January 2015 Chronogram

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4 CHRONOGRAM 1/15

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ARTS.CULTURE.SPIRIT.

CONTENTS 1/15

VIEW FROM THE TOP

COMMUNTIY PAGES

12 ON THE COVER

37 NEW PALTZ: COSMOPOLITAN VILLAGE

Hands, a mixed media work by Steven Siegel.

14 ESTEEMED READER

Jason Stern remembers the potato gun that never arrived.

19 EDITOR’S NOTE Brian K. Mahoney listens for a tree falling in the woods.

NEWS AND POLITICS 20 WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING

Medical marijauana, renewable energy, record-breaking temperatures, and more.

21 BEINHART’S BODY POLITIC

Larry Beinhart reflects on The Torture Report and its surrounding debate.

The homey village of New Paltz welcomes some exciting new additions.

KIDS AND FAMILY 42 A PERFECT CHAOS

Hillary Harvey explores the blessing in disguise of growing up with disabilities.

WEDDINGS & CELEBRATIONS 46 THE LOVE OF ART FOR THE ART OF LOVE

Explore Hudson Valley wedding venues for the artist in you.

WEDDING GUIDE

FEATURE

52 A DIRECTORY OF WEDDING VENUES AND SHOPS IN THE HUDSON VALLEY

22 CHILDREN ON THE RUN

WHOLE LIVING

Central American youth make a home in the Hudson Valley, but how long will they be able to stay? Leanne Tory-Murphy reports.

82 DARING TO BE SILENT

HOME 26 THE UMBRELLA HOUSE

Artist and former watch designer Chuck Davidson’s minimalist haven in Cragsmoor.

34 THE CRAFT: SPECTRAL FIXTURES

Kim Markel melds art and function in her bold home décor.

6

72

Selections from the CIA’s new pop-up restaurant, Pangea.

FOOD & DRINK

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Turn off your smartphone and see what quietude can teach you.

COMMUNITY RESOURCE GUIDE 77 TASTINGS A directory of what’s cooking and where to get it.

78 BUSINESS DIRECTORY A compendium of advertiser services.

86 WHOLE LIVING Opportunities to nurture mind, body, and soul.

Karen Pearson

Chronogram

upstater ONLINE AT UPSTATER.COM

feed your obsession.

1/15 CHRONOGRAM 7

ARTS.CULTURE.SPIRIT.

CONTENTS 1/15

ARTS & CULTURE

FOOD & DRINK

58 GALLERY & MUSEUM GUIDE

72 POP GOES THE RESTAURANT Max Watman explores the growing trend of the pop-up restaurant, a new style of rough-and-ready, run-and-gun restauranteering.

62 MUSIC: TURNING THE TURNTABLES Peter Aaron presents Chronogram’s 2nd-annual year-end music survey.

Nightlife Highlights include Ani Difranco; Sarah Borges/Girls Guns & Glory; Dave Mason; Joe Crookston; and The Albrights/The Love Ways.

Reviews of Music for Four Electric Violins by Richard Carr; Bonjour Batfrog by Frenchy and the Punk; and Swift by Marco Benevento.

66 BOOKS: GIVING VOICE Nina Shengold explores the worlds of the vivacious Lois Walden.

68 BOOK REVIEWS Reviews of Rope and Bone by Ginnah Howard, Ruin Falls by Jenny Milchman, and The Dog: A Novel by Joseph O’Neill. Plus short takes.

70 POETRY Poems by Gary Barkman, Richard Donnelly, Isak Dubrow, Robert Duffy, Alice Graves, Cliff Henderson, Ed Meek, Will Nixon, LissySha, Carol Shank, Alana Shaw, Matthew J. Spireng, Sam Truitt, Anna M. Ulman, Mike Vahsen, and Jeanne Verrilli. Edited by Phillip X Levine.

104 PARTING SHOT Aaron Rezny’s Eating Delancey: A Celebration of Jewish Food.

46

A newly married couple celebrating at Basilica Hudson.

