Chronogram November 2022

The Challenge, Dick and Bingo, Caroline Clowes, oil on canvas, 16½" x 20¾", circa 1859. Hart Hubbard Collection of the Dutchess County Historical Society.

An exhibition of paintings by Caroline Clowes, "Fertile Ground," opens this month at Locust Grove in Poughkeepsie.

GUIDE, PAGE 65

ARTS

60 Music

Album reviews of No Mistakes by Otto Kentrol featuring Faceless; Manifesto of Henryisms (Community Music, Vol. 3) by Steven Bernstein and the Hot 9; and Robin the Hammer by Robin the Hammer. Plus listening recommendations from Ted Lawrence of Stockade Guitars.

61 Books

Peter Aaron reviews Levon Helm: Rock, Roll, & Ramble, a behind-the-scenes look at Helm’s legendary Midnight Rambles by longtime music scribe John Barry. Plus short reviews of House of the Seven Heavens by Mark Morganstern; Faire Mount by Ed Breslin; Cash on Cash: Interviews and Encounters with Johnny Cash by Robert Burke Warren; Elverhoj: The Arts and crafts Colony at Milton-on-Hudson by Williams Roads and Leslie Melvin; and Waking Up to the Dark by Clark Strand.

62 Poetry

Poems by Carol Bergman, Leah S. Brickley, B. Moore Columbo, Donny Kass, Lisa Kosan, Isabella Kosmacher, Ted Millar, Emily Murname, Cliff Saunders, J. R. Solonche, Cole Sletten, Matthew J. Spireng, and Jennifer Wise. Edited by Phillip X Levine.

Orpheum

at Upstate

in Saugerties.

exhibition of paintings by 19th-century landscape

Caroline Clowes at Locust Grove.

screening of Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros, about the revered composer and musician.

“Inspired Encounters” is the

Rockefeller Creative Arts

at the

month: Soccer Mommy at Mass MoCA

Rubblebucket at Bearsville

Peripheral Natural Wine Festival,

Farm & Flea, Beacon Bonfire, and

Inspired as much by the craggy coasts of her native England as she is by Greek mythology, Rachael Talibart conjures photographic magic from windswept waves. An exhibition of Talibart’s photographs, “Oceans & Odysseys,” is on view through February 6 at Sohn Fine Art in Lenox, Massachusetts.

The daughter of an avid yachtsman, Talibart spent weekends and school holidays at sea as a child. She would make up stories about the waves, “seeing mountainous landscapes or strange creatures in the surf,” she says.

The cover image, Sedna, is from her Sirens series, which feature monstrous storm waves named after mythological beings. “Connecting these great waves to myths seemed natural to me,” Talibart says. “Myths are the stories civilizations tell themselves to explain the mysteries of the unknown, and there aren’t many things more mysterious and unknown than the ocean.”

Researching myths is part of the pleasure of the “Sirens” project for Talibart, and the story of Sedna, an Inuit sea goddess, is particularly resonant for her. “Caught at sea during a storm,

she clings to the boat, but her father sacrifices her to save himself by cutting off her fingers,” Talibart says. “The severed digits fall to the seafloor and become the creatures of the ocean. Sedna is mostly benevolent but sometimes becomes angry if humans break taboos. Then her hair becomes tangled, trapping the creatures of the sea on which the Inuits depend. A shaman must dive to the bottom of the ocean to comb Sedna’s hair and release the creatures. Sedna is both respected and feared and helps maintain balance in the world.”

When she’s ready to shoot, Talibart heads to the coast even if the weather is terrible.

“Working in less-than-ideal conditions forces me to dig more deeply, to be more creative. I believe creativity thrives on limitations,” she says. Talibart typically spends hours lying on the beach in search of the ideal image. She uses fast shutter speeds to capture the violence and drama of waves.

Doing most of the work on location by using on-camera filters, rather than relying on making changes in post-production, she edits using software to adjust tone and contrast. She explains

her process, “Although I previsualise, I try not to be too prescriptive when working at the coast. If I have a particular project on the go, but the conditions on the day don’t suit it, I will adapt and improvise. That flexible approach keeps me motivated and creative. Knowing the tides in advance is really important, and I will adapt my choice of beach accordingly.”

Talibart’s photographs are printed as giclee in limited editions. Sedna is one of the most popular of her prints, and there is just one copy of it left on the market, which is included in the exhibition at Sohn Fine Art. “Once it’s gone, that will be it, no more prints of Sedna will ever be made,” she says. “A strange feeling, but I am very happy that people have taken her to their hearts.”

Print size depends on the photograph. “Most of my “Sirens” series tend to be popular in larger sizes. I am passionate about print and teach printing to other photographers,” Talibart says. “There really is nothing quite like seeing a photograph beautifully printed on a luxurious fine art paper. Print brings photographs to life.”

—Mike Cobb

Sedna

RACHAEL TALIBART Photograph

Loki, a photograph by Rachael Talibart from the “Sirens” series.

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Starting November 25th.

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Plus selected special items in the store.

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Our staff is here to help you choose the best for your needs and budget. That’s why we’re the Hudson Valley’s most popular Kitchen Store. Come by, and see the difference!

6934

by Jason Stern

There was a time you let me know What’s really going on below But now you never show it to me, do you?

—Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”

When my children were little I read them a book called Young Zeus (G. Brian Karas, 2010), an illustrated recapitulation of the early life of the mythical Zeus. The book follows his story until he, together with his siblings, overcome their father Kronos and the other Titans, to rule the world from their home on Mount Olympus.

The chief thing that struck me about the story was the relationship with the monsters the Olympians’ fathers and uncles had imprisoned in the underworld of Tartarus. These were their cousins the Cyclopes, “Circleeyes,” and Hecatoncheires, “Hundred-Handed Ones” guarded by the monster Kampe, “silkworm” or “caterpillar.” Zeus learns that the battle with the Titans can only be won with the help of these underworld creatures, so he works to free them.

In the illustrated version, Zeus enters Tartarus armed with a special kind of honey to relax the fabulous jailoress. Having fed her the honey, she sleeps and he frees the underworld creatures, extracting their promise that they will assist him in the battle with the Titans. The Cyclopes and Hundred Handers are amenable, as it was the Titans who had first imprisoned them.

The writer Joseph Campbell taught that ancient myths are true in their allegorical descriptions of the features and landscape of the human inner life. He invited readers to see every aspect of the stories, not as narratives involving external events or characters, but as precise descriptions of the inner world. He included religious texts in this category with the understanding that ancient myths are vestigial scripture and sources of worldview for societies of the past.

As I read about Zeus and the underworld creatures to my children with Joseph Campbell’s guidance in view, I felt a real importance in the story. It seemed to contain some instruction or teaching in a form meant to elude the analysis of the mind and speak directly to a deeper, unconscious part of my psyche. The story suggested to me a means of reconciling with the powerful impulses buried in the latent and instinctive parts of our nature.

I intuited that the underworld creatures relate to the powerful instinctive drives for survival. These include drives for health, safety, and the accumulation of resources; the drive for social connection and maintaining reliable relationships; and the sexual drive which is not only for physical sex but also for “pushing the envelope” in myriad ways. Albeit unconsciously, these drives make our decisions and motivate our actions.

When these instinctive impulses are unconscious, relegated to the underworld, their manifestation is furtive, compulsive, addictive, shrouded in a fog of urgency and denial. Consciousness of their operation and power is absent.

The denial of instinctive needs may be at the root of the diseased life of human beings in the present epoch. We are driven to diverse prophylactics against imagined threats out of fear of discomfort or even survival. We are starved for meaningful connections and seek them in conditions removed from physical, atmospheric human contact. Sex becomes fetishized or a misguided means of feeling power or identity. All of these are poor translations of the needs and satisfactions available for experience within the body.

Conscious and inhabited, the drives become the power plant of manifestation in the direction of a heart’s desire. Bringing the instinctive drives to consciousness is the liberation of the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires from imprisonment in the underworld. Freed, they may come to our aid in unseating the ego-mind from its tyrannical seat of power.

Zeus’s approach to the terrible Kampe is instructive. He feeds and satisfies her so that she is able to relax. I see in this an approach to working with the liberation of latent and instinctive sources of power in the psyche. We are invited to approach our unconscious parts with offers of satisfaction, intentionally providing what this deep part of our nature truly needs.

We may find ways to content the body’s appetite for nourishment, for sex and creative work, and for social connection. In this way, the satisfaction of the instincts becomes conscious, welcomed to unabashedly participate in life. Herein we may liberate some attention from striving to satisfy starved and imprisoned instincts, and consider aims worth having.

A

Carol

Created by SITI Company

by Anne Bogart ’74 and Darron L West Commissioned by the Fisher Center at Bard

“The brilliance of SITI’s

comes from the way the company enlists the audience’s imagination to help tell the tale.”—Columbus Dispatch

A Christmas Carol photo by Chris Kayden

Pareidolia is the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern—like seeing the face of Jesus in your toast. The term comes from the Greek words “para,” meaning beside or beyond, and eidolon, meaning form or image. Once thought of as a symptom of psychosis, pareidolia is now recognized as a normal human tendency.

In his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan theorized that pareidolia stems from an evolutionary need to quickly recognize faces. “As soon as the infant can see, it recognizes faces, and we now know that this skill is hardwired in our brains,” Sagan writes. “Those infants who a million years ago were unable to recognize a face smiled back less, were less likely to win the hearts of their parents, and less likely to prosper.” To Sagan, the fact that we see faces in rocks and clouds and bowls of spaghetti is just an anthropomorphizing tick we developed along our evolutionary path.

(Intriguingly, face-recognition software is also prone to pareidolia, with computers sometimes seeing faces where none exist. Instead of evolution, it is the algorithm and training data that they are programmed with that’s the cause.)

Pareidolia is new to me (the term, not the experience; I once saw the face of Margaret Thatcher in a whorl of dog fur). I was turned on to it by our writer, Mike Cobb, who used it in reference to the work of photographer Rachael Talibart. She shoots seascapes that seem populated with all manner of creatures, both human and mythological, and she acknowledges a propensity for pareidolia. “I definitely have that tendency!” Tablibart told Cobb. “Pareidolia is a sign of our imagination at work and enriches our experience of the world.” Sedna, Talibart’s photograph of a wave, appears on the cover this month (On the Cover, page 6).

Learning about pareidolia sent me down a delightful rabbit hole; one of the pleasures of editing this magazine is the never-ending journey of discovery it takes me on, even 28 years later. (This is my 329th issue as editor of Chronogram.) Allow me to share with you some of the other delightful tidbits I picked up this month.

The Sound of One Dog Eating

In contrast to the extra-sensory visual perception of pareidolia, the legacy of Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) is in Deep Listening. The practice, developed by the composer and musician, explores the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary, selective nature of listening. A longtime resident of Kingston, the late experimental music innovator is the subject of a new documentary by Daniel Weintraub, Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros, will be screened this month at the Rosendale Theater (Guide, page 67).

I mused on Oliveros’s Deep Listening practice—which I admittedly know precious little about—while walking Clancy in the park at dusk on the evening before the first frost. I decided to remove my earbuds and stop the relentless aural barrage of podcasts for a few moments. (How many podcasts do you listen to regularly? I must be up to nearly 50 in my regular rotation, and I can hardly

editor’s note

by Brian K. Mahoney

Learning Curve

keep up with them—the audio equivalent of cliche-buttrue pile of unread copies of the New Yorker. According to DemandSage, as of June 2022, there were 2.4 million podcasts globally.)

The park was near-dark and empty, so it was easy to focus on the sounds around me. I heard three distinct layers: the low-toned background hum of traffic on Route 9W; the high-pitched chirping of nocturnal insects; and a middle tone, the susurrus of leaves rippling in the wind. The sounds bled together to make a song of sorts, but I could pick out the separate layers, like different instruments in the orchestra. And then, I detected a new layer: a deep, guttural rustling punctuated with frenetic outbursts of ripping paper. A quite familiar sound: Clancy rooting in discarded food wrappers. I put my earbuds back in.

Grottos

Last month marked the opening of the David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center, located on the campus of the Pocantico Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in Tarrytown. Carl Van Brunt took a trip down to Westchester to see the inaugural exhibition, “Inspired Encounters: Women Artist and the Legacies of Modern Art,” and reports on the show in the Guide (page 68). The new arts center is located in a building designed by William Wells Bosworth in 1908 as an orangerie for John D. Rockefeller, of Standard Oil and richest-person-in-modern-history fame. Like “pareidolia,” I was unfamiliar with the word “orangerie.” Perhaps you are, too. Allow me to enlighten us both. An orangerie is a building dedicated to growing citrus fruit where the trees can be protected in winter. Not just a greenhouse, an orangerie was also a status symbol between the 17th and 19th centuries. (Seems that Rockefeller was late to the game.) The wealthy would often entertain in their orangeries in inclement weather, and the buildings, built in the classical style, would often contain fountains and grottos. Given the recent devastation of the Florida citrus crop by Hurricane Ian, it seems like a missed opportunity not to have kept a couple of fruit trees. Perhaps a grotto as well. And who doesn’t aspire to grotto-level wealth?

Not so Random Harvest

In our June issue, Noah Eckstein reported on the initial planting of legal, adult-use marijuana in New York by a select group of hemp farmers licensed by the state to produce the first crop of weed since the passage of the MRTA. With a conditional adult-use cannabis cultivation license, cultivators were allowed to grow one acre of outdoor flowering canopy or 25,000 square feet in an indoor greenhouse. The cultivators Eckstein spoke to were wary but excited about growing their first marijuana crop.

As I write this, it’s late October and all the farms who were part of the state’s initial cadre of marijuana cultivators have harvested their plants. For this month’s High Society report (page 36), Eckstein circles back around to the same farmers he profiled earlier this year. I don’t want to ruin the suspense about whether the growing season was successful or not, but one grower told us they harvested over 30,000 plants. Which I learned is quite a lot of weed.

Letting the Grapes Decide

AT ACCORDION WINES, MALOU DESPOUX TAKES A HANDS-OFF APPROACH TO HANDMADE WINE

By Marie Doyon Photos by Nora Scarlett

You’ve almost certainly seen the Languedoc-Roussillon region in movies—sprawling green countryside where stone castles rise out of rolling fields of vineyards and wine flows like water at every meal. This cradle of French winemaking would seem the fitting ancestral home for novice winemaker Malou Despoux, founder, vintner, distributor, sales rep, and one-woman owner of Accordion Wines, though she claims it had little to do with her circuitous path to the profession.

“Languedoc-Roussillon is the wine basket of France,” she says. “I’ve always had a lot of exposure to wine. My parents’ house down there is surrounded by vineyards. But I never did anything with wine while I was living in France.”

Her father, a banker, moved the family around a lot when Despoux was a kid—Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, and, finally, New York. After getting a degree in environmental conservation and anthropology from McGill University in 2016, Despoux returned to New York to apply to graduate programs, and, in the meantime, took a part-time job in a wine store. “I just loved it

and found it super interesting,” she says. “The team there was really nice and open, very patient with me, and taught me a lot.” The part-time job turned into a full-time job, and she helped the owners open a natural wine bar.

When she decided to move upstate in 2018, Despoux didn’t waste any time finding work in a wine shop. At Fox & Hound in New Paltz, she continued to nurture her interest and grow her knowledge base, going as far as to take the first of three levels of Wine & Spirit Education Trust certification (WSET). “I realized that was geared more toward hospitality and becoming a sommelier, and I was more interested in the actual production,” she says. She returned to France for a harvest in Bordeaux in 2018 and was hooked. In 2019, she headed to California, in 2020 to Chile, and in 2021 to the Finger Lakes to work the harvest in different regions.

“At that point, I had quite a bit of experience working in wineries,” Despoux says. “Everyone has a different way of doing it. I wanted to learn more about the science behind the process—behind the fermentation and the wine

Accordion Wines founder Malou Despoux and her husband Lowell Deutschlander harvesting grapes in 2021 for the company’s first line of wines.

Opposite, clockwise from top left: Grapes from the 2021 harvest; unlabeled bottles of Tongue in Cheek, a skin-contact pet nat made with Gewurztraminer and Seyval Blanc grapes; stainless steel fermentation tanks in Despoux’s garage-turnedwinery in Accord.

growing, more the theory.” Ever the self-starter, she took an online course from the Universite de Burgundy and earned a baccalaureate in viticulture and winemaking. “I studied that for a year, and then did another harvest in the south of France near where I’m from. I came back to New York and was like, ‘Okay I have a pretty good understanding of how everything works.’ So I decided to launch this small company.” Simple as that.

Despoux launched Accordion Wines in her garage in Accord in 2021, using grapes she helped harvest in the Finger Lakes and the North Fork of Long Island. Her first year, she made six wines, only two of which have been released to date: Toe the Line, a dry, Finger Lakes Riesling, and Tongue in Cheek, an orange pet nat made from Gewurztraminer and Seyval Blanc. To taste the Tongue in Cheek is to recognize the hand of a gifted, if not intuitive, winemaker. It is not the amateur dawdling of a first-timer. The wine features a delightfully buzzy natural effervescence with a darker, honeyed color than a classic, non-contact Gewurtz. It has a nosy, tropical bouquet with bright florals that woo rather than overpower and a tart finish that is its enchanting coup de grace.

A Collaboration with Nature

Accordion Wines are made with lowintervention principles—nothing added, nothing taken away. The grapes are fermented only with the yeast on their skins—a sometimes unpredictable collaboration with nature. “The yeast ends up imparting quite a bit of flavor to the wine,” Despoux says. “Commercial yeasts might have more of a vanilla flavor or banana. You can decide what your wine is going to taste like depending on the yeast you use and, of course, the grape variety. But if you use indigenous yeast, you have no idea what is going to happen. Instead of starting with an idea of what you want your wine to taste like, you let the grapes decide what they are going to end up being. I always thought that was a pretty cool way of doing it.”

Despoux just finished harvesting this year’s grapes, which are in various stages of fermentation. After being crushed, most of the grapes sit on their skins for at least a day to impart color and flavor to the juice. Then she presses them, separating the skin from the juice. “Orange wine” is consumer shorthand for a skin-contact wine (though these wines are by no means always orange in color, and never

“If you use indigenous yeast, you have no idea what is going to happen. Instead of starting with an idea of what you want your wine to taste like, you let the grapes decide what they are going to end up being. I always thought that was a pretty cool way of doing it.”

