep audiences engaged. There is good commercial rationale for disseminating bad news.

There’s another data point that is perhaps more telling. Namely, two investment groups, Blackrock and Vanguard, that own a large interest in the New York Times also own most of its competitors including Fox (News Corp), CNN (Time Warner), Disney, CBS News, MSNBC and many other major media brands. These two companies arguably control almost the entire media landscape, including organs that might ordinarily be seen as promoting opposing points of view.

The two investment groups, which are effectively one because Vanguard owns a controlling interest in Blackrock, also own virtually all the companies on the S&P 500, including every major company working in the pharmaceutical (notably a majority interest in Pfizer), defense, energy, banking, and technology sectors.

With this global monopoly of everything in view, it is not a stretch to infer that the major media companies serve as the marketing and propaganda arms for a worldwide business enterprise. And all these businesses benefit from unbridled consumption, destruction of the natural world, dismantling of the local economy and independent business, war, pandemics, and social strife. For these companies, bad news is good news.

My point is not to decry the injustice of a small group of corporations with more money than God controlling the economic, social, and political life of most of the planet for their own benefit. Rather it is to suggest that not only the news but also the narratives within which the news is framed should be viewed skeptically, and with a persistent inquiry—who actually benefits from the story? The great leap of inquiry is to look beyond the official narratives to what is real.

We are the recipients of innumerable narratives about what is happening in “the world” as though it is some known and consistent quantity. But what is the world, really?

The world is not distant events about which I can know nothing directly; it is not public figures who may as well be fictional characters in a Russian novel; it is not a stock market industrial average or parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere.

The real world begins with my direct experience and includes people with whom I enjoy personal encounters. The world is what I contact with my senses, what I touch, taste, smell, hear, and see. The world is what I perceive, and what touches my inner life. The world is what I can verify and come to understand in experience.

If my aim is to be kind to everyone, the objects of kindness and respect are those people that I meet. If my aim is to care for Great Nature (of whose body I am a part) then I can strive to consume only what is necessary, to preserve the objects in my care, and to relate to the sacred within all life.

The first thing I find in making contact with the real world is that it is good. The sense of ownership and separation quickly drops away as I become grateful for the abundance flowing everywhere. Though there may be problems and difficulties, the basis of the real world is the inexhaustible creative force of life. I see that this life that briefly flows through my body flows through all beings, all plants, all animals, all people and that in this we are one life.

A sensitive contact with the world reveals its reality and the unreality of the dominant narratives. In this contact I am allowed to be content and unafraid even as many around me are suffering and fearful. With freedom from fantastical and illusory media-driven narratives I may even be able to serve in a manner that is relevant and sincere.

Curated by Maya Benton

November 5, 2022–February 5, 2023

IBM Tech City, 101 Enterprise Drive (second floor), Kingston, NY Thursday–Sunday: 11–5pm

4-H is America’s largest youth organization, and it helps kids grow into their best selves through project-based learning. From working with animals to creating fiber arts, practicing archery to bringing robots to life, 4-H clubs explore the pillars of Civic Engagement, Ag & Food, STEM, and Healthy Living.

4-H’ers are about 4x more likely to give back to their communities, 2x more likely to be civically active, 2x more likely to make healthier choices, and 2x more likely to participate in STEM activities. Find out how 4-H will help your family grow by contacting your county CCE office.

by Brian K. Mahoney

Any Given Sunrise

This is why we come. Why we get up in the blueblack pre-dawn and slip out of warm beds and drive down to the water’s edge. For a magnificent dawn like this. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder snapping photos like tourists watching a panda give birth. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cat Stevens started singing “Morning Has Broken” out of unseen speakers in the sky, like the bells ringing at the end of Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves. The whole thing has a magicalrealist spectacle to it that makes hymns understandable. It’s so freakishly stunning you have to look away.

But celestial sightseeing is not why we’ve come at all, actually. We’re not a cult of Sun genuflecters, we’re dog owners. The sunrise is an added bonus. (That said, shoutout to the Sun for being a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma that’s made it all happen for the past four billion years. If I was to worship anything, it’d be you, buddy.)

We’re here to walk our dogs. Or, to be more precise: we’re here early enough so our dogs can run off-leash and not bother anyone. (Well, they bother June, who has a never-ending pocketful of treats in her coat that Clancy is constantly trying to smuggle the whole of his mastiff head into.) To let them amble and sniff and root in the bushes without being tethered to us for a few minutes.

We’re here for small talk. The half-asleep easy stuff: restaurant openings, problematic neighbors, movie

reviews, dream analysis, recipes, why a Greenland kayak paddle is thinner than a normal oar, the strangeness of Portuguese bathrooms, when to start wearing long underwear—it’s all up for discussion.

We’re here to be quiet and let our minds wander in silence.

We’re here to remember other mornings and the dogs and dog owners who are no longer with us. Each morning is an implicit memorial service. We walk for us but also for them. We walk with the beautiful ghosts of Bear and Emmett and Shazam.

We’re here to watch tugs push barges up the river, sending wake onto the shore that frightens the dogs.

We’re here to complain. About new traffic patterns. Our dead mothers. And often about the programming on NPR. Specifically, why WAMC sees the need to have a local meteorologist read the weather for 10 minutes every morning. We have phones for that now. (Like everything else.)

And does anyone care how cold it is in the Nunavut Territory or what the wind speed is on top of Mount Washington?

We’re here for each other, morning after morning, in all seasons. Except when it rains. Clancy doesn’t like the rain.

We’re here for all of it, but today, we’re here to watch the sunrise.

Looking east toward Rhinecliff from Kingston Point, November 15, 6:38am.

Photo by Brian K. Mahoney

Frequent Fryer

LOVE BIRD POPS UP IN ACCORD

By Marie Doyon

Love Bird was one of those rare pandemic silver linings—a small, roadside fried chicken shack on Route 209 in Accord between a tire shop and a timber lot that quickly became the talk of the town.

When Brooklyn-based caterer Holly Sheppard’s wedding season dried up in 2020, she relinquished her kitchen in the city and retreated to her house upstate. Eventually, she rented a building on Route 209, most recently the casual burger spot Mama Boyz, to serve as her new base of operations for her company Fig & Pig Catering. Yet, mid 2020, in-person events were largely still suspended.

“I thought, ‘Well, what am I going to do up here?’” Sheppard recalls thinking. Her event planner suggested she revive Love Bird, the fried chicken pop-up Sheppard had done years earlier in Brooklyn. It was a relatively easy lift to get going. Sheppard put together a menu, bought an ad on Instagram, and people started coming in droves.

The chicken was crispy and the timing was right. “At that time, lots of people were moving upstate, there weren’t a lot of things open, and it just sort of took off,” Sheppard says. “It was just me and two other people doing it, it was kind of crazy. Eventually we thought, ‘Maybe

we should keep doing this?’” They slowly added to the number of picnic tables out front as the payroll got longer and so did the menu. All of a sudden, they had what Sheppard calls a “real restaurant,” but without any of the reserve funds, clear plan, or even the original intention to do so. When wedding season came roaring back with a vengeance in 2021, something had to give.

“There were so many people waiting to get married. It was too much to do both,” Sheppard says simply. She shuttered Love Bird with a promise to do regular pop-ups. “The community was kind of devastated,” she says. “Like, God— fried chicken, people get really emotional. It was

Fried chicken, cornbread, collard greens Opposite from left: Saigon Chicken sandwich; Chef Holly Sheppard’s Love Bird pop-up will be open through December 17 in Accord.

awful closing it.” The pop-ups never materialized as the 2022 wedding season proved to be even wilder than the year before.

A Fried Revival

But last month, as the chill set in and the rhythm of weddings died down, Sheppard launched a five-week revival of Love Bird, running through December 17. “I have an amazing team of chefs this year and I want to keep them busy,” she says. “Before, I just had too many things going on. But now, I have great staff and we can really focus on all the things that make Love Bird awesome.”

Fans of Love Bird will be happy to hear that the original menu is largely back and intact. The all-star is the three-piece fried chicken box ($16) served with cornbread and hot honey. The fistsized, deboned hunks of chicken arrive at the table still crackling hot, and it’s hard not to burn your tongue as you devour the juicy meat with its perfectly crunchy exterior.

This year for the first time, Love Bird is also offering a grilled, boneless half-chicken option ($20), with grilled pita and a special sauce. (“It is just so good,” Sheppard says of the new offering. “Me and my other chef are freaking out about how good this grilled chicken is.”) Just a hint of char on the exterior imbues the meat with a smokey flavor. It’s a bit more expensive, but could easily feed two with a side.

Or, opt for a sandwich. The Southern breaks no molds but offers Sheppard’s take on the classic, with fried or grilled chicken, remoulade, pickles, lettuce, tomato, and white sauce ($15). There is also the One Night in Saigon, featuring chicken, pickled carrot and daikon, cucumber, cilantro, a spicy-sweet Vietnamese chili sauce, and white sauce ($15). The Saigon Bowl offers a deconstructed take on the same sandwich over a bowl of garlic rice. Choose from crispy tofu or fried or grilled chicken ($15).

To round out your meal, pick from the a la carte list of classic Southern barbecue sides like mashed potatoes and gravy, coleslaw, sticky Brussels sprouts, and smoky cheddar grits ($6). To the okra-averse: leave your biases at the door. Sheppard’s grilled okras look like blistered shishitos and come with a creamy miso dipping sauce that will convert even the most reluctant of believers. If you want something green to balance that fried food, the house salad leans Greek, served with feta, cucumber, cherry tomato, red onion, and champagne vinaigrette ($15). Top it with tofu or chicken to turn it into a proper meal (+$5).

If you forgot your appetite at home, shame on you. Still, the snacks section offers two affordable, unpretentious bites: deviled eggs with tin mustard, dill, and lemon ($6) and a classic Southern pimento cheese spread served with Ritz crackers ($7).

Of course, you’ll need to wash it all down. With a temporary liquor license, Sheppard is able to serve beer, wine, and spirits. There are wines by the glass, a margarita, and a bourbon sour (all $8) as well as canned soda and beer. And don’t skip dessert. The chocolate chip cookie is as big as your face and does honor to its name, salty and sweet, with a crispy edge, and just the right amount of give in the middle ($3). (“Chocolate chip cookies and fried chicken are two things I put a lot of research and experimentation into,” Sheppard says. It shows.) There are also double chocolate peanut butter cookies ($3), chocolate cupcakes ($4), and an indulgent banana pudding topped with lemon wafers ($7).

In the future, as the team gets up and running, Sheppard hopes to add back pork belly bao buns and other favorites from the blue plate specials program she ran at Love Bird previously. “I want to be super organized before I add anything past what we already have,” she says.

For the Love of Chicken

Love Bird exclusively serves hormone- and antibiotic-free chicken from Pennsylvaniabased Free Bird. The fried chicken is brined, twice-dredged in flour, and soaked in buttermilk. “That chicken goes through a lot of steps before it hits the fryer,” Sheppard says.

Growing up in the suburbs of Jacksonville, Florida, Sheppard ate a lot of fried chicken. Her truck driver father called himself a “fried chicken connoisseur,” and claimed that the best he’d ever had was from a place in South Florida. “He brought it home one day, and I thought, “Uhhh…I can do better than that,” Sheppard recalls. “Fried chicken is like putting a burger on your menu—there is no point doing it unless you do it really well. I also love chicken. So much. You can so often have mediocre chicken. And I think we make some pretty damn good fried chicken.”

The interior of Love Bird feels a lot like someone’s house. Aside from the open kitchen with its oversized hood and sizzling fryer baskets, there is a bright orange couch with coffee table, a six-seat communal table, and another four-top next to a tall bookshelf of cookbooks. If you’re lucky enough to arrive in a lull, you can snag one of these indoor spots, and there are a couple of picnic tables on the porch, for those willing to brave the cold, but this is largely a take-out business. Call ahead or order online to have your chicken waiting for you.

Love Bird will pop up in Accord through December 17, with another stint tentatively planned for late winter/early spring. Current hours of operation are Wednesday and Thursday, 4-8pm, and Friday and Saturday, 12-8pm.

4728 Route 209, Accord; (845) 570-0638. Lovebirdpopups.com

Pop-Up Restaurants Are Popping in the Region

Across the Hudson Valley, some chefs are experimenting with temporary eateries rather than committing to full-fledged brickand-mortar restaurants. What’s an inexpensive way for them to try out new ideas is a delicious way for eaters to experience new flavors. Here is a list of pop-ups active this month.

Michelle Chiu’s pop-up Two Five leans heavily Korean, reflecting her heritage, but she also dips into Japanese and Chinese culinary traditions to round out the offerings in her mouth-watering, Asian comfort food pop-up. Think handmade mandoo—pillowy, steamed dumplings filled with beef or pork, kimchi, and veggies or pajeon— Korean savory pancakes with scallion, zucchini, shredded carrot, onion, chives, and shrimp paired with a dipping sauce you could drink. As the weather gets colder, you could pick from a hearty Japanese curry made with seasonal, local vegetables; sweet and spicy buldak (literally fire chicken); japchae (stir-fried glass noodles), or fried Korean hot dogs. You’ll have to make the decision on the fly, though, as Chiu switches up the menu regularly. Though her summer season has taken her throughout various locations in the Rondout Valley, Two Five is mainly a fixture at Stonehill’s in Accord, where the pop-up will be in residence, alongside the Catskills Cocktail Club, on Friday, December 9. Instagram.com/eattwofive/

Misto

Run by Brazilian-Ukrainian, husband-and-wife duo Wilson and Nadia Costa, Rose Hill Farm favorite Misto harnesses global flavors in a locally sourced menu. On a given weekend at the orchard taproom, options might span a vegan, coconut milk acorn squash curry with potatoes, garlic, ginger, chili, and turmeric; a smoked brisket sandwich on housemade focaccia, served with pickled onions, cheddar, and hoisin barbecue sauce; or a mutton merguez sausage with grilled banana peppers, sumac onions, yogurt raita, and pita. All of the meat products are pasture-raised locally from producers like Germantown-based regenerative operation Gulden Farm and Red Hook-based Sawkill Farm. There is always at least one vegetarian option and a selection of desserts. Misto will continue to be inside the taproom at Rose Hill Farm on Saturdays throughout the winter with the exception of Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Stay tuned for news about special, ticketed, sit-down dinners at the farm. Misto-eats.com

For years, in a converted barn in Saugerties, New World Home Cooking in Saugerties turned out an eclectic menu with a quirky, iconic chef at the helm. Ric Orlando’s signature style was “bringing global comfort food and farm-to-table together,” which earned him a close-to-cult following until the spot closed in 2018. Since then, between stints of traveling and writing, Orlando has stayed active on the local culinary scene with periodic pop-ups and cooking classes. On December 2, he takes over the kitchen at the Wick Hotel in Hudson. The menu includes jerk swordfish meatballs, chickpea fritters with octopus, and saffron rice balls stuffed with braised short rib. And on December 6, Orlando will return to his old stomping grounds of Saugerties for a one-night “Ric Orlando Classic Dinner” pop-up at Salt & Fire by reservation only. Expect old favorites from the New World menu with new twists.  Ricorlando.com

Miracle at Flores Tapas Bar 1659 Route 9, Wappingers Falls

For cocktails and kitsch, Miracle is the gold (tinsel) standard. In 2014, on advice from his mom, Greg Boehm paused construction of his East Village cocktail bar to do a Christmasthemed pop-up. Sometimes, mother knows best. With the decorative zeal of a maximalist elf tempered by elegant, though still thematic cocktails, Miracle was a raging success that went on to become a global phenomenon with pop-up locations around the country and across the world from Montreal to Paris, Greece to Mexico, and now, the Hudson Valley. Miracle will pop-up at Flores Tapas Bar in Wappingers Falls in all its gaudy greatness through December 30. Expect candy canes and silver lanes aglow, lights, tinsel, snowflakes, and mistletoe. And at the bar, time-tested, punny seasonal favorites like the Christmapolitan, Christmas Carol Barrel, Snowball Old-Fashioned, Yippie Ki Yay Mother F****r!, and Jingle Balls Nog. Flores will also have live music every Friday from 6pm to 9pm for the duration of the pop-up, in addition to their normal food menu.

Florestapasbar.com

Oyster Party

A New York City food market favorite, Oyster Party made its way upstate when its founder Kyle Needham did (he’s also one of the partners behind Kingston Standard, hence its oyster program). So, fortunately the last few years have been a briney blessing, with Oyster Party dishing up their fresh mollusks (3 for $10, 6 for $18) and lobster rolls ($22) at local shops, restaurants, farms, festivals, wineries, and breweries. They close out the 2022 season with a final, six-stop lap around the valley. They’ll be at Rose Hill Farm in Red Hook on Fridays, December 2, 16, and 30; Stella’s Fine Market in Beacon December 3, and at Drowned Lands Brewery in Warwick December 10-11.

Oysterpartybk.com

Hibino By Day

188 Liberty Street, Newburgh

On Mondays, the peaceful space that houses Lodger, Leon Johnson’s temple of food, art, and activism, is quietly a-flurry behind curtained windows. Slipping in the door, you feel like you’ve entered a monastery or someone’s study. You’re on the inside of best-kept secret: Yasuyo Hibino’s Japanese lunch pop-up, Hibino Day by Day. Onigiri, or rice balls, are the heart of the menu at this weekly affair. Stuffed with things like sauteed shitake, hijiki seaweed, or kimchi-tuna mayonnaise and topped with delicacies like microgreens, sesame seeds, sprouts, and edible flowers, each onigiri is a tiny canvas of color and texture. Hibino offers a mix of vegetarian and seafood-based options. Order three, six, or eight. The miso soup is more than an afterthought—salty, tangy, with a hint of smoky flavor from the fish flakes, it warms your bones on a cold day. (Order ahead for a vegan version made with mushrooms.) Specials change weekly and might include a cold soba salad in warmer months or a hot curry made with root vegetables in winter. Preorder via Instagram DM to guarantee your food.

Instagram.com/hibino_daybyday

—Marie Doyon

Two Five

Ric Orlando

caption tk

The holiday-themed pop-up bar Miracle is in residence at Flores Tapas Bar in Wappingers Falls through December 30.

sips & bites

Cherries

4166 Route 209, Stone Ridge Normally a jump in ingredient quality corresponds to an even bigger jump in pricing, but the new owners of Cherries Ice Cream are banking on a volume business to sustain them as they source the best quality products, from local, three-ingredient ice cream to grass-fed burgers, with single-digit pricing for the majority of items. The roadside ice cream stand has been a longtime fixture of Stone Ridge and aims to continue being a reliable community hub, open seven days a week from 12pm to 9pm. While the previous incarnation of Cherries had dozens of items on the menu, the new owners have pared back and reinvisioned the offerings—less deli food, more fast-casual food. The hickory-smoked, all beef hotdogs run $4 to $6 a pop, and there are wraps, sandwiches, and finger food favorites like mozzarella sticks and chicken tenders. There are also several plant-based options including a gluten-free, vegan burger and nuggets.