WEDDINGS & CELEBRATIONS

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THE FORECAST 90 DAILY CALENDAR Comprehensive listings of local events. (Daily updates at Chronogram.com.)

PREVIEWS 89 "XL," a show of large-scale works opens on January 30 at the Lehman Loeb.

90 Bindlestiff Family Cirkus brings its holiday cabaret to Hudson’s Club Helsinki.

91 LeLand Gantt's "Rhapsody in Black" comes to the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie.

92 Half Moon Theatre stages the comic one-man show “Fully Committed.”

93 The Psychedelic Furs play Tarrytown Music Hall on January 17.

95 The Clark Art Institute hosts “Monet/Kelly” through February 15.

96 The Hudson Valley Rail Trail Winterfest comes to Highland on January 10.

PLANET WAVES 98 A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO THE 21ST CENTURY

Eric Francis Coppolino on how the Internet is redefining the concept of self.

100 HOROSCOPES

What are the stars telling us? Eric Francis Coppolino knows.

Weddings By Two

Chronogram

EDITORIAL EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Brian K. Mahoney bmahoney@chronogram.com CREATIVE DIRECTOR David Perry dperry@chronogram.com BOOKS EDITOR Nina Shengold books@chronogram.com HEALTH & WELLNESS EDITOR Wendy Kagan wholeliving@chronogram.com POETRY EDITOR Phillip X Levine poetry@chronogram.com MUSIC EDITOR Peter Aaron music@chronogram.com KIDS & FAMILY EDITOR Hillary Harvey kidsandfamily@chronogram.com EDITORIAL PARACHUTIST Jennifer Gutman EDITORIAL INTERN Laura Farrell PROOFREADERS Lee Anne Albritton, Barbara Ross CONTRIBUTORS Mary Angeles Armstrong, Larry Beinhart, Stephen Blauweiss, John Burdick, Eric Francis Coppolino, Anne Pyburn Craig, Marx Dorrity, Ron Hart, Hillary Harvey, Sarah Imbolden, Annie Internicola, Karen Pearson, Susan Piperato, Tom Smith, Sparrow, Alexander M. Stern, Zan Strumfeld, Robert Burke Warren, Max Watman

PUBLISHING FOUNDERS Jason Stern & Amara Projansky CEO Amara Projansky amara@chronogram.com PUBLISHER Jason Stern jstern@chronogram.com CHAIRMAN David Dell Chronogram is a project of Luminary Publishing ADVERTISING SALES

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Mario Torchio mtorchio@chronogram.com ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Robert Pina rpina@chronogram.com ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Ralph Jenkins rjenkins@chronogram.com ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Anne Wygal awygal@chronogram.com SALES ASSOCIATE Nicole Hitner nhitner@chronogram.com ADMINISTRATIVE BUSINESS MANAGER Ruth Samuels rsamuels@chronogram.com; (845) 334-8600x107 MARKETING & EVENTS COORDINATOR Samantha Liotta sliotta@chronogram.com PRODUCTION PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Jaclyn Murray jmurray@chronogram.com; (845) 334-8600x108 PRODUCTION DESIGNERS Kerry Tinger PRODUCTION INTERN Amanda Schmadel OFFICE 314 Wall Street, Kingston, NY 12401 | (845) 334-8600; fax (845) 334-8610

MISSION Chronogram is a regional magazine dedicated to stimulating and supporting the creative and cultural life of the Hudson Valley.

All contents © Luminary Publishing 2015.

SUBMISSIONS

CALENDAR To submit listings, visit Chronogram.com/submitevent or e-mail events@chronogram.com. Deadline: November 15.

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Chronogram.com/tv

Tune in to the first episode of ArtScene, our new web TV series about Hudson Valley art.

Each 20-minute episode explores our vibrant community of artists, galleries and museums, and history. Produced by independent filmmaker Stephen Blauweiss and hosted by Chronogram editor Brian K. Mahoney.