—Malou Despoux

are they made with actual oranges). “It’s kind of like tea,” Despoux explains. “The longer you leave the skins in the juice, the more tannins the juice will have. That mouth-puckering effect in black tea from the tannins—it’s the exact same with red wines. And the more time you leave it, the more color you’ll get and more flavors. There are a lot of phenolic flavor compounds in the skin.”

The natural approach to winemaking was inevitable for Despoux, who grew up around vineyards producing that way and trained in wine shops as the low-intervention wine movement was taking off. “They feel more alive and a bit more surprising in general,” she says. “I’m not at all only into natural wine. But for me, it makes more sense, environmentally speaking and health-wise, to have grapes with less intervention from the beginning and to let natural yeasts ferment them.”

Given this method of doing things, Despoux doesn’t always know how many wines she’ll end up with. She is waiting for the last grapes of the 2022 harvest to finish their first fermentation before tasting and blending them. She guesses that she’ll probably end up producing four to five wines, the first of which won’t be released

until spring 2023 at the earliest. Given the space constraints of her home facility, Despoux is only making about 500 cases, or 5,000 bottles a year, which she is distributing herself to area restaurants (Sonder and Jar’d Wine Pub) and wine shops, including Bluebird in Accord; Kingston Wine Co. and Ester in Kingston; Sipperley’s Grog Shop and Rose Hill Farm in Red Hook; Grapefruit Wines in Hudson; Copake Wine Works; Wild Common in Andes; Upstream in Livingston Manor; Unfiltered in Woodstock; and Fox & Hound in New Paltz.

“I feel super lucky to be making wine not only where I am making wine but when,” Despoux says. “The consumer now is super interested in natural wines. The palette has expanded to include what we used to consider weird-tasting. People have less of an idea of what wine should taste like. They just taste it and decide if they like it or not.”

You’ll have to decide for yourself. As for this writer, she’s headed out to hunt down the last few cases of Tongue in Cheek.

Accordion Wines does not have a formal tasting room, but Despoux does offer winery tours by appointment. Accordionwines.com

Friends help Despoux to press the grapes, a step that extracts the juice from the grapes and separates it from the skins.

sips & bites

Kitchen at Salt & Fire 124 Partition Street, Saugerties The Saugerties restaurant scene tends to have less turnover than the surrounding towns and cities, so openings are notable. In late August, Salt & Fire celebrated its grand opening in the former Bella Luna location. The business is co-owned by Jorge and Rihanna Rodriguez, who are also the proprietors of the beloved Mexican restaurant and bar Main Street Cafe, and chef Joseph Della Chiesa and his wife Kaitlyn. At Salt & Fire, old world techniques like wood-fired cooking infuse a contemporary, locally sourced menu. Global culinary influences range from Spain (oven-roasted chorizo and peach flatbread) to Korea (koji barbecue pork belly meatballs) to France (cod a la grenobloise), plus raw bar offerings like oysters and shrimp. Inside, you could easily be in a European bistro with exposed brick and beams, wood floors, and white tablecloths, and rooftop seating for the warmer days.  Saltandfireny.com

Upstate Taco

4293 Route 209, Stone Ridge

Since opening on August 15, the roadside Upstate Taco in Stone Ridge has done steady business, turning out melt-in-your mouth carne asada, chicken, and pork tacos, mulas, and a variation on burritos. For an app, start with nopales, grilled cactus paddles that that taste like something between a shishito pepper and a pickled jalapeño ($8); elote, Mexican-style street corn ($5); or a top-loaded tostada, a crispy corn tortilla piled high with chipotle braised chicken, beans, cheese, shredded romaine, crema, and cotija cheese ($6.50). Everything is made in house with local ingredients from the salsas and guac to the aguas frescas (blended fruit drinks). The food comes out hot and fast and the place is cranking during the lunch rush. In the evenings, families file in for a bite after soccer practice and couples cozy up in the corners to sip tajin-rimmed margaritas and craft beer.

Upstatetacony.com

Pima Mediterranean 10 Main Street, Chatham Slow-roasted lamb roast and a whole brick oven fish are two of the familystyle showstoppers that set the tone for the seasonal menu at Pima, the new Mediterranean restaurant in Chatham. Chef and owner Kouri Killmier has created a lineup of dishes and an atmosphere that capture both the regional flavors and the communal vivacity of Mediterranean dining culture, all while celebrating the abundance of locally farmed ingredients. A robust small-plates menu and a raw bar round out a dining experience that turns dinner out into an event.

Pimakitchen.com

Champetre

2938 Church Street, Pine Plains

In the `80s and `90s, chef Michel Jean dished up the food of his homeland at beloved SoHo haunt Provence, where the city’s fashionable set would gather for moules mariniere and martinis. Now, on Pine Plains’s sleepy main drag in a 23-seat boite, Jean is back, dishing out rustic, time-honored French food to delight even the most refined palette at Champetre. The menu is restrained with four apps, four entrees, and five to six desserts, plus rotating fish, pasta, and risotto specials. Indulgent starters like classic garlic escargots ($19) don’t need to innovate to tick every comfort food box you have and restore your faith in eating out. Fall’s menu brings warming classics like bouillabaisse, coq au vin, and duck confit to the table. Split a bottle of French wine and settle in for an old-world evening in rural Dutchess County.

Instagram.com/champetre.ny

Hotel Lilien

6629 Route 23A, Tannersville

In addition to its 18 luxe guest rooms, the newly opened Hotel Lilien’s bar is open to the public with a short menu of elevated snacks and cocktails. If you’re feeling peckish but noncommittal, start with the house-marinated olives or herbed mixed nuts ($7). The whipped butter board ($11) and the cheese and charcuterie platter ($32), with its mix of local cheeses and Italian cured meats, each offer a tasty array for noshing. The crispy fried chicken sandwich is served on a potato bun with homemade slaw and pickles ($14). The wine list at Lilien offers 10 affordable options by the glass or bottle, while the cocktail list shines with innovative but approachable concoctions. Warm up with the Hot Damn, made with pepper-infused tequila, cucumber, lime, firewater bitters, and cilantro. Next spring, sister restaurant Nat’s Mountain House will open in the lot adjacent to Hotel Lilien with restaurateur Natalie Freihon (The Fat Radish, Nat’s on Bank) at the helm. Hotellilien.com

—Marie Doyon

The studio and artist's cabin of Stoneleaf Retreat are surrounded by 22 bucolic acres. Residency founders Helen Toomer and Eric Romano have gradually added art installations to the landscape. Alongside the barn, a colorful mural by Macon Reed was painted during the 2020 lockdown and explores the long-term impact of history’s great pandemics. Lizania Cruz’s Freedom Budget banner is on display through 2022.

The Nature to Nurture Art

Helen Toomer’s Stoneleaf Retreat in Hurley

By Mary Angeles Armstrong Photos by Winona Barton-Ballentine

Helen Toomer insists she’s not an artist.

“Oh no! I wouldn’t call myself that,” says the cofounder of the Stoneleaf Retreat, the Art Mama’s Alliance and the creator of Upstate Art Weekend. “I would say I’m an organizer; I’m an arts supporter—really, though, I just sit at my computer and make things up. I feel like that should be my title.”

I’ve caught Toomer on a late summer afternoon, during a brief window of quiet, at the homestead/residency/gallery space she shares with her husband Eric Romano, their son Harry, and a growing list of women artists who come initially for creative residencies—some with their own children—and very often end up remaining in Toomer ’s heart and on her radar indefinitely. The weekend before, the family ’s bucolic 22 acres was a hub for the third annual Upstate Art Weekend, with 145 galleries, museums, project spaces, and artists participating in a celebration of regional art. In a few days, Toomer and Romano will welcome an extended family of mother, child, and grandmother who will take root in the property ’s three-bedroom guest cabin and utilize the generous studio space carved from a weathered barn to grow their own creative work.

Helen Toomer on the deck of the residence she shares with her husband and their son. Dating from 1770, the original farmhouse has been added to over the centuries. Toomer and Romano hope to leave their own mark on the property. Along with the residency program, Toomer hatched Upstate Art Weekend in 2020.

“I’d ruminated on the idea for years, but after the pandemic, I knew I needed to bring people and art back together again,” she says. “We were suffering from being separated and I realized how lucky we were to be surrounded by such an incredible landscape. I wanted to share that.”

But now all is quiet. Toomer, dressed in a flaming orange top, neon-green shorts, blue sandals, and square white sunglasses, is like a floating Mondrian painting guiding me around the hilly landscape, which is teeming with both nature and art. Just south of the Ashokan Reservoir, the property ’s ancient stone farmhouse, repurposed outbuildings, murals, and outdoor sculptures emerge from the landscape like patches of milkweed and phlox. Although the grounds are momentarily empty, it’s easy to imagine generations of parents and children running back and forth from the rambling farmhouse to the barn or tumbling down the grassy slopes from the garden to the pond and somewhat neglected tennis court.

Originally Lenape and Schaghticoke land, the property ’s three-bedroom farmhouse was built in 1770, and the adjacent cleared lands sustained an orchard, gardens, chickens, and sheep through the 19th century. Toomer and her husband have transformed it into another kind of cultivation operation—this one intent on nourishing creative work. “It’s a place for artists to connect with nature and art to be nurtured,” Toomer says.

The Nature of an Artist

Toomer came from a family that was grounded in the material arts, rather than the ethereal ones. “ We were very working class,” says the native of the south of England. “My mom was a secretary and my dad was a plasterer.” Her parents are decidedly country people and the family spent weekends in the New Forest nearby their home.

“My father would drag us and I went kicking and screaming,” Toomer explains. It wasn’t until a school field trip to London’s Tate Gallery that Toomer discovered her deep love for high art. An encounter with the gallery ’s post-war collection brought her, literally, to her knees. “It stopped me in my tracks,” she remembers. “I felt really, really sad and then astonished that something could make me feel the pain of that era.” She wanted to make work that could affect others as deeply and decided to study fine arts at college in Bournemouth. It made her realize, however, that the actual making of art wasn’t her personal creative path.

First moving to London, then New York, Toomer took on multiple arts-adjacent positions, finding her creative way organizing art and

design fairs and focusing on professional development within the art world. In New York, Toomer crossed paths with Romano, the founder of SPACE Design + Production, which designs, builds, and manages art and design fairs nationwide. The two married and then lived in Brooklyn before they were drawn upstate. “ The area reminded me so much of the woods in the south of England,” says Toomer. “I’d run away from the countryside I’d grown up in and then found myself drawn essentially slap-bang back to nature. It was like my life was coming full circle.”

Rambling Toward a Dream

Toomer and Romano looked for homes in the area for a year and a half before visiting the site that was to become Stoneleaf. “ This house had been on the market for two years and Eric had been trying to get me to see it,” says Toomer. “But it was out of our budget so I refused.” When the price fell to just within range, she agreed to visit an open house. Toomer had long dreamed of starting an artists’ residency, but had never made an actual plan. However, walking around the property that day, she could suddenly see the dream manifesting around her. The

home’s previous owners had converted a former outbuilding into a three-bedroom guest cabin. The barn’s first floor was then a storage garage, but the second floor, built into a descending hillside, was open with a partial greenhouse wall. “ There were two guys in the barn talking about how the space would make a great studio, and I just smiled—I knew it was going to be an artist ’ s residency,” she remembers.

The interior of the farmhouse pulled at her heartstrings as well. “ The big open kitchen reminded me of an English cottage, it felt like the heart of the home,” she says. The original main house, with thick stone walls and a central stone fireplace, was added onto through the 18th and 19th centuries to include additional firstfloor living space and a second-floor suite of bedrooms. “Different parts of the house represent the last three centuries,” says Toomer. “ You can move through time as you move through space.

Also, I loved how nothing was straight.” Driving away past the property ’s old orchard, the name “Stoneleaf” came to her, and Toomer wrote it down. “I knew that ’s what it was going to be,” she says. “It definitely wasn’t the plan, but it felt like fate.”

The family room of Toomer and Romano’s home is filled with art and mementos.

Besides the Devan Shimoyama collage and the Allison Schulnik painting there are a pair of boxing gloves made by Zoe Bruckman. “The gloves were made from my wedding dress, which my husband Eric secretly stole from my closet,” says Toomer. “The day after I received the gift I realized I was pregnant.”

The farmhouse’s original structure includes a large fireplace and low, wood-beamed ceilings. Toomer’s father helped fill in the gaps in the stone walls and the family uses the space as a living room. Toomer added artworks by Lizania Cruz made during a 2019 residency on the property. “We call it the Christmas room because it looks best in the winter with the fire roaring and filled with lights,” she says.

Toomer believes the barn was added to the property in 1972. A former greenhouse, the top of the barn is now studio space utilized by residents. On the ground floor, Toomer created two gallery spaces from a former garage and storage space.

One of three bedrooms in the artist’s cabin. Toomer was inspired to start Stoneleaf Retreat in 2017 after stumbling onto the property, which realized a long-held dream. The past five years have been unexpected for her, but sharing the property with others has plenty of rewards. “I can only change what’s in my corner,” Toomer explains. “And my corner is Stoneleaf—a place for artists to be in, to be safe, to connect with each other and the landscape, and to be nurtured.”

Artists in Nature

The couple bought the home in 2016 and began the residency program in 2017. “ The land felt very nurturing,” Toomer explains. “I wanted to share that feeling and the place with as many people as possible.” Replacing the cabin’s staircase and refinishing its open-concept living and kitchen area, as well as adding a new deck and outdoor shower, gave them the space to host three artists at a time during the warmer months. The barn’s open second floor was easily adapted into an oversized studio. Toomer and Romero cleaned out the barn’s garage and, with her father ’s help and artistry, converted the entire first floor into two gallery spaces to display residents' work.

Toomer was inspired to create family residencies out of her own experience with becoming a mother. “Being a parent is the best of times and the worst of times,” she says. “ You really lose yourself and you find yourself creatively as well.” The dilemma of prioritizing one’s art practice over connecting with and parenting young children—or vice-versa— seemed particularly unfair to Toomer, and also a waste of potent creative energy. Mothers are particularly in need of creative support. Extending the residency to women with children

gives the artists time and space to reconnect with their creative practice at a particularly creative transition in their lives. “A lot of artists come here to bond with nature and reconnect with their own practice whilst also knowing their children are safe and also in a welcoming, nurturing environment,” says Toomer. “Selfishly, I love it because I get to bond with them and they become a part of the family and are forever integrated into the land here.”

Whether in the midst of parenting or not, Toomer finds that a lot of her resident artists are in a particular state of transition when they find Stoneleaf. “I don’t care about an artist ’ s resume; really I want to know why they want to be here and what it might mean to them,” she says. “ This is a place for artists to be safe and to connect and be nurtured.” It’s part of Toomer and Romero’s 21st-century addition to their timeless property. The land, they believe, has been enlivening and inspiring people from the time of the original land stewards, through its Colonial and early American chapters, until now. They hope for that to continue. “ With a house this old, you realize you are just custodians of something larger than yourself and you’ll only have a short time before someone else owns it,” says Toomer. “So we really try to use our time wisely.”

HOLIDAY SHOPPING GUIDE

Five golden rings, four paintbrushes, three scented candles, two matching shoes, and a bottle of the finest vintage! The Hudson Valley’s independently owned shopkeepers are already busy stocking shelves for the holiday season with everything from knitwear to books and artisanal food products and curated art.

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

Main Street, New Paltz, NY

Main Street, Beacon, NY

Pinkwater Gallery

This Holiday season, consider the gift of art for your loved ones, your partner, or even yourself! A highly personal and unique gift, 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. The gallery is known for its innovative curation of area artists. From paintings and drawings to monotypes, screen prints, encaustic photography and fiber art, this gallery offers sophisticated works of art at various price points, making for the perfect gift.

N. Front Street, Uptown Kingston, NY. Pinkwatergallery.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.

BillCooke.Art

Unique silk scarves, leggings, pillows, bags and more. Incorporating the truly eccentric, vaguely psychedelic, geometric designs of Bill Cooke. Unusual gifts for your unconventional friends. Available only through the online store. View the collection at: billcooke.art

Raw Spirit Fragrances

Give the gift of Raw Spirit!

Born from travels to some of the world’s oldest communities and pristine landscapes, from the Australian outback, to the mountains of Haiti, to the deserts of Namibia, and now to the beautiful Hudson Valley. Our cruelty-free fragrances are crafted with clean ingredients, free of parabens, sulfates, gluten, petrochemicals, and formaldehydes. Rawspiritfragrances.com

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.

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.

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.

Orvis Sandanona

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.

Boulevard Wine & Spirits

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.

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

A

option, the 2020 Torque Tempranillo

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.

Tattoo by Adam Lauricella

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.

Woodstock Wine & Liquor

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.

Old Souls

Old Souls is the Hudson Valley’s premier outfitter shop specializing in apparel, accessories, and gear for all needs home, camp, field, and stream. Some of our brand offerings include Filson, Patagonia, Yeti, Red Wing, Pendleton, Marmot, Cotopaxi, TopoDesigns, Smartwool, Outdoor Research, Hestra, Helly Hansen, HydroFlask, and Fjall Raven.

As you browse our rustic cabin-feel shop, you will want to take your time perusing our hand-selected goods such as Buck, Bear and Son, Kershaw, and Opinel knives; Hultz Bruk Swedish axes and hatchets; outdoor and wilderness books; and fly fishing gear. Gift wrapping is available. Our experienced staff is excited to meet and assist you. Open every day 10-6pm at 63 Main Street, Cold Spring, NY. New, Second Location: Livingston Manor, NY. Open Thursday-Sunday. Oldsouls.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.

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.

Honey's Cannabis CBD & Accessories

Shop Local! Honey's sells Hudson Valley grown and sourced CBD products as well as cannabis accessories hand made by local artists. We have bath bombs, tinctures, gummies, salves, lotion, loose flower, and so much more. Come find a great gift for the holidays, we have something for everyone! 133 Main Street, Gardiner, NY. Honeyscannabis.com.

Dreamy bath bombs for a luxurious soaking experience.