Cherriesicecream.com

Tortilla Taco Bar Uptown

299 Wall Street Kingston

In June 2020, mid-pandemic, Oaxacan-born and Rhinebeck-raised chef Ruben Lopez opened his dream restaurant in Kingston’s Rondout district: Tortilla Taco Bar. As the name suggests, the menu at the new spot is built around the housemade tortillas, from tacos to tostadas. In a neighborhood with more than a few Mexican food options, Lopez’s fish tacos, carne asada, and deliciously indulgent birria quesatacos quickly stood out. Oh, and the margaritas. Now Lopez and crew have scooped up a prime Uptown location to serve as an outpost for Tortilla Taco Bar, with a greater emphasis on their mezcal-focused cocktail program and shareable plates than full dining. Tortilla Uptown is open every day except Wednesday. Thetortillatacobar.com

Homespun Foods

232 Main Street,

Beacon

Since 2006, Homespun has been a fixture of Beacon, a Main Street mainstay for breakfast, lunch, and takeout. The quality of the sourcing and its execution has only elevated since Joe Robataille took over the business in 2019, building out a network of local farms in collaboration with chef Becky DeYoe (a veteran of Diner in Brooklyn). A trained sommelier, Robataille naturally built out Homespun’s wine list, but there are only so many wines by the glass you can sell at lunch. In June, Homespun launched its dinner service to a Beacon hungry for their Mediterranean bent on New American cuisine. Open for dinner Friday through Sunday, the kitchen turns out a new menu each week inspired by farm-fresh produce. A late fall dinner might include a sweet potato bisque topped with toasted pumpkin seeds and cilantro or a seasonal panzanella salad with marinated beets, red pears, radicchio, almonds and croutons. Meat eaters will be delighted by the excellent execution on classics. The confit chicken leg is a toast to fall, braised in duck fat and served with a spicy butternut squash puree, crispy Brussel sprouts and roasted apples ($27). The dining area is small (think cafe) so make a reservation. And don’t skimp on the extensive wine list, which spans glasses ($9-$15) and bottles ($15-$300), conventional and natural.  Homespunfoods.com

Edgewood

132 Lindsley Avenue, Kingston Sitting atop a hill with views of the Hudson River, Edgewood was built in 1873 for brick manufacturer John Cordts. The three-story Second Empire residence is a paragon of the extravagant style, and now you can stay—and eat—there. As part of the Hutton Brickyard portfolio, the house features 12 guest rooms on the top two floors with the glamorous downstairs dedicated to dining and drinking. The menu opens with reasonably priced sharable items like a perfectly sauteed hen of the woods mushroom served over an emerald kale-cashew pesto ($18) and the locally made burrata, which comes with spiced, roasted honeynut squash, fried sage, and barrel balsamic vinegar ($16). Salad boxes are ticked with kale and baby gem options to which you can add chicken or trout for a full meal ($12-$30). For a delightfully umami, meat-forward main, opt for the braised beef short ribs, which are served over a bed of polenta, with a red wine demi glaze and a garden-fresh gremolata ($28). The steelhead trout is sourced locally and served with pickled fennel, toasted fregola, watercress, and a blood orange butter ($34). Aim for a table in the orange-painted salon (the one colorful relic of artist Hunt Slonem’s tenure as the owner of the house). Huttonbrickyards.com

Savona’s

136 Warren Street, Hudson Savona’s has been a staple of the Kingston waterfront since it opened in 2007, beloved for its wood-fired pizza, ample portions, and laid-back vibes. Propelled by their success, brothers Daniel and Stephen Sabina opened a second location in Poughkeepsie in 2017, followed by another in Red Hook in 2020. The latest in the portfolio is its Warren Street trattoria in Hudson. The pizzas and flatbreads are made in wood-fired ovens, the garlic bread and breadsticks are beloved, and the portions are generous. Kick dinner off with a bruschetta ($10.95), fried zucchini flowers ($13.95), Nonna’s famous meatballs ($12.95), or a panzanella burrata salad ($17.95). From the mains, choose hearty classics like bucatini carbonara ($22.95), crimini mushroom truffle risotto ($21.95), Tuscan veal marsala ($33.95), chicken pepperoni parmigiana ($23.95), shrimp scampi ($24.95), or lobster ravioli ($23.95). Savona’s in Hudson is open for lunch (both prix-fixe and a la carte), dinner, and Sunday brunch. Savonas.com

—Marie Doyon

Suzi Edwards in her living room. One thing she loves about her modular home’s design is the nine-foot ceilings throughout the house. Edwards wanted plenty of space to display her collection of art as well as some of her own work. Here she’s prominently displayed a painting of Monet by her late husband. Intermixed are some of her own pieces and a few collected over the years.

Modular Mosaic

Artist Suzi Edwards takes a pre-fab home and makes it her own spiritual retreat.

By Mary Angeles Armstrong Photos by Winona Barton-Ballentine

It doesn’t matter how formidable the project— Suzi Edwards isn’t afraid to play around. Whether it ’s creating giant public mosaic installations for the Florida Botanical Gardens or the Orlando Shakespeare Festival, or devoting herself to an immersive spiritual study that might lead her around the world, Edwards trusts her intuition to guide her. She begins with ideas that intrigue her—it could be an image, a color, or an ancient text—then she reworks the pieces into a collage of glass and stone, a painting of found images that tell a new story, or a personal daily practice of breath and movement. “My ideas come from everywhere,” Edwards explains. “It ’s often just something I see in my head. The process is always very fluid.”

She took this same approach when building her three-bedroom, two-bath modular lake cottage near Omega Institute in Rhinebeck. Like Edwards’s life story, the home is both a little quiet and a little crazy. The home sits on the banks of Long Pond and borders wetlands—a peaceful place ideally suited for quiet contemplation. However, the modular layout allowed Edwards to be as inventive as she liked with the interior design. It also gave her the chance to turn a long-held vision into reality very quickly. Or, as she puts it, “It was like boom! Instant house.”

Edwards added a 300-square foot covered porch to the modular home’s original layout, which is often the site of her daily meditation practice. The home features scenic views of Long Pond.

The Middle Way North

Edwards’s first went to the Omega Institute—the place she calls her spiritual home—in the `90s on a bit of a whim. Although she’d sojourned in Woodstock during her youth, it wasn’t until she was a single mother with two sons and living in Florida that she found her place at the holistic retreat center outside Rhinebeck. “I came across a catalog with beautiful Buddha statues set in blooming summer gardens,” she remembers. “ They had yoga classes, communal meals, and the best workshops on the planet.” She was intrigued. Her children spent summers with their father so she decided to visit. Finding the secluded retreat tucked away in rural Dutchess county, “ was a bit like looking for an earring on a beach,” she remembers. It was also the culmination of a long and somewhat circuitous spiritual quest.

Edwards’s early life was one part wild adventure, one part seeking. She’d spent her childhood in the Virgin Islands, where her family owned a hotel, and then went on to become a successful fashion designer in her 20s. It was

a glamorous life that included rubbing elbows with celebrities and witnessing the heyday of `60s-era London and New York, but it also left her unfulfilled. She details those early years, and the path that eventually led her to yoga and meditation, in her spiritual memoir Quiet Mind, Crazy Heart, which was published in June. By the time she found Omega, her spiritual seeking had led her down many paths, including studying yoga with Swami Vishnu at the Sivananda Ashram in the Bahamas and becoming part of the Hare Krishna centers in New York and Washington, DC. “Omega felt like home right from the start,” she explains of that first visit. “It’s a seeker ’s paradise with many schools of thought and traditions represented. It’s a wonderful spiritual and intellectual buffet.”

That first trip began an almost 30-year collaboration. Edwards initially visited for workshops but eventually became Omega’s community arts facilitator, sharing her devotion to her creative practice with others visiting the center. The creative arts, Edwards believes, are the

next evolutionary step on the path to mental and spiritual health. “ Yoga and meditation are widely accepted now,” says Edwards. “I think the next spiritual practice is creativity. It ’s very important for everybody to have a creative outlet. It ’s really an antidote to depression.”

Leap and the Net Will Appear

In 2010, Edwards decided she wanted a permanent home in the Hudson Valley and began looking on both sides of the river. Nothing she saw appealed, until one day, walking through the village of Saugerties, she came across the Benjamin Custom Modular showroom. “ The designer in me did cartwheels when I saw walls filled with sample boards of siding, flooring, countertops, and cabinets,” says Edwards. “I immediately thought, ‘Now that ’s a great idea.’”

Run by general contractor Debra Benjamin, the colorful shop presented a revolutionary idea of modular home building. Rather than drab, massproduced structures, Edwards saw the modular layouts as a jumping off point for new designs. “ You really can design a home the way you want it,” Edwards says. “And you can do it quickly.”

Benjamin’s building model appealed to Edwards’s creativity and she built her first home, a two-story Colonial, in the village of Rhinebeck that year.

She was happy with her Rhinebeck home. However, Edwards had come to the area for Omega, and she was still drawn to having a permanent residence on or near the grounds. In January of 2020, when two, three-acre lots adjacent to the Omega property became available, Edwards saw her opportunity to make her dream a reality. In Florida at the time, she had a friend go look at the land and then bought the acreage sight unseen. Edwards contacted Benjamin again, this time choosing a one-story Westchester Modular Highland model home for her new lot.

Staying mostly within the home’s original footprint, Edwards redesigned the 2,290-squarefoot modular layout on her computer while she was still in Florida. “Because of the timing, many problems came up during the process,” she remembers. “ The only way I got through it was my meditation practice. Every time I got caught in the ping-pong match of possible decisions, I learned to take off my glasses, sit quietly in a chair, and breath.”

After choosing a modular layout, Edwards worked with general contractor Debra Benjamin to personalize the home’s design. In the kitchen, she created a colorful backsplash inspired by the Hudson River School of landscape painting. She then commissioned the Colorado-based company Enduring Images to print the painting on tiles.

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The home’s design features three bedrooms, with the primary bedroom suite tucked away down a gallery-like hallway at the back of the home. With views to the pond, Edwards had fun with the colorful wall design. She found the wallpaper print painting online and then hired a local contractor to install it. Her dog Hazel enjoys the relaxing space.

A guest room near the home’s entrance is decorated with textiles and art from Edwards’s travels. The home is roomy enough to accommodate guests—including Edwards's grown sons and grandchildren—without feeling overwhelming.

Like the rest of the house, the design of the primary bathroom was completed online before Edwards actually saw her plan made manifest. For the bathroom, she created another tiled picture, this one titled Karen and Kenneth.

Third Eye Design

She liked the Craftsman-style home’s open concept design, but thought she could push the open feel even further. At the center of the layout, side-by-side hallways led to either the primary bedroom suite or down to the basement. By erasing the wall between the two halls and extending the floor, Edwards created a central gallery space for an eclectic family portrait collection. (She reimagined the basement entrance outside and added Bilco doors.)

To expand the flow between kitchen and dining room, Edwards removed a pony wall of cabinets and replaced it with a smaller kitchen island she found online. Along the edge of the kitchen, a colorful backsplash was inspired by the paintings of Thomas Cole and Fredrick Church. By merging the artists’ styles, Edwards created her own landscape painting in the Hudson River School vein and then commissioned the Colorado-based company Enduring Images to print the landscape onto tiles. She also had fun with the bathroom tiles, creating a blueand-white tile print satirizing the cultural phenomenon of “Karens” and “Kenneths.”

By swapping the two garage doors for glass walls, Edwards transformed the 864-squarefoot garage into a light-filled studio space with soaring ceilings. (The kitchen’s former pony wall is now art supply storage in the garage.) She then repurposed the small hallway connecting the

studio with the house into her ad hoc office. She also added a 300-square-foot covered porch to the back of the home facing the pond.

Edwards deliberated the most over the home’s hardwood flooring. “I wanted it to look like a French bookshop circa 1860,” she explains. She first considered Pergo, but realized that wouldn’t be luxe enough. Trusting her creative instincts, she finally decided on distressed wide-plank oak floor boards from Foster Flooring in Staatsburg. With ninefoot ceilings and abundant wall space, Edwards knew the home would provide ample space to display art.

After she’d finalized the design, Benjamin’s team went to work, first installing an onsite foundation. The home was fully constructed in a nearby factory complete with internal wiring, cabinets and all the chosen finishes. Benjamin’s team then trekked the two box-like parts down the winding country paths to the home site and spent the winter of 2021 installing and finalizing the home.

When Edwards flew up that May she was nervous about seeing her creation. “ I was anxious and hoped I would like what I ’d built,” she says. However, her intuition hadn’t failed her. The well-laid-out home was a symmetrical balance of comfort-minded details and her distinct, creative flourishes. What ’s more, it was walking distance to the Omega grounds. “ I know with absolute confidence that I am just where I need to be.”

HOLIDAY SHOPPING GUIDE

This holiday season, leave the glow of your laptop behind. Hudson Valley retailers offer a wide selection of goods and services. Go small scale and support local businesses with perfect stocking stuffers, places for either a relaxing day trip or exciting evening out, handcrafted designs, and more. Check out these selections.

Hamilton & Adams

Gifts for Men, Women, Kids & Home. Come discover the holidays with us. Whether you’re exploring the globe or chilling right here by the Hudson, our mission is simple–to help you live better and look sharper. This season we launched The Stillwater Shirt as a natural extension of the Hamilton & Adams brand. The soft flannel shirt jacket is that essential item for gifting season. It’s made in the US and can be worn anywhere a layer is needed. Open 10am-7pm, Monday-Saturday; 11-6pm, Sunday. 32 John Street, Kingston, NY. Hamiltonandadams.com.

Hummingbird Jewelers

Celebrating 44 years as Rhinebeck's full-service jewelers, featuring a beautifully curated collection of fine designer jewelry from around the world. When Bruce and Peggy Lubman opened Hummingbird Jewelers in 1978, they had a vision–to create a jewelry store and gallery that featured local artisans; elevating the concept of jewelry to fine art. That vision has blossomed into an award-winning destination for stunning and unique handmade jewelry from artists around the world. Bruce and Peggy still run their store with their daughter Jamie, and personally curate their collection; each piece chosen for its quality, artistry, unique design, and inspiring beauty. From custom jewelry designed by their onsite goldsmith, Bruce Anderson–using ethically sourced gems, conflict-free diamonds, and recycled metals–to a diverse collection of elegant engagement and wedding rings, they still put the same loving care into maintaining their vision. 23A East Market Street, Rhinebeck, NY. Hummingbirdjewelers.com.

Keap

With the season of giving, rest and rejuvenation upon us, now is the perfect time to discover Keap Candles—proudly made in Kingston, NY. Keap exists to help restore you and the planet through their candles made with regeneration in mind. Each candle is lovingly poured in Kingston with a blend of expertly-crafted scents and a reusable glass tumbler, all designed towards zero-waste. Their monthly candle subscription will take you on a restorative journey, and makes a perfect gift to yourself or someone you want to bring care to throughout the upcoming year. Use code “Kingston” for 10% off your first candle. Keapbk.com/kingston.

Hudson Valley Goldsmith

Hudson Valley Goldsmith is a full-service fine jewelry store with an emphasis on custom design and repairs, diamonds and unique fine jewelry. We love our identity of being a workshop staffed with talented goldsmiths. With our world travels and constant discovery of new designers, we’ve become a destination for both unique and traditional fine jewelry.

You can shop our showrooms in New Paltz and Beacon which are full of finished fine jewelry made in house and by artists around the world. We are also a full-service jewelry store offering repairs, resizing, gold buying and more, all done on premises.

Hudsonvalleygoldsmith.com

71 Main Street, New Paltz, NY 226 Main Street, Beacon, NY

Pegasus Footwear

Pegasus Footwear of Woodstock, Rhinebeck, and New Paltz is a unique footwear destination where you’ll enjoy a beautiful selection of comfort footwear along with personalized fitting service that will help you feel as wonderful as you look! Visit Pegasus and experience the world's best comfort shoe brands like VIONIC—all equipped with the latest technology to keep you feeling great on your feet. You’ll find all-weather shoes and boots; active styles for the gym, hiking, and running; walking shoes; options for work and special occasions; and sumptuously supportive slippers like the VIONIC Jackie. No matter what your foot type, lifestyle, or aesthetic, there’s always something great in store for you at Pegasus! Visit Pegasusshoes.com for events, locations, hours, and more.

VIONIC Jackie slipper in grey

Crystal Connection

Housed in an 1890s church, creating a sacred space to feel, heal, and connect to a world of wonder and inspiration. Offering workshops, events, and a place to explore one of the largest varieties of crystals and minerals, sprinkled with other metaphysical tools for your journey of growth. One of the largest selections in the Northeast. Wholesale is available. Visit throughout December for year end sales and our Holiday Light Projection Show. Check website for details. Closing on the 30th for the season. 116 Sullivan Street, Wurtsboro, NY. CrystalConnectionNewYork.com.

Leigh Kelley Skin Studio

Offering an array of skincare, body care, candles, and fragrances hand-selected by the owner, Leigh, who has worked in luxury skincare for over a decade. Studio favorites include bath soaks from PAXOS, candles from Arquiste, and the Biphase Moisturizing Oil from organic skincare line Furtuna. The studio also offers gift cards for Leigh's clinical-meets-holistic facials that are both results-driven and highly relaxing. 192 Pine Street, Kingston, NY.

Leighkelleyskinstudio.com

Catskill Art Supply

Catskill Art Supply has been serving the Hudson Valley for over 44 years! We offer Expert custom picture framing, including ready made frames, a full service printing department, a large selection of art supplies for all levels and unique gifts! Our Kingston location is open every day from 10-5! *Check website for updated holiday hours. Our team looks forward to helping you pick the perfect gifts for everyone on your list! Shop online with us today at Catskillart.com Order $45 or more for free shipping to Ulster and Dutchess county. 230 Plaza Road, Kingston, NY and 35 Mill Hill Road, Woodstock, NY.