PHOTOGRAPHER Carolyn Marks Blackwood

PAINTER Staats Fasoldt

ART SCENE Beacon

SCULPTOR Ze’ev Willy Neumann

CERAMICIST Robert Hessler

ON THE COVER Steven Siegel

Carolyn Marks Blackwood photographs nature within a several mile radius of her house, perched on a cliff above the Hudson River facing the Catskill Mountains.

The Beacon art scene and the vibrant 2nd Saturday event have greatly contributed to the city’s cultural and economic renasisance. Above: Marion Royael Gallery.

Robert Hessler’s style is to improvise within the constraints of the clay he works with, allowing for forms that skirt the edge of chaos through experimentation.

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A teacher and member of the Woodstock Artists’ Association for 30 years, Staats Fasoldt’s watercolors interpret nature with spontaneity and minimal application.

Ze’ev Willy Neumann’s “Love Knot” project linked the neighboring towns of Woodstock and Saugerties with identical love seat sculptures.

The Red Hook-based sculptor and Land Artist takes us on a tour of his studio and his latest seies of intimate sculpture-paintings, “Building Pictures.”

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Hands Steven Siegel | gloves, paper, sand, poly-twine, paint | 39”x33”x8 | 2014

hen I meet Steven Siegel at his rural Red Hook studio, he’d recently returned from Lincoln, Montana, where his largest paper installation to date was just completed in October. Hill and Valley is an undulating wall of paper 12 feet high and 50-feet long, composed of 30,000 lbs. of stacked paper. It took Siegel and an army of volunteers two physically demanding weeks to assemble the piece on site, piling layer upon layer of paper and nailing it together with foot-long nails. “My right arm is still suffering as a result of that one and will probably never recover,” says Siegel, who pounded in most of the nails himself. To Siegel, his installation pieces are as much about the process of creating them as they are about the outcome. “The memory is as much about the experience of building the project and having a good time as it is about the finished piece,” he says. “It’s like a barn raising. The work is easily taught and it just happens, but there’s this real bonding that happens on the site.”

Hill and Valley is the 40th or so site-specific paper work Siegel has done since he began his paper installations in the late 1980s, beginning with a piece at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island. Siegel works in the Land Art tradition of James Turrell and Robert Smithson, and worked as an assistant to site-specific artist Michael Singer in graduate school. Siegel has created sitespecific works out of various materials besides paper, including glass, plastic bottles, discarded electronics, aluminum car parts, grass, and bespoke Italian sneakers, though he is turning his attention to less large-scale sited work of late.

His current series, “Building Pictures,” from which the cover image is taken, continues an idea Siegel began exploring in Biography, a 156-foot-long mixed media piece that he created over five years, adding on sections over time and bringing in new materials and discarding old ones. Siegel is very much a processoriented artist, and ideas about evolution and geology heavily influence the way he works. “When I develop a craft, the craft is not a means toward an end,” says Siegel. “The craft is the end. To imply otherwise is to be a creationist, in a sense.

You’re saying:You have the tools, now design something and make it. And that’s not the way it works in evolution. The way it works is by contingency and mutation and environmental factors—no one knows where it’s going to evolve.”

For all the talk of process, however, it’s the aesthetics that matter most to Siegel. “In the end, if it doesn’t look good, I don’t really care about it,” he says.

Portfolio: Stevensiegel.net —Brian K. Mahoney CHRONOGRAM.COM WATCH a short film by Stephen Blauweiss about Steven Siegel and his work.

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“BEST “BEST SUSHI!” SUSHI!” Chronogram Chronogram & & Hudson Valley Hudson Valley Magazine Magazine

Rated Rated “EXCELLENT” “EXCELLENT” by

by Zagat Zagat for for 19 19 years years

There are two kinds of doing—automatic and doing what you wish.Take a small thing that you wish to do and cannot do and make this your God. Let nothing interfere. If you wish, you can. Without wishing you never can. Wish is the most powerful thing in the world.”