Filson twill medium duffle in tan. Made in USA.

Sow It Goes

New York's First Legal Cannabis Harvest

By Noah Eckstein

Right before the sun comes up, farmer Phil Spinelli, owner of Nightshade Farm in the Rensselaerville town of Medusa, puts on a headlamp to investigate some 7,000 cannabis plants. His four children, aged eight months to nine years old, are still asleep, but his day has started. He walks into the dark field, inspects the buds for any signs of botrytis, a common plant fungus, or powdery mildew.

Luckily his inaugural crop was devoid of any rot, something he attributes to proper cultural habits, like putting extra space between each plant to optimize airflow. Then the reaping begins.

I first spoke to Spinelli in June, for an article about New York farmers’ transition from hemp to cannabis, when his harvest was in its infancy, tiny seedlings he tended like a father would a child. He was a part of the state’s first cohort of hemp farmers given the green light to grow cannabis some six months ago. Then, he was contemplating the perfect moment to plant the seeds in the ground. Uncertainty about how to proceed in the

burgeoning enterprise loomed, but he was still excited by the prospect of being one of the first legal cannabis farmers in New York.

Today, he estimates that his first harvest will yield close to a ton of cannabis—some will become smokable flower and the rest may be used as extraction biomass to create distillate oils for gummies and other THC products to be sold in adult-use recreational dispensaries slated to be operational by the end of the year (this probably will be pushed to the beginning of next year).

What happens to his crop really depends on whether it meets certain standards set by the Office of Cannabis Management’s “Laboratory Testing Limits” document, per the Cannabis Control Board’s August 15 emergency vote to approve an application process for cannabis laboratories and to create regulations for the sampling and testing of adult-use cannabis. Spinelli is both licensed as a cultivator and a processor, an extractor and manufacturer—he can legally grow the plant, make cannabis oils, and package prerolls.

But before the cannabis can be tested for potency or microorganisms, it must first be harvested. After Spinelli is done cutting down the branches from a few plants, his wife Kristine drives a tractor to him in the field.

“We take them to our drying facility, hang them, and repeat the process,” Spinelli says. Long days and long nights are a part of the job. The couple are the sole workers on Nightshade Farm. “Financially, I just really can’t afford to hire outside labor right now,” he says.They have a babysitter who helps with the kids, but other than that it is just the two of them.

At the end of harvest, they will be responsible for cutting, trimming, packaging, and selling 2,000 pounds of marijuana. Spinelli has multiple Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary (CAURD) applicants interested in purchasing his cannabis, however their interest and involvement is contingent on them being awarded their license from the state.

high society

A worker readying one of the 38,000 marijuana plants at Hepworth Farms in Milton for harvest.

Photo by Peter Freed/Hepwroth AG

Claverack Creek Farm

“Wanna jump on the back of the tractor?” Jonathan Wilson asks me, in what feels like a command rather than a question. It’s October, autumnal colors galore, and I’m visiting Claverack Creek Farm, another one of the New York hemp farms that were approved in April to legally cultivate cannabis. Wilson, 44, is the farm’s lead consultant, assisting 27-year-old lead farmer Sibby Hanson with the day-to-day operations of managing their first cannabis harvest.

Some 45 minutes east, along Route 9 near Hudson, the setting at Claverack Creek Farm is different from that of Nightshade. The atmosphere feels like a cool college barn party, with about five 20-somethings sitting in a circle, listening to “Mannish Boy” by Muddy Waters, all of whom are equipped with a pair of scissors and a large stem of marijuana.

They’re laughing and working, bucking buds, the process of hand removing large leaves from the harvested cannabis plant. “Once we test the moisture, and it seems like it’s adequately dry, we buck the bugs off, put them into bins, then they’ll go through an industrial trimming process,” says Matt Haering, a farmer at Claverack Creek Farm. He’s known Hanson practically his whole life, and smiles when he says so.

Katelyn Neff, 27, works on the farm two days a week, and also works as a garden crew member at the Letterbox Farm Collective in Hudson. She’s tall, thin, with long red hair. She smiles at the sight of a snapdragon.

“Different strains like different things,” Neff says, en route to collect marijuana with about a dozen black and yellow moving boxes. “We have this strain PuTang that doesn’t do well in high humidity and we planted it outside and it got a lot of powdery mildew,” she says.

Most of the summer was rather dry, and the plants responded well to the conditions. At night in the Hudson Valley though, it gets humid. In August and September it also started to rain a lot, just as the plants were reaching their largest and densest expression. Because of this, Claverack Creek Farm dealt with powdery mildew and botrytis, colloquially referred to as “bud rot,” which destroys a plant rendering it useless. Still, their first harvest was successful.

Hanson and Wilson estimate that their yield is between 800 to 1,100 pounds of cannabis.

In the field, Hanson smiles when inspecting a sticky, bright green cannabis bud. Even when he notices bud rot, he is smiling. This is because most of the crop is already harvested, resting in sealed bags waiting to be distributed to dispensaries and to be sold. Yet the government isn’t prepared for that stage of the process to commence. The applications to apply for a conditional adult-use retail dispensary license closed at the end of September. So, it’s a bit of a waiting game.

Tricolla Farms

“It’s putting a lot of growers in a pretty precarious situation right now as we’re harvesting since there is no meaningful lab testing available,” says Brittany Carbone,

cofounder and CEO of Tonic, a line of CBD wellness products, and Tricolla Farms, an event space where she has harvested 1,000 pounds of cannabis in Berkshire, a town 30 minutes south of Ithaca.

She’s both frustrated and grateful. The lack of clarity about when dispensaries will open, and what is going to happen to her crop is daunting. “There’s this kind of very tense feeling of ‘What are we going to do with this crop that we’re harvesting now?’” she says.

Carbone also has concerns with a proposed potency tax implemented by the state, that she says would charge customers in retail dispensaries a higher price for more potent cannabis products.

“Because the biomass that is 10 percent THC is obviously going to command a lower price per pound than material that is at 15 percent or 20 percent THC,” she says. “The higher the potency, the more money you could get per pound.”

Carbone believes in a flat tax rate so that higher taxes aren’t pushed on to the consumer. She believes the legal market will have an issue converting people who usually purchase cannabis from a gray-market dealer, and fears high taxes will further deter them.

While it was expected that the nascent industry would experience hiccups, setbacks, and problems along the way, Wilson believes the Office of Cannabis Management is doing the best it can.“I think they’re doing a really solid job,” he says. “Changing a long-standing prohibition in a state with a large population, with a lot of different politics involved, is tough.

And they were able to push through really quickly, creating a lot of jobs and opportunity.

I think it is a huge step in the right direction. They’re 'making the road by walking' pretty well.”

Agriculture is such a front-end-loaded business, that all of these farmers are looking ahead to tomorrow, to what they can do to have a more successful harvest next year. “Everyone spends their wad of cash in springtime and crosses their fingers,” Spinelli says.

Hepworth Farms

Gail Hepworth, a partner at Hepworth Farms, a 500-acre certified organic vegetable farm in Milton, which is part of the cannabis growing pilot in New York, is hoping that the yield from her farm’s 30,000 cannabis plants will be featured at every retail dispensary in New York. She has letters of intent and memorandums of understanding with prospective retailers. “We will distribute to every dispensary, shelf ready,” she says. Hepworth plans to begin processing by the beginning of November.

Hanson and Hepworth, Spinelli and Carbone have a lot to be thankful for. Hanson points to the sky. “I can see all the weather coming in all directions,” he says. He gestures to the north.

“The weather coming in from Albany, you can see it.” He looks to the west toward the Catskill mountains. “You can see the occasional Atlantic storm coming from the south,” he says. Hanson embraces the present. And, he looks toward the future, both good and bad. “Cannabis could fall victim to a wet season.”

Matt Haering, a farmer at Claverack Creek Farm, bucks a branch of cannabis, preparing it for an industrial trimmer. Photo by Noah Eckstein

Resting Place

By Joan MacDonald

For Elise Lark, the vision of establishing a good place to die is about our innate capacity to care for one another. “It’s about changing the ways we think about, relate to, and care for those who are dying. It’s about creating a good place to live.”

This quote is found on a leaflet explaining Jim and Lisa’s Circle Home, a soon-to-be ADA-compliant temporary residence. As the home’s director, Lark is currently adapting the 3,500-square-foot Victorian house in Kingston’s historic Rondout district, transforming the structure into a safe, comfortable home for those with only a short time to live.

The house is a project of the Kingston-based nonprofit Circle of Friends for the Dying (CFD), established in 2012. CFD will work together with hospice services to provide a home and support for those facing their final months. “When families are in the midst of this and they realize there are not a lot of resources, they start looking for information and a place,” says Lark. “What people don’t understand is that hospice is not a designated place, although some organizations have a designated hospice residence.”

People receiving hospice care can be anywhere. “They can be at home, which is where the majority of our people are, or they can be in the hospital,” says Lisa Wilson, executive director of

Hudson Valley Hospice Foundation. “They can be in a nursing home, they can be living wherever they call home, but sometimes that doesn’t fit perfectly or that just isn’t feasible.”

Some families don’t have a safe home to spend their final months in. Some may not have a primary caregiver who can care for them around the clock as they decline. Nor can they afford to hire a caregiver. Jim and Lisa’s Circle Home is a community-based effort that works to address this problem.

Family Values

The house was donated to CFD by Jim Gohlke, a member of an oncology support group that Lark ran, as a bequest after he died. Renovations began in January 2022 and Lark hopes to welcome the first guests next year. Lark can’t be sure why Gohlke made such a generous donation, but she suspects that as a member of the oncology support group, he considered the end-of-life options and fears faced by his peers.

“Jim was part of those conversations,” says Lark. “Jim saw how peers were talking about their distress and he also attended funerals. Prior to funerals we would go as small groups to visit people in their homes or in different care settings. The group became intimate in that sense.”

Lark’s sessions, which took place at a cancer

support house, helped her realize how important it is to offer such services in a home care setting rather than a facility. To create a beautiful environment for residents’ final months, she is carefully preserving the home’s remarkable original features—ornate stone fireplaces, stained glass, intricate Victorian woodwork and a quiet garden. The home has a kitchen where families can prepare meals, a room where relatives from out of town can sleep over. The bedrooms offer views of the garden and the nearby park below.

“When people walk into the cancer support house they should feel at home,” she says. “People understand home, you don’t have to explain it. People get what that looks like and the feeling of comfort and security that comes with a home.”

While CFD hired an architect and is working on renovations with a contractor, some renovation work is contributed by volunteers. Similarly, the future residence will have a small staff, including a nurse, as well as a rotating system of trained volunteers. “Our trained volunteers can do anything a family member in a private residence is expected to do,” says Lark.

“Our volunteers serve as extended family.” The care model, called Comfort Care Homes for the Dying, began in Rochester in 1984. It now consists of about 30 homes statewide, acting independently but sharing information. The

homes do share a common care culture, a basic philosophy, and operate in coordination with their local hospice agency.

“Hospice comes in and provides the medical oversight and then the home and the staff and the volunteers serve as an extended and surrogate family,” says Lark. “It is not a replacement for family for those who have family, but we’re extending that capacity of the family and we are a family for people who don’t have a family. Comfort Care Homes for the Dying all share the philosophy of serving people with the greatest need and the fewest options at no cost to the residents.”

According to Lark, Jim & Lisa’s Circle Home will collaborate with Hudson Valley Hospice. “People will be enrolled in hospice either prior to or upon entry to the home, so we’ll be getting referrals from hospice, from hospital discharge planners,” says Lark. “Physicians can make referrals, family members can make referrals, and patients can even refer themselves. Anyone can make a referral.”

Medicare and Medicaid and many private insurance plans cover hospice care, but some people are underinsured or uninsured. “We rely on private donations from individuals and local businesses,” says Lark. “We’re not funded by the government in terms of Medicaid or Medicare or by private insurance. This is a community endeavor. It really is the community that provides the financial support and in-kind donations. People also give their time.”

Homelike Environment

In Hyde Park, the Poughkeepsie-based Hudson

Valley Hospice Foundation is currently addressing the same issue on a slightly bigger scale. The foundation, which serves Ulster and Dutchess counties, began construction of Hospice House in December 2021 and hopes to complete the $10 million project by 2023. Hospice House will feature 14 self-contained private suites.

“They are furnished to create as much of a homelike environment as possible in each individual space,” says Wilson. “We encourage people to bring things from home, photos and such, to make the room as much their own as possible for their time there. Two of those suites will be convertible to pediatric for the use of our littlest patients, when that’s necessary. There is a full kitchen and dining room, a chapel, lounges, great room and reading nook, where people can find a quiet space or gather together. Every effort has been made to meet the needs of our patients and their loved ones.”

Wherever patients call home, hospice can provide an interdisciplinary team that includes nurse case managers, home health aides, chaplains, music therapists, and other specialty therapists. Social workers are available to help patients and their families arrange whatever is needed—from planning a funeral to offering grief and bereavement services for 13 months after.

“It’s a philosophy of care, of holistically treating the patient and supporting their loved ones,” says Wilson.

Hudson Valley Hospice currently has more than 130 volunteers, including 44 specially trained end-of-life doulas. Similar to the way a birth doula assists in a birth, these doulas

can help patients plan how they want to spend their final days. That can involve fostering a comfortable environment, serving as an advocate, or helping patients create a legacy in the form of something to pass on to loved ones, such as a scrapbook, a quilt, or a poem. Doulas can help with guided exercises to reduce anxiety.

Start The Conversation

One mistaken assumption about hospice care is that it’s only available if you have less than six months to live, so enrollment should be delayed as long as possible. This misunderstanding results in families waiting too long to receive beneficial services, when, in fact, there is no rule determined by life expectancy. Jim and Lisa’s Circle Home is set up to only accept patients with less than three months to live, but that’s not true of hospice care in general, so it’s important to find out what the options are.

“Nobody should have to die alone, in pain or without the support of hospice,” says Wilson.

“Everybody always says, ‘We should have called sooner,’ because a lot of people don’t realize all of the pain and symptom management and support they can receive. We urge everyone to call. Ask the questions. Start the conversation.”

Having the conversation can improve the quality of a patient’s final days.

When Lark looks around her makeshift office, which will one day be the welcome center for Jim & Lisa’s Circle Home, she notes how much sunshine the windows let in. “Some people might think this is morbid, but this home is not about death, it’s about life and light.”

Jim and Lisa’s Circle Home in Kingston is a project of Circle of Friends for the Dying that provides a home and support for those facing their final months.

For decades, Columbia Memorial Health (CMH) has provided vital, locally based healthcare services for patients across Columbia, Greene, and Dutchess counties. For hospitals and healthcare groups that serve mostly rural populations, maintaining a strong physical presence and a team of top-notch providers is no easy feat. In the last decade, financial and staffing pressures have resulted in the acquisitions or closures of many independent hospitals across the country.

With the start of CMH’s strategic affiliation with Albany Medical Center in 2016, the healthcare group took a vital step toward preserving and enhancing the strength of its locally based care.

Over the last six years, as additional local hospitals and community health centers throughout the region joined Albany Medical Center as affiliates, the network developed into a single integrated system called the Albany Med Health System. In addition to Albany Medical Center and Columbia Memorial Health, the System also includes Albany Medical College, Glens Falls Hospital, Saratoga Hospital, and the Albany Med Health System Visiting Nurses, a home healthcare agency.

Today, the System offers patients convenient access to the widest range of medical and surgical services in northeast New York. The strength and scope of the System ranges from primary to urgent, hospital, surgical, postsurgical, and home care. Patients benefit from the enhanced collaboration between their community healthcare teams and

Albany Medical Center’s advanced services, which extend additional network resources and provide a higher level of care to those who need it. More than 100 areas of specialty care are offered within the Albany Med Health System, many of which are usually unavailable in rural communities.

“CMH is proud of the progress made in building our system,” says Jay P. Cahalan, president and CEO of Columbia Memorial Health. “Connecting our services and clinicians means better care coordination for our patients.” On January 1, 2023, CMH’s chief operating officer Dorothy M. Urschel, DNP will succeed Cahalan after his retirement as the organization’s president and CEO.

With the System’s latest evolution, patients will notice that the names of their local hospital or health centers will begin to be shown alongside the Albany Med Health System name and new logo.

“We are one team, 16,000 professionals strong, standing ready to care for the three million people of our region,” says Albany Med Health System President and CEO Dennis P. McKenna, MD. “When patients see the Albany Med Health System brand, they can rest assured they have a direct connection to the most advanced quality services and the largest team of health care experts from the Mid-Hudson Valley to the North Country.”

Going forward, System providers will also have access to a unified electronic medical record called Epic. When it is implemented in 2024, a patient’s entire health story—with accuracy and data security as leading priorities—will be retrievable by any System clinician, helping to ensure a seamless

experience at every visit and expand access to higher levels of care.

“A common, integrated electronic medical record platform will play a key role in fulfilling the promise of the Albany Med Health System: increased collaboration, more timely diagnoses, and enhanced, coordinated care,” says Saratoga Hospital President and CEO Jill Johnson VanKuren. “Once the platform is in place, every patient at every system location will benefit.” The use of the single electronic medical record will also lead to a unified online patient portal, expected to go live in 2024.

The formation of the Albany Med Health System makes it the largest and only locally governed health care system and the region’s largest private employer. “With leadership in our own hometowns, all decisions are made here, not elsewhere,” says Dr. McKenna. “Our patients have guided our growth, and through continued integration, we will remain the team you trust now and for many years to come.

Short-Terming the Market

FOR THE MANY’S “HOMES ARE NOT HOTELS” CAMPAIGN

By Will Solomon

Mark Sanchez has never seen the housing situation in the Hudson Valley so tight.

“It’s exceptionally difficult,” says the longtime Newburgh resident, who’s currently looking for a new apartment. Sanchez would like to stay in the city, but like other residents in Newburgh and elsewhere in the region, he is struggling with the extraordinary dearth and skyhigh cost of housing.

“It’s really bad,” he says. “There are people who are just leaving Newburgh, who have to go to rural areas or further upstate, because there’s just no housing that’s available within the city. These are people who don’t necessarily want to move, but they’re being forced out.”