Montano's Shoe Store

Montano's has been properly fitting the people of the Hudson Valley and beyond for over 116 years. Stop in today and experience old fashioned service and see the absolute largest selection of footwear for the whole family at the best prices. With brands like Red Wing, Chippewa, Thorogood, Keen, Merrell, New Balance, Hoka, On-Running, Birkenstock, Blundstone, Florsheim, Rockport, Ecco, and many more you are sure to find what you need in your size. Montano's shoe store has all your footwear needs covered whether you are in the market for work boots, running shoes, baby shoes, or the best comfort shoes available. 77 Partition Street, Saugerties, NY. Montanosshoestore.com.

Graceland Tattoo

Be a hero this holiday season with a gift card to Graceland Tattoo! Established in 2003, in the heart of the Hudson Valley, you can find our brand-new tattoo parlor still centrally located in the Village of Wappingers Falls. Our philosophy is simple: Be good to the craft we hold so dear, be good to the clients who walk through our doors, and be good to each other. It’s proven to be a winning combination for us and we are grateful for the community we’ve built.

Old Souls

With shops in Cold Spring and Livingston Manor, Old Souls is upstate's premier source for all of your outdoor gear! Our brands include Patagonia, Marmot, Outdoor Research, Smartwool, Yeti, Red Wing, Pendleton, Fjall Raven, Cotopaxi, Topo Designs, and more. Visit us 7 days/week in Cold Spring at 63 Main Street, and Thursday-Sunday in Livingston Manor @ 46 Main Street. Check the website/instagram for updated holiday hours: oldsouls.com/@oldsoulsny.

We have two full-service body piercers who have committed countless hours to honing their skills. We offer the highest quality jewelry, and practice the safest, most advanced piercing techniques. More importantly, we’re here for you during the healing process and beyond.

From the brightest colors to the smoothest black and gray, Graceland Tattoo is known for doing it right. We have thousands of classic tattoo designs to choose from. Or bring in your own idea and work with us to create a custom piece. Our tattooers have decades of experience and it shows in their work. We have a well-rounded approach dedicated to cleanliness, professionalism, and craft. Graceland Tattoo’s award-winning team is always booking new appointments and we offer gift cards in any denomination. It’s perfect for your kid’s new piercing. Give one to a friend and help them out with their next tattoo appointment. Or really go BIG and pick up the whole tab. They’ll never forget it!

Wappingers Falls, Gracelandtattoo.com

Tattoo by Dana Hex

BillCooke.Art

Bespoke men's jackets and shirts incorporating the eccentric, vaguely psychedelic, geometric fabric designs from the studio of Bill Cooke. This jacket's fabric is a woven cotton/rayon, the shirts are made from silk/cotton printed fabric. Each piece is a work of art. Nothing else like it. Details at: billcooke.art/bespoke

Michelle Rhodes Pottery

By appointment (845) 417-1369 or deepclay@mac.com. New Paltz. Michellerhodespottery.com

Hemp & Humanity

Red Mannequin

One size does not fit all. Red Mannequin celebrates diversity; everyone has their own look, preference, and budget. Whether you're shopping for shoes, tops and bottoms, dresses, jewelry, or accessories, from fancy to plain, bright to subdued, you'll find it at Red Mannequin. 1 Main Street, Chatham, NY. Redmannequin.com.

Chickadee Studio and Supply

Offering a selection of fiber arts and crafts materials and socials for the sewist, handweaver, natural dyer, and more. Featuring Merchant and Mills, Gist Yarn, Brooklyn Haberdashery, PetitFelts, Botanical Colors, Cohana, books and DIY kits. Visit us Tuesday–Saturday, 10–4pm. 46 West Market Street, Red Hook, NY. Chickadeestudioandsupply.com.

Woodstock Wine & Liquor

New York licensed hemp retailer showcasing New York State and womenowned CBD and other cannabinoid products as well as a selection of hemp gifts, accessories, bags, novelties, home goods and more. Owner, and 50+ USA Snowboarding Champion, Melissa Gibson, founded the company in 2016 and is a nationally recognized expert in matching the plant to people (and pets!). Highly Trusted. Consciously Curated. 17 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY. IG@hempandhumanity.com.

Shopping for the wine lovers in your life? Any Scotch collectors or Cognac connoisseurs on your shopping list this year? Woodstock Wine & Liquor is your boutique wine and spirits shop in the heart of historic Woodstock with just the right gift for them all. Gift packaging and free local delivery is available, and ordering online is easy at woodstockwineandliquor.com. 63 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY.

Orvis Sandanona

Studio 89

Support local artists and makers with your holiday shopping. Shop for pottery, jewelry, cards, soap, candles, prints, and art, all created by Hudson Valley/Catskills artists and artisans. November 1 through December 31. Open WednesdaySunday. Online shopping/shipping available at Studio89hv.com or IG @studio89hv. 89 Vineyard Avenue, Highland, NY.

The Hudson River Valley's rich sporting tradition is more vibrant than ever. Orvis, the oldest permitted shooting preserve in the United States, is iconic in the region. Enjoy two unique sporting clays courses, a Five Stand, wobble trap, a thriving retail space, and monthly shooting events. Experience signature elegance and exquisite service at Orvis Sandanona. For reservations call The Clubhouse at 845-677-9701. Millbrook, NY. Orvis.com.

Birch Body Care

Birch Body Care is the place to go for the best self-care, right in the heart of uptown Kingston. Get a massage, facial or simply shop our gift boutique filled with skincare, beautiful objects and simple luxuries. Full menu, gift certificates and online booking at Birchkingston.com. 73 Crown Street, Kingston, NY.

Boulevard Wine & Spirits

Boulevard Wine and Spirits aims to be your wine and spirit destination during the Holidays Season. Their growing inventory can meet and exceed your gift needs, offering affordable and approachable options for any palate or budget. Offering weekly tastings every Friday and Saturday. 374 South Wall Street, Kingston, NY. Blvdwines.com.

is $14.99 per bottle. Save 15% off a case.

Pinkwater Gallery

This Holiday season, consider the gift of art for your loved ones, your partner, or even your canine companion! Art is a wonderful affirmation of a special relationship or a deepening of connection to one’s home. If you are feathering your nest, why not choose a work by a local artist? Pinkwater Gallery specializes in contemporary artists living and working in the Hudson Valley and Catskills.There is a range of art and artful objects to choose from at various price points, from paintings and drawings to monotypes, screen prints, encaustic photography, and fiber art. Plus special hand-made sweaters for dogs from HAUTE DOGUE. 56 N. Front Street, Uptown Kingston, NY. Pinkwatergallery.com.

Chronogram Subscription

Give the gift of arts, culture, and spirit, all year long. A subscription to Chronogram makes a great gift for everyone on your holiday shopping list. Get a 12-month subscription for only $36. Visit chronogram.com/subscribe.

Newhard's —The Home Source

This is the season of thanks and gratitude, a time to enjoy the company of friends and family and the beauty that surrounds us. There is no better time of year to visit the Warwick Valley! Newhard’s—The Home Source has been called the “Emporium of Everything” and is filled with treasures to make your home a little bit warmer, more beautiful, gracious and happy. Take a moment to discover our town and the Village of Warwick, its history, wonderful restaurants and friendly stores. We want to share our romance with you. 39 Main Street, Warwick, NY. Find us on Facebook and Instagram.

A delicious option, the 2020 Torque Tempranillo

It’s Beginning to Smell a Lot Like Christmas

Gifts for the Cannabis Lover in Your Life

By Amadeus Finlay

The days of grabbing a street corner dime bag as a holiday treat for your weed-lovin’ loved ones are long gone. Cannabis gifts have evolved into an industry all of their own and the sheer range and variety of products available in the adult use market covers almost all imaginable nooks and crannies of daily life; bath and beauty products, edibles, tea; guitar cases. With the holiday season almost upon us, we dived headfirst into the world of ganja gifting to find out what’s hot for stockings this year.

CBD Caramels

Nothing says, “winter holidays” like a rich, velvety caramel. And now Soft Power Sweets of New Paltz (the latest venture from renowned vegan chocolatier Lagusta Yearwood) has created a CBD-infused alternative to the delicious, seasonal mix. Dipped in dark chocolate and coming in a range of flavors, chamomile cabernet, apple ginger, and maple latte (each designed to provide the consumer with a unique CBD experience), Soft Power caramels are almost entirely organic, including wild-foraged produce. Allergy warning, each product contains soy and coconut.

Available online at Softerpowersweet.com

Hemp Guitar Case

Every instrument needs a safe and secure home. And life on earth needs a safe and secure planet. A hemp guitar case achieves both. This artisan, one-of-a-kind design at Hemp and Humanity in Woodstock, is derived from local, non-GMO hemp that has been third-party tested and vetted as safe from toxins and harmful additives. From a musician’s perspective, it is a light, yet durable case, and will give your precious ax the protection it needs from a life of being played and loved.  Available at Hemp and Humanity in Woodstock.

THC Oral Spray

Now for something completely different. Yellow Labs of Middletown, Rhode Island has announced Pittsfield dispensary and producer, Berkshire Roots, will be the sole manufacturer and distributor of Canna Mist, a THC oral spray delivered directly into the mouth. Which means if you want something truly exclusive, this is the gift to get. Available in four varieties, Relax, Energy, Focus, and Recover, each is designed to give the user a discrete, scent-free approach to cannabis consumption.

Available at Berkshire Root in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Cooco Doob Tube

Why didn’t they think of this before? Designed to protect your spliffs from all life can throw at them, the Doob Tube is an aluminum cylinder that matches the dimensions of a standard prerolled joint, and looks stylish to boot. What’s more, the Doob Tube contains the odor of cannabis, while also being resistant to moisture, making it a pretty slick accessory. Want one that matches a certain look? The Doob Tube is available in four different colors (black, gold, gray, rose).

Available at Honey Cannabis in Gardiner and online at Honeyscannabis.com

Raspberry-Lime Gummies

Move over, coffee! Fresh off the line at COAST Cannabis, this female-owned company from Wareham, Massachusetts has created a gummy designed to give consumers a boost of energy, as well as being able to fend off the munchies at the same time. And with 100mg of THC, they also pack a punch, but are nicely balanced at a 1:1:1 ratio of THC:THCV:CBD.

Available at Canna Provisions locations in Lee and Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Puffco Plus Oils Vaporizer

Vaporizers are becoming increasingly widespread. There are almost endless options for cartridges, while dry herb has been cornered by some big players, such as Storz and Bickel in Germany. But remaining in their shadows is the consumer who wants a solid option for consuming concentrates. Until now. The Puffco Plus is an award-winning solution for vaporizing concentrates, and more than lives up to the accolades. Designed with the user in mind, the mouthpiece combines a loading tool, splash guard, and carb cap, while a dart that comes from the mouthpiece allows consumers to scoop concentrates without making a mess.

Available online at puffco.com

Bath Bomb

Caveat emptor: This is not an actual explosive. Give bath time an aromatic edge with rose oil and rose essence blended with rose and hibiscus petals. The bomb is infused with 50mg of CBD, designed to soak into the body and offer intradermal relief. All natural ingredients, including organic full spectrum hempderived cannabidiol and organic hemp seed oil.

Available at Honey Cannabis in Gardiner and online at online at Honeyscannabis.com

Vessel Cartridge Vapes

Speaking of the endless options for cartridge vaporizers, one product has come onto the market that might just find itself as the top dog. Powerful, robust, slender, and kind on the eye, Vessel’s line of Flagship, Core, and Vista cartridges are impressive by any standard. Leading the pack, Flagship is powered by a 300mAh lithium-ion rechargeable battery (nothing to be sniffed at), fits most 510 thread cartridges, and is designed to protect the oils from the elements, while still allowing the user to see the levels through a slit on the top of the pen. A nice touch are the designs with wood finishing, with each carved from real walnut.

Available online at vessel.com

Red Lips Ashtray

Something for Rolling Stones and Madonna fans. This chic, retro ashtray pulls on the aesthetic popularized by the Stones’ Hot Lips motif (seen on t-shirts everywhere) and colors it with MAC’s Russian Red lipstick, which was crafted for Madonna to wear on her iconic Blonde Ambition tour in 1990. The makers of this ceramic statement piece describe it as “glamorously kitschy,” (never have truer words been spoken), but that is exactly what to expect from Her Highness NYC. This “female-forward CBD couture” creates and distributes products developed by women, and excels at cool inventions that go beyond the norm.

Available online at Herhighness.com.

Betty’s Eddies Go Betty Go Watermelon Fruit Chews

Energizing edibles are all the rage this holiday season, and the vogue continues with Betty’s Eddies Go Betty Go Watermelon Fruit Chews. Infused with L-theanine, caffeine extracted from coffee, and a blend of THC and THCV, these vegan, gluten-free treats are made from all natural products, including real watermelon. Expect a little less THC than the Raspberry-Lime gummies, exactly half at 50mg, but that does not detract from the efficacy and enjoyment of the edible.

Available at Canna Provisions locations in Lee and Holyoke, Massachusetts

Raspberry-Lime Gummies from COAST Cannabis; Red Lips Ashtray from Her Highness CBD; a wood-finished vape from Vessel.

Opposite: CBD Caramels from Soft Power Sweets

Covid-19. The opioid epidemic. Mental illness. The current state of public health in the Hudson Valley, and in the United States at large, seems to be plagued by one crisis after another. Local public health officials, who have the daunting and sometimes unenviable task of addressing these crises, must also decide which crisis merits the most attention and resources.

Dr. Livia Santiago-Rosado, the Commissioner for the Department of Behavioral and Community Health (DBCH) in Dutchess County, identifies the county’s top public health priority as health literacy: the ability to understand, and use, information when making health-related decisions. An estimated 88 percent of Americans lack adequate health literacy skills––and public health officials like Dr. Santiago-Rosado deal with the ramifications.

“Our collective lack of basic knowledge causes the simultaneous overutilization and underutilization of our health care system,” she says. “We see long waits at emergency rooms or difficulty contacting a doctor’s office. Many folks don’t know how to treat a common cold properly, so they go to the emergency room thinking they need antibiotics. Others misunderstand and mismanage acute pain and end up with substance use disorders. Many others don’t seek preventative care because they feel fine, until they don’t, and end up in the emergency room with a stroke or in a diabetic coma.”

Meeting the Moment

EXPANDING ACCESS TO HEATHCARE IN THE HUDSON VALLEY

By Naomi Shammash

The DBCH website is loaded with educational materials like brochures, reports, and instructions to guide readers to the information they need to improve their health literacy––or what Dr. Santiago-Rosado calls “our community’s ‘health IQ.’” They do it, she says, “because health literacy, or the lack thereof, affects everyone.”

Community Health Assessment

Poor health literacy also makes people vulnerable to misinformation that can be harmful to their health and wellbeing, as illustrated by the widespread conspiracy theories about Covid-19 that have been dubbed an epidemic of their own, or an “ infodemic.” In November 2021, a group called “Do We Need This?” mailed out postcards across Columbia County that urged people not to get Covid-19 vaccines.

At the same time, one county away, Dr. Santiago-Rosado was appointed to her current role as commissioner. When she came onto the scene, the Dutchess County Department of Behavioral and Community Health had been responding to Covid-19 for almost two years. With Covid-19 vaccines and treatments available to the public and relatively high mid-Hudson Valley vaccination rates, Dr. Santiago-Rosado decided to look more broadly at the state of public health in the region by conducting a community health assessment.

The DBCH began by gathering data and input

from stakeholders to select the public health issues on which they would focus their efforts. They zeroed in on two problems with a unifying theme: chronic disease prevention and the prevention of mental illness and substance-use disorders. “Beyond supporting existing activities and interventions, it’s important to remind ourselves that our most vital role is in population health and primary prevention––preventing disease or injury before it occurs,” Dr. SantiagoRosado explains.

Prevention as a public health practice can be thought of as nipping disease in the bud— taking steps to give people the best chance at avoiding illness in the future by doing things like exercising and eating well. Coming up with strategies for prevention requires an understanding of what causes disease in the first place. A key focus for Dr. Santiago-Rosado has been “unearthing root causes for these challenges so we can create interventions and programs to address them at their core, while ensuring we don’t lose sight of our most vulnerable populations, such as those who may lack access to care or people with disabilities.”

The DBCH focuses on reducing tobacco use rates, particularly among youth, and reducing obesity rates with regard to preventing chronic illness. To mitigate mental illness and substance abuse, the DBCH runs programs such as overdose prevention trainings and suicide

Dr. Livia Santiago-Rosado, Commissioner for the Department of Behavioral and Community Health in Dutchess County.

support. They provide Narcan training and fentanyl strips, and have begun an initiative to review opioid prescriber patterns to identify those who over-prescribe opiates and educate them on best practices. They offer an Intensive Treatment Alternatives Program, or ITAP—an alternative to inpatient rehabilitation––for those struggling with addiction. A helpline, available to call or text 24/7/365, is available for suicide and crisis intervention, while the Mobile Crisis Intervention and Trauma teams can assist community members in person.

Rural Dilemma

The programs listed above constitute only a small slice of what the DBCH has to offer. It’s a pretty comprehensive lineup, but when people seek out support, they often find it in different places: health care providers, community- and faith-based organizations, and governmental agencies. Dr. Santiago-Rosado sees the lack of coordination among these groups as a barrier to successful public health initiatives. She believes that their cooperation during Dutchess County’s response to Covid-19 was a great success, and wants to foster further collaboration “so our residents don’t fall through proverbial cracks.”

These cracks are often wider in rural areas, where health care is usually harder to access than in cities. There are fewer health care providers and medical centers––20 percent of America’s population lives rurally, but less than 10 percent of America’s physicians practice there, and there are only 13.1 physicians for every 100,000 people

compared with 31.2 in urban areas. More than 130 rural hospitals have closed down in the last decade, and an additional 600 rural hospitals, which make up more than 30 percent of all rural hospitals in the country, are at risk of closing in the near future.

Geography poses another barrier to health care access for those in rural areas, who have to travel further distances to get to a doctor’s office or the emergency room. For those without cars, public transportation is often piecemeal, if not nonexistent. A poll found that one in four people living in rural areas said they were recently unable to get the health care they needed, and about a quarter of those cited distance and lack of transportation as the reason why. Rural American socioeconomic trends worsen the aforementioned difficulties with health care access. Per capita income in rural areas is nearly $10,000 lower than the average per capita income nationwide, and rural Americans are more likely to live below the poverty level and be without insurance.

Dutchess County contains both urban and rural areas, but the public health priorities that the DBCH and Dr. Santiago-Rosado outlined are particularly acute in the rural community. Inadequate health literacy and chronic disease are more severe in rural America than in urban centers, and while mental illness and substance abuse are widespread across both geographies, rural areas have fewer resources to treat them––for example, mental health providers are more likely to practice in urban regions.