—Kenneth Walker Esteemed Reader of Our Magazine: What is this experience of wish?

In children the power to wish is strong. As children we can want something so much it hurts. Every waking moment can be focused on the object in mind, with the feeling that possessing it will yield a state of utter completeness.

For me the object was something I saw in an ad at the back of a Richie Rich comic book when I was six. It caught my attention immediately in its elegant design and constructive use of spoiled vegetables. It was called a “potato gun” and, from what I could gather, was a device that propelled plugs of potato with velocity and accuracy.

I remember the line drawings on the yellowed comic book paper showing a feisty boy with short, side-parted hair and a plaid shirt pelting his shrieking sister with bits of spud. The ad included an order form, showing a cost of $.75 plus postage and handling, which came to $.93.

It took me a couple months to save up enough money with my savings and an allowance of a dime a week. When I had saved the sum I carefully completed the form, addressed and stamped an envelope, and loaded it up with change. I remember the walk down our quarter-mile long driveway, moving from one track to the other to avoid pond-sized puddles, cradling the heavy, bulging package like a new kitten, finally placing it in the box, and ceremoniously raising the flag.

And then I waited for the potato gun to arrive. I waited a week. A month. I waited years. I was still waiting into my teens though I had moved a dozen times and there was clearly no chance that the potato gun would come. It was like the wish for the potato gun, my heart’s desire, was the thread of yearning on which all the experiences of my early life were strung.

It was only much later, as I tried to reconstruct the details to understand how it was that this wish that was so important, that had even become my God, went unfulfilled and undelivered, that I realized what must have happened.

I found the Richie Rich comic book in a pile of other comic books while exploring the attic of the old farmhouse where we lived for a year. They were in the company of strange old objects like a worn, handmade flail, cookstove-heated clothing irons, and a collection of hand-crank egg beaters.

I was particularly intrigued by a device the purpose of which I couldn’t fathom.

It was in an impressive black leather-covered box with precisely shaped receptacles for several electrical discharge devices and a dozen bizarrely shaped hollow glass attachments. Apparently it was a machine designed to deliver therapeutic electrical current to various parts of the body. The purposes of some of the attachments became clear, while others did not. One attachment was a tube shaped like a rake or comb, apparently for invigorating the scalp, while others were so oddly formed that I was afraid to consider what parts or orifices they were meant to address. I used the device to test how far I could turn the knob while holding the delivering end, enduring the increasingly intense voltage.

Eventually bored with testing my capacity for electric shock, I sat down with the comic books and pored through the treasure trove of old titles. Perhaps it was my charged state that caused such a whole-hearted response to the ad for the potato gun.

In any case, though the comic books clearly weren’t as antiquated as the quack machine, they were at least 20 years out of date, which meant that the company selling the potato gun likely no longer existed, which meant that I had sent my hard-saved 93 cents into the void.

At the time, I was not in possession of this kind of logical mentation, and all that remained was a gradually ripening disappointment and the final realization that the mail-ordered object would never arrive. Of course, if the gun had arrived I would never have remembered the vivid experience of wishing that developed into hope, and even a kind of faith, before the disappointment set in. Had the gun arrived, wish would have been subsumed by novelty, which itself would have worn out fast, as happens with all new toys.

Because the wished-for object never came, I was allowed to cook in the wishing, to know the flavor and texture of a heart longing for fulfillment, and to remember the naive but unalloyed purity of wish, which can only arise in a child, but which can be evoked even in the heart of a wizened adult, with an added capacity for discernment, as wish for Being.

—Jason Stern

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Chronogram Seen: Holiday Dance Party

On December 6, Chronogram hosted a Holiday Dance Party (#WinterChronoLand) at the former Bridgewater Bar and Grill in downtown Kingston. Over 250 people came out to 50 Abeel Street with performances by Gold Hope Duo and DJ Truckpile, beer from Keegan Ales, wine from Kingston Wine Co., special tastings of Hetta Glogg, appearances from Naughty Santa and his sexy helpers, and food from Pippy’s Hot Dog Truck. Special thanks to Mike Piazza of 50 Abeel Street Corp., Evolving Media Network, JTD Productions, Columbia Costume Supply, and Milne’s at Home Antiques. Stay tuned for more Chronogram events in 2015. Chronogram.com/luminaryevents.