This scene Sanchez describes is familiar, and distressingly typical: In local conversations, Facebook groups, and a stream of articles, the problem of housing in the Hudson Valley is everywhere, and two-and-a-half years after the start of the pandemic, the situation is worse than ever.

For the Many (FTM) is one of the groups working to change this. The grassroots political organization’s current campaign—focused on an enforceable ban on short-term vacation rentals in five Hudson Valley municipalities—is one front in the effort to make a dent in a housing market gone insane. While no one expects it to be a panacea, the next several months will help to reveal whether the “Homes Are Not Hotels” effort can help prevent the Hudson Valley from becoming unlivable for all but the wealthy.

Why Short-Term Rentals?

While finding affordable housing in the Hudson Valley has long been difficult, the COVID-19 pandemic threw the problem into overdrive. The statistics are familiar: One study found a net gain of 30,000 residents in the Hudson Valley in 2020 alone, and at one point in 2020, the city of Kingston had the fastest rising home prices of anywhere in the United States.

Short-term rentals are one part of the problem, says Brahvan Ranga, the political director of FTM. “The crux of the issue is absentee investors coming in, buying up properties, and taking up housing stock so they can make a quick profit off of vacation rentals instead of renting them out to long-term residents,” he says.

A variety of data illustrates the severity of the issue. A recent report by the vacation rental company StayMarquis found that $278 million was spent on short-term rentals in the Hudson Valley in 2021, a 99 percent increase from the previous year. Growth was concentrated in Ulster and Greene counties, but every Hudson Valley county showed a revenue increase.

Ulster County, though, has been hit particularly hard: A July 2022 report put out by the County Comptroller March Gallagher found that three percent of the county’s housing stock—and 12 percent of its rental housing stock—were being offered as short-term rentals. The problem appears to be concentrated in cities like Kingston: Ranga points to data, based off

industry sites AirDNA and Apartments.com, estimating that 66 percent of Kingston’s longterm housing is being taken up by short-term rentals (the numbers are only slightly lower in other large Hudson Valley municipalities: 58 percent in Newburgh, and 50 percent in Poughkeepsie).

FTM’s proposed legislation—which they have preliminarily targeted for Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Beacon, New Paltz, and Kingston—would take three primary actions to address the issue: ban all non-owner-occupied short-term rentals, or vacation rentals; create a registration process to ensure people offering short-term rentals only do so at their primary residence; and create a strong enforcement mechanism to keep hosts accountable and, if necessary, issue fines for violations.

Ranga emphasizes that the short-term rental problem is, in part, one of scope. “The issue isn’t someone renting out a spare bedroom in their home to make some extra cash,” he says. “The problem is absentee investors who don’t live on the property, taking up that housing stock as a vacation rental instead of renting it out to a long-term resident.”

Newburgh and Poughkeepsie Out Front

As FTM works to spread word of the campaign around the community, holding block parties, speaking to tenants, and lobbying elected officials, Newburgh and Poughkeepsie are at the head of the pack for passing legislation.

The two cities are, in some ways, natural choices: While both municipalities have their share of short-term rentals, neither has yet seen the extreme proliferation of Airbnb and VRBO listings that have defined places like Beacon or Hudson.

Anthony Grice, a city councilman in Newburgh who is working with FTM on the legislation, says that, for this reason, starting now is important. “Some [people say], it’s not a problem now, so why deal with it?,” he says. “But it is a problem… and I don’t think that’s wise for anybody in any situation to do, to wait until it becomes a bigger problem.”

Grice does not commit to a date to pass the legislation, saying that he’d like a housing vacancy study to be done first, but says he has “every intention of getting it passed.”

About 15 miles upriver, Poughkeepsie councilmember Megan Deichler says she intends to pass the legislation this year. “I’ve heard from many people who live in the city of Poughkeepsie who cannot afford their rent, they can’t find comparable rental properties within their budgets,” she says, describing the growing housing issue in the city. “The problem is only getting worse.”

She sees short-term rentals as one part of this issue. “We looked up the data as recently as a few weeks ago,” Deichler says in early September.

“Over a third of the available rentals in the city of Poughkeepsie were short-term rentals. Month by month, it only increases.”

Deichler says she has yet to see opposition to the legislation in Poughkeepsie. But in Newburgh, Grice and Ranga both mention budding pushback from property owners in the city who balk at the proposed restrictions.

In a statement, the Newburgh Coalition for Historic Preservation and Economic Development, a group representing some Newburgh homeowners, wrote: “While [this] group strongly agrees affordable housing is an important issue that must be addressed, it is deeply concerned that restricting short-term rentals will jeopardize the City’s existing and future tax base, and eliminate an important revenue stream generated by these rentals for jobs and tourism. And while a short-term rental restriction will have an adverse impact on the city’s economy, it is not likely to notably improve affordable housing options.”

Grice is listening to them, he says, but insists regulation is important. “My take has always been that we’re going to put people over profit,” Grice says. “When it comes to short-term rentals, they’re not the only problem, but they are part of the problem if we don’t keep them in line.”

The current campaign is not quite as far in New Paltz and Beacon. In the former, Ranga says FTM is focusing on the town of New Paltz (as opposed to the village), where many short-term rentals have migrated since the village banned vacation rentals in 2021. While Beacon does have some restrictions on the books, “the law just hasn’t been enforced at all,” says Ranga. He also

sees a need to strengthen it.

Finally, in Kingston, some short-term rental regulation does exist: A 2021 city resolution amended the definition of “hotel” to include short-term rentals. But here too, FTM sees a need to do more. “The law just doesn’t go far enough to ensure registration of all short-term rentals or ban the vacation rentals,” says Ranga, adding that better enforcement is necessary.

Ranga hopes to coordinate the push with an update to Kingston’s zoning code this fall.

Will it Be Enough?

Everyone involved with the issue agrees that short-term rental regulation is important, but in a region overrun by a comprehensive housing crisis, how significant will these changes be?

Alex Wojcik, the deputy mayor of the village of New Paltz, has worked with FTM professionally, and spoke at the Homes Are Not Hotels campaign launch. She is also intimately familiar with the housing issue: A recent Times Union profile highlighted Wojcik’s ongoing struggle to secure a new apartment in the village of New Paltz after her current rental was put on the market.

She agrees that short-term rentals are part of the problem—and points to some success the village of New Paltz has had since enacting their own vacation rental ban. There is data, Wojcik says, indicating that “as soon as you get a couple of Airbnbs in a neighborhood, the general prices go up.”

Community members at the For the Many block party in Kingston in September to build support for its “Homes are Not Hotels” campaign. Kingston is one of a number of municipalities in the region that have put short-term rental regulations in place. Opposite: Downtown Newburgh. Newburgh City Councilman Anthony Grice is in favor of short-term rental restrictions. “We’re going to put people over profit,” Grice says. “When it comes to short-term rentals, they’re not the only problem, but they are part of the problem if we don’t keep them in line.”

Studies back this up, including a 2017 study from California and a 2016 study in Boston that correlated increased Airbnb listings with higher local rents and decreased supply of long-term housing. A 2018 study by the New York City comptroller also found that “for each one percent of all residential units in a neighborhood listed on Airbnb, rental rates in that neighborhood went up by 1.58 percent.”

In smaller municipalities, Wojcik sees the problem interlocking with others—some logistical, like enforcement. “On the village level, it’s hard to have teeth with a lot of these laws. It’s not the same thing as with a city, or a county, where you can slap fines on right away,” she says. “We don’t really have that kind of jurisdiction.”

She and others also see short-term rentals as distinctly detrimental to the character of small communities. Matt Osterhoudt is a Kingston homeowner who recently joined with his neighbors to get the city to shut down an illegal short-term rental in his residential Rondout neighborhood.

“It really is a quality of life issue, for people who actually live there,” says Osterhoudt. “People who are there for short-term rentals are there for a good time, are there for the weekend. Many of them don’t have any regard for the people who live around the neighborhood because they’re probably not coming back. They don’t really care.”

Wojcik describes the long-term implications of this problem in hollowing out a sense of community. “It’s been really hard getting people

For the Many’s satirical skewering of the marketing language being used by short-term rental owners to sell the Hudson Valley to visitors is part of its “Homes Are Not Hotels” campaign.

Opposite: Residents of Kingston’s Rondout neighborhood joined together to get the city to enforce the law and shut down an illegal short-term rental operating on West Chestnut Street.

Photo by Winona Barton-Ballentine

to fill the landlord-tenant relations council in the village, as well as all of our volunteer boards and commissions that literally run our operations,” she says. “A lot of people say they don’t want to make the commitment, not because of time or anything, they just don’t know how long they can commit to being here. Why finish a volunteer project for a community that you get displaced from?”

Housing as a Human Right

But Wojcik also points to deeper economic issues that don’t lend themselves to neat regulation. “We just have so many more people moving to the area now who can work remotely and who are better able to afford prices that anyone who lives and works in the Hudson Valley can’t afford,” she says.

“There’s a lot of different issues happening all at once, and it’s not just about supply,” Wojcik adds. “It’s about the jobs, what we get paid, it’s about how we preserve what housing is available for the people who do currently live and work and play here, and how we prevent the prices from going up.”

For reasons like these, at the root, all those working on or supportive of this campaign see short-term rentals as important—but as only one piece of the housing puzzle. At its core, Ranga sees the housing problem, particularly with respect to renting, as “a power imbalance between tenants and landlords, and the fact that we’re treating housing as a commodity, and not a right.”

Eli Berkowitz, an organizer with Community Voices Heard, a grassroots organization that fights for racial, social, and economic justice throughout New York, shares this view. “I really think our media narrative, our local governments, our state, county, federal governments need to be moved away from this idea that renters—because we don’t own—don’t deserve the same kind of rights and protections that ownership is supposed to [provide],” Berkowitz says.

Berkowitz believes this conception is particularly salient in the Hudson Valley, where he says some elected officials “seem to think that their constituencies are made up primarily or entirely of homeowners, and not renters, which is just not true.” He notes that Poughkeepsie is 86 percent renters—both an enormous voting base, and the ultimate source of the city’s property taxes.

While Berkowitz does agree that short-term rental restrictions in municipalities are crucial, he also wants to see stronger and broader action on the state level in support of the right to housing, in particular a statewide good cause eviction law. (“We think that’s probably the single biggest thing the state legislature can do to settle this issue once and for all and protect tenants across the state,” says For the Many’s Ranga, speaking about such legislation.)

In the meantime, housing activists are making it clear that they will attack the issue on several local fronts. To that end, in October, FTM—

along with Citizen Action of New York and the Mid-Hudson Valley Democratic Socialists of America chapter—demanded radical intervention in Kingston: a rent decrease for many city tenants from Kingston’s new rent control board, which was established under Emergency Tenant Protection Act guidelines after Kingston declared a housing emergency in July.

“The Kingston Common Council and Mayor Steve Noble have consistently taken steps this year to protect Kingston’s tenants from rising rents and evictions,” Aaron Narraph Fernando, FTM’s Communications Lead, said in a statement. “Now the city’s new Rent Guidelines Board has the opportunity to continue that work [and help] the residents of nearly 1,300 newly rent-stabilized units afford to live in Kingston and stay in their homes.”

For locals, like Newburgh resident Sanchez, changes like these are needed immediately; the housing problem is not conceptual. “If you talk to local people on the street, they’re hurting, and they want to see change,” he says. “It’s not policy for them, it’s not this abstract political ideology. It’s literally, ‘I can’t afford to live on Lander Street, or I can’t afford to live in the Heights, because I’m getting priced out and my landlord is threatening me.’”

“It’s housing, it’s a human right,” he adds. “It shouldn’t be a profit-making industry. People have over the years turned it into that, and it’s really disgusting.”

Practical Magic

New Paltz

By Margi Conklin Photos by David McIntyre

Dr. Darrell P. Wheeler has only been president of SUNY New Paltz for four months, but he already feels like a familiar face in town. Wearing a sports coat and tie, he strolls the streets to grab a coffee or stop by the post office, and people come up to him to shake his hand. “I haven’t even been on the ground for 90 days,” says Wheeler, who moved from SUNY Albany, where he was dean of the School of Social Welfare, to a home close to campus with his husband, Donovan, in July. His husband, with whom he has two adult children and one grandson, is also enjoying being the “First Spouse.”

“I’m the first nonwhite president at SUNY New Paltz, so people recognize me and welcome me. It’s really great to be in a town where you’re seen as part of the community just by virtue of the college’s stature.” Wheeler adds: “New Paltz fits my temperament. There’s good food, and it’s physically breathtaking. I’m looking forward to getting to know the town.”

A Playful Place

There’s certainly a lot to see. Two years after a self-induced pandemic slumber, New Paltz has reawakened in 2022—with new businesses opening, tourists returning, and exciting plans emerging everywhere you turn.

In September, Rob Gamble, and his fiancée, Amanda McDonald, opened the Gunks Gaming Guild and Cafe on Church Street, where the room is filled with patrons playing Dungeons & Dragons and an assortment of board games while sipping specialty coffees and teas.

The one good takeaway from COVID, Gamble says, is that he had more time to be with his family at the dinner table and reconnect around games. And he wanted to bring that sense of intimacy and fun to New Paltz. “Community has always been one of our biggest things, giving people a place to hang out with their friends and make new friends,” Gamble says. “Our first night, we had people who were 17 to 19 playing with 60-year-olds they had never met. That’s been happening a lot.”

The SUNY New Paltz women’s varsity field hockey team practicing on campus. The iconic Skytop tower is in the background.

Opposite, top: A period reenactor in front of the Jean Hasbrouck house, built in 1721, on Historic Huguenot Street.

Opposite, bottom: The patio at Lola’s Cafe, at the corner of Main Street and North Chestnut Street, in the heart of downtown New Paltz.

Students training at the New Paltz Karate Academy.

Opposite, top: Gunks Gaming Guild and Cafe owners Robert Gamble and Amanda McDonald.

Opposite, bottom: Andy and Kirsty Gaukel, directors of Denizen Theatre, on the set of “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

Just across the street, at the Floating Lotus Lash Bar, owner Nicole Cabrera also welcomes everyone—“men, women and children”—to her softly lit microspa for facials and other treatments. “It’s more of an experience than a service,” says Cabrera, a Navy veteran turned aesthetician, who offers a range of beauty services like waxing, lash lifts, and brow lamination, all cruelty-free.

She is trained in the art of microblading, which uses a tattoo pigment to draw natural-looking hairs onto the skin. “I recently had a client who was a cancer survivor,” Cabrera says. “She was in remission, and her eyebrows didn’t grow the same. I gave her her eyebrows back. To me, that’s why I do this.”

Around the corner on North Front Street, Shabbat Rusciolelli, has a similar goal. She describes her consignment store, Nettle & Violet, which opened in August 2021, as a “joy factory.” Packed with timeless classics, her shop sells pieces for men and women ranging from $30 to a $600 Vivienne Westwood coat.

Rusciolelli, who started out dressing her musician friends in the East Village, now styles anyone who comes into her store for free. Recently, she paired a Russian ballerina with a full-skirted evening gown made in France in the 1940s. “What happens when you put something

onto your body that matches your own feeling is that you light up,” she says. “I’m not interested in selling something to someone that doesn’t make them light up. Because to me, I don’t want a life that isn’t rooted in joy.”

Welcome to the Show

Ed Carroll and Gina O’Brien also hope to bring joy to New Paltz with the new piano bar they’re planning to open before Thanksgiving on Main Street. They have transformed the former Murphy’s pub, now named the Lemon Squeeze (after a popular rock scramble in the Gunks), into a sophisticated club complete with banquettes, an elegant bar, and a stage built for a wood-toned grand piano.

Carroll and O’Brien met as students at SUNY New Paltz. He became president of AMC networks and she is now a screenwriter and director, but they could never forget the town where they fell in love. Before and after they married, they regularly sang along to show tunes at piano bars like Marie’s Crisis in Greenwich Village, and wanted to bring the same vibe upstate. “We have a great affection for the town,” Carroll says. “And we were having lunch at Murphy’s and I said, ‘You know, this place is for sale.’ And she looked at me like I was an insane person.”

“He plotted the whole thing out!” O’Brien says with a laugh.

They tapped their entertainment world contacts and scoured the Hudson Valley to find experienced piano players who could belt out everything from standards by Carole King, Billy Joel, and Ray Charles to current pop songs by Harry Styles, Green Day, and the Killers. The piano players will “read the energy of the room and take requests,” Carroll says. “We want people to feel that their requests are welcome and everyone is there to have a good time.”

Locals can find a good time at the Denizen Theatre at Water Street Market, now under the direction of Andy and Kirsty Gaukel. The couple are theater veterans who’ve worked in Europe, New York City, and across the US before moving to Tillson during the pandemic. So far, they have staged two shows, and their second, Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart,” played to sold-out crowds in October. “People have responded super well to it,” Andy enthuses.

Their next show will be the comedy “An Act of God,” depicting the heavenly father debating

two of his archangels, Michael and Gabriel, and will run from November 25 through December 23. “I was laughing out loud when I read it,” Andy says. “The characters will be holding microphones and coming into the audience and asking questions. It will be super lighthearted and get people thinking.”

History Here

Esi Lewis wants to get people thinking, too. The attorney is the visionary behind saving the Ann Oliver House on Broadhead Avenue, a home built in 1885 by Black architect Jacob Wynkoop. Once slated for demolition, in 2021 Lewis swooped in and successfully submitted a plan to turn it into a Black cultural center, named for pioneering SUNY New Paltz Black Studies professor Dr. Margaret Wade-Lewis. Now, she and her four fellow board members are working to raise $650,000 to restore the building and create a place for culture, education, history, and healing.

“Jacob Wynkoop was the first man born free in New Paltz, so he never was a slave,” Lewis

says. “He was called a carpenter, but he was more than that. He’s credited for seven houses in town. He created a free black neighborhood for his friends and family.

“As a child growing up in New Paltz, I would go on field trips to Huguenot Street and see the houses that had been saved, but no one ever talked about if there were Black people here and their accomplishments,” she continues.

“I want my daughter and [other] children of color to have that same sense of pride. Historic Huguenot Street’s offices are in one of the first buildings that Jacob built.”

Lewis and the Ann Oliver House board members are hosting their first annual fundraiser on November 5 from 5pm to 7pm at the Dorsky Museum, and a Community Kwanzaa event on December 31.