Extra Care

Improving health literacy requires improving public access to relevant health information, which is most easily found online––and 53 percent of rural Americans lack access to highspeed internet. Rural residents of the MidHudson Valley experience higher rates of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. Rural youth are twice as likely to commit suicide as their urban counterparts, and mental health clinic visits in Dutchess County have declined by 30 percent since 2001––but the DBCH and the Westchester Medical Center Health Network (WMCHealth) announced a plan in June to better treat mental health in the Hudson Valley.

With Dutchess County providing $3 million in funding, they’re establishing the Behavioral Health Center of Excellence, which will be a part of MidHudson Regional Hospital in Poughkeepsie. The funds will also go toward permanently adding 20 inpatient mental health beds, increasing the hospital’s total number to 60. The same is happening in Ulster County, where WMCHealth will add 20 inpatient mental health beds to the HealthAlliance Hospital in Kingston.

The DBCH will staff the new Behavioral Health Center, with the goal of connecting future patients with the outpatient services the DBCH offers. “Dutchess County is truly blessed,” says Dr. Santiago-Rosado, “to have these devoted public servants working for the improved health of our community.”

The Dutchess County Stabilization Center in Poughkeepsie is a core component of the county’s mental health program.

Shelter from the Storm

Catskill

By Andrew Amelinckx Photos by David McIntyre

You can feel it in the air like a crisp autumn wind. Catskill is continuing to grow and transform, even in the face of economic upheaval. Amid longtime businesses shuttering, new ones have launched, and change in all its forms, the defining feature here for better or worse—especially since the pandemic—continues.

Catskill’s Star Turn

For several months this year, the village of Catskill became Millwood, Pennsylvania, the fictitious setting of an HBO Max teen slasher series. The production for “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin,” filmed extensively in the village between November 2021 and April 2022. It was the largest film production in the area this year and may herald the start of a trend, according to Kristen Brayden of Greene County Tourism. “With the filming of ‘Pretty Little Liars,’ I would anticipate an increase in interest in filming in Greene County,” Brayden says via email. “The economic impact is significant for both the county and

municipality where they are filming, from lodging to catering to shopping and more.”

There were a few independent shoots as well, Brayden said. One of those was Catskill resident Brendan Fay’s Your Valley, My Valley. Fay has spent the last three years working on the film, “a humorous but earnest portrait of a community through the lens of seven seemingly disparate characters who are all connected by the legacy of strange phenomena in their beloved valley,” according to Fay, who produced, wrote, directed, filmed, lit, costumed, scored, and edited the film. He recruited the all-local cast for his comedic “pseudo-documentary” from people he’s met since he moved to Catskill five years ago. The film premiered on November 18 at the Community Theatre on Main Street.

The Community Theatre, which closed during the pandemic, is now owned by developer Ben Fain and once again shows movies from time to time in partnership with Upstate Films. “We were able to come up with a handshake agreement to

Looking south down Main Street.

Opposite, top: Jordan Scott Lane cutting Ben McCarthy’s hair at Drop Dead Barber Shop on South Jefferson Avenue.

Opposite, bottom: Retired State Trooper Greg Mosley giving a lesson at the Catskill Golf Resort.

show films and animate the space while it was being fixed up,” Paul Sturtz, Upstate Films’ coexecutive director, says. Since August they’ve had several events, including showings of The Big Lebowski, Moonage Daydream, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with live accompaniment by the Anvil Orchestra. “We really fell in love with Catskill,” Sturtz says. “There’s always a good feeling in the air when we’ve been doing events in the space.”

Catskill, with its plethora of restored old homes and stunning scenery, has caught the eye of others who wield cameras for a living. Michele Saunders, who owns New York Locations, which provides settings for print and film productions, says the area’s “potential is incredible. It’s very inspiring for photo shoots.” Her primary focus is working with interior photo shoots for home goods and furnishings. Among the companies that have shot at the various homes she represents are Pottery Barn, Williams Sonoma, West Elm, and Anthropologie. “I’ve definitely seen more interest in Catskill as a shooting location,” she says. “There was a time when no one knew where I was. They would confuse Catskill with the Catskills. But now a tsunami of people has moved here. There’s a lot of interest.”

The Cost of Doing Business   Main Street, a gauge of sorts of the village’s economic temperature, has seen many new businesses open this year despite the shifts taking place not just here but globally. Several home and gift stores launched, including High Rock Home (at Joe’s Garage), Catskill Collectibles, and Peyton’s. Businesses related to health, wellness, and beauty saw an uptick with the opening of Yaad Wellness, Creature of Habit Hair Studio, Stinging Nettle Apothecary, Afterglow Tanning, and Vita Arts Bodywork Studio. The Catskill Chocolate Co., a new cafe, bakery, and chocolate store also opened in 2022. Both Spike’s Record Rack and Catskill Mountain Woodworking moved to larger locations.

This year also saw a revitalized Catskill Farmers’ Market under the presidency of Christine Ritmo, who, with her husband Fabio, owns and operates Nimble Roots Farm. The market once again brought local products and music on Sundays to the center of the village in the parking lot alongside the creek. A smaller farmers’ market takes place at Left Bank Ciders on Thursday evenings from spring to fall.

But along with openings, there has been one

From left: Lauren Robbiani, Jean Robbiani, Lydia Studier-Tarzia, and Jaden Dedrick at Catskill Chocolate Company on Main Street.

Opposite: Sculptor and bespoke shoemaker Jesse Moore in her studio on Main Street. She is preparing work for the exhibition “Shoemaking in America,” which will open at the University of Wisconsin in February.

Building, Kingston At this Chronogram Conversation, Alexandra Horowitz, head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College, will talk with Chronogram editor Brian Mahoney about her new book, The Year of the Puppy, where she charts her puppy’s early development. The conversation will be followed by audience Q&A and a book signing and reception.

Main Street staple that has closed. Liam and Laura Singer recently shuttered HiLo, a cafe that has been around for more than five years and was a downtown anchor. “A lot of circumstances coming out of the pandemic have kind of just caught up to us in terms of things like the cost of goods,” Liam says. The couple also own Avalon, a Korean restaurant and music venue in the village. “Between Avalon, HiLo, and having a kid, we just didn’t have the bandwidth to innovate there the way we needed to,” he says. “We were finding it harder and harder to make a profit.”

He says they’re trying to pass the business on to new owners who have “got their own kind of ideas for the place, but will definitely continue doing good coffee there.”

Escalating food costs have become an issue for many local restaurants. “It feels like once a week something’s going up. Wheat, milk, cheese, meat, you name it, it’s gone up,” says Sam Jones, the co-owner of Goodies, a bagel and sandwich shop, in an email. “We just roll with it. We try not to raise our prices, but sometimes we have to raise them marginally.”

Goodies, opened last year, has become another local go-to spot where there’s an equal dose of good food, friendly service, and a wacky sense of humor exemplified by Yetta, a female sasquatch who makes regular appearances at the eatery. Jones says their business is all about the locals. “Once the community realized that we’re catering to Greene County and not the out-oftowners, Goodies has become a neighborhood staple,” Jones says. “The Catskill community is our bread and butter. We love and value our community and they know it.”

Community Needs

It’s not only Catskill’s businesses that are feeling the squeeze from inflation. Its residents have been hit by higher grocery bills, increasing rents, and fluctuating gas prices. “Housing insecurity, food insecurity, a lack of healthcare—especially mental health care—has gotten out of control,” says Neva Wartell, the executive director of the Catskill Food Pantry. Wartell, who has a long history of community activism, believes Catskill, and Greene County as a whole, doesn’t have

a precedent for organizing on the community level. “It’s something that never came up before,” she says. “Now the lack of housing, the lack of services, the lack of food and healthcare is coming to a head.”

The Catskill Food Pantry, at the Parish Hall of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on William Street, which is open on Fridays from 1 to 4pm, has seen a significant increase in use this year, she says. It’s the only “free choice” food pantry in the area, according to Wartell. “Our shoppers come in and shop for themselves,” she says. “We don’t require anybody to prove their income eligibility. We work very hard to make that happen.”

While the community wrestles with economic troubles, Rev. Dr. Shanell Turpin, the pastorelect of the Second Baptist Church, sees continued social separation as another issue facing many Catskill residents. “People are still dealing with the aftermath of the pandemic and PTSD from all the loss that we’ve endured,” she says. “We lost more than loved ones. Many of us lost our way of life in the pandemic. We lost income. We lost friends. Some people lost

Greg Hamm, co-owner of Willa’s Bakery, located on the Foreland campus on Bridge Street.

Rev. Dr. Shanell Turpin with (from left): Deacon Wayne Neal, Reverend Suzette Turpin, Rev. Dr. Richard Turpin, Sister Hadiyah Owens, and Deacon Willie Davis at the altar of the Second Baptist Church on Main Street. Rev. Dr. Shanell Turpin is about to become the first female pastor to lead the Second Baptist Church in its more than 100-year history.

Opposite, top: A lonely husky waits patiently for canine companionship at the dog park on Main Street.

Opposite, bottom: Catskill Cryo founder Sandy Dylak in the cryo tank. During a three-minute cryo session, the temperature falls below -200 F°.

relationships. And a lot of those things have to be grieved and are still being grieved and sometimes the best way to grieve is to come together.”

She says that instead of trying to get back into an old rhythm, the church has started a new one by livestreaming services online, offering conference calls for members without internet access, and ushering in a ministry dedicated to sending out cards to people in the community who are sick, shut in, or “are going through a season of grief.”

The Second Baptist Church, with its 133-year history, remains a vital part of the village and has continued to not only provide its members with spiritual nourishment, but the wider community with physical nourishment. “Under Rev. Dr. Richard Turpin’s leadership, we were able to feed over 4,000 families over the span of 2021,” Rev. Dr. Shanell Turpin says. “I have to give credit to Rev. Turpin

for all the success of where our church is now and how we have been able to move forward as we navigate our way through this pandemic.”

Rev. Dr. Richard Turpin, the current senior pastor—and Shanell’s father—has led the church for 23 years and is the longest-serving pastor in its history. His daughter’s election to become senior pastor when he retires (no date has been set yet) is also historic. Rev. Dr. Shanell Turpin will usher in a new era as the first woman to lead the church in its long history. “Although the shoes I’ll be filling are very big, I will continue to walk by faith,” she said. “God will help me take each step.”

As Catskill continues to reshape itself as it’s done for generations, only time will tell what forms those changes will take, but if the past is any indicator, the community will flourish only through the interconnectedness of its residents.

Top row: Andrew Amelinckx, author and artist; Betsy Jacks, executive director, Thomas Cole National Historic Site; Brendan Bo O’Connor, cognitive scientist, outsider artist, and cartwheel enthusiast; Brendan Fay, composer and filmmaker.

Second row: Brian Dewan, artist and musician; Noah Martinez, Catskill Clubhouse youth peer leader; Robert Hoven, executive director of Friends of Beattie-Powers Place; Owen Hope, project manager at Rowan Woodworking with Cate Hope, communications manager at the Fisher Center at Bard College. Third row: Jennifer Greim, director of advancement and external affairs, Thomas Cole National Historic Site; Simon Perschbacher, designer and furniture maker; Christina Dietman, director of Catskill Wheelhouse; Rodney Alan Greenblat; artist, musician, director of the Catskill Zen Circle. Bottom row: Jesse Bransford, artist and NYU professor; Danielle Valenchis, changemaking consultant; Jak Lizard, singer/performer; Derek James Smith, tarot reader, astrologer, milliner, hypnotherapist, artist, and puppeteer, pictured with Tollzar.

Catskill Pop-Up Portraits

Photos

by David McIntyre

On November 6, Chronogram held a pop-up portrait shoot at the Avalon Lounge in Catskill. Catskillians responded to the call and came out on an unseasonably warm fall afternoon to be photographed by David McIntyre. Thanks to everyone who showed up and to Liam Singer and the staff of the Avalon Lounge for hosting us.

Above: Liam Singer, co-owner of the Avalon Lounge

Left: Pim Zeegers, owner of Citiot, with Gertjian Meijer, owner of Arteque.com.

Ryder Cooley, interdisciplinary musician, artist, and performer. She leads the dark carnival band the Dust Bowl Faeries.

of the Catskill Food Pantry; Yetta (aka Sam Jones, owner of Goodies) with Mike Banat, former Brooklynite who relishes more time on a riding mower than on the highway; Michael Moy, owner of High Rock Home at Joe’s Garage.

Jordan Baker, painter, writer, curator; Kai Hillman, director of Greene County Clubhouse, a project of the Mental Health Association of Columbia-Greene; Matthew Cullen, recording engineer and producer. Bottom row: Neva E. Wartell, director

outreach coordinator for CREATE Council on the Arts; Lucy Bohnsack, artist and photographer; Kira Goldfarb, owner of Cat on the Corner; Lisa M. Thomas, co-founder of Thin Edge Films. Third row: Michele Saunders, Catskill jack of all trades;

Top row: Joe Stefko, drummer and director of Charnel House book publishing; Christine Ritmo and Fabio Ritmo, owners/farmers of Nimble Roots Farm; Kendra McKinley, musician and fabric painter. Second row: Liz Shaw, marketing and

Michael Bisio Inimitable (Mung Music Records)

Michael Bisio and Matthew Shipp Flow of Everything (Fundacja Sluchaj Records)

Kingston avant-garde bassist Michael Bisio plays jazz with an unrelenting edge. It’s music that requires both intellectual ardor and stamina, and it asks, nay, demands, that the listener exert just as much effort and curiosity in hearing it as Bisio does in creating it. Two new opportunities exist to hear Bisio’s protean skill on disc—one, Inimitable, an improvised solo effort; the other, Flow of Everything, a sparkling duo project with innovative pianist Matthew Shipp. Recorded on a February Thursday in Brooklyn in 2020, the former finds Bisio and his four strings by turns reflective and antic, marked as much by whirring, whistling arco, especially in the frantic “Hear Now,” as by thrumming pizzicato. Delightfully human, “Quintessence”—peppered with finger squeaks, breathy laughs, is that a dog barking outside?— is a long conversation in a crowded room of one. With John Coltrane’s “Wise One,” Bisio, while occasionally slapping chords, searches out the space between the notes.

Flow, tracked at the same Park West studio, in April 2021, expands the chat by 88 keys. Deep in the album, for example, on the trance-like title track, Shipp’s Monkish repetitions tangle with Bisio’s upright. It might be an argument if it weren’t so damn entrancing. The opener, “Flow,” exhibits the lyrical freedom so second nature to both artists. Beginning, appropriately with Bisio’s bowing, “Bow for Everyone” releases into a wide, stately piano harmony. And, penultimately, “Pockets” reshapes the dynamic, with Shipp, reaching to the bottom of the keyboard, in the lead.

—Michael Eck

sound check

Each month here we visit with a member of the community to find out what music they’ve been digging.

On tour in Europe last spring, my band stumbled across the music of Australian electropop band Parcels. SO good! Refreshing and musical. Funky grooves, a guitarist who looks like George Harrison, tight vocal harmonies. Check out Live Vol. 1 (complete footage) on YouTube and their single “Tieduprightnow.” I’m also loving the tropical vibes of Molly Lewis’s “Oceanic Feeling.” This song sounds like a vintage Hawaiian classic from the 1930s but was only released last year. Makes me want a grass skirt. Love it. And while we’re touring the tropics, “To the Island,” also released last year by the beloved Crowded House, is one of their best songs yet.

Kenny Roby

Nostalgic Blue Mountain folk melds with gospeltinged Americana and Southern backstreet swamp boogie to give Kenny Roby’s latest release a true breadth of country style and swagger. Here is an easy ride to simpler times, with some subtle twists and turns along the way. The tunes feel familiar and sticky, with lots of meat from the soul on the bone. Knee-slapping katydids crouch near the haybales, keeping the sad and lonely campfires company, just within earshot of boot-stomping and barn-stormin’ cowboys. Despite the varied cadences, and in deference to previous work, there is something more settled and serene here. A kind of spiritual comfort in the weariness. Like coming back home and drying your socks and gloves by the wood stove after a long day in the cold and wet snow. Roby is joined by a solid cast of Hudson Valley players and passers by, including vocals by Amy Helm, accordion by Brian Mitchell, and even some harmonica by John Sebastian.

—Jason Broome

The Slambovian Circus of Dreams A Very Unusual Head (Storm King Records)

Known for their eccentric, steampunk aesthetics, the Sleepy Hollow-based Slambovian Circus of Dreams has built a following of fervent fans known as “Jellies,” who strut inside Slambovia, a utopian realm created by songwriter Joziah Longo. It’s an alternate world propped up by the band’s collective musical excellence. “Absolutely Beautiful Freakin’ Day” melancholically declares “I wish the sun would go away and leave me here with all my blues again.” “Beez” promotes the no-mow practice popular with pollinator preservationists. Flamenco guitar runs open “Solve It All Dali,” which marvels at the master Spanish surrealist. “Force of Nature” is a swirling lament for Stephen Hawking with an “ooh-la-la-la” chorus, while “Pluto’s Plight” is energized by a fierce electric guitar solo. A Very Unusual Head presents a tapestry of psychedelic folk whose lyrics appeal to a higher consciousness and gently invites listeners to coexist within Slambovia

—Mike Cobb

Kenny Roby (Royal Potato Family)

Sarah Perrotta

Kingston singer-songwriter Sarah Perrotta’s newest album, Blue to Gold, is out now.

Sarahperrottamusic.com

Photo: Rachel Brennecke

Santa Doesn’t Need Your Help

Kevin Maher, illustrations by Joe Dator TURNER PUBLISHING COMPANY, 2022, $18.99

An aging Santa resists an offer of help from a K-Pop boy band (we are given to understand, by illustration, that in earlier years he’s had his role usurped by Burt Reynolds, Pikachu, and the Harlem Globetrotters.) Grumpy, he takes to his sleigh, and disasters en sue. Not Father Christmas’s best look, and the description of the problems of aging, although accurate, may serve more as nightmare fuel than as the intended lesson in self-acceptance.

Solace and Sanctuary:

The Ashokan’s Enduring Gifts Paintings by Kate McLoughlin, text by Gail Straub HIGH POINT, 2022, $35

Like all great beauties, the Ashokan Reservoir is a complicated creature. The beauty there is enough to stun the soul; the poignant history of the indigenous residents and “drowned towns” adds a layer of ache for those who know. McLoughlin and Straub, dear friends who bonded on these shores and have walked them for decades, lean into the poignancy in this collection of evocative images and words of wisdom. A book to heal the wintry heart.