16 CHRONOGRAM 1/15

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veryone knows this koan-like query: If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? When I was introduced to this puzzle as a young child, it confounded me. My first thought was: Why do people care about unobserved trees toppling over? What was the point of thinking about it at all? The idea of such a thorny query existing struck me as both profound and absurd. Why not ask instead: If a ham sandwich sits on a kitchen counter in Hoboken, New Jersey, will it make me hungry? But when I tried to picture a tree falling, I realized that I was just replaying television footage of giant pines crashing to the ground with a great whoosh and thump (from some PBS special on clear-cutting undoubtedly).

The woods I knew were populated by people wielding cameras, observing.

That wasn’t going to work.

So then I squeezed my eyes shut tight and imagined myself walking through the woods, just walking around aimlessly, kicking through the pine needles, not expecting a tree to fall but waiting for a tree to fall. Maybe it would fall way off in the distance so I could pretend I wasn’t actually listening. This scenario wasn’t going to work either, as I was still going to be there to hear the sound, and the point of the exercise was to address whether or not the poor tree could be heard keeling over. I needed a depopulated, silent forest, a dying tree, and a way to record it.

This was the profound bit: How to imagine a tree and whether or not it made a sound. Trying to envision this was one of the first mind-bending moments I remember. It was a Schrodinger’s cat type of thing: How could you find out what happened if you weren’t allowed to be there? Was silence just the lack of human perception? If so, did the universe go dormant when people weren’t around? And then further down the solipsistic rabbit hole: Did things stop when I was napping, like everyone just sort of slumped over like they ran low on batteries and then perked up when I awoke?

Typical greasy kid’s stuff. And then I had a breakthrough: Just leave a tape recorder in the forest and come back later. You’d need a long-playing tape, of course.You’d have to hope the tree wouldn’t fall on the tape recorder as well; or that you wouldn’t be eaten by bears. But then we would know—all you’d have to do was playback the tape. If only there had been woods near my house I’d have done it myself. I’d have solved this dilemma once and for all! I pictured playing the tape at the UN (which is where I thought the Nobel Prize was awarded) and receiving the grateful, thunderous applause of the assembled nations, just reward for a boy genius.

I was too young to know that this was a theoretical question about how we define sound—whether it’s a vibration independent of its reception by the brain or whether it relies on being perceived to make it sound. The fact that this theoretical question persists tell us an amazing thing about ourselves: We’re quite self-centered to think that the universe needs our perception to validate its existence. Was the universe silent before the arrival of homo sapiens? Did disturbances of air become sound only 200,000 years ago, when we made the scene? Two hundred thousand years is an awfully short period in geological time—it must have been awfully quiet out there. Is it still a sound if a pterodactyl makes it and a stegosaurus hears it?

Brian K. Mahoney Editor’s Note The Silent Treatment

All this reminiscing about my early philosophizing was brought to mind

by Wendy Kagan’s exploration of silence as a spiritual practice (“Daring to Be Slient,” page 82). Nearly all religions have meditative quietude as part of their tradition, as a road to the interior, a way to get closer to the divine.

Contemporary silent practice is different from that practiced by monks in the 16th century. Those monks didn’t have to contend with their iPhones beeping at them every minute with updates from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Our world is noisier than ever. But as cacophonous as our environ-

“Silence is not acoustic.

It is a change of mind, a turning around.”

—John Cage ment is, it’s noisier inside. Silent meditation brings the interior chatter to light.

“Silence acts as an intensifier,” says meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg. “We can see more clearly the lack of silence that’s going on in our minds.” And that’s a scary thought—I can see myself on the third day of a silent retreat repeating to myself the suspense film cliché: “It’s quiet in here. Too quiet.”