Nice and New Meanwhile, other projects that have been brewing for years have finally come to life. The new, energy-efficient New Paltz firehouse, with 10 bays and seven firetrucks, insulated concrete

Esi Lewis on the porch of the Ann Oliver House, built in 1885 by Black architect Jacob Wynkoop. Lewis is the founder of the Dr. Margaret Wade-Lewis Black History Research and Cultural Center, which the building will eventually house.

A group of prospective students touring SUNY New Paltz.

Manny’s Art Supplies, a longtime favorite of students and artists alike, recently got a facelift from new owners Amanda and Zack Del Favero.

form walls, and all-electric systems, is fully operational on North Putt Corners Road. In the coming year, solar panels will be added to the roof, according to Fire Chief Cory Wirthmann.

Another eco-friendly project—Zero Place, a housing and retail complex on Route 32— has filled all 46 apartments since it opened in February, and “produces more energy than it consumes,” says founder David Shepler. And Noah Michaels, a chef trained by Jean-Georges Vongerichten, will soon open a new bakery and coffee shop, Dry Fly, in a ground-floor space by the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail.

Another person elevating the dining scene is Clare Hussain, with her restaurant Runa on Plattekill Avenue. Though COVID forced Runa’s closure, Hussain is again serving highquality French culinary classics with a Bengali/ Indo influence. The return of her head chef in May allowed Hussain the time to refresh the outdoor dining area, where she added a bluestone sidewalk, picnic benches, Moroccan white lanterns, Adirondack chairs, and a fire pit around

the 200-year-old copper beech tree out front.

“People are vibing, it’s chill,” says Hussain, who was born in Bangladesh and went to school in Ireland. “When people are leaving at the end of the night, they’re all taking selfies.”

Special Moments

“Modern witch” Dana Cooper cultivates a chill vibe at plant and magic shop the Ritualist on Main Street, selling cauldrons, candles, and Tarot cards alongside houseplants—“my other passion.”

“Magic and plants go together really nicely,” Cooper insists. “As I was taking care of my plants and taking the time to notice what was going on with them, I saw how they mirror our bodies and energy levels. Plants are good reminders for us to take care of ourselves, too.”

Anyone taking the time to notice what’s going on in New Paltz will notice that even one of New Paltz’s greatest institutions, Manny’s Art Supplies, is evolving as well. Manny’s, which turned 60 this year, got a facelift from Zack and Amanda Delfavero, a young married couple

who started working here when they were students at SUNY New Paltz. In April, Manny’s daughter Marilyn Golgoski sold them the business, and they rearranged the space, boosted its art supplies, and sprinkled in some “magical” touches, like Mystery Art Bags for $10.

At first, they were nervous to change anything, Zack admits. “Special moments happen here,” he says. “People have proposed to each other in the paper aisle. Manny’s is a really strange place and we wanted to make sure it stays that way.”

But, buoyed by positive customer feedback, the couple hopes to be here when Manny’s is 100 years old and they are both 70. “Marilyn used to say that the mountains call people to New Paltz and when they leave they call you back. I thought that was such a cool thing, but I never really believed it,” Zack says. “But then so many people come here and then move away and come back. They just can’t stay away. I can’t imagine leaving. Everyone is just so kind…” he says, hesitating for a moment, before saying with a laugh, “…and weird.”

The staff of Runa on the outdoor patio.

Clockwise from top left: Dana Cooper, owner of Ritualist; Shabbat Rusciolelli, owner of Nettle and Violet Vintage; Artist Ryan Cronin with Melanie Cronin, CEO of Cronart USA and the Cronin Gallery;

Clare Hussain, owner of Runa restaurant; Jake Godwin, construction manager; Myles Flusser, filmmaker; K. T. Tobin, director of the Benjamin Center at SUNY New Paltz; Seth David Branitz, writer, musician, and co-owner of Karma Road cafe; Stacie Flint, painter; Gillian Murphy, director of Elting Memorial Library; Anna Conlan, executive director of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz; Darrell P. Wheeler, president of SUNY New Paltz; (center) Amy Pickering.

New Paltz Pop-Up Portraits

Photos by David McIntyre

On October 8, Chronogram held a pop-up portrait shoot at Denizen Theatre at Water Street Market in New Paltz. New Paltz residents responded to the call and came out on a glorious fall afternoon to be photographed by David McIntyre. Thanks to everyone who showed up and to Kirsty and Andy Gauckel and the staff of Denizen Theatre for hosting us.

Clockwise from top left: Megan J. Wolff, policy director of Beyond Plastics, pictured with Madeleine Harvey; Zachary and Amanda Del Favero, co-owners of Manny’s Art Supplies; Esi M. Lewis, founder of Dr. Margaret Wade-Lewis Black History Cultural Center, pictured with Clark Love Lewis; Rob Leitner, director of events and corporate development at Unison Arts, Ally Bell, director of operations at Unison Arts, and Faheem Haider, executive director at Unison Arts; Sean Triolo, bartender, pictured with Mr. Boone.

Tim Rogers, New Paltz mayor, with Kimmer Gifford, yoga instructor, and Eleanor.

Lagusta Yearwood, vegan chocolatier, author, and owner of Lagusta’s Luscious; (center) Mark Gruber, owner of Mark Gruber Gallery.

artist and founder of Roost Studios; Redi and Roen Felton; Ed Felton, SUNY New Paltz wood design instructor; Kevin Case, Mohonk Preserve president; Nicole Cabrera, owner of Floating Lotus microspa;

Biking rentals; Ericka Wadleigh, marketing manager for Lagusta’s Luscious; and Softer Power Sweets; Carol Johnson, director of the Haviland-Heidgerd Collection at Elting Memorial Library; Marcy Bernstein,

Clockwise from top left: Neil Bettez, New Paltz town supervisor; Matthew Sweeney, co-owner of the Parish; Theresa Fall, owner of Jar’d Wine Pub and co-owner of the Parish; Craig Chapman, owner of New Paltz

SOUND CHECK

Otto Kentrol featuring Faceless No Mistakes (Modern Harmonic Records)

If you’ve been going to see live music in the Woodstock area for long enough, the odds are good that you’ve seen saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Otto Kentrol AKA Bill Ylitalo. Maybe you’ve caught him performing with such bands as Blue Food, Big Sky Ensemble, Swollen Monkeys, the Bard College Symphony Orchestra, Baird Hersey and Prana, or various Karl Berger-led projects or perhaps even teaching gamelan music at Bard. Ylitalo is one of those musicians who holds the whole scene together and embodies the best and truest spirit of Hudson Valley music; a genre-straddling, music-for-music’s-sake player who earnestly connects with, burrows into, and inhabits any style, whether it be straightahead bar funk or defiantly experimental no wave sounds like the ones that fill the luxe two-LP career album No Mistakes

The program begins in Kentrol/Ylitalo’s native Wisconsin, where he played with noisy punks Appliances SFB before go ing on to study with free jazz legend Roscoe Mitchell and at Woodstock’s Creative Music Studios and debut with the EP Learn Greek in Greece, whose 1980 sessions make up the set’s first side. Balancing out the exhaustive anthology are a brace of bent-and-spiky 1982 cassette demos and 19831984 tracks by the sometime CBGB plumber’s (brave man!) trio Faceless. With in-depth liner notes by WFMU’s “Spin Age Blasters” host Erick Bradshaw, it all adds up to a compen dium of overdue appreciation and a mandatory purchase for fans of prime early ’80s underground skronk ’n’ squeal.

—Peter Aaron

It must have been something in the water around Philadelphia in the 1950s and ’60s that produced so many local Hammond B-3 organ legends: Jimmy Smith, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Charles Earland, and the great Jimmy McGriff. Who’d have guessed that Jimmy McGriff is on heavy rotation at a guitar store? Well, he is. To redeem ourselves, we also listen to a lot of Slim Harpo. Not only a great harp player, but he also knew his way around a Gibson ES-330 and had a repertoire of unbeatable stuff. I don’t really follow new music except work coming from my friends, and they’re a talented bunch! Take [Woodstock singer] Molly Farley’s tracks that she posted recently on SoundCloud. Live in the studio, featuring Bruce Balmer on guitar, Theo Schikowitz on upright bass, and Eric Parker on drums. Molly’s on piano and vocals and her songs bring me to my knees.

Ted Lawrence is the proprietor of Stockade Guitars in Kingston. Stockadeguitars.com

Woodstock’s Robin “the Hammer” Ludwig has trod a particularly idiosyncratic path across the rock ’n’ roll landscape for more than 60 years. Beginning in the Greenwich Village music scene of the 1960s, Ludwig has pursued intersecting paths as a musician and jeweler specializing in metalwork. His work has included a notable stint designing jewelry for Billy Idol. As a musician, Ludwig has performed with a string of bluesinflected rock ’n’ roll bands, including the Shivers and the Five Points Band. On this release, Ludwig lovingly covers a series of blues and folk classics, in addition to a handful of original compositions. Ludwig’s songs such as “Bug” and “Devilvison” feature his rich, evocative vocals and fingerpicked acoustic guitar. They sit seamlessly beside compositions from Robert Johnson, Son House, and Fred Neil. Recommended for connoisseurs of authentic American folk-blues.

Jeremy Schwartz

Steven Bernstein and the Hot 9 Manifesto of Henryisms (Community Music, Vol. 3) (Royal Potato Family Records)

When composer/slide trumpeter and long-time Levon Helm sideman Steven Bernstein first saw New Orleans maestro Henry Butler in 1984, he had no idea how much of an effect Butler would have on his life. But if you were lucky enough to catch the late pianist live (I did) or hear his eclectic sound on record, you’d understand. Bernstein’s brave quartet of 2022 releases includes Manifesto of Henryisms, and the title fits just right. The disc, which again pairs Bernstein with a band the duo founded, nods to Butler’s protean influence but is not held hostage by it. It is a trip straight back to the Congo Square sounds that inspired both men; heavy with the funk of the Big Easy in all the greasy ways that Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, and Louis Armstrong implied. From “Black Bottom Stomp” to “Dippermouth Blues,” this is the old-school strut refashioned for today.

—Michael Eck

Robin the Hammer Robin the Hammer (2021, Independent)

Ted Lawrence of Stockade Guitars

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

House of the Seven Heavens Mark Morganstern

RECITAL PUBLISHING, 2022, $15

Mark Morganstern’s gift for the surreal, on vivid dis play in the reimagined Hudson Valley of his novel The Joppenbergh Jump, illuminates the lives being lived headlong in these two novellas and three short stories. Morganstern’s straightforward voice lets us immerse ourselves thoroughly in slightly tilted realities without a hitch, in the company of characters whose precisely drawn inner lives are in crisis: an unquenchable young immigrant, an aging college professor, a seedy bro of a realtor being reeducated by powerful women. This is magic you can believe in.

Faire Mount Ed Breslin

PARKSIDE BOOKS, 2022, $15

It’s 1876 in the City of Brotherly Love, time for a centennial meant to evoke healing and unity in a reeling nation. All is set for a grand celebration.

But what’s a bloody corpse doing in the docents’ booth? Ed Breslin, writer of an eclectic list of titles and retired up here after decades as an editor and publisher in Manhattan, puts us amid the scramble for solutions in a romp through his bustling native city in the age of Walt Whitman and U. S. Grant.

Cash on Cash: Interviews and Encounters with Johnny Cash Robert Burke Warren

CHICAGO REVIEW PRESS, 2022, $19.99

The Man in Black is one of the most iconic figures in American music history, treasured across genres and eras since the public first fell in love with that otherworldly poetic voice and gift for the guitar. Im possible to pigeonhole either musically, personally, or politically, he was often considered an enigma, but not because he didn’t speak his mind. Catskills novelist, musician, educator, and journalist Robert Burke Warren does a deft job of pulling together both familiar and previously unpublished interviews into a revelatory self-portrait.

Elverhoj: The Arts and Crafts Colony at Milton-on-Hudson

William B. Rhoads and Leslie Melvin

BLACK DOME PRESS, 2022, $35

Hudson Valley history is full of artsy tales at least as fascinating as those of the warriors and captains of industry, and many of the best are cap tured by Catskill-based Black Dome Press. Elverhoj (Danish for “hill of the fairies”) flourished through the first three decades of the 20th century, its creatives winning national acclaim from their rustic riverside studios, and art history profs Rhoads (SUNY New Paltz) and Melvin (Bard) bring us the story from bright-eyed origins through soaring suc cess to ultimate demise.

Waking Up to the Dark Clark Strand

MONKFISH PUBLISHING, 2022, $16.99

Subtitled “The Black Madonna’s Gospel For An Age of Extinction and Collapse,” this timely blend of paleobiology, memoir, history, science and spiritual archaeology is the perfect bedside companion for a chilly November evening amid late-stage capital ism and all its wonders. Strand, editor of the Haiku Challenge and author of several earlier works on spirituality and religion, helps us see past the harsh illusions of illumination peddled by the main stream into timeless wells of wisdom that can help us meet the moment with clarity and love.

—Anne Pyburn Craig

Levon Helm: Rock, Roll & Ramble

John W. Barry

SELF-PUBLISHED, 2022, $29.99

Ten years after his passing, it feels, in many ways, like Levon Helm never left Woodstock. Of course, a big chunk of that is due to the timeless, worldrenowned music he made here with The Band, Bob Dylan, his own bands, and so many other artists. But much of that feeling that flows through the pines and hollows around the mountain town comes from the love the com munity itself has for the late drummer, singer, and mandolinist. It also comes from the warm vibes that elevated the popular Midnight Ramble sessions that resurrected his career and continue to be held at the Barn, his home and recording studio at 160 Plochmann Lane. A note-taking fly on the wall since just about the beginning of those intimate events—I don’t think I’ve ever gone to a Ramble and not seen him there—is former Poughkeepsie Journal music columnist John Barry, whose Levon Helm: Rock, Roll, & Ramble focuses on the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and multiple-Grammy winner’s final years and the scene around his beloved house concerts.

Through his own observations and anecdotes and interviews with and re membrances by the musicians who played at his side (Larry Campbell, Jimmy Vivino, Jim Weider, Erik Lawrence, others), members of the Barn’s “Team Levon” staff (manager Barbara O’Brien, engineer Justin Guip, security crew member Chris Howe), local luminaries (Assemblyman Kevin Cahill), and even several of the attendees themselves, Barry sketches a you-are-there snapshot album of the weekly sessions whose freewheeling atmosphere and earthy music always felt like an extension of Helm himself.

Perhaps the book’s most priceless passages, however, are the wonderfully, well, rambling stories about Helm’s childhood and early years on the road that the writer collected firsthand during his time around the Southern-bred musi cian. Full of downhome banter and folk wisdom, they underscore his existence as a direct link to the vanishing past and, to borrow a line from Greil Marcus, the old, weird America (“I could eat, fight, and raise hell and listen to music all at the same time,” the drummer recalls about growing up in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas).

Helm’s history is touched on mainly through his homespun yarns, and for context there’s a bit of the history of the Woodstock region he called home from 1967 on (except for a 1973-1975 spell in California with The Band), landing here after his wild years on the road with rockabilly warriors Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks and the tumultuous 1965-1966 tour with Dylan’s trailblazing electric group. For the most part, though, the book is a testament to the tenacity, struggle, and redemption of Helm as he weathered the fiery destruction of the Barn and its rebuilding (he cheekily named his post-fire ensemble the Barn Burners), financial bankruptcy, and cancer diagnosis and treatments while making some of the best music of his life—along with legions of new fans and friends. And it’s those friends who do most of the talking here, sharing the moments they shared with the rock icon and, in the cases of the musicians, talking not only about what it was like to play with and spend time around him but also about the ways in which The Band’s music and Helm’s persona profoundly influenced them.

In his preface, Barry accurately asserts that his book doesn’t take the place of Helm and Stephen Davis’s 1993 autobiography This Wheel’s on Fire. Instead, it serves as an epilogue to that more Band-centric tome, a parting portrait of Midnight Ramble-era (2003-2012) Helm and the rent party/medicine show-in spired house concerts that reflected, and still reflect, his vision and personality.

“Keep it goin’,” Levon famously requested of his daughter Amy Helm and the rest of the events’ organizers shortly before his death. In its own way, Rock Roll Ramble honors that request by celebrating both the series and the spirit of the man that forever runs through it.

—Peter Aaron

The Still Spot

There’s a still spot in my brain that is getting bigger Like a puddle or a pupil, and I wonder Which undulating mists disappear in there? Lately I stare, blurring my eyes on purpose, And try to unthread everything’s name From its existence. Then I don’t have to worry. I don’t have to know that I care

If it’s my face in the mirror. My room is a square; It’s a shape; it’s four lines; it has been erased. There’s nothing but time.

When the slow sun finally rolls itself over the ledge The still spot blackens, Defiant as wind through a candle flame. There’s nothing like morning flattening.

My arms have become such numb stretches of skin. Two ropes of dough Nudging themselves into parentheses, Pushing into my pillow, Framing my head. Ah, to be born again!

There’s a still spot in my brain that is getting bigger. This paper is getting thinner

—Jennifer Wise

Shorter Days and Colder Nights

At 12 I behaved strangely, skating uphill in winter or rolling summer swimmers back into the pool. I was a kid with a village to make, a tree to enjoy. Through a looking glass I searched for lips—the good life needed a theme song, conjured in a carriage house. It was my duty to always play it, to belt it out at petting zoos. From childhood I learned how to place light between gray medals and how to check trees for Asian beetles. My mom taught me to sew, and it saved my mental health. Mom opened me like a present as I grew up too worried about getting burned to feel deeply remorseful. Instead, I felt like a reluctant but loud crusader for autumn’s shorter days and colder nights.

Right on time I went walking into fall, for now silver seemed like gold. I walked onto a blue horizon, where paradise formed apples as enchanting as stones of hope. Against all odds I caught a magical daydream with no hands: I just fell right on top of it!

—Cliff Saunders

BY Phillip X Levine if this is lightning and this is thunder how far away am i?

Some Love

Some love hides in the bushes Pounces when you least expect it Or pads up to you silently in the night Tickling your nose with its cold, wet one.