Everything Else Is Bric-a-Brac: Notes on Home Akiko Busch

PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS, 2022, $19.95

In 60 evocative short essays, Akiko Busch examines our profound con nection to the mundane and what it reveals about life as it’s actually lived. Busch mines the connection between animate and inanimate and tenderly unearths all kinds of gems in the ways houses are painted, chores accom plished, inner yearnings expressed. What is it that we actually notice, and why? What draws us? A wonderful autumn read.

Design Flaw: Stories

Hugh Sheehy

ACRE BOOKS, 2022, $17

In the first of these short stories, apol ogists for the Eschatological Society launch into a full-tilt-boogie infomercial marketing various shifty and shifting conceptions of the afterlife. It’s immedi ately obvious that this will be a series of fearless voyages through wild hu man habitats, and the guide is up to the task. Beacon resident Sheehy’s keen eye and empathetic heart for the chaos of our current situation make for belly laughs and nonstop, nourishing entertainment.

The Failure

Gregory D. Jaw

MUCKHOUSE, 2022, $13

This first novel by Kingston musician and teacher Jaw breathes fresh life into the gonzo road trip as a vehicle of self-discovery, seasoned with a very post-`60s comprehension of the agony of trauma, grief, and addiction. The unnamed narrator is a study in the ways a human can be simultaneously wonderful, wrecked, and resilient. The Failure has a flame of bright hope at its very core.

—Anne Pyburn Craig

Beaver Land: How One Weird Rodent Made America

Leila Philip TWELVE BOOKS, 2022, $30

If the sight of a beaver dam has ever sparked your curiosity to learn more about this native rodent, Leila Philip’s new book, Beaver Land will give you a sense of how deeply the beaver is embedded in American history and culture. Philip, author of A Family Place: A Hudson Valley Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family brings her authoritative narrative style to this investigation of the North American beaver and its role in our shared habitat Philip’s research into the historic fur trade that brought riches to early capitalists and colonial powers as well as current conservation efforts is exhaustive, but the book includes fascinating conversations with humans working at many beaver intersections, and they all have an interesting story to tell.

The book begins with an overview of the Ktsi Amiskw, or Great Beaver story, of which many versions have been handed down orally throughout North America. Philip traces several Indigenous tribes’ understanding of the beaver story then poses the question as to why this “fat, furry rodent with four orange teeth” has been so central to North American creation and destruction sagas. The Great Beaver story has many variations but almost always includes a cautionary warning for humans interacting with the land. The natural world demands responsible stewardship from its inhabitants, or else the habitats will be lost. Philip writes to summarize how the Ktsi Amiskw legend guided people living in North America for thousands of years to understand, “you destroy the Earth, you destroy yourself.”

Driven by greed and the demand for beaver pelts, we learn of John Jacob Astor’s success in capturing a government charter to establish a trading post on the Columbia River, a key strategic post for trade with settlers and Indigenous peoples. Astor became America’s first multimillionaire after establishing the monopolistic American Fur Company, which dealt in beaver pelts. The quest for beaver fur was so rapacious that after Astor began to corner the market in the early 1820s, the beaver was nearly wiped out 20 years later.

Philip accompanies Herb Sobanski Jr., a modern-day fur trapper in Connecticut, who worked as one of 52 professional fur trappers in the state until his death in 2019. Philip’s conversations with Sobanski are some of the most illuminating in the book. She checks out trap lines and witnesses coyote skinning in a fur shack to give readers a sense of the modern fur trade culture. More remarkable is reading that this activity takes place practically in the Connecticut suburbs. Philip also attended the North America Fur Auction where beaver, mink, and fox pelts were auctioned behind closed doors. Her access to this contemporary fur trade culture was unprecedented and she captures the uneasy aura of the auction itself. Though she interviews many actors in this chapter, names were changed for fear of reprisal if they were identified with the fur trade.

Philip shines light into other beaver corners such as Dorothy Richards’s Beaversprite, the beaver sanctuary founded by Richards in the 1930s where she lived with 14 beavers in the Adirondacks. Philip visits Beaversprite (now operated by the Utica Zoo) where she gives the reader a sense of just how unusual Richards was in her relationship with beavers. (I secretly wished the book included some of the images of Dorothy with multiple beavers on her lap, which can be found online.) Sharon and Owen Brown are the current stewards of Beaversprite and offer personal accounts of Dorothy’s life. Readers unfamiliar with Richards or the history of Beaversprite will find this chapter captivating and certainly worthy of the word “weird” in the subtitle of the book.

Some of the most interesting parts of the book discuss the beaver’s patterns in building dams and lodges and current conservation or watershed management projects. One Harvard scientist from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana studies how beavers work collectively on a waterway by taking cues from the volumetric flow rate of water, or the current. The book ends on an optimistic note about the role the beaver can play in land and water management

Beaver Land is a well-balanced history, personal narrative, and journalistic investigation of a curious but familiar rodent in the Hudson Valley.

Leila Philip reads and signs at Hudson Hall on Friday, December 9 at 6pm.

—Betsy Maury

To Whoever Moves in Next

We’ll leave our ghosts In the garden And our love In the sunlight That filters Through the Kitchen

—Ryan Brennan

Christmas Trees

... The holidays arrive on time, but, again We are late in becoming...

There are compensations, though: Trees—wonderful Christmas trees, like assorted pills They come in all shapes & sizes, as if truly therapeutic...

O See how blankly they stare, standing stiffly in corners, as awkward as some youngster stuffed into his Sunday best... But—yes— There are compensations...

Our talk, our frivolous trinkets... It happens every year: Christmas trees...

We coax them first with axes, then haul them off to smoke-filled parlors as hijacked, unwilling guests; we then prop them up on stools where they blink at us politely across tables... Christmas trees, recurring visitors who beam, nod at all we say, question nothing & still appear to be alive: They beam at us through windows, cheery & dangerous. Yes—Every year it happens: We assume the Christmas spirit, Christmas colors— Our hands turn red from wrapping, while our friends grow enviously green...They know that the biggest tree & most extravagant gifts prove the most prosperous life (or—so we are taught from childhood).

Yes... Christmas guests, Christmas trees... Each year we prostrate ourselves at their feet, our feelings pre-packaged, stale— over-ambitious, wrapped in our stresses & ribbons of blood: Are we ashamed by how little we have to offer? No, the trappings are showy enough, & we pop up through laughter like rabbits out of hats, bold Punchinellos —some Jack-in-the-box item. We are armed with our amusements: They have not failed us yet, though now, an inner voice seems to ring out far-too-clearly, proclaiming like a herald its prodigious warning: that it’s the road-not-taken which leads to Bethlehem….

—Marlene Tartaglione

Night Shift

This sweater keeps saving me whenever I might lose it but go to the hotel lobby instead where it’s chilly at 2am, while others sleep beside, above, within.

I take Rexroth’s old century down with me—imagine just walking my city, kicking out my K’s, not a care what they think or see, or if they’re even there, at all. But he, he just settles in with nuts and a magazine, and takes aim—implacable, determined not to drop off and streak the floor on gorgeous wings. Not yet anyway. Just sits and keeps blasting time and its people and even his own family as their imagined tragic victims. But he’s a nature poet, peripatetic, I’m told—rich in dusk and vagrancy—some box car Willie to take my tokes for me and the Gallimimus, who lived as he did: rapturous, fired, and would have had feathers. Either way, that rain was hard and your haunches felt it from that aerie. I feel it now with you, but that is one wide country you’re pelting from this next new one I’m in—hell we’re all in it. The night watch

is Indian with a limp, joins family on his Apple—live from Mumbai or Goa. I hear them running the halls, stacking plates, turning down the TV. “Daddy” they yell, “happy Father’s Day,” while the mother murmurs a daily love song in Marathi. “Time After Time” plays on the speakers, soft, since he turned it down for me. Then gave me some water. Now he yawns while for us—us

it is a holy awakening.

—Christian Walker

Dear Abby,

My parents died. My house burnt down. I have no money. I asked Donald Trump, former President and “Apprentice” for a loan. No word yet. After leaving quarantine with dangerous Alzheimer’s Disease residents in emergency housing I am tired. I’m almost 50 years old and my ex-husband and I have been separated over 10 years. He’s been in chronic care resulting from several heart attacks. I have two undergraduate degrees and am finishing my MFA in Museum Studies. I have been to several marriage agencies that offer only retired creepy scientists. Looking for the right man...a writer perhaps. Need your advice.

—E. Pinter

Motorcycle Girl

When riding these days I kick my heels

Back into the passenger pegs

And pretend you are hanging on Your legs tucked under mine

As I press my heels harder into the pegs And move into the broad fast curve Giving the bike that low and fluid moan Your arms come round me holding tight Into the turn not my body but yours mine Leaning low into the flow the two of us And the bike and the curve leaning smooth and quiet

Like the night itself pouring through the turn The throttle opens and I duck my head in low Behind the windscreen

And you lean low into the wind with me Murmuring little glad yelps in your helmet Tucked tight and close against my shoulder Whoosh and we are gone

—Vernon Benjamin (1945-2022)

Her Reply

These days I moan

Oh to ride

Straddled onto you again

My hands resting low Against your thighs

Inevitably sliding up, beckoned Under your open leather jacket To your chest

Or your T-shirt Finds my fingertips slipped in Under its sleeves

And tracing down your arms You’re strong Moving, pushing over the hills and curves You want me closer You reach back

“Let me know you’re there” I press into you deeper Our hearts are latched

We are one body Alone under the blanket of rev In the din we let go of What’s been left behind You know the road but not Where it takes us

The twilight gives chase When we stop

We’re sticky with the night’s Hot humid weight You kill the engine I rest quiet now

My breasts pressed against you We breathe soft in time

I can still feel the cool on my cheek Of your smooth black jacket

With the body I love inside Why did I ever get off

—Unsigned

Full submission guidelines: Chronogram.com/submissions

Stay

Bind me to your altar.

The ropes that bruised.

The others who nestled their hung heads in the basin.

I want to feel my wrists shape the same holy purple that wears you.

Enshrine me in reds and pinks. Preserve me the moment my lips taste worship as honeyed as mead and as warm as clove.

Then brand me in the swallowing black mass of sky and share what terrible gods I can affront to stay me in this cowering prayer.

—Branden Parisella

Heaven, Wherever

Vermont

Late Summer

A house

A second story A door on it seen only from the back No staircase led to it We shared it with another family We were both on vacation It was a small lake I met a summer friend there His name was Angel We played Magic: The Gathering We watched “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”

I asked why it took almost a week to meet He said his family was in the back of the house I asked how he got in He said the front door I asked why it took almost a week to meet again He said his family is from Mexico I didn’t notice his accent until that second I didn’t think about it after that second He said our families just have different schedules His family and mine met for dinner

It was delicious

We made burgers, dogs and potato salad They were surprised how much we liked their cooking We were shocked when they enjoyed ours back We both said it’s just easy summertime food We didn’t know it was both our last day there Angel and I had a sleepover that night We slept in the same bed In the morning we hugged and said see ya We were seven I don’t care how old I am now

—Carson Pytell

Town on the Skids

It’s a sorry town, a sad Main Street, when even the bar is shuttered.

Folks still have reason to get plastered but there’s just not enough of them for good old Charlie to stay in business. The mine closed and most people left and now those that stayed have to drive twenty miles if they want to get drunk on a Saturday night. Empty hardware store, abandoned diner, movie theater that’s a flea market on every second Sunday— that’s only half the story. For the rest, it’s a road through no man’s land in the middle of the night, a bunch of old cars and every one of them weaving.

—John Grey Peace by the Sea

Meditating by the beach, I hear the music of the sea, Imagination playing around, Peace here is what I found. Look out to the horizon! Ships are floating on air, Never before have I seen such a sight, The sky is full of colors so bright. My mind is seeking, my eyes just stare, The water is clear of colors so rare, A layer of blue, a layer of green, A layer of both in between.

If you want to sort things out in your mind, Go to the sea, it’s there you will find, You may not have found the answers you seek, But at least you’ll have found peace by the sea.

—Margaret Medina

The Picture of Her in Her Prime (the dashing cameraman)

She has taps on her shoes and a tube for later but that shouldn’t deter you from getting to know her dress, her sex, her titular seam.

She won’t give you a yes or no about the tube but she was never keen on annotation. Besides that’s her kick for later.

But she did get the taps from an Italian down the street a few years back when such things were in fashion and she flirted w/the dashing cameraman who took this picture of her in her prime.

—Mike Jurkovic

Sideshow on the Main Stage

THE NO RING CIRCUS

AT HUDSON BREWING COMPANY Thenoringcircus.com

For local live entertainment, the holiday season is traditionally the time of school productions of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and other family fare. But this year, some Hudson Valley adults may want to consider foregoing yet another performance of “The Nutcracker” and taking in a show by the No Ring Circus—but leave the kids at home with Grandma for this one. Established in 2017 by performers and life partners Daphne Malfitano and Eli Rose, the taboo-trouncing troupe specializes in spicy treats and freakish feats that are decidedly not for little ones or meek prudes—but it’s all in good fun, of course. Hudson-based No Ring Circus will perform a “grand-scale sideshow/circus spectacular” at Hudson Brewing Company on December 9 at 7pm. I spoke with Rose via email in mid-November.

—Peter Aaron

What made you want to start your own circus? Were you drawn to performing at a young age, or did that come later in life?

I’ve been interested in sideshow my entire life, likely inspired by my father’s tales of his circus work when he first came to America. Though I was raised in an artistic household, I didn’t actually start performing sideshow until my early 20s. I was a solo touring performer for years—Daphne was the inspiration and the driving force behind our creating our own circus and company. They are a lifelong performer, writer, and director, and the No Ring Circus came of the joining of our forces.

How did you meet Daphne, and what makes you two such a good fit as performing partners?

Daphne and I were introduced though a mutual friend, and we married eight months later. We truly consider ourselves to be sharing a single brain, spread over two bodies. We can communicate fluently without words on stage, we are excited by the same ideas, and we have an identical artistic language. Our work grows very organically as a result.

Why “No Ring”? Is there a story behind the name? Our very first production was a full-length existential clown show with an intentionally long name alluding to the circuses of yesteryear: “Fiddles & Oboe’s Clown Orchestra and No Ring Circus.” As we developed into a brand beyond this show, we shortened our name to the No Ring Circus; the initial joke being that we were so broke when we started out that we fancied our circus would have no rings, as opposed to three. But our work also largely exists in liminal spaces (both physically and thematically), so the name continues to resonate.

How would you describe the No Ring’s particular aesthetic? What qualities are you looking for when you come up with your routines and add other performers?

Our aesthetic encompasses many authentic aspects of ourselves and as such tends to lie at the center of a Venn diagram of ritual/performance art/occultism/fetish and BDSM/camp/traditional sideshow. We are quite particular about the performers we work with. They are all obviously wildly talented, but beyond that, we

Sovereign Sage performing at Hudson Brewing Company in August.

Opposite: No Ring Circus cofounder Eli Rose as "The Great Omniscious."

Photos

by

David McIntyre

work with people that are on similar artistic/personal/ philosophical wavelengths as me and Daphne. The No Ring Circus is intensely familial in that way.

When and how did the troupe end up in Hudson? It’s interesting and unusual that such a small city is home to two independent circuses, yours and the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus. Were you aware of the Bindlestiffs before you moved to town? Daphne lived in Hudson years ago and was in love with life here. We met while I was living in New Orleans, and they moved down to me. Though we adored living down South, we agreed that if we were to ever actually purchase a house, it would be back in Hudson. These days, most of our gigs are in New York City as well as across the country, but we’d much rather sneak away for work and then be able to retreat to a much more restful place. And yes! Of course we know the Bindlestiffs! They’ve been legends in this industry for many years. I used to frequent their talent showcases even before I began performing sideshow. The Hudson locale is a coincidence, but a happy one.

Watching the demo reel on the circus’s website, there’s a little bit of “adult” content in some of your shows. Do you tailor/tone down the performances for local venues like Hudson Brewing Company, where you’ve appeared previously?

We certainly have different acts for different crowds and events, but we insist on tailoring without sacrificing our authenticity. We exist in extremely highend and corporate worlds as well as strip clubs and sex parties, and everything in between. It’s less about the content and more about maintaining our voice. This is the main reason we don’t do kids shows— frankly, we have nothing to say to kids. (FYI, Hudson Brewing Company enthusiastically grants us incredible boundary-pushing freedom. We definitely have some fun there.)

What do you most hope that the audience gets from an evening with the No Ring Circus?

Truth. What they need that day. A new viewpoint or experience. A gradual expansion of horizons. Answers to a question but also a lot of new questions.

From 19th-century scientific and portrait photography to avant-garde and conceptual photography; from Minimalist, Pop Art, and Op Art printmaking to experimental bookmaking and photography in the 21st century, this dynamic exhibition explores how artists embrace, reject, and reclaim the grid. By altering perception, they offer new ways of seeing.

"Wilde About Whitman" imagines what happened behind closed doors when Oscar Wilde met Walt Whitman in 1882.

“Mold your wit into a weapon they can’t escape,” Walt Whitman advises Oscar Wilde in “Wilde About Whitman” by David Simpatico. A staged reading of the play will take place at the Stissing Center in Pine Plains on December 15. The characters are played by Steven Patterson and Joshuah Patriarcho.

“Wilde About Whitman” is based on a true occurrence. The two writers met on January 31, 1882, while Oscar Wilde was on an 11-month tour of North America, promoting a new Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, “Patience.” As yet, Wilde had composed no major works. He was a witty 27-year-old lecturer, a provocative hero of the Aesthetic movement, which espoused a life enriched by poetry, painting, and elegant handmade artifacts. “Patience” was a skillful satire of that movement.

Wilde and Whitman spent three hours together. “Only a very little bit is known about what they did, but they were said to have gone upstairs and locked the door— so that’s what my play’s about,” Simpatico explains. “What happens behind that locked door!”

Whitman, once a young explosive innovator himself, had matured into a great gray American poet. He was 62; the year before he’d had a major stroke. In “Wilde

About Whitman,” we first see Whitman walking backward down the stairs. He’s kept Wilde waiting an hour. Though he’s world famous, Whitman is almost penniless, living in his brother’s modest home in Camden, New Jersey.

At first Whitman views this worshipful European dandy with suspicion. “Mr. Whitman, I come as a poet to call upon a poet with whom I have been acquainted almost from the cradle,” Wilde announces. “And I, Mr. Wilde, come to you as one who just got off the crapper,” Whitman rejoins.