What we consider silence, however, is not the genuine article. The composer John Cage went in search of it, visiting the anechoic chamber at Harvard University. An anechoic chamber is a room designed to completely absorb sound—a silent room. When Cage emerged, he told the technician he had heard two sounds: one high and one low. The technician told Cage that the high sound was his nervous system operating, and the low sound was his blood circulating. Cage concluded that there was no such thing as silence in an auditory sense. “Silence is not acoustic,” Cage later wrote. “It is a change of mind, a turning around.”

Cage’s best-known work, 4’33”, debuted on August 29, 1952 at Maverick, an open-air concert hall in the woods outside the village of Woodstock.

The piece consists of any instrument or combination of instruments not being played for roughly four-and-a-half minutes. I imagine the baffled crowd at the premiere watching the lone pianist on the stage, not playing. Cage’s point was to get people to listen to the accidental sounds around them, like the wind through the pines, or the late summer crickets, or the sound of their own blood circulating. Maybe they heard a tree falling somewhere in the distance.

Maybe not.

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industry. Advocates praise the rule as a public education tool to combat America’s obesity epidemic, but whether menu labeling will aid healthy eating is still an open question. Health experts believe large-portion sizes and unhealthy ingredients are significant contributors to obesity in the United States. In 2006, New York City, and later Westchester County, became the first to experiment with the effects of posting calorie counts on menus, and since then many other cities, counties, and states have jumped on board, resulting in 18 states and cities adopting the menu-labeling regulation.

Source: New York Times The cost of providing electricity by wind and solar power plants has dropped so low over the last five years that, in some markets, renewable energy is now more frugal than natural gas. According to utility executives, the trend has increasingly accelerated this year after several companies signed power purchase agreements. These agreements provide generous subsidies, making the production of renewable energy cheaper and allowing companies to charge customers a smaller sum. The prices dive especially low in the Great Plains and Southwest, where wind and sunlight are abundant elements. Experts and executives caution that the low prices don’t correlate with replacing conventional power plants just yet. Wind and solar farms are still reliant on government subsidies in order to create affordable electricity prices for their customers. But that’s not to say that they aren’t moving in the right direction for creating an affordable market for the greater population.

Source: New York Times Soldiers returning home from war who exhibit symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can obtain drugs for relief as long is it falls under medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Marijuana is not one of those drugs.

Some doctors argue that it is a fault in the health system, as the antidepressant drugs often prescribed to patients, such as Zoloft or Proxil, contain highly addictive opiates that make the substances harmful. Because of this, some doctors argue that research on the effectiveness of medical marijuana to treat PTSD is needed. Sue Sisley is one of those doctors. After working with veterans for 20 years as a psychiatrist, Sisley began examining the correlation between marijuana and PTSD at the University of Arizona. She was fired in July of this year.

Since then, Colorado’s Medical Marijuana Scientific Advisory Council has picked up her research and received a $2 million grant to conduct her triple-blind study involving 76 Arizona-based veterans and doctors from Johns Hopkins. In order to initiate the research, the study needs approval from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environments, which will settle on December 17, as well as the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which won’t make the decision until April or May of 2015. Currently, eight states allow certain veterans to receive a medical marijuana card. Arizona, which is still in the process, would be the ninth.

Source: Rolling Stone British, Swiss, and US regulators have fined some of the world’s biggest banks for a combined amount of $4.25 billion. The banks were accused of conspiring to manipulate the currency markets for a profit-seeking foreign exchange market.

Regulators claimed that traders formed groups at the banks and used code names such as “the players,” “the three musketeers,” and “the A-team” in order to tap into clients’ private information, such as pension and hedge funds. The regulators of The Financial Conduct Authority claimed the manipulation was enabled by traders seeking others who planned to trade in the same direction—euros for dollars—and conspired to build a large book of orders that would elevate the average price of the currency exchange. The difference between the average price and the newly created elevated price would then become profit to traders. The fines pose no risk to the health of the banks that settled (such as UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, HSBC, and the Royal Bank of Scotland), only the regulators themselves.