Some love hums in the background Pleasant white noise until you turn it up Your favorite song.

Some love you ask directly “Would you like to be friends?”

Some love needs to be toasted in a cast iron Baked at 375

Until the heat oxidizes caramel Crystals that stick in your molars long after you swallow.

Some love speaks a secret language Just one word unlocks an encrypted other self Fully realized after months or years asleep.

Some love fortifies you in armor of steel Feeds you Appalachian melodies While the world rages outside But time and rain rust the hinges Trapping you until you summon the strength To bust out: naked, alone, new.

Some love picks you a bouquet of wildflowers Your favorite

You keep them on your desk until they dry Scatter pollen everywhere Then you toss them on a brush pile Knowing they’ll return.

—Isabella Kosmacher

Witness

They grew from seeds pressed into thimble pots twenty-five years ago, privy to windowsill views of swirling snow and vibrant leaves, children splashing, birds in flight.

Nine cacti, spires and nodes, tolerate clumsy hands and watering spouts. Cobwebs and cat-fur sweaters adorn them, creating delicate auras punctuated by eight-point stars.

They endure, growing thicker in the middle drying out down below.

Vague

It’s not really clear what my intention is, though you might argue it’s intended to be that way,

but, honestly, that’s not the case. I might start out not knowing where I’m going, but it becomes

clear as I go along. I intend for it to become clear—to me, to you. Here, though,

if it really was clear from the start that I intended to define vague in a long-winded way,

then perhaps, instead, it should be called clear, but, really now, isn’t that

a whole different poem?

—Matthew J. Spireng

Experiencing new vistas and neighbors, a majestic river and flaming sunsets that sizzle when they slip behind the Palisades.

Their needles intertwine, a safety net of sorts for their silent community of shared existence and vigilant observation amid the steady progression of time.

—Lisa Kosan

The Rain Came Late and Other Cynical Thoughts

Suppose it thundered last night and you woke up frightened as you were as a child. It took a while for you to remember where you were, in a bed by yourself, as you were as a child. There’d been a drought, the rain came late, or not at all. A wildfire swept into the ridge ignited silently by lightening from the storm. And you slept, and others slept. What did you do yesterday to participate in this calamity, or to end it?

Let me take this on board for you. It’s beyond civic duty so I cast no blame. I will take it on board. Maybe it’s a mandate, maybe it’s a calling, a writer’s calling. And you are elsewhere, in the garden composting or harvesting sunflowers.

The storm is over and we go on living. So long as we don’t congratulate ourselves for our participation in ending the calamity. Whatever we have done isn’t enough.

—Carol Bergman

Good Intentions

I knew my friend would be embarrassed too. She’d scold herself in the car on the way home.

And we’d each work through our own unnecessary shame— born from good intentions. Her driving away with it and me, pouring it from the bowl, back into the bag.

—Leah S. Brickley

I Know A Field

I know a field where the sun always shines Golden when the world is grey Golden in the morning Before the sun hits the pines Golden again at the end of the day.

When the mountain goes dark And the towering trees no longer glow My meadow lies still, yet spinning Rays that spin straw into gold.

—B. Moore Columbo

What About Him? (Saint John Alone)

Lately I’ve been turning out The pockets of my memory; You’re all museum faces now, Dark washes of oil yellow-blurred, Plaster identities crumbled under Impersonations of some artist-beloved. (Well, at least they are stolen too.)

Lately I’ve been breathing; At night, it’s all I do. Dreams, bloated maudlin, Waltz with that little tongue of fireDrunken hope and pathetic glory, Hand in hand with a lung for each. Lately I’ve been taking nights off From work, from prayer, (If there’s a difference anymore.) In my free time I write postcards. Sometimes I send them home With a year for the address, And when they come back undelivered I just burn them, and pretend. Grace became a gamble, Faith, a film of stale wine, But lately I’ve been saying your names again, So I’ve reason yet to stay.

—Emily Murnane

When I’m Lost

Sometimes when I’m lost and weary, and the Wind has quit my sails; Night-time comes in robes of sadness, bringing with it storms and gales. Then gently do I launch my lifeboat, trying hard to steer toward land, hoping that the One will see; and take me in Its loving hand.

—Donny Kass

Poetry Has Been Purged

Not having been in here a while, it could be I just misremember where the poetry section is located. I thought it was one aisle behind science fiction, yet I’ve been back and forth from one end of the store to the other three times. My conclusion: poetry has been purged.

I should march right up to that attractive honey-haired sales associate and demand to speak to a manager. But my preternatural tendency to avoid confrontation will likely only render me demure and annoying.

Let’s say I go through with it, though, and find myself face to face with someone in charge. Am I prepared to accept the possibility people don’t read poetry anymore?

Would learning it was an albatross around corporate headquarters’ neck cutting into profits mollify me?

Man, I could use some poetry right about now.

—Ted Millar Without Apologies

I have a wheelbarrow. It isn’t red. Not much depends upon it. I don’t have chickens. My neighbor has chickens. They make a mess of my mulch. They shit like crazy on my walk.

I wish it would rain.

—J. R. Solonche River

It goes both ways This rolling brine and trash A habitat, symbiotic Swollen from heat and time We tiptoe in every day trying not to touch too much and drown each other And maybe, feet up, make estuary progress towards somewhere Just a bit better

—Cole Sletten

The Source Family November 12 at the Orpheum, Saugerties Part of Upstate Films’s “Close-Up” series, the centerpiece of this evening of film and music is a screening of Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulous’s The Source Family. It tells the story of a charismatic former Marine, Jim Baker, who began a commune in Los Angeles in the ‘70s that attracted beautiful young followers. In a sprawling mansion, flower children meditated, made psychedelic music and tantric love, and ate bean sprouts. There’ll also be music from Ben Jones and a screening of footage from a work-inprogress about the Unarius Academy of Science, a folk-healing public access TV collective. Upstatefilms.org

Drawing to a Clowes

Art historians are rediscovering female artists who’ve been forgotten for generations. The once-prominent genre painter Caroline Clowes (1838-1904) is featured in an exhibition at Locust Grove, Samuel F. B. Morse’s estate in Poughkeepsie. “Fertile Ground: The Hudson Valley Animal Paintings of Caroline Clowes” opens November 4.

As the show’s title suggests, Clowes’s specialty was four-footed creatures. Her horses are noble and resplendent, her cows warmhearted, but her sheep are particularly mesmerizing, their coats arrayed in natural spiral patterns. “People say they want to touch them,” curator Bill Jeffway reports. Sheep and Chickens looks very much like a creche, with sheep replacing Mary and Joseph: two sheep and two lambs in a manger. One sheep stands, eyeing the viewer. The sitting adult closes her eyes blissfully. Was this tableau meant as a parody of the Holy Family?

“I think she was very conscious of eye contact with the animal,” Jeffway suggests. The way a photographer chooses the right moment to take a photograph, Clowes would wait for a telling glance to record in a sketch.

Buckskin was a horse her cousin Ambrose brought back from the Civil War, which became the subject of one of her canvases. This painting particularly resembles

a portrait, focusing on the equine head and neck. Buckskin’s long white mane gives him an androgynous elegance, a bit like an English rock star of the 1970s.

Several of the paintings were made in Florida, near the St. Johns River. These pictures are less domestic than their northern equivalents; the creatures in Florida Cow Painting 1 look like they’re about to melt into the forest. (Some of the canvases were titled for this exhibition.)

Evensong, one of Clowes’s final paintings, which shows an Impressionist influence, depicts a mighty uprooted oak tree with a sheep nuzzling its exposed roots. Atop the trunk, a thrush is singing. Am I imagining the artist preparing for death?

Clowes’s life was a rags-to-riches story, like the ones written by her contemporary, Horatio Alger. Clowes’s mother died when she was two; her infant sister perished soon after. Clowes and her sister Lydia were raised by their eccentric father, who had inherited a woodland in Sullivan County and attempted to devise new commercial uses for lumber, such as a folding bed and a wooden railroad. His schemes were unsuccessful, and eventually his two daughters were sent to live with relatives. Caroline went to Heartsease, the stately house in Lagrange where her uncle Benjamin Hall Hart managed his extensive apple orchards. Nowadays

we think of farmers as struggling, but back then, apples were big business. Heartsease, which is also a type of violet, was well-named. Is it possible that the contentment that exudes from Clowes’s beasts was shared by the artist as well?

Clowes attended the Poughkeepsie Female Collegiate Institute, then studied with Hudson River School painter Frederick Rondel. Back then, as is still the case, being a successful artist required good business sense—including, in her case, hiding her gender. (She sold her paintings under the name C. M. Clowes.) Her representative, J. H. Wright, wrote to her: “They suppose you are a gentleman and I did not correct them.” Like many successful 19th-century women, Clowes never married. Eventually, she had an international reputation, exhibiting three works at the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences.

“I think that’s a powerful aspect of the show: That we have paintings, we have preparatory drawings, and then we have all these letters, so you can understand how Clowes came to have those skills, how she worked to overcome prejudice against women,” Jeffway observes. The exhibition is coordinated with the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College.

—Sparrow

“FERTILE GROUND: THE HUDSON VALLEY ANIMAL PAINTINGS OF CAROLINE CLOWES” November 4 to December 30

Locust Grove, Poughkeepsie Dchsny.org/clowes

Untitled (Horses with Parasol), Caroline Clowes, oil on canvas, 14" x 20". Collection of Elise Shartsis.

Inner Voice

“People mostly rely on their eyes [to observe], but by doing that they miss the world around them,” the late Kingston composer, musician, musical theoretician, and educator Pauline Oliveros told your arts editor when she was profiled for the October 2013 issue of Chronogram. “When we learn to become better listeners, we learn more about ourselves, as well as each other.” That principle, which lies at the core of the Deep Listening practice she developed, comes to the fore in Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros, a new documentary about the experimental and electronic music pioneer by filmmaker Daniel Weintraub that will premiere at the Rosendale Theater on November 4 and 5.

“[The film] is Daniel’s vision, and he started working on it before Pauline passed,” says Oliveros’s partner of 30 years, the author and artist Ione. “She and I spoke with him a lot during the process and did a lot of video for it. I kind of had to stop for a while when Pauline passed [to grieve] and couldn’t put my full energy into it. But after a while I thought about what she’d say, which would have been, ‘Let’s get this thing done!’”

Deep Listening is filled with rare early photos, recordings, and even scores and diagrams that illustrate Oliveros’s compositions and theories. The film follows her fascinating and creative life from her Texas childhood through her negotiating being a gay woman before the cultural revolutions of the ’60s and ’70s to her studying alongside fellow innovators Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Ramon Sender, and Loren Rush in San Francisco, where she cofounded the pivotal San Francisco Tape Center collective; groundbreaking work and approach on the accordion; and right on up to her final years as a Kingston resident and a faculty member at the cutting-edge Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, where the Deep Listening Institute entity, as per its creator’s wishes, is permanently embedded.

Perhaps there’s a bit of irony at play in the fact that there’s now a movie about Oliveros, whose intensely meditative approach to audio awareness—and awareness in general—centers on peeling back and compartmentalizing the layers of sound that surround us, which sometimes means not looking at anything. But

Weintraub’s film, which largely allows Oliveros herself to tell her story and explain her discoveries and ideas through recorded interviews that are peppered with commentary from her peers (Riley, Morton Subotnick) and disciples (Thurston Moore), is never at odds with the central tenets of the Deep Listening ethos. In fact, it leaves the viewer not only wanting to explore her music further, but to pay more attention to the sounds around them—something the composer no doubt would have appreciated.

“Watching the film for me is like revisiting Pauline’s past at the same time as her work continues here in the present, which is something that really goes along with the quantum theories she had about the work she was doing,” muses Ione. “It brings her back, into the present, but in a new way.”

Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros will be shown at the Rosendale Theater in Rosendale on November 4 at 7:30pm and November 5 at 2pm. A Q&A with director Daniel Weintraub and Ione will follow each screening. See website for tickets and information.

—Peter Aaron

LISTENING: THE STORY OF PAULINE OLIVEROS AT THE ROSENDALE THEATER

4 and 5 November at the Rosendale Theater Rosendaletheatre.org

Pauline Oliveros performing in Amsterdam, circa 2000.

Photo by Pieter Kers

From the Rockefeller Cellar

Below: Thom, Where are the Pocumtucks (The Oxbow), Kay WalkingStick, oil on panel, 24" x 48", 2020. Courtesy the artist and Hales Gallery, London and New York. Photo by JSP Art Photography

Opposite, clockwise from top left: Installation views of "Inspired Encounters," courtesy of the David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center.

Fluted Head, Elizabeth Catlett, Bronze, 12 1/2" x 9" x 9", 1991.

National Academy of Design, New York. © 2022 Mora-Catlett Family / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Exterior shot of David Rockefeller Creative Art Center

Photo by Frederick Charles

The David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center, which opened in October on the grounds of the Pocantico Center in the Westchester hamlet of Pocantico Hills, is an important new addition to the art scene in the Hudson Valley. The center will enable the Rockefeller family to leverage their modern art collection and long-standing support of the arts in general to provide exhibitions and events that are accessible to all sectors of our region, including underserved communities. According to notes written by David Rockefeller, Jr. and distributed to visitors at the center’s preview, it “will host rehearsals, performances, exhibits, artist residencies, and community groups along with a robust series of related public programming.” An example of this is the center’s first exhibition, “Inspired Encounters: Women Artists and the Legacies of Modern Art,” which brings together works by women artists from the Rockefeller’s collections, such as Lee Bontecou and Louise Nevelson, in dialogue with a group of seven women artists, including Sonya Clark and Elana Herzog, still making their way through an art world too often dominated by men.

Another example is a two-month studio residency that comes with a $25,000 prize. The first awardee is Peekskill-based artist Athena LaTocha. The award will be granted annually, alternating between local and national artists. Importantly, an additional $25,000 award and six-month residency will be given to a local arts organization; this year it’s going to Arts 10566, also based in Peekskill, whose goal is to “address the varied interests and needs of Peekskill’s diverse youth community through the arts.”

“We’re looking at the whole Hudson Valley,” says Elly Weisenberg Kelly, manager of public programs at the Pocantico Center. “We want to be part of that whole cultural ecosystem—the name of the game here is to be accessible.” Tickets to most events are in the $15 to $30

range. Through its connections with community groups, the center is offering free transportation as well as free tickets to events when needed. The new gallery is free of charge for all visitors.

The center’s performance facility is the Bloomberg Philanthropies Performance Space, a 180-seat indoor theater with cushioned bleacher seating that can be telescoped out of the way to provide additional floor space. Pivot doors enable access to an adjacent outdoor patio creating an indoor/outdoor performance venue. Upcoming programs include “Untold Tales,” a multidisciplinary production by Pablo and Anna Mayor of Folklore Urbano NYC on November 16 with music, dance, and theater inspired by the stories of immigrants living in the greater New York area. A performance incorporating music, text, video, and visual art by the award-winning dance company A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham will take place on December 1.

The building is itself a work of art—a prime example of adaptive reuse. Originally designed by William Wells Bosworth in 1908 as an orangerie for John D. Rockefeller and now restored and updated by FX Collaborative, it retains the elegance of its original exterior as well as the high ceilings supported by narrow columns of its historic interior. The overall look and feel as well as the versatile functionality of the space is definitively 21st century—the electrical needs of the building are entirely met by solar panels installed at the site. The facility uses state-of-the-art audio and lighting equipment. It also makes use of abundant natural lighting through large windows and skylights that can be covered with either sun shades or black out shades.

The “Inspired Encounters” exhibition on view through March 19 features works not only by Bontecou and Nevelson but also other luminaries such as Marisol Escobar, Anni Albers, and Grace Hartigan from

The exhibition was jointly curated by Katrina London, manager of collections and curatorial projects at the Pocantico Center, and Jeremiah William McCarthy, chief curator of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art.

Highlights from the artistic dialogues on view include Takenaga’s large painting on six hollow wood core wooden doors, Two for Bontecou, which quotes Bontecou’s gritty dark centered work in canvas, metal and wire: Untitled,1960. Another is an autobiographical suite of nine prints by Anni Albers, Connections, 1925–83, paired with a diminutive sculpture fashioned by Louise Nevelson with Plexiglas and golden machine screws. (The Albers suite is on loan from the Johnson Collection; Rockefeller’s collection includes an Albers, but the curators wanted to give her a larger presence in the exhibition.) Kay WalkingStick asks the perhaps rhetorical question “Who owns the landscape?” in her two Hudson River School-style works, homages to Cole and Durand, subtly emblazoned with Native American motifs.

There is also a dialogue concerning the complexities of reason and emotion between paintings by Melissa Meyer and Grace Hartigan. Meyer’s Nod to Grace featuring painterly calligraphy at once poised and playful is next to Hartigan’s ravishing Salome, somewhere between abstraction and representation, the body and the mind, and deep into the emotive poetry of gesture and color. London notes that in the Rockefellers’ Kykuit mansion the piece “was in a ground floor service tunnel that was converted into a gallery where it was hard to grasp the work.” Now it's on view for everyone to see.

—Carl Van Brunt

Nelson A. Rockefeller’s extensive collection, in visual conversation with newly commissioned works by seven other women artists. Joining Sonya Clark, and Elana Herzog are Maren Hassinger, Melissa Meyer, Fanny Sanin, Barbara Takenaga, and Kay WalkingStick.