But once two great talkers get started, they can’t stop. The insults, the praise, the self-reproaches, the bon mots, begin to flow, along with homemade elderberry wine.

Oscar Wilde was known for his brilliant aphorisms, but many of them were stolen from other writers. As a private joke, Simpatico gives some of them to Whitman for Wilde to purloin—including Wilde’s famous last words: “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”

A subject the poets return to again and again is fame. The first edition of Leaves of Grass was anonymous. In place of an author’s name was a famous photograph of Whitman in workingman’s clothes, his collar open to his chest, a hand on one hip. Wilde asks Whitman about the

An Old Poet, A Young Aesthete, And A Bottle of Elderberry Wine

“WILDE ABOUT WHITMAN”

December 15 at 3pm at the Stissing Center

Thestissingcenter.org

photo, which hangs on the wall in the first act. “I wanted my readers to hold me in their hands,” he replies.

In Act 2, the younger and older poet proceed up to the third-floor room. I will not reveal what goes on behind that closed door, but I will say this: Walt Whitman has a bearskin rug.

Simpatico scrupulously researches his plays, but also writes with a poet’s daring. “I often build a collage before I start working with words,” Simpatico says. “I think about emotions, and get psychological murmurs that I don’t have words for.”

Oscar Wilde would meet a tragic fate. He sued the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, for describing him as a “sodomite.” The libel trial went poorly, Wilde withdrew the charges, and was then arrested for gross indecency. In 1895, Oscar Wilde was convicted and sent to prison for two years, where his health declined. He died in Paris in 1900, at the age of 46.

In “Wilde About Whitman,” the elder poet predicts the younger’s future: “Oh! Trust me, the vultures are waiting to pounce, Oscar. They’ll ruin your life because you terrify them.”

—Sparrow

Meet a Puppy for Science!

A CONVERSATION WITH DOG COGNITION

RESEARCHER ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ

December 16 at the Fuller Building Chronogram.com/conversations

Few of us meet our dogs the day they’re born. The dog who will, eventually, become an integral part of our family, our constant companion and best friend, is born without us into a family of their own. A puppy’s critical early development into the dog we come to know is usually missed entirely.

Dog cognition researcher and author Alexandra Horowitz (Inside of a Dog; Our Dogs, Ourselves) aimed to change that with the adoption of her family’s new pup, Quiddity (aka Quid). In her new scientific memoir, The Year of the Puppy (Viking), she charts the puppy’s early development from birth to first birthday.

On December 16 from 5:30-7:30pm Alexandra Horowitz will join me for a conversation about puppies and dog development at the Fuller Building in Kingston. There will be an audience Q&A followed by a reception and book signing in partnership with Rough Draft Bar & Books. A portion of the proceeds from the event will be donated to the Ulster County SPCA.

—Brian K. Mahoney

Brian K. Mahoney: One of the things that I never thought about was that when we adopt puppies—even at eight or nine weeks old—they are fairly well along in their developmental process. I guess as a dog cognition researcher, you knew this. But what drew you to want to be there from day one with a new pup?

Alexandra Horowitz: Well, I knew this sort of intellectually, but I hadn’t experienced it. And there was still some abstraction, because there isn’t a huge amount of research with puppies, for the reason that they’re just not easy subjects. There just hasn’t been a huge amount of science done about what’s happening in those early days. I felt like this was a chance to thread the science that there was together. There isn’t a place which really tells the story scientifically of what’s happening with them perceptually and cognitively. And then personally, I also thought, “Oh great, we could add a puppy to our family. Great, we could meet a puppy for science.” We had adopted our dogs when they were older, and you really wonder what they were like before and all the things that happened in their life. And you kind of want to be able to go back and make it good for them. And I thought, “Well, let’s see what it’s like to start the journey with them from the beginning.”

So much happens in that eight-to-twelve-week time period before any of these dogs normally get adopted. What was something that you found out about these tiny critters that was unexpected? Well, you sort of forget how completely incompetent they are at birth—they’re little sludges. But their development is really rapid. Just week to week there were enormous changes. And that struck me. I hadn’t kind of deconstructed it. And relatedly, I was really interested in the relationship between the litter and the mother, and the litter and the siblings with each other. And I hadn’t kind of appreciated the mom has to be sort of all in, but she pretty rapidly starts moving away. And that was fascinating to see too, the way that she’s giving them her all, completely everything, and then a few weeks in she starts weaning them. And then by the time they’re going to be adopted out, she’s like, “Step away. Step back.” to the pups.

That was a real relief to read, as somebody who’s adopted a 10-week old puppy. I remember thinking at the time, “Oh dear, I ripped this thing from its mother.”

A lot of people wondered about that. And I just don’t think that’s a problem at all. The mom is already ready for them to go. And if you think about it in terms of just reproduction, dogs have this biannual heat. So in theory, a female dog could get pregnant again six months after her last litter. So if she spends two months getting them out of the house, then she only has a couple more months before she’s on the next one. You wouldn’t want, evolutionarily, to have that other litter sticking around, at least not in a way where you need to take care of them. And then they learn so much from their siblings. At the point when she starts stepping away from them, the siblings are this amazing force of social learning. They’re just always on top of each other and following each other. And then it really, really struck me, in a way I hadn’t thought about before, how much we’re ripping the dog from that world. They do come from this very protected, safe space of being in the puppy pile. And it’s so interesting to me that we, almost universally as a culture, immediately give them their own space, which is away from the people in the house and how extra difficult that feels, when you see where they’ve come from and how they’re just always touching each other and following each other and learning from each other.

Alexandra Horowitz at home with some of her animal companions in Columbia County. Quid, the protagonist of The Year of the Puppy, is on the left.

Photos by Winona Barton-Ballentine

In Year of the Puppy, you take aim at some training manuals. You write: “All the perfect puppy books are selling really has nothing to do with perfection. It has to do with training a dog to be more what we, in today’s culture, assume dogs should be like.” And then you write, “I find that language of perfection, in regard to puppies, both hilarious and tragic.” Hilarious and tragic how?

Well, it’s funny because, A, they’re not going to ever get there, so I find that comic. And B, they start out pretty much perfect. We’re all attracted to the puppies right away, because of who they are, because kind of their ridiculousness and pleasure in life and overacting and delight to see us every single time they see us. That’s perfection, actually. That’s the thing we’re attracted to. They’re very cute, all that. So that we think, “Now I’m going to mold this into perfection,” that’s very funny. It’s already done. And, also tragic, because it really leads people to, “I can treat this dog like a weird object that has to be molded into a different shape, in order to be a good dog.”

Many people really enjoy training their dogs and the dogs enjoy it, too. There can be training that improves the relationship. And some training or teaching is really necessary, just for safety’s sake and to make them cooperative companions. But this notion that there’s some sort of set of things you need to do to the dog, in order to get them to this perfection, is really missing out on the opportunity to meet this creature, who is completely alien to your environment, really is their own personality, and comes in this really adorable package. So that’s the tragedy, it seems to me. We spend all this time worrying about getting them to be perfect, when they’re already perfect.

Not too long after adopting Quid, you strap a GoPro on her to observe the world to her perspective. What did you see?

I love always doing this, because the first thing I like people to do to just get into the umwelt of their dogs is to get down on their level, which already is just a huge difference. The ground is much more salient. Smells on the ground are much closer and part of your experience. And you see everything from a different angle. It’s just important to recognize that.

The other thing that I saw was a little surprising. If we had her off leash, she immediately forgot about us. She was just off after the little furry thing or just running with exuberance in any direction. But in the GoPro, you can really see that we were almost always at the center of her days. She was always looking at us. She was still pretty young, but that she had centered us, as she would’ve centered her mom early in her life naturally, and that was a little reassuring.

In the book, you cite research that says dogs go through adolescence like humans, testing boundaries and ignoring learned behaviors like a teenager.

Dogs go through adolescence. They have puberty; hormones are surging. In dogs’ case in particular, their body is way ahead of the development of their brain. They rebel, and it’s a phase. And if only we appreciated that it’s a phase, we wouldn’t get so bent out of shape. I mean, maybe we do get bent out of shape when the teenager slams the door, instead of listening to us. But we also know intellectually like, “Okay, this isn’t like our bond is severed forever. You are a teenager. And this is what teenagers do. I’m going to be there again later for you. I’ll knock on your door.” But with dogs, people don’t seem to appreciate it.

It’s important that we know this for a really tragic reason, which is, that when people start to get this pushback from their dogs—and this happens right as they’ve grown out of that really cute early puppyhood— is when we see a lot of dogs returned to shelters. Maybe somebody struggled with getting the dog to not do a behavior that they think is a misbehavior, and maybe they got through, and the dog was sort of improving. And then the dog seems to resort to that old self, and they just give up on the dog. Most shelter dogs that are returned are adolescents. And then they’re harder to adopt again, because they’ve passed that really early cute phase. Our misunderstanding of teenagerhood and the unwillingness to kind of sit it out leads to the destruction of a lot of dogs.

In the last chapter, you list the requirements for being prepared for your puppy, which is only one requirement. You write: “Expect that your puppy will not be who you think, or act as you hope.”

I really was responding to, again, these books that kind of have the checklist of things you need to have in order to be completely prepared for your puppy. And they all have to do with just material things. And, well, I’m not saying that they’re entirely wrong. You do need food. You do need to think about where you’re going to feed your dog and so forth. But it gives a really incomplete picture of what it’s like to mentally and emotionally prepare for the introduction of a dog, who has no idea what’s going to happen.

The real thing we all need is an open-mindedness and a willingness to not cling so tightly to our idea about what it should be like. I, as a person who gets asked a lot for advice on getting a dog, and then the dog is acquired, and people are delighted, and inevitably within that first week, I get another email from the people, who are really concerned that they have the wrong dog. And I have felt this way.

And it’s all due to our expectations about how it’s just going to be this simple addition. It’s just a puppy. They’re just going to come into our life and then act just like

the professional dogs I see out there who are walking nicely by their owners, and the owners are completely unconcerned about the dog’s behavior, and it’s not like that at all. If we loosened up that vise-grip we have on our expectations about what it has to be like, I think we would do much better incorporating dogs into our home.

How’s Quid doing?

She’s doing great. She’s almost, I guess two years, nine months now. She’s sitting right here on the sofa. And she is impossibly woven into the family. You couldn’t extract her now. She is who we expect and look forward to. And she does a lot of very sweet things and learned a real strong obsession with tennis balls, so we have a lot of tennis balls around the house. It was easier for me to see her, actually, after our other dogs, Finnegan and Upton, both passed. Upton passed a month after Finnegan did. Part of my kind of standoffishness with Quid, I think, was because it felt like she was so vital, and Finn, especially, was suffering with his age. And that seemed like a cosmic unfairness. When you just look at Quid on her own, she’s her own kind of charming, quirky self. And it’s easier to appreciate without them in our days, even though I would get them back in a minute, if I could.

Jack Whitten was a trailblazer in the world of abstract art. His work spoke to an emotional weight and solemnity that was both one of a kind in its modality and universal in its effect. Viewing his creations, two questions persist: What was he looking for and what did he find?

“Jack Whitten: The Greek Alphabet Paintings,” the firstever exhibition devoted to a crucial stage in the career of an artist known for his rigorous experimentation with the materiality of painting, will be shown through July 10 of next year. The 40 paintings in the show are pulled from a variety of public and private sources and curated by Donna De Salvo and Matilde Guidelli-Guidi.

When these works were created, Whitten was still relatively young in his career. “His commitment to rethinking painting at a time when the medium was seemingly obsolete is a testament to his resilience and inexhaustible talent,” says De Salvo.

Whitten (1939-2018) produced work that was identifiable by his distinctive approach to collage. Always happy to experiment with materials and composition, much of his work had the radical approach of using dried acrylic paint as inlay on wet canvas.

The “Greek Alphabet” series, produced between 1975 and 1978, employed this method and others. The series saw Whitten place wires and cords on a hard surface and overlay them with canvas. He then applied layers of acrylic, gesso, and pigment before brushing over them with an assortment of tools like rakes and afro picks, creating a sort of loom affect.

“Remarkably, this is the first time that more than a handful of works from Whitten’s seminal ‘Greek Alphabet’ series have been publicly displayed together. The exhibition is the result of years of curatorial research to retrace the contours of the series and locate the individual paintings. It is only in seeing such a significant number of them assembled, as the artist intended, that one can appreciate the formal and material permutations of the series,” says Jessica Morgan, Dia’s Nathalie de Gunzburg director.

Whitten, born in Bessemer, Alabama in 1936, initially studied pre-med at the Tuskegee Institute before art caught his eye at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was there he got swept up in the civil rights movement, creating signs and displays for

demonstrations in 1960.

He left for New York City the same year and enrolled at the Cooper Union to continue his art studies. There, Whitten developed a more experimental take on Abstract Expressionism.

In an interview with Modern Painters magazine, he said, regarding his process, “It’s very conceptual. Everything comes together with the last step. This is not an overlay, that’s an inlay; it’s inlaid into a field of wet acrylic, and when that happens, you get a strange spatial juxtaposition. For painting, that’s a new space. I first saw a glimpse of that space in the `70s, and I’ve been chasing it ever since.”

Eta Group IV, from the “Greek Alphabet” series, features what Whitten called a “weaving of light” with its almost shimmering, grayscale quality. It’s here you can observe the juncture in Whitten’s work, where he embraced unconventional techniques like the strips of acrylic jutting diagonally across the canvas.

“Whitten’s systematic investigation of acrylic paint, indirect methods of execution, and collapse of gesture into surface place these works at the intersection of Conceptual, Minimalist, and Process art, says GuidelliGuidi: “His formal research paralleled a philosophical one, encompassing the new mediascape and the fractal nature of jazz music, quantum physics, and space travel.”

Whitten’s work has seen a recent surge in interest, with exhibitions and surveys being held in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center and the Baltimore Museum of Art, among others.

The art of Jack Whitten opens one’s eyes to a visual dichotomy of beauty and darkness. That duality was born out of a social journey. The work on display shows the transition of Whitten’s time in the South, surrounded by racial turbulence, and his entrance into the countercultural environment of `60s and `70s New York City. All of this, boiled down to 24 ancient symbols and 40 creations, makes for a thought-provoking entrance into a chapter of a celebrated artist's life.

Trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith will perform at Dia:Beacon on Saturday, December 3 at 2pm, musically interpreting Whitten’s Greek Alphabet paintings.

—Austin C. Jefferson

Rethinking Painting

“JACK WHITTEN: THE GREEK ALPHABET PAINTINGS”

Through July 10, 2023 at Dia:Beacon Diaart.org

From left:

Mee I, Jack Whitten, acrylic on canvas,1977 Photo by John Berens

Eta Group IV, Jack Whitten, acrylic on canvas, 1976

December 4. “I’ve always trusted that [music] is my path,” said Meshell Ndegeocello when she was profiled in the June 2014 issue of Chronogram. Here, that musical path will lead the Grammy-winning singersongwriter, rapper, bassist, and erstwhile Hudson Valley resident to Levon Helm Studios for a rare and overdue regional performance. Ndegeocello debuted with 1993’s profound Plantation Lullabies and hit number three on the Billboard charts the following year via her duet with John Mellencamp on a version of Van Morrison’s “Wild Night.” Her 12th and most recent album is 2018’s Ventriloquism. (Charlie Parr pops by December 2; the Hot Sardines swing December 18.) 7:30pm. $45, $65. Woodstock.

Levonhelm.com

Delicate Steve

December 4. In addition to creating waves with his own music, quirky indie-pop guitarist Delicate Steve has collaborated with the likes of Paul Simon, the Black Keys, Tame Impala, Amen Dunes, Built to Spill, Lee Ranaldo, the Dirty Projectors, Nicole Atkins, TuneYards, Dr. Dog, and others. His 2011 debut album, Wondervisions, was released to instant acclaim on David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label and even inspired author Chuck Klosterman to pen a fictional biography of the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He brings it to No Fun for this upstate hit. (Rump State and Decimus get noisy December 2; Pony in the Pancake plays December 17.) 7pm. $10, $14. Troy.

Nofuntroy.com

Pierre Kwenders

December 9. Congolese-Canadian musician and DJ Pierre Kwenders got his musical start as a member of a Catholic choir in his adopted hometown of Montreal. With two EPs and as many albums (Jose Louis and the Paradox of Love appeared earlier this year) under his belt, Kwenders, who plays at Tubby’s this month, is well known for his work with the Moonshine collective, which produces popular parties all over the globe. Dancers and diggers of hip-hop, electronica, Afropop, and world music, mark your calendars accordingly. With Booker Stardrum and Nkodia. (Bitchin Bajas and Clarice Jensen visit December 3; Che Chen of 75 Dollar Bill and others jam December 7.) 7pm. $18. Kingston. Tubbyskingston.com

Pokey

LaFarge

December 9. It would be entirely believable to learn that Pokey LaFarge literally stepped out from the yellowed pages and sepia-toned artist photos of a 1930s or ’40s record catalog. The 39-year-old roots singersongwriter puts a now-time spin on old-time country, blues, Western swing, folk, rockabilly, and early jazz and looks hella stylish doing it—like if Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Rudy Vallee, and Eddie Cochran hung out or something. He had to postpone his much-awaited return to the Egg’s American Roots and Branches Series due to the you-know-what. But back he is here. (Jorma Kaukonen revisits December 13; the McKrells celebrate Christmas December 17.) 8pm. $29.50, $34.50. Albany.

Theegg.org

Marshall Crenshaw

December 14. After playing John Lennon in the original cast of “Beatlemania,” Marshall Crenshaw cemented his own legendary rock singer-songwriter status with his 1982 self-titled debut album, home to such power pop classics as “Someday, Someway” (also a hit for Robert Gordon), “There She Goes Again,” and “Cynical Girl.” Also the writer of hits for others (the Gin Blossoms’ “Til I Hear It from You”), Crenshaw has fronted the Smithereens since the 2017 passing of lead singer Pat DiNizio. He brings his Acoustic Duo Jam Band to Darryl’s House for this intimate show. (Johnny A. pays a Beatles tribute December 8; Willie Nile flows December 16.) 7pm. $39.02, $54.47. Pawling.

Darylshouseclub.com

DJ Logic

December 18. DJ Logic is widely credited for bringing jazz into hip-hop. The virtuoso Bronx turntablist, who on this night lands at the Falcon, has been highly influential on the use of “the decks” as an instrument. Revered for his remixes of Nina Simone and Billie Holiday, Logic lists as his collaborators Bob Weir, John Mayer, Medeski Martin and Wood, Bernie Worrell, Christian McBride, Carly Simon, Jack Johnson, the Roots, Jack DeJohnette, Warren Haynes, Vernon Reid, and many more. (Fay Victor vocalizes December 11; Jeremy Baum celebrates “A Charlie Brown Christmas” December 23.) 7pm. Donation. Marlboro.