“INSPIRED ENCOUNTERS: WOMEN ARTISTS AND THE LEGACIES OF MODERN ART” Through March 19 at the David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center Rbf.org/pocantico/events

Photo Courtesy of Scott D. Snell Imagery

Soccer Mommy

November 5. Soccer Mommy is the musical alias of Nashville-raised indie rocker Sophie Allison, whose wounded bedroom lo-fi pop hints at the disaffected grrl sounds of ’90s/early ’00s artists like Liz Phair and Avril Lavigne. She’s toured with Stephen Malkmus, Slowdive, Vampire Weekend, Kacey Musgraves, and others, and her fifth album, this year’s Sometimes, Forever (produced by Oneohtrix Point Never’s Daniel Lopatin), went to number 14 on the Billboard Alternative chart. Lightning Bug opens this teenage daughter-perfect Mass MoCA date. (Taylor Mac and Matt Ray vamp November 19; J. Hoard happens by December 3.) 8pm. $27-$57. North Adams, Massachusetts. Massmoca.org

Little Days

November 6. The Southern California-based Little Days began in 1998 as the studio project of Gov’t Mule bassist Jorgen Carlsson and his wife, singer-songwriter Mini Diaz, but have since become a performing quartet. “They don’t rely on Auto-Tuning, drum machines, or sequencing, but instead they have live studio musicians playing their real instruments,” asserts their bio. “The aim is to have their recordings sound like a missing tape reel found in a vault circa 1978, inspired by the pop rock music of that time.” The band eases into the Egremont Barn on its East Coast tour. (The Mammals make music November 12; the Mallet Brothers hit November 18.) 7pm. $15. Egremont, Massachusetts. Theegremontbarn.com

Martha Wainwright

November 12. Singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright has been overdue for a visit to these parts for quite some time—and, lo, here she is, joined by her sister Sloan Wainwright, for a rare and intimate performance at Radio Woodstock Studios. The two siblings are part of the musical family dynasty that includes their father, Loudon Wainwright III; late mother, Kate McGarrigle; and brother, Rufus Wainwright. All of the proceeds generated by the limited-attendance (80 seats only) show will go toward supporting area venue Unison Arts' programming for the remainder of the year and into 2023. 5pm. $150-$200. West Hurley. Unisonarts.org

Juma Sultan’s Aboriginal Music Society

November 17. Jazz percussionist, occasional bassist, and local legend Juma Sultan is known best for his performance with Jimi Hendrix at the Woodstock Festival in 1969. But Sultan was a key musical figure well before that landmark event, playing a crucial role in the New York free jazz loft scene earlier in the decade and founding his ever-changing Aboriginal Music Society collective in 1968. He recently resurrected the ABS project as a nine-piece band for live appearances, one of which is this night at the Falcon. (Tim Berne and Greg Belisle-Chi jam November 6; Richard Lloyd’s Television tunes in November 9.) 7pm. Donation requested. Marlboro.

Liveatthefalcon.com

The Weight Band

Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams

November 18. Well, here’s a solid bill that you can’t go wrong with. Performing the classic songs of The Band is the Weight Band, led by guitar great Jim Weider, a 15-year member of The Band and a longserving player of the Levon Helm Band; sharing the stage of the Bardavon with Weider and crew for the occasion are two of the guitarist’s most famous fellow Helm collaborators, multi-instrumentalist and singersongwriter Larry Campbell and singer-guitarist Teresa Williams. For a Thanksgiving-season, heart-and-hearthwarming Hudson Valley gathering, it gets no more appropriate. (The Hudson Valley Philharmonic plays a live soundtrack for Voices of Light (The Passion of Joan of Arc) November 6.) 8pm $29. Poughkeepsie. Bardavon.org

Rubblebucket

December 3. Brooklyn art/dance pop band Rubblebucket will hold much appeal for fans of similar indie units like Vampire Weekend, the Dirty Projectors, Brazilian Girls, Gang Gang Dance, tUneE-YarDs, and Passion Pit. Anchored around the founding core of Alex Toth (trumpet, band leader) and Kalmia Traver (vocals, saxophone), the group has long been popular on the festival circuit thanks to their upbeat, foot-moving, ska/ reggae-inspired rhythms. On the high-jumping heels of their 2021 album Earth Worship, they’ll shake up the Bearsville Theater this month. (Zero zips through November 2; Lissie lands November 5.) 8pm. $25. Bearsville. Bearsvilletheater.com

Juma Sultan's Aboriginal Music Society plays the Falcon in Marlboro November 17.

“Anthem”

November 4 at EMPAC

Hudson-based choreographer and dancer Adam Weinert is premiering his newly commissioned dance performance “Anthem” at the EMPAC Concert Hall in Troy this month. The performance, which rewrites the American anthem from a dance perspective, considers the failed narratives and failed hopes of our country. The movement in “Anthem” draws from a fake news article describing imagined original choreography from 1916 meant to accompany the national anthem. The performers, wearing Bluetooth in-ear monitors, will move in unison to a different soundtrack than what the audience is hearing—a sad, yet cogent commentary on our times.

Empac.rpi.edu

Beacon Bonfire

November 4-5 at various locations in Beacon

The idea for this immersive festival of art and music emerged from a series of gatherings around a bonfire a group of artists produced during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to bring residents of Beacon together. Two years later, festival organizers are shining a light on the city’s diverse cultural offerings with a town-wide festival. Over 100 artists will be performing or exhibiting their work across Beacon across two days of programming and activations, from concerts in venues like Towne Crier Cafe and Quinn’s to bonfires all over town and performances in nontraditional spaces.

Beaconbonfire.com

Take a Look at This Heart

November 9 at Story Screen Theater

Beacon-based filmmaker Ben Duffy screens his 2019 documentary about love, sexuality, and the human bond in the disabled community at Story Screen this month.

Take a Look at This Heart is an empathic journey into the lives of 17 people; some with disabilities and the partners who love them, others struggling to get by in a world that often seems to overlook them. The film will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker.

Storyscreenbeacon.com

Peripheral Natural Wine Festival

November 12 at 14 Montgomery Street, Hudson

Over 90 small-scale natural wine producers will be pouring at this annual gathering. Attendees can enjoy natural wines from France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain, and the US (California, New York), while hearing local live music and tasting fare provided by regional restaurants. The region’s only natty wine fest, it offers unlimited tastings of naturally fermented beverages

produced with a dedication to organic practices, native yeast fermentation, and minimal intervention.

Peripheralwine.com

This is National Wake November 12 at PS21

Chatham-based filmmaker Mirissa Neff screens This is National Wake (2018), her documentary tracing the rise and fall of the multiracial South African punk group, “the band that defied apartheid,” whose members risked everything to taste freedom and documented their courageous performances in Super 8. The band’s “brilliant archival footage” forms the basis of Neff’s revelatory film. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Mirissa Neff.

Ps21chatham.org

Percussion Orchestra of Kingston November 12 at the Old Dutch Church

The Percussion Orchestra of Kingston (known colloquially as POOK) is a young people’s multicultural, world rhythm, drum, and percussion performance ensemble founded by Evry Mann in 1997. POOK plays and traditional, folkloric, and original rhythms for community events, schools, and festivals. As part of the Peaceful Guardians Project, the group works to improve community/police relations. To celebrate its 25th anniversary, POOK is hosting a fundraising concert at the Old Dutch Church in Kingston that will feature performances by the ensemble as well as guest drummers. Proceeds will help buy new drums and percussion instruments.

Peacefulguardiansproject.org

“Hyprov” with Colin Mochrie

November 12 at Paramount Hudson Valley Theater

Improv takes a detour into the psychologically focused lane of hypnosis in “Hyprov,” starring “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” comedian Colin Mochrie and hypnotist Asad Mecci. A mind-blowing, jaw-dropping, side-splitting show that combines hypnosis and improv—two art forms that have entertained and mystified for decades. A couple dozen volunteers from the audience will be put under hypnosis by Mecci and perform improv with Mochrie.

Paramounthudsonvalley.com

“The Rise and Fall of Jean Claude Van Damme”

November 13 at Philipstown Depot Theater

The full title of this “gleefully juvenile show” (New York Times) says a lot: “The Rise and Fall, Then Brief Modest Rise Followed by a Relative Fall Of…Jean

Philipstowndepottheatre.org

“Presence of Light”

November 19 at the Old Dutch Church

The Erick Hawkins Dance Company carries on the legacy of Erick Hawkins (1909-1994), a leading moderndance choreographer and dancer who pioneered movement theory. “Presence of Light,” performed in the spectacular sanctuary of Kingston’s Old Dutch Church, will consist of five dance pieces with accompaniment from pianist Anton Fine.

Erickhawkinsdance.org

Hudson Valley Hullabaloo

November 19-20 at the Andy Murphy Recreation Center

A carefully curated selection of craftspeople selling their work, Hudson Valley Hullabaloo returns to the Andy Murphy Rec Center in Kingston for another year of handmade objects and holiday fun. Shop here for highquality craft direct from local Hudson Valley artisans, such as Catskill Glassworks, L&M Studio, and Rural Modernist.

Hvhullabaloo.com

Andrew Dice Clay

November 25 at Sugar Loaf Performing Arts Center

Hopefully you’ll have fully digested Thanksgiving dinner before you head out to see one of the most reliably controversial and outrageous comics of the past few decades. Despite playing a parody version of himself in TV and films, from Ford Fairlane to “Entourage,” the 2016 autobiographical TV series “Dice” revealed a vulnerable, more mature side of the shockmeister that carries through into his stand-up (a bit). Dice will surely be dishing out the classics as well. Leave the kids at home.

Sugarloafpacny.com

Basilica Farm & Flea

November 26-27 at Basilica Hudson

This urban-chic-meets-new-rural extravaganza paved the way for Field + Supply and Phoenicia Flea. Nine years after its founding as an antidote to Black Friday at big box stores, it shows no signs of stopping. Basilica Farm & Flea is part timeless flea and farmers’ market and part 21st-century craft and design fair, with close to 100 vendors in 10,000 square feet of space.

Basilicahudson.com

Claude Van Damme As Gleaned by a Single Reading of His Wikipedia Page Earlier This Month.” This OffOff-Broadway show is a minimalist affair—two actors reenacting an approximate biography of the Belgian action hero with action figures jury-rigged into puppets— and delightfully zany.

"Anthem," a new work from dancer and choreographer Adam Weinert will premiere at EMPAC in Troy on November 4.

510 WARREN ST GALLERY

510 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“South and North 2022.” Photographs by John Lipkowitz. November 4-27.

1053 MAIN STREET GALERY

1053 MAIN STREET, FLEISCHMANNS

“Echo Chambers.” Work by David Young and Susan Yelavich. November 5-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, 2023.

ANN STREET GALLERY

104 ANN STREET, NEWBURGH

“Anthology.” Emerging artist fellowship exhibi tion featuring the work of Kammy Daydream, Myra Grice, Fernanda Mello, Neen Rivera, and Angelís Wong. Through November 19.

ART GALLERY 71

71 EAST MARKET STREET #5, RHINEBECK.

“Vera Kaplan: Paintings.” November 6-December 6.

ART OMI

1405 COUNTY ROUTE 22, GHENT

"Allana Clarke: A Particular Fantasy." Construc tions using materials such as sugar, cocoa butter and hair-bonding glue to construct works that confront histories of colonialism and West ern standards of beauty. Through January 8.

ART POD 66

66 ROCK CITY ROAD, WOODSTOCK

“Loving Light and Eye in the Sky”. Digital prints on canvas by Carmela Tal Baron. Through November 30.

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. November 26-December 30.

BANNERMAN ISLAND GALLERY

150 MAIN STREET, BEACON

“Modern American Impressionists.” Landscape paintings by Deborah Cotrone, Gary Fifer, and Marguerite Takvorian. Through November 27.

BEACON ARTIST UNION

506 MAIN STREET, BEACON

“as above, so below.” Paintings by John De Marco. Through November 6.

“Rekindled.” Group ceramics show with work by Rob Boryk, Jason Laney, Sarah Fox, Sydney

Ruckdeschel, Eileen Sackman, and B. J. Watson. Through November 6. “Boomerang.” Artwork by Pamela Vlahakis. November 12-December 4.

“Combinants and Recombinants.” Sculptures and prints by Jebah Baum. November 12December 4.

BILL ARNING EXHIBITIONS

17 BROAD STREET, KINDERHOOK

“A Light That Swam Like Minnows.” Group show curated by Aaron Michael Skolnick. November 11-December 18.

BUSTER LEVI GALLERY

121 MAIN STREET, COLD SPRING “Ursula Schneider.” Paintings and prints. November 4-27.

CAROL COREY FINE ART

6 NORTH MAIN STREET, KENT, CT

“Difference City.” Polychrome carved wood sculptures by J. C. Fontanive. Through November 27.

CAROL CHEN GALLERY

281 MAIN STREET, GREAT BARRINGTON, MA

“Suzanne Kiggins: Harmonica.” New paintings. November 12-January 14.

CARRIE HADADAD GALLERY

622 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“Big Little Color.” Donise English, Gina Occhio grosso, Vincent Pomillo, and Stephen Walling. Through November 27.

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.

CRAGSMOOR FREE LIBRARY

355 CRAGSMOOR ROAD, CRAGSMOOR

“The John Evans Family (1765-1997).” Docu ments and photographs of the Evans family. Through November 30.

CREATE GALLERY

398 MAIN STREET, CATSKILL.

"OPTICS//MOTION." Nathan McLaughlin pres ents an immersive 45-minute video experience.

Through November 12.

GALLERY 40

40 CANNON STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE

"All That Jazz, and more - Exploring the Relation ship Between Art and Music." Sean Bowen and Alan Summ. November 4-27.

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

“Sowing Seeds of Emptiness.” Hair embroider ies by Jayoung Yoon. Through November 6. “Holiday Pottery Show & Sale.” November 19-27.

GEARY CONTEMPORARY

34 MAIN STREET, MILLERTON

“Lethe-Wards.” A series of cast iron and plaster boats by William Corwin inspired by ancient burial boats. Through December 18.

GREEN KILL

229 GREENKILL AVENUE, KINGSTON

D’ARCY SIMPSON ART WORKS

409 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

"New Work by Gretchen Kelly." Through November 11.

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. October 14-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 “Point of View.” Group show of the Women Photographers Collective of the Hudson Valley. Through November 13.

DIA BEACON

3 BEEKMAN STREET, BEACON Richard Serra, Louise Bourgeois, Melvin Edwards, Dan Flavin, and others. Ongoing.

EMERGE GALLERY

228 MAIN STREET, SAUGERTIES

"Piccolo: The Big Show of Small Art." Includes art sized 11” x 14” and under by 115 artists from the Hudson Valley and NY metropolitan area. Through November 13.

FORELAND

111 WATER STREET, CATSKILL

“Robert Bordo.” Paintings. Through November 27. “System Sets.” Curated by Jesse Greenberg. Work by David Brooks, Nathaniel DeLarge, Matthew Fischer, Russel Taylor, and Susan Wides. Through November 27.

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. November 15-December 21.

FRONT ROOM GALLERY-HUDSON

727 WARREN STREET, HUDSON “Quodlibet.” Paintings by Mark Masyga. Through November 20.

FULLER BUILDING

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

“Vito Desalvo’s World of Music Productions and Literary Works.” Colored pencil drawings. November 5-December 31.

HESSEL MUSEUM OF ART/CCS BARD BARD COLLEGE, ANNANDALE-ONHUDSON

“Dara Birnbaum: Reaction.” First US retrospec tive of groundbreaking video artist. Through November 7.

“Martine Syms: Grio College.” Recent and never-before-seen video works that interrogate digital media’s influence on our lives and explore representations of Blackness and its relationship to vernacular, feminist thought, and radical traditions. Through November 7.

HOLLAND TUNNEL GALLERY

46 CHAMBERS STREET, NEWBURGH

“Matter of Fact.” Paintings by Thornton Willis and sculpture by Bix Lye. Through November 13.

HOTCHKISS SCHOOL TREMAINE ART GALLERY

11 INTERLAKEN ROAD, LAKEVILLE, CT “Cross Cut.” Sculpture by Ryan Frank. November 5-Decmeber 10.

HUDSON BEACH GLASS GALLERY

162 MAIN STREET, BEACON

“Night Full of Dreams I Can’t Remember.” Paint ings by Sally Bowring. Through November 6.

HUDSON HALL

327 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“Enigmatic Artists of the Hudson Valley.” Work by Lois Guarino, Stan Lichens, and Pete Mauney. Through November 20.

JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY: THE SCHOOL

25 BROAD STREET, KINDERHOOK

“Stressed World.” Works by El Anatsui, Shimon Attie, Radcliffe Bailey, Yoan Capote, Nick Cave, Ifeyinwa Joy Chiamonwu, Gehard Demetz, Pierre Dorion, Paterson Ewen, Vibha Galhotra, Barkley L. Hendricks, Hayv Kahraman, Anton Kannemeyer, Lyne Lapointe, Deborah Luster, Tyler Mitchell, Meleko Mokgosi, Adi Nes, Jackie Nickerson, Odili Donald Odita, Gordon Parks, Garnett Puett, Claudette Schreuders, Malick Sidibé, Paul Anthony Smith, Michael Snow, Hank Willis Thomas, Carlos Vega, Andy Warhol, Leslie Wayne and Carrie Mae Weems.

Through December 3.

JANE STREET GALLERY

11 JANE STREET, SAUGERTIES

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

JDJ | THE ICE HOUSE GARRISON

“Soft Folds.” Coiled, gathered, and unstretched paintings on canvas by Susan Weil. Through November 13.

KLEINERT/JAMES ARTS CENTER

34 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK

“Arriving at Byrdcliffe.” History, nature, and legacy of the Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts colony. Work by Milton Avery, Philip Guston, and others. Through November 20.

A sculpture by William Corwin from "Lethe Wards" at Geary Contemporary in Millerton.

LABSPACE

2642 NY ROUTE 23, HILLSDALE

“Magic Mirror.” Paintings, ceramics, and sculp ture by Susan Carr. Through November 27.

LACE MILL GALLERIES

165 CORNELL STREET, KINGSTON

“Confrontation.” Curated by Freya DeNitto. Group show. Through Novmber 30.

LAUREN CLARK FINE ART

684 SOUTH MAIN STREET, GREAT BARRINGTON, MA

“Ground; Matter as Form.” Work by sculptors Joe Wheaton and Michael Boroniec. Through November 7.

LIFEBRIDGE SANCTUARY

333 MOUNTAIN ROAD, ROSENDALE

“Impressions of India: Surrendering to the Journey.” Photographs of contemporary India by Mary Anne Erickson. Through January 31.

LOCUST GROVE

2683 SOUTH ROAD, POUGHKEEPSIE

“Fertile Ground: The Hudson Valley Animal Paintings of Caroline Clowes.” Exhibition of paintings by Caroline Morgan Clowes (18381904), Dutchess County landscape painter. November 4-December 31.