Liveatthefalcon.com

Meshell Ndegeocello

—Peter Aaron

Pierre Kwenders plays Tubby's in Kingston December 9.

“A Christmas Memory”

December 1-18 at Park

Theater

The Whale Theater, in association with Tectonic Theater (Moisés Kaufman, artistic director); will present Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory” as a live radio play at the intimate Park Theater in Hudson featuring Broadway veterans Marceline Hugot and Jeffrey Binder. Joining the actors will be a cellist performing original underscoring and a Foley artist helping to bring the story to life with sound effects. The performance will be followed by a second act featuring a cabaret of beloved holiday classics.

Brownpapertickets.com/event/5606789

“Miracle on South Division Street”

December 2-18 at Shadowland Stages

Meet the Nowaks, a Polish-American and very Catholic clan living amidst the urban rubble of Buffalo’s East Side in the 1960s. The neighborhood is depressed, but Clara, the family matriarch, happily runs her soup kitchen and tends to the family heirloom—a shrine to the Blessed Mother, which adjoins the house. This neighborhood beacon of faith commemorates the day when the Blessed Virgin Mary materialized in Clara’s father’s barber-shop. As the play opens, a family meeting—run by daughter Ruth—has been called to divulge her plans to go public with the family miracle by creating a one-woman play about the sacred event. During the course of the meeting, the family’s faith is shaken to the very core when a deathbed confession causes the family legend to unravel.  Shadowlandstages.org

Winter Walk

December 3 in Hudson

Hudson’s favorite street festival turns 26 this year and it’s bigger than ever. Take a stroll down Warren Street and experience performances, art installations, familyfriendly attractions, local food and drinks, holiday shopping, fireworks and festive cheer. Plus: Twinkling lights, decorated shops, horse-drawn wagons, carolers, and fireworks.

Hudsonhall.org

Sinterklaas

December 3 in Rhinebeck

It’s an old Dutch tradition that’s become a beloved tradition in Rhinebeck as well: the annual Sinterklaas Festival, produced by celebration artist Jeanne Fleming. In honor of its rich Dutch heritage on the first Saturday of each December the town hosts this magical holiday event, which recreates many of the customs brought to the area by settlers from the Netherlands more than 300 years ago. Every year

Rhinebeck residents (and thousands of others!) come together for this day-long family celebration, which finds the town center festively decorated with paintings made by local school children and includes live music and street performers, storytelling, animals, craft fairs, magic shows, ornament making, traditional Dutch food and pastries, and a parade.

Sinterklaashudsonvalley.com

Paige Turner: Drag Me to Christmas

December 9 at Revel 32 in Poughkeepsie; December 10 at

Rosendale Theater

New York City’s drag Showbiz Spitfire is back to make your holiday season merry and bright with an evening full of jokes, songs, and yuletide cheer produced by Big Gay Hudson Valley. The New York Times writes: “Paige Turner is the ultimate theater queen and always gets everyone to sing along.” The show features over-the-top song parodies and holiday classics from Mariah Carey, Bing Crosby, and Paige Turner’s own Christmas album.

Revel32.com; Rosendaletheatre.org

Into the Light

December 10 at Rosendale Theater

Into the Light, is a magical, multicultural pageant that has thrilled audiences of all ages, that tells the story of a young girl named Lucia who journeys around the world to find light in the darkest time of the year. Featuring Arm-of-the-Sea Theatre’s giant puppets with The Vanaver Caravan’s holiday songs, dances, and music traditions the performance celebrates many of the world’s traditions for bringing light, joy and beauty into the darkest part of the year. Through dance and music Into the Light honors such holidays as Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Yule, Winter Solstice, Sankta Lucia (Sweden), and Diwali (India).

Vanavercaravan.org

Will Bond plays Ebenezer Scrooge in SITI Company's interpretation of "A Christmas Carol" this month at Bard College's Fisher Center. Photo by Chris Kayden

Unsilent Night

December 16, location TBD in Kingston

Phil Kline’s Unsilent Night returns for its 30th anniversary, hosted by Kevin Muth and Jeff Stark. The event is a moving boombox parade where multiple speakers make one shimmering, seasonal composition. Each participant downloads a track from a website or loads an app onto their phone. Participants will meet up, press play at the same time, then head out and walk a carefully chosen 45-minute route through the streets of Kingston, creating a distinctive mobile sound sculpture that’s different from every listener’s perspective.

Kingston.unsilent.com

“A Christmas Carol”

December 16-18 at the Fisher Center at Bard College Charles Dickens’s tale of the redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge has been around the holiday block a few times, so it’s refreshing to see it getting a reimagining by way of SITI Company at Bard’s Fisher Center this month. The play, which was workshopped here last year, returns for its world premiere in a production co-directed by Anne Bogart and Darron L. West. The ghosts of the past, present, and future will be conjured to speak to society’s immediate need for gratitude, charity, fairness, justice, and equity in this timely production.

Fishercenter.bard.edu

“An Act of God”

Through December 23 at Denizen Theater

This play is adapted from David Javerbaum’s The Last Testament: A Memoir by God. If Javerbaum is familiar to you, let’s leave it at this: He’s won 13 Emmy Award, mostly as a writer on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” “An Act of God” is a 90-minute comedy where God and his angels reveal the mysteries of the Bible and answer some of the deepest questions that have plagued mankind since Creation. Scott Alan Evans directs this production with Karl Kenzler, David Keohane, and Christa Rapaglia at New Paltz’s black box theater.

Denizentheatre.com

NightWood

Through January 1 at The Mount For NightWood, creator Chris Bocchiaro wanted to recreate the feeling of walking through woods on a winter’s night. The result is an innovative and immersive sound and light experience set against the backdrop of Edith Wharton’s historic home in Lenox, Massachusetts. Wander the illuminated three-quarter-mile route through the woods and gardens for an otherworldly experience that evokes wonder and awakens the imagination, blending theater, art, and the outdoors.

Edithwharton.org

“Peace, Love, and Lights”

Through January 1 at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts Enjoy this drive-through holiday winter lights show on the Bethel Woods grounds from the comfort of your car. Follow the magical glow through themed area like Candy Cane Lane and Holidays Around the World. Bethelwoodscenter org

Lumagica Winter Garden

Through January 3 at Stone Ridge Orchard

A nondenominational holiday event, Lumagica transforms an apple orchard into a spectacular light show. World-renowned for its light sculptures throughout Europe, Lumagica is bringing its immersive experience to Stone Ridge Orchard. The illuminated walking tour features a half-mile trail strung with over 500,000 lights—many in the shape of fantastical animals—that promise to transport guests into an entirely different world in six themed areas: the Deep Freeze, Tales of Time, the Tree of Life, Colorful Trees, Nature by the Pond, and the Shooting Stars. Guests will wander through a “magical garden” that has been caught in a deep freeze and enlisted to help Zinnia, a colorful hummingbird, in restoring color to the garden. Onsite fire pits and food and beverages will also be available to round out the evening.

Stoneridgeorchard.com

Sinterklaas will draw thousands to Rhinebeck on December 3 to celebrate the new expression of an old Dutch holiday tradition.

My Uncle's Last Swim, Marcus Xavier Chormicle, 2019, part of the Center for Photography at Woodstock exhibition "Parallel Lives: Photography, Identity, and Belonging."

Opposite: Jukebox Cathedral, Suzanne Kiggins, gouache and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 inches, part of a solo exhibition at Carol Chen Gallery.

510 WARREN STREET GALLERY

510 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“Spirits & Flowers.” Paintings by Jane Craker. December 2-January 1.

1053 MAIN STREET GALLERY

1053 STREET, FLEISCHMANNS

“Echo Chambers.” Work by David Young and Susan Yelavich. Through January 7.

THE ALDRICH CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM

258 MAIN STREET, RIDGEFIELD, CT

“52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone.” The exhibition celebrates the fifty-first anniversary of the historic exhibition “Twenty Six Contemporary Women Artists,” curated by Lucy R. Lippard and presented at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in 1971. “52 Artists” will showcase work by the artists included in the original 1971 exhibition, alongside a new roster of 26 female identifying or nonbinary emerging artists that were born in or after 1980, tracking the evolution of feminist art practices over the past five decades. Through January 8.

ANDES ACADEMY OF ART

506 MAIN STREET, ANDES

“Small Works 2022.” Paintings, works on paper, sculpture, and more. Through December 10.

ART GALLERY 71

71 EAST MARKET STREET #5, RHINEBECK

Mary Belliveau.” Paintings. Through December 4. “Vera Kaplan: Paintings.” Through December 6.

ART OMI

1405 COUNTY ROUTE 22, GHENT

“Allana Clarke: A Particular Fantasy.” Clarke is a Trinidadian-American artist known for using materials such as sugar, cocoa butter, and hairbonding glue to construct works that confront histories of colonialism and Western standards of beauty. Through December 10.

ARTPORT KINGSTON

108 E STRAND ST, KINGSTON

“The Pleasure of Gift Giving.” Seasonal art and craft marketplace. Through December 31.

ART SALES AND RESEARCH CLINTON CORNERS

“Holiday.” Painting, sculpture, and jewelry by Fabienne Lasserre, Kathryn Lynch, Anne Brown, John Tweddle, Corinne Robbins, Harold Granucci, Daisy Craddock, and Caitlin Lightfoot. Through December 30.

ARTS SOCIETY OF KINGSTON 97 BROADWAY, KINGSTON

“Under 30.” Work by artists under th age of 30. December 3-24.

ATHENS CULTURAL CENTER 24 SECOND STREET, ATHENS

“One Foot Square.” Small works by member artists. Through December 18.

BAU GALLERY (BEACON ARTIST UNION)

506 MAIN STREET, BEACON “Boomerang.” Artwork by Pamela Vlahakis. Through December 4. “Combinants and Recombinants.” Sculptures and prints by Jebah Baum. Through December 4.

BILL ARNING EXHIBITIONS / HUDSON VALLEY

17 BROAD STREET, KINDERHOOK

“A Light That Swam Like Minnows.” Curated by Aaron Michael Skolnick. Work by Lina Tharsing, Stephen Bron, Stephen Truax, Allison Schulnik, Johnny Defeo, Daniel Heidkamp, and Ellen Siebers. Theough December 18.

CAROL CHEN GALLERY

281 MAIN STREET, GREAT BARRINGTON, MA

“Suzanne Kiggins: Harmonica.” New paintings. Through January 14.

CARRIE HADADAD GALLERY

622 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“Light of Day.” Work by Paul Chojnowski, Jeff Fichera, Robert Goldstrom, Eileen Murphy, Patty Neal, Harry Orlyk, Leigh Palmer, Tony Thompson. December 2-January 22.

THE CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY AT WOODSTOCK

474 BROADWAY, KINGSTON.

“Of Objects and Shadows / De Objetos y Sombras.” Group exhibition of Latino artists living and working upstate, curated by Qiana Mestrich, featuring Genesis Baez, Nydia Blas, William Camargo, Steven Molina Contreras, Zoraida Lopez-Diago, and Qiana Mestrich. Through December 31.

THE

CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY AT TECH CITY

101 ENTERPRISE DRIVE, KINGSTON

“Parallel Lives: Photography, Identity, and Belonging.” Group exhibition curated by Maya Benton. Through December 31.

CMA GALLERY

AQUINAS HALL MOUNT SAINT MARY’S COLLEGE, NEWBURGH

“Transition.” Drawings and animation and video by Philippe Safire. Through January 30.

CREATE COUNCIL ON THE ARTS

398 MAIN STREET, CATSKILL

"Annual Membership Exhibit." Group show. Through December 31.

D’ARCY

SIMPSON ART WORKS

409 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“Translations.” Paintings by Will McLeod. Through December 12.

DASH GALLERY

253 WALL STREET, KINGSTON

"VIP The photography of Rose Hartman." Images from the Studio 54 days and many fashion, art and cinema personalities. Through December 31.

DAVID ROCKEFELLER CREATIVE

ARTS

CENTER GALLERY

200 LAKE ROAD, TARRYTOWN

“Inspired Encounters: Women Artists and the Legacies of Modern Art.” Pairs pieces by a dozen groundbreaking women artists of the postwar period with new commissions of contemporary art presented publicly for the first time. Through March 19.

DAVIS ORTON GALLERY

114 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

"13th Annual Self-Published Photobook Show." Juried by Crista Dix and Karen Davis. Through December 18.

DENIZEN THEATRE

10 MAIN STREET, NEW PALTZ

“What in the World?” Roost Studios group show on theme of social unrest and inequality. Through December 23.

DIA BEACON

3 BEEKMAN STREET, BEACON

“Jack Whitten: The Greek Alphabet Series.” Forty works from Whitten’s Greek alphabet series. Through July 10.

ELIJAH WHEAT SHOWROOM

195 FRONT STREET, NEWBURGH

“Amplifier.” Multimedia works by Marton Nemes. Through January 22, 2023.

FRANCES LEHMAN LOEB ART CENTER

VASSAR COLLEFE, POUGHKEEPSIE

“On the Grid: Ways of Seeing in Print.”

Photographs, prints, artist’s books, and printed sculptures from the Loeb's permanent collection. Through December 22.

FRIDMAN GALLERY

475 MAIN STREET, BEACON

“Victoria Keddie.” Electronic sound and video art. Through December 21.

FRANCES LEHMAN LOEB ART CENTER

VASSAR COLLEFE, POUGHKEEPSIE

“On the Grid: Ways of Seeing in Print.”

Photographs, prints, artist’s books, and printed sculptures from the Loeb's permanent collection. Through December 22.

FULLER BUILDING 45 PINE GROVE AVENUE, KINGSTON “Unraveling.” Sculptures by Kat Howard and Benedicte Leclere and Jerome Leclere. November 10-December 4.

GALLERY 40

40 CANNON STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE "A Kind of Magic: The Art of Transforming." Group show juried by by Kathleen Laucius. Through January 29.

GARDINER LIBRARY

133 FARMER’S TURNPIKE, GARDINER “Evocative Abstractions.” Paintings by Marcy Elise Bernstein. Through December 31.

GARRISON ART CENTER 23 GARRISON’S LANDING, GARRISON “smallWORKS.” National juried exhibition. December 10-January 15.

“Susan Lisbin: Painting.” December 10-January 15.

GEARY CONTEMPORARY

34 MAIN STREET, MILLERTON

“Lethe-Wards.” A series of cast iron and plaster boats inspired by ancient burial boats used in Egyptian, Anglo-Saxon, and Mapuche societ ies. Through December 18.

GREEN KILL

229 GREENKILL AVENUE, KINGSTON “Vito Desalvo’s World of Music Productions and Literary Works.” Colored pencil drawings. Through December 31.

JANE STREET GALLERY

11 JANE STREET,

KLEINERT/JAMES ARTS CENTER 34 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK “5 by 7 Show.” Twenty-third annual small works show, benefitting the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. December 2-18.

LABSPACE 2642 NY ROUTE 23, HILLSDALE “Holiday.” Group show. December 17-February 19.

LIFEBRIDGE SANCTUARY 333 MOUNTAIN ROAD, ROSENDALE “Impressions of India: Surrendering to the Journey.” Photographs of contemporary India by Mary Anne Erickson. Through January 31.

LIMNER GALLERY 123 WARREN STREET, HUDSON “A Show of Heads.” Work by James Edwards, Pam Golden, Jimmy James Greene, Richard Greene, Michael Manning, William Martin, James Russell May, John Hampshire, Pascal Lee, Rebecca Hope, Alicia Dominic Keenon, Gena Brodie Robbins, Greg McLemore, Yuko Mizobuchi, Andrew Ortiz, Liz Anderson, John Jerard, Donalee Penden Wesley, Carmile S. Zaino, Reid Nicholls, Howard Hao Tran, Brooke Poeppel, Elissa Bromberg, Matt Coglianese, and Jeanette Compton. Through Decemebr 17.

LOCKWOOD GALLERY 747 ROUTE 28, KINGSTON. “Woodstock School of Art Instructors Exhibit.” Group exhibit. Through December 17.

LOCUST GROVE 2683 SOUTH RD (SB), POUGHKEEPSIE

Installation view of "Conflict Assembly" at September in Kinderhook. On the wall: that impetus, that spasm, that leap (HA HA HA HA HA HA), Sara Magenheimer, acrylic, canvas, medium, Epson UltraChrome HD pigment on organza and muslin, thread, 2022

SAUGERTIES

“An Other Music.” Work by Tracey Cockrell. Through December 4.

KATONAH

MUSEUM OF ART

134 JAY STREET, KATONAH

"Tenacity & Resilience: The Art of Jerry Pinkney." Honoring the work of Jerry Pinkney (1939-2021), this exhibit features more than seventy illustrations, dummy books, and work ing drawings from seven children’s books from 1993 to 2020. Through December 16.

KENISE BARNES FINE ART

7 FULLING LANE, KENT, CT

“Radical Chrome.” Work by Mary Judge, Jenny Kemp, Julie Maren, Joanne Mattera, and Audrey Stone. Through January 15.

“Fertile Ground: The Hudson Valley Animal Paintings of Caroline Clowes.” Exhibition of paintings by Caroline Morgan Clowes (18381904), Dutchess County landscape painter. Through December 31.

MAGAZZINO ITALIAN ART 2700 ROUTE 9, COLD SPRING

“Gilardi: Tappeto-Natura”. Piero Gilardi’s Tappeto-Natura (Nature-Carpets). The exhibi tion seeks to recount and illuminate the experi ence of a pioneering artist who, at the height of the 1960s, opened a dialogue between Italy and the United States, and who remains committed to investing in the formation of an international artistic community that embodies the tie between art and life. Curated by Elena Re. Through January 9.

MARK GRUBER GALLERY

NEW PALTZ PLAZA, NEW PALTZ “Holiday Salon Show.” Group show. Through January 14.

MASS MOCA 1040 MASS MOCA WAY, NORTH ADAMS, MA “Marc Swanson: A Memorial to Ice at the Dead Deer Disco.” Installation and sculpture. Through January 1, 2023.

MIKEL HUNTER 533 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“Sensual Ambivalence.” Oil paintings by Terry Rodgers. Through December 24.

MONUMENT 394 HASBROUCK AVENUE, KINGSTON “Crisscrossed Air.” Handmade quilted textiles and tapestries by Sarah Nsikak. December 9-January 13.