MAGAZZINO ITALIAN ART

2700 ROUTE 9, COLD SPRING.

“Gilardi: Tappeto-Natura.” Piero Gilardi’s Tappeto-Natura (Nature-Carpets). Through an ample selection of relevant works, 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.

MANITOGA

584 ROUTE 9D, GARRISON

“Formfantasma at Manitoga’s Dragon Rock: Designing Nature.” Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of the Italian design duo Formafantasma will present a selection of works in dialogue with the House, Studio and surrounding landscape at Manitoga. In col laboration with Magazzino Italian Art. Through November 14.

MARK GRUBER GALLERY

NEW PALTZ PLAZA, NEW PALTZ “Holiday Salon Show.” Group show. November 12-January 14.

MASS MOCA

1040 MASS MOCA WAY, NORTH ADAMS, MA

“Marc Swanson: A Memorial to Ice at the Dead Deer Disco.” These installations are Marc Swanson’s most ambitious yet and consist of sculptures and environments in a diverse array of materials that look at the relationships between humans, culture, and the natural world. Exhibition curated by Denise Markonish, in conjunction with an exhibition at Thomas Cole Historic Site. Through January 1.

MIKEL HUNTER

533 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

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

MOTHER GALLERY

1154 NORTH AVENUE, BEACON

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

NEWBERRY ARTISAN MARKET

236 MAIN STREET, SAUGERTIES

“Richard Gamache Retrospective.” Paintings. Through November 20.

OLIVE FREE LIBRARY

4033 ROUTE 28A, WEST SHOKAN

“Hudson Valley Watercolors.” Group show cu rated by Staats Fasoldt. Through November 5.

PAMELA SALISBURY GALLERY

362 1/2 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

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

“Disquiet.” Safety pin sculptures by Tamiko Kuwata and photographic works by Robert Palumbo. Through January 8.

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

Through January 8.

“Rebecca Purdum: New Paintings.” Through November 27.

SAMUEL DORSKY MUSEUM OF ART

1 HAWK DRIVE, SUNY NEW PALTZ

“The Material, The Thing.” Annual Hudson Valley artists showcase. Through November 6. “Benjamin Wigfall & Communications Village.”

Through December 11.

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

SELIGMANN CENTER FOR THE ARTS

23 WHITE OAK DRIVE, SUGAR LOAF

“Kurt Seligmann: Beyond the Quotidian.” Paintings by the Swiss-American surrealist Kurt Seligmann (1900-1962). Through November 25.

SEPTEMBER

4 HUDSON STREET, KINDERHOOK

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

“Deeper Than The Skin.” Regional exhibition curated by Paula Bernay of Bernay Fine Art. Through November 27.

SUSAN ELEY FINE ART

433 WARREN STREET, HUDSON “Ingrained.” Sculptures by Jared Abner and monotypes by Rachel Burgess. Through November 13.

THOMAS COLE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE

218 SPRING STREET, CATSKILL

“Marc Swanson: A Memorial to Ice at the Dead Deer Disco.” A companion exhibition to one at Mass MoCA, these installations are Marc Swanson’s most ambitious yet and consist of sculptures and environments in a diverse array of materials that look at the relationships between humans, culture, and the natural world. Exhibitions curated by Denise Markon ish. Through November 27.

THOMPSON GIROUX GALLERY

57 MAIN STREET, CHATHAM

“James Christopher Carroll with Matt Drake.” Mixed media artworks. Through November 13.

TIVOLI ARTISTS GALLERY

60 BROADWAY, TIVOLI

“Vivid.” Work by Janene Gentile, abstract painter; Demoy Shilling, photographer; Andrea Gentile-Shilling, ceramicist; and Cinda Spar ling, conceptual artist. Through November 15.

VISITOR CENTER

233 LIBERTY STREET, NEWBURGH

“Iena Cruz.” Work by the acclaimed environ mental street artist. Through November 15.

WOMENSWORK.ART

4 SOUTH CLINTON STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE

“Ritual: Art & Witchcraft.” Group show.

Through November 26.

WOODSTOCK ARTISTS ASSOCIATION AND MUSEUM

28 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK

“Richard Segalman: Contemporary American Impressionist.” Exhibition spans Segalman’s six-decade career and features 24 works of art including oil paintings, watercolors, pastels, draw ings, and monotypes. Through December 31.

Hipnotic, Iena Cruz, acrylic on cotton, 70" x 30", 2017. Works by the acclaimed street artist Iena Cruz are on view at Visitor Center in Newburgh through November 15.

Horoscopes

By Lorelai Kude

OPTING OUT IS NO LONGER AN OPTION

The astrology of November 8, Midterm Election Day, is as polarized as America herself. Taurus Full Moon/Total Lunar Eclipse with Venus opposite the Sun and Mercury in Scorpio, squared by Saturn in Aquarius reflects the fixed, binary, rigid ideologies running like an ever-widening fissure down America’s spine, resulting in chaos and uncertainty. Mars in Retrograde Gemini conjunct America’s natal Moon in Gemini at 21 degrees is uncomfortably close to Donald Trump’s natal Sun at 22 Gemini. Trump isn’t on the ballot, but his influence is. Venus, which is very much about politics, and Mercury, which is all about communication, are swimming together through Scorpio to trine Neptune November 10–12; a viable vision for the future emerges. Mercury and Venus sextile Pluto November 13–14; Your ability to resist high levels of external disarray directly depends on the supportive foundation you’ve built over time. Venus and Mercury trine Jupiter November 15–16; being paralyzed with inaction isn’t an option anymore. This is not our first time at this rodeo!

Venus and Mercury both enter Sagittarius November 16–17; constraints and caution slip away, favoring bold action. The Sun trines Jupiter November 30 and enters Sagittarius November 22, right before the New Moon in Sagittarius and Jupiter’s direct station in Pisces November 23. A sense of righteous invincibility prevails, whether that’s objectively accurate is less important than the confidence-building effect of large doses of bravado and optimism. Mercury and Venus trine Wounded Healer Chiron in Aries November 28. Courage, vulnerability, and honesty create unbreakable bonds of loyalty.

November’s gift is that by the end of the month, any doubts about where you stood on the ideological spectrum will irrevocably be put to rest. Regardless of the outcome, nobody gets to opt out of taking personal responsibility for the future anymore.

ARIES (March 20–April 19)

Planetary ruler Mars in Gemini stationed retrograde October 30. The planet of assertive vitality goes “backwards” until January 12. Your thought processes and communications around matters of your immediate environment are challenged during this time. You may struggle to understand your siblings; those of flesh and blood, and those of the spirit. It is crucial to test your perceptions for accuracy at the square of retrograde Mars in Gemini to retrograde Neptune in Pisces on November 19. Family heritage is heavy baggage; don’t carry it alone. Retrograde Mars trine Saturn November 28 energizes you to start unpacking those bags.

TAURUS (April 19–May 20)

Big surprises challenge existing structures when Venus in Scorpio opposes Uranus November 5 and squares Saturn November 7. The Full Moon Total Lunar Eclipse in Taurus November 8, with the Sun conjunct Mercury and Mercury opposite Uranus is the apex of the crisis of self-identity you’ve been trying to avoid. The trine of Venus to Neptune and Jupiter November 10 and 15 is the lifeline you’re praying for. Venus enters Sagittarius November 16, helping to loosen your grip on what’s keeping you from soaring higher. Mercury conjuncts Venus November 21 just in time to sweeten family encounters on Thanksgiving.

A

GEMINI (May 20–June 21)

Mercury amplifies the Full Moon / Total Lunar Eclipse message on November 8 in conjunction with the Sun, opposing the Moon and Uranus. The message is this: the tighter you hold on to your obsessions and possessions, the smaller and more constricted your world becomes. With assertive Mars retrograde in Gemini through mid-January, your nervous energy is through the roof. It’s an excellent time to clear the clutter! Formulate your long-term plan November 10 when Mercury squares Saturn during Moon in Gemini. Mercury trines Neptune November 12 and Jupiter November 16 before entering Sagittarius November 17. Follow your inspiration!

CANCER (June 21–July 22)

With five lunations during November, you’re looking at a very emotionally intense month. First Quarter Moon in Aquarius November 1 invites you to enlarge your definition of family. The Full Moon in Taurus/Total Solar Eclipse November 8, with the Sun and Mercury in Scorpio opposite Moon and Uranus dramatically stimulates your creative and communal nexus. Last Quarter Moon in Leo November 22 generates pride in well-managed resources; the New Moon in Sagittarius November 23 hospitably welcomes wanderers. First Quarter Moon in Pisces November 30 resurrects and refocuses your dreams, but this time in a more practical and embodied form.

LEO (July 22–August 23)

An existential peak November 8–11 at the Full Moon / Lunar Eclipse, with Sun and Mercury in Scorpio opposite Moon and Uranus in Taurus, followed by the Sun’s square to Saturn in Aquarius. Are you stuck in comfortable or familiar ways and resistant to inevitable change? Conjure a fresh new dream when the Sun trines Neptune November 14; the Last Quarter Moon in Leo November 16 illuminates the significance of your impending role change. Power surges at the Sun’s sextile to Pluto and trine to Jupiter November 18–20; the Sun enters Sagittarius November 23, turning up the fire.

VIRGO (August 23–September 23)

The Sun / Mercury conjunction in Scorpio opposite Moon / Uranus in Taurus at November 8’s Full Moon

Total Lunar Eclipse sparks a crisis in faith. Wrestle with integrating new ways into beloved traditions November 10 with Mercury square Saturn; find inspiration in nature when Mercury trines Neptune November 12. Others find encouragement from your example when Mercury trines Jupiter November 16. Mercury enters Sagittarius November 17: no way to avoid truth-telling!

Mercury conjuncts Venus November 21, and both trine Chiron November 25. Calibrate your communications for extreme vulnerability, especially in the realm of intimate partnerships and shared resources.

LIBRA (September 23–October 23)

You may be in for a shock around what your partner defines as equitable allocation of shared resources when Venus opposes Uranus and squares Saturn November 5 - 7. Are service and sacrifice equally valued? Rise above perceived slights to transcendent heights November 10–13 with Venus trine Neptune and sextile Pluto. Taking the high ground pays off big time when Venus trines Jupiter November 15. Venus enters Sagittarius November 16, sweetening the sharp arrows of truth with diplomacy. Mercury conjuncts Venus November 21 and both trine Chrion November 25. Set an example: Do justice by protecting the vulnerable.

Horoscopes

SCORPIO (October 23–November 22)

All things are revealed: the good, the bad, and the ugly, when Sun and Mercury in Scorpio oppose Moon and Uranus in Taurus at the Full Moon / Total Lunar Eclipse November 8. Transcend the superficial; prove you can love and be loved in all your gritty, imperfect, flawed, and fabulous humanity. The Sun and Mercury in Scorpio square Saturn in Aquarius November 9–10; rise to your highest ideals without abandoning reality. Venus, Mercury, and the Sun sextile Pluto November 13–18 imbuing your creative impulses with fresh fuel. Mars trines Saturn November 28, energizing your professional, public persona.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22–December 22)

Deeply personal, poignant, and beautiful life and death revelations occur when Venus and Mercury in Scorpio trine retrograde Jupiter in Pisces November 15-16, before both enter Sagittarius November 16–17. You’re dying to feel alive and you’re willing to risk it all when the Sun trines Jupiter November 20. It’s useless to warn you about recklessness; Sagittarius knows there’s no such thing as bad luck or good luck; there’s only pure luck. Sun enters Sagittarius November 22, buoying your bounce and infusing confidence. You’re ready to fly at the New Moon in Sagittarius with Jupiter stationing direct November 23.

CAPRICORN (December 22–January 20)

Lucrative opportunities for your unique talents may be found through well-connected friends, in affinity groups, and like-minded community organizations when Venus squares Saturn November 7. Have your best elevator speech prepared when Mercury squares Saturn November 10; communicating your vision with passion and purpose elevates your status and gives you credibility when the Sun squares Saturn November 11. You’ll have the chance to impress someone influential. Be clear about what’s in it for them. The answer is a resounding yes when Venus trines Saturn November 28. Nobody understands how you make hard work look easy. Don’t divulge your secrets!

AQUARIUS (January 20–February 19)

Retrograde Uranus in Taurus revisits a home and family theme which became important in June of this year. Examine how you’re meeting the goals you set for yourself at the First Quarter Moon in Aquarius November 1. The Sun and Mercury in Scorpio opposite Venus, Uranus, and the Moon in Taurus November 5-9 squares your Aquarius Sun and transiting Saturn in Aquarius. A culmination of built-up expectations, fears, disappointments, and hopes to play out in the family arena. Thankfully, the Last Quarter Moon in Leo November 16 with Venus entering Sagittarius and Mercury trine Jupiter liberates your love life.

PISCES (February 20–March 19)

November puts the “go” in your “flow”, with so much harmony it almost appears you’ve bribed the cosmos. A romantic, intense trine between Venus and Mercury in Scorpio and Neptune in Pisces November 10–12 almost seems too good to be true; the light of the Sun / Neptune trine November 14 reveals reality in the most beautiful way. Ignore naysayers and party poopers when Mars squares Neptune November 19. Jupiter in Pisces stations direct November 23 and the First Quarter Moon in Pisces November 30 sparks profound gratitude. Now is the time to swim forward toward your future.

1053 Main Street Gallery 72

Apizza! 54

Aqua Jet 25

Athens Fine Art Services 72

Bard College at Simon’s Rock 7 Barner Books 54

Beacon Natural Market 18

Berkshire Food Co-op 19

Bill Arning Exhibitions 10

Bill Cooke & Co 32

Birch Body Care 32

Bistro To Go 18

Boulevard Wine & Spirits 33

Bridge Arts and Education 72

Cabinet Designers, Inc 25

Canna Provisions 2

Catskill Art Supply 32

Catskill Farms 28 Center for Photography at Woodstock 66

Chickadee Studio and Supply 34

City Winery 17

Colony Woodstock 26

Columbia Memorial Health 8, 41

Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster Co. 12

Dedrick’s Pharmacy 53 Dia Beacon 70

Erick Hawkins Dance Company 72

Fisher Center at Bard College 11

Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty 28

Glenn’s Wood Sheds 26

Graceland Tattoo 33 Green Cottage 77 H Houst & Son 28

Hamilton & Adams 30

Hawthorne Valley Association 12 Herrington’s 22

Historic Huguenot Street 54

Holistic Natural Medicine: Integrative Healing Arts 38

Honey’s Cannabis 34

Hotchkiss School 72

Hudson Brewing Company 19 Hudson Clothier 35

Hudson Design Architecture & Construction Management 25

Hudson Valley Goldsmith 31

Hudson Valley Goldsmith 53

Hudson Valley Healing Center 77

Hudson Valley Hospice 38

Hudson Valley Kitchen Design 22

Hummingbird Jewelers 10, 30

Jack’s Meats & Deli 18

Jacobowitz & Gubits 79

Jane St. Art Center 72

John A Alvarez and Sons 28 Keap 31

The Kinderhook Group 22

Larson Architecture Works 26 Leigh Kelley Skin Studio 32 Liza Phillips Design 28

Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center 12 Malcarne Contracting 1 Mark Gruber Gallery 70 Matthew ONeill 70 Menla 38 MOD.VIN 35

Montano’s Shoe Store 33 Mother Earth’s Storehouse 12 Mountain Laurel Waldorf School 54 Mulberry Hair Company 38 N & S Supply 25

Newhard’s 34 Old Souls 34 Orvis Sandanona Company 33 Pamela’s on the Hudson 19

The Pass back cover Pegasus Footwear 35 Peter Aaron 72 Pinkwater Gallery 31 Raw Spirit Fragrances 32 Red Line Diner 17 Red Mannequin 34 Regent Tours, Inc. 77 Resilient Self Therapy 38 Revel 32 28

Runa Bistro 54 RYCOR 50

Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art 7, 66 Sawyer Motors 8 Schneider’s Jewelers, Inc. 35 Snowflake Festival 70 Stacie Flint Art 54 Studio 89 32 Studio SFW 26 Sullivan Catskills 4 Sunflower Natural Food Market 10 Sunshine Smiles 53 Third Eye Associates Ltd. 77 Tuthilltown Spirits, LLC 19

Ulster County Habitat For Humanity 76 Unison Arts Center 72 Upstate Films 76 Vassar College 66 WAAM - Woodstock Artists Association & Museum

Wallkill View Farm Market

Warren Kitchen & Cutlery

WDST 100.1 Radio Woodstock 76 Williams Lumber & Home Center

WMCHealth

Woodstock Wine & Liquors

Xthetic MD

YMCA of Kingston and Ulster County

Tapping into 85

Brenda Bufalino is a national treasure who’s also a local legend. As a soloist, and choreographer/director of the American Tap Dance Orchestra, Bufalino has performed and taught internationally for over 30 years. She’s collaborated with her partner and mentor the great Charles “Honi” Coles, as well as Gregory Hines, the Nicholas Brothers, and other giants of tap dance. As a jazz and tap dancer, singer, poetess, and composer, she dominated stages and studios in New York, Boston, and beyond through the 1970s and `80s, and is renowned for improvisational fearlessness, acoustic innovation, and wildly original choreography. Bufalino’s called the Hudson Valley home for decades; founding the Dancing Theater in New Paltz in 1974 and creating “Gertrude’s Nose: A Tap Opera” in 1996.

“Brenda Bufalino: Tapping Into 85” at the Rosendale Theater is a birthday celebration of sorts and will feature tap dancing, singing, and storytelling, with a sneak peek of a new documentary by her dear friend and American Tap Dance Foundation cofounder Tony Waag. Joining her will be vocalist Teri Roiger and bassist John Menegon. Tickets for the performance, happening at the Rosendale Theater on December 3 at 7pm, are $20 for non-members and $15 for members. Rosendaletheatre.org

—Anne Pyburn Craig

Actual Patient

This is where _______ happens.a cure

A lot goes into planning a birthday. Decorations. Cake. Candles. A bouncy house. For Camryn to celebrate hers, she needed a stem cell transplant to cure her Sickle Cell Disease. Yes, cure. We deploy technology, techniques, and talented specialists to deliver advanced Pediatric Care to tens of thousands of children at our Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital. Helping kids like Camryn enjoy this birthday. And the next. And the next. Happy birthday, Camryn.