MOTHER GALLERY 1154 NORTH AVENUE, BEACON

“Belief in a Disenchanted World.” Work by Kadar Brock and Lee Hunter. Through December 10.

MOTHER-IN-LAW’S 140 CHURCH AVENUE, GERMANTOWN “Thread of Illusion.” Immersive installation with sculptural installations by Sascha Mallon and Kathy Greenwood. Through January 1.

OLANA STATE HISTORIC SITE

5720 ROUTE 9G, HUDSON

“Chasing Icebergs: Art and a Disappearing Landscape.” Frederic Church’s iceberg sketches from his 1859 voyage to the Arctic. Through March 26.

OLIVE FREE LIBRARY

4033 ROUTE 28A, WEST SHOKAN. “Pandemonium.” Small works show curated by Elaine Ralston and Nathalie Andrews. Through January 7.

PAMELA SALISBURY GALLERY 362 1/2 WARREN STREET, HUDSON “Disquiet.” Safety pin sculptures by Tamiko Kuwata and photographic works by Robert Palumbo. Through January 8, 2023.

“Photography and Sculpture.” Work by Carleen Sheehan, Chris Bartlett, and Pamela Sunday. Through January 8.

“Still in Bloom.” Sculpture by Jon Isherwood. Through April 23.

“All Small.” Small-scale works by Leonard Baby, Scott Brodie, Silas Borsos, Valerie Hammond, Lisa Hoke, Diana Horowitz, Jill Moser, Amy Pleasant, Margaret Saliske, Richard Aja, Pete Schulte, and Don Voisine. December 3-January 8.

SAMUEL DORSKY MUSEUM OF ART

1 HAWK DRIVE, SUNY NEW PALTZ

“Benjamin Wigfall & Communications Village.” Through December 11.

"For Context: Prints from the Dorsky Collection." Through December 11.

SEPTEMBER

4 HUDSON STREET, KINDERHOOK

"Conflict Assembly." Work by A.K. Burns, Liz Magic Laser, Sara Magenheimer, Sahra Motalebi, Em Rooney, Carrie Schneider, Kianja Strobert, and Sam Vernon Organized by Olga Dekalo and Kristen Dodge.Through December 18.

SOHN FINE ART

69 CHURCH STREET, LENOX, MA

“Oceans & Odysseys.” Oceanic photographs by Rachael Talibart. Through February 6.

SPENCERTOWN ACADEMY ARTS CENTER

790 ROUTE 203, SPENCERTOWN

“Crafts: Art by Any Other Name.” Work by ceramicist JoAnn Axford, painter Shaari Horowitz, woodworker Alistair Jones, quilter Katharina Litch man, basket maker Tina Puckett, and designer/ metalsmith Munya Avigail Upin. Curated by Barbara Lax Kranz. Through December 18.

SUSAN ELEY FINE ART

433 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“Shoots and Stars.” Work by Sarah Lutz and Rachelle Krieger. Through December 31.

TANJA GRUNNERT SALON

21 PROSPECT AVENUE, HUDSON

“Significant Otherness.” An interspecies collabo ration by Cat Tyc and Agnes Tyc. Through December 18.

TIME AND SPACE LIMITED

434 COLUMBIA STREET, HUDSON

“Cuba: Unexpected Views.” Cuban street photography by Adam Weissberg. Through December 18.

THOMPSON GIROUX GALLERY

11 INTERLAKEN ROAD, LAKEVILLE, CT

“Ryan Frank: Cross Cut.” A collaborative installation focused on ecology, time, and place. Through December 10.

TREMAINE ART GALLERY AT THE HOTCHKISS SCHOOL

57 MAIN STREET, CHATHAM

“Part of the Story.” Work by Peter Acheson, Jim Bergesen, Wendy P. Carroll, Benigna Chilla, BlackTugBoat, John Cleater, Wayne Coe, Frank Curran, Margot Curran, Tom Curran, Mary Anne Davis, Dan Devine, Grigori Fateyev, Jean Feinberg, Jeanette Fintz, Mary Flinn, Marianne Gagnier, Barry Gerson, Marie-Claude Giroux, Spencer Hall, Kate Hamilton, John Hampshire, Ellsworth Kelly, Mark LaRiviere, Monica Miller Link, Mona Mark, Donna Moylan, Hideyo Okamura, Sara Farrell Okamura, Kingsley Parker, Dana Piazza, Catherine Ramey, Asya Reznikov, Jacque line Rogers, Christie Scheele, Carleen Sheehan, Jack Shear, Kim Sloane, D. Jack Solomon, Lawre Stone, Beth Thielen, William Thompson, Robin Whiteman, Gerald Wolfe, and Joseph Yetto.

Through December 17.

CITY OF TROY

VARIOUS LOCATIONS IN TROY

"Troy Glow." Paintings by Thomas Sarrantonio. Decmeber 4-January 9.

UNISON ARTS & LEARNING CENTER

68 MOUNTAIN REST RD, NEW PALTZ

"Field Work." Public art light festival.

Through December 4.

WOODSTOCK ARTISTS ASSOCIATION AND MUSEUM

28

TINKER

STREET, WOODSTOCK

“Richard Segalman: Contemporary American Im pressionist.” Spans Segalman’s six-decade career and features 24 works of art including oil paintings, watercolors, pastels, drawings, and monotypes.

Through December 31.

“Eric Banks: Reclamations and Reflection.” Paint ings and sculptural works from Banks’s 40-year career. Juried by Henry Klimowicz. Through December 31.

“Gratitude.” Group show. Through Decmber 31.

Haystack, Tamiko Kawata, Steel safety pins, 25.5 x 12 x 8.5 inches, 2022, part of the exhibition "Disquiet" with Robert Palumbo at Pamela Salisbury Gallery in Hudson through January 8.

Horoscopes

By Lorelai Kude

Requiem for a Dream, or a Hallelujah Chorus?

The celestial portents heralding societal change have spoken; the pundits have prophesied, and the heady mix of delusion and denial has been quaffed. The Gotterdammerung of Enlightenment Liberalism is upon us. The “marketplace of ideas” was supposed to be where the highest and best rose to the top; instead, we see the ascendancy of the vilest and very worst. But take heart, friends. We’re about to enter a whole new and highly energizing phase with the ingress of Jupiter, the planet of societal consciousness, religious and philosophical systems, beliefs, and perceptions, into Mars-ruled Aries on December 20. Neptune, still in Pisces (where he met Jupiter earlier this year and together put an end to anyone’s ability to cut through the mass delusion infecting our world), stations direct on December 3. While we’ve been intoning a requiem for a dream, what we’ll be singing soon is a hallelujah chorus. But not before a fight.

Mars continues his retrograde through Gemini this month, opposing Venus December 1 and the Sun December 8. Like waiting out a tornado in a storm cellar, it’s important to make good use of your time during this chaotic period. The Full Moon in Gemini December 7 has amends to make; be proactive emotionally with everyone to whom you owe a debt of gratitude.

The Sun enters Capricorn and squares Jupiter at the Winter Solstice, December 21. The longest night reveals creative genius: The trine of Venus and Uranus December 22 right before the New Moon in Capricorn December 23 brings pie-inthe-sky down to the kitchen table and puts it on your plate.

Mercury stations retrograde in Capricorn before conjuncting Venus December 29. Practical considerations are paramount to the success of any resistance. As we enter 2023 together, we know this: Whether requiem or hallelujah, harmony is power.

ARIES (March 20–April 19)

You’ve developed your sea legs even though Planetary ruler Mars still dizzies in retrograde Gemini through mid-January. The Sun trines Chiron in Aries December 4; a rare and wonderful opportunity for healing hearts and transcending residual feelings of victimhood. Sun opposite Retrograde Mars in Gemini December 14 challenges unexamined assumptions to a duel only truth can win. Jupiter re-enters Aries December 20, where he’ll expand your courage, risk-taking, and desire for a fresh start through mid-May. Set your intentions at the First Quarter Moon in Aries December 29; when you wish upon a star your dreams will likely come true.

TAURUS

(April 19–May 20)

Establishing your new normal means taking personal responsibility for what you value. Venus opposes Retrograde Mars and sextiles Saturn on December 1, followed by a square to Neptune December 4. If you don’t examine and own your choices, they’re not really yours. Venus enters Capricorn and squares Jupiter December 9; identifying “the better things in life” is your work through December 22’s trine of Venus to Uranus. Step into your own unique vision of what you’re all about and declare it proudly. Retrograde Mercury conjuncts Venus and Venus sextiles Neptune December 20. End the year with a big bang!

GEMINI (May 20–June 21)

With Mars in Retrograde Gemini through mid-January you long for respite from multiple contradictory urges. Mercury squares Neptune December 1, making it even more difficult to discern distortion from reality. Mercury squares Jupiter and enters Capricorn December 6, gathering steam before the Full Moon in Gemini December 7. All-important life decisions seem overwhelming; it’s okay to delay them until you’re standing on firmer ground, which won’t be until late January. Mercury stations retrograde in Capricorn and conjuncts Venus December 29. Do you want to renegotiate a sharing arrangement with an intimate partner? Now is the time to make a deal.

CANCER (June 21–July 22)

You may surprise yourself with decisions made at the Full Moon in Gemini December 7. These come from a deeply subconscious urge for personal freedom which you likely suppress out of a sense of obligation. Analyze those commitments closely at the Last Quarter Moon in Virgo December 16—do they really belong to you, or did you take them on out of a sense of overdeveloped responsibility? The New Moon Capricorn, your solar opposite, shines brightly on practical and passionate partnerships December 23. You’re not in this alone! The First Quarter Moon in Aries December 29 supports courageous choices.

LEO (July 22–August 23)

Your inner child’s sense of playfulness is supported by the Sun in Sagittarius through December 20. The Sun opposite both the Full Moon in Gemini and retrograde Mars December 7-8 encourages you to risk imperfection by trying something new! The risk/reward ratio is truly on your side December 12 at the Sun’s sextile to Saturn. Verify any Divine Revelations for actual sustainable reality December 14 when the Sun squares Neptune. The Sun enters Capricorn at the Winter Solstice December 21, with Sun square Jupiter. Realize you’re on the cusp of a changing epoch and find a toehold before the deluge.

VIRGO (August 23–September 23)

Mercury squares Neptune December 1, and because you care deeply about accuracy, you’re not going to believe it’s true until you’ve verified it. Mercury squares Jupiter and enters Capricorn December 6, supporting feelings of security and belonging. The Last Quarter Moon in Virgo December 16 may put to rest nagging, double-minded self-doubts you’ve struggled with for so long, but only if you let the light of new and revelatory self-realizations regarding your inherent uniqueness invade your fear centers when Mercury trines Uranus December 17. Mercury stations retrograde and conjuncts Venus December 29; negotiations over love and money are not over!

LIBRA (September 23–October 23)

The opposition of Venus to Retrograde Mars in Gemini and sextile to Saturn on December 1 brings you a huge step closer to maturely acknowledging your needs without shame or artifice. Though you have a secret horror of the not-so-pretty parts of hard, cold reality, the square of Venus to Neptune December 4 allows you to see beauty in otherwise bleak circumstances.

Practicality presides over passion when Venus enters Capricorn and squares Jupiter December 9; you’re looking for a life-partner, not a drive-by encounter. Don’t compromise your uniqueness for the sake of harmony when Venus trines Uranus December 22.

SCORPIO (October 23–November 22)

This month go inside, nurture yourself with deep rest, and trust the universe has your best interests in mind. December 19-20 are back-toback powerful days for you. The Moon in Scorpio December 19-20 enhances the impact of Jupiter’s entrance into Mars-ruled Aries on December 20. This will stimulate your mind-body connection, your focus on the healing arts, and empower your intentionality on building up your health. A new diet/ exercise regime nurturing your immune system is what you need through mid-May. The Sun enters Capricorn at the Winter Solstice December 21, encouraging you to plumb your immediate environment for undervalued treasures.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22–December 22)

It’s payoff time with the Sun in Sagittarius through December 20. The end of feeling stuck is in sight! Healthy upheaval turns toxic energy on its head when Mercury squares Jupiter December 6. Truthtelling means you can never go back and that’s the best possible outcome. The Sun in Sagittarius opposite Full Moon in Gemini December 7 displays the panoply of your prodigious efforts in a new light. Venus squares Jupiter December 9, unleashing a creative torrent. Jupiter enters Aries December 20 and the Sun squares Jupiter December 21. The next five months you’ll be moving full steam ahead.

CAPRICORN (December 22–January 20)

Cosmic support is yours this month, with Venus sextiling Saturn December 1 and the Sun/Saturn sextile December 12. You’re transitioning from one phase of life into the next, with important business to settle in the old before moving on to the new. Mercury and Venus enter Capricorn December 6–9; all your ducks are in a proverbial row. No more cautious hesitation; you’ve weighed the consequences, and calculated the cost. Finish resolving the past and start with a clean slate when the Sun enters Capricorn at the Winter Solstice December 21, followed by the New Moon in Capricorn December 23.

AQUARIUS (January 20–February 19)

Saturn has only a bit over three months left in his journey through Aquarius which began in December 2020. The lessons learned from the transit of your classical planetary ruler through your own sun sign are invaluable to the maturation process. Internalize them by externalizing the wisdom gained in some creative way when Venus sextiles Saturn December 1. You’ll demonstrate how far you’ve come when the Sun sextiles Saturn December 12. Genius shines when Mercury trines Uranus December 17; you’re recognized for your unique artistry when Venus trines Uranus December 22. You’ve built a foundation of originality: Treasure it!

PISCES (February 20–March 19)

Mercury squares Neptune December 1 before Neptune stations direct in Pisces December 3. This feels slightly whiplash-like, especially when Venus squares Neptune December 4. It’s a Mutable Sign Mashup: The more flexible you are, the less likely to be caught in some sort of pretzel logic you’ll have to be a slippery fish to escape. Distortion levels are so high right now! Even those who think they know the truth are looking at their own biases in the mirror when the Sun squares Neptune December 14. Mercury and Venus sextile Neptune December 24 and 28; structured dreams have wings, too.

Ad Index

1053 Main Street Gallery 66

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Athens Fine Art Services 68

Bard College at Simon’s Rock 25

Barner Books 37

Beacon Natural Market 18

Berkshire Food Co-op 19

Bill Cooke & Co 34

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Bistro To Go 19

Body Be Well Pilates 48

Boulevard Wine & Spirits 35

Bridge Arts and Education 68

Cabinet Designers, Inc 26

Canna Provisions 2

Carrie Haddad Gallery 66

Catskill Art Supply 32

Catskill Farms 10

Center for Photography at Woodstock 11

Chickadee Studio and Supply 34

Chronogrammies 36

City Winery 17

Colony Woodstock 12

Columbia Memorial Health 8

Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster Co. 12

Crystal Connection 32

Dia Beacon 66

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Earth Angels Veterinary Hospital 12

Garrison Art Center 66

Glenn’s Wood Sheds 22

Graceland Tattoo 33

Green Cottage 28

H Houst & Son 28

Hamilton & Adams 30

Hawthorne Valley Association 25

Hemp & Humanity 34

Herrington’s 26

Holistic Natural Medicine: Integrative Healing Arts 40

Hudson Brewing Company 17

Hudson Clothier 37

Hudson Design Architecture & Construction Management 26

Hudson Roastery 18

Hudson Valley Forestry 22

Hudson Valley Goldsmith 31

Hudson Valley Healing Center 77

Hudson Valley Hospice 40

Hummingbird Jewelers 11, 30

Jack’s Meats & Deli 18

Jacobowitz & Gubits 76

John A Alvarez and Sons 28

Keap 31

Kenise Barnes Fine Art 66

Larson Architecture Works 26

Leigh Kelley Skin Studio 32

Malcarne Contracting 1

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MOD.VIN 37

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Mother Earth’s Storehouse 19

Mountain Laurel Waldorf School 25

N & S Supply 28

Newhard’s 35

Old Souls 33

Orvis Sandanona Company 34

Pamela’s on the Hudson 19

Pegasus Footwear 31

Peter Aaron 77

Pinkwater Gallery 35

Red Mannequin 34

Resilient Self Therapy 40

Ridgeline Realty 28

Runa Bistro 18

Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art 62

Sawyer Motors 8

Schneider’s Jewelers, Inc. 37

Shook Insurance Agency, LLC 48

Studio 89 34

Studio SFW 28

Sullivan Catskills 7

Sunflower Natural Food Market 12

Sunshine Smiles 40

Third Eye Associates Ltd. 77

Tuthilltown Spirits, LLC 17

Ulster County Habitat for Humanity 76

Unison Arts Center 66

Upstate Films 77

Vassar College 62

WAAM - Woodstock Artists Association & Museum 62

Warren Kitchen & Cutlery 9

WDST 100.1 Radio Woodstock 76

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Win Morrison Realty 4

WMCHealth inside back cover

Woodstock Wine & Liquors 34

Xthetic MD 40

YMCA of Kingston and Ulster County 40

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Controlling the Narrative

There is a longstanding tradition for artists and cultural organizations to sell or donate their archives to an established research institution so that future scholars and artists can access the material. Jackson Pollock’s papers are at the Smithsonian. Carolee Schneemann’s archives are split between Stanford University and the Getty Museum. Some artists, like Georgia O’Keefe and Edward Hopper, have museums dedicated to their work and correspondence, but these are the exception to the rule. It is especially rare for an arts organization to create and maintain their own archive.

But this is what Women’s Studio Workshop, one of the largest publishers of artists’ books in North America. is setting out to do.

With backing from a $180,000 grant from the Hauser & Worth Institute, the Rosendale-based feminist arts collective will create a full-time archivist position to activate the organization’s collections, which comprise artist books, artist files, institutional records, a photograph collection, and a silkscreen poster collection.

“Typically, what organizations like ours do is give their institutional archives to a major library,” says Lauren Walling, executive director of Women’s Studio Workshop. “When you place your record in a larger institution, that gives your work greater legitimacy.”

Founded in 1974, the organization has always charted its own course and continues to be a critical hub for radical thought in the arts. We’ve always served underrepresented people our entire history,” says Walling. “We don’t need the recognition of institutions by putting our history in someone else’s hands. We want ownership of our own records and ownership of our own story.”

That costs money, however, and the grant will allow for a three-year investment of someone working full-time as an archivist and special collections manger to create a place where artists and scholars can access and utilize Women’s Studio Workshop’s nearly 50 years of archives onsite at their Rosendale campus. “We’re going to control the narrative,” says Walling.

—Brian K. Mahoney

A promotional poster for Women's Studio Workshop from 1976.