Source: New York Times The documentation of calorie counts on food menus in chain restaurants, movie theaters, and pizza parlors across the country has now become a requirement of the Food and Drug Administration. These rules will apply to food in vending machines, amusement parks, certain prepared foods in supermarkets, and food establishments with 20 or more outlets, such as fast-food chains and sit-down restaurants. Beverages served in establishments that are listed on a menu will also be included, but mixed drinks at a bar will not. The rules are scheduled to take effect in late 2015, but they are likely to face legal and political opposition from the food 20 CHRONOGRAM CHRONOGRAM 1/15 1/15 20

The sale of milk as a beverage has fallen to its lowest mark in nearly 30 years, with nearly half of adults in the US no longer consuming the iconic dairy product. In 2011, the total of US beverage milk sales was 53 billion pounds, the lowest level since 1984 according to figures released by the US Department of Agriculture in August. The shift in consumer habits, and a flood of new beverages in the marketplace—such as sports drinks and bottled teas—has contributed to the decline of milk sales. The dairy industry has stressed that some products that they compete with—such as soy- and almond-based products—use the name “milk” but aren’t the real thing, since they don’t come from a cow. The fear of antibiotics and synthetic hormones used by the dairy industry has also caused a shift, but the dairy producers claim there’s no evidence that their practices are harmful. Currently, the industry is promoting chocolate milk as a sports recovery drink based on evidence that milk’s proteins, carbohydrates, and sodium refuel tired muscles. However, if there aren’t fundamental changes in the milk business, milk will soon become an irrelevant beverage.

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel The world is on track to break the record for hottest year, according to the United Nations weather agency. Preliminary estimates from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) examined land and sea surface temperatures to find the current global average, revealing that temperatures during the first 10 months of 2014 soared higher than ever recorded. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also concluded that 2014 will break all previous high-temperature records. Oceans provide most of the evidence of warming, as they take in the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere from greenhouse gas emissions. The higher temperatures have already begun to affect the way we live, as we see heavy rainfall and flooding in some countries but extreme drought in others. As we begin to experience the effects of global warming, the world’s three biggest emitters, the US, China, and the EU, have pledged to cut their use of fossil fuels as part of the Lima Climate Change Conference. Other big carbon polluters, such as India, Russia, and Australia, have yet to come on board.

Source: Guardian After reviewing a report that chronicles a compilation of violence, atrocities, and disease directed toward children globally, the UN has resolved that 2014 has been the worst year for the world’s children. According to the United Nations’ Children’s Fund (UNICEF), up to 15 million children are involved in violent conflicts in the Central African Republic, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, South Sudan, Syria, and Ukraine. In the Central African Republic, 2.3 million children were affected, as near anarchy rose within the region. According to the report, up to 10,000 children may have been recruited by armed groups as soldiers, and more than 430 children have been killed or wounded.

In South Sudan, 320,000 children are refugees in neighboring countries and 235,000 suffer from malnutrition. Worsening the situation, the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa has orphaned thousands of children, and an estimated five million are out of school.

Source: New York Times Compiled by Laura Farrell

DION OGUST

Larry Beinhart’s Body Politic

THAT PESKY TORTURE REPORT

I

would like to thank the outgoing Democratic Senate for their gift to the nation, the Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program, otherwise known as The Torture Report.

James Mitchell, the man who water-boarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed, claims that what he did could not be torture because “if it was torture, I would be in jail.” The logic is magical. It’s Merlin. It’s Harry Potter. Expect your 10-yearold to think, “Taking money from my mother’s purse can’t be bad, I’m not in a time-out.” A few years later, “Cocaine must be legal, or I’d be under arrest.”

When they themselves are parents: “Adultery’s fine, otherwise I’d be divorced.”

And, of course, “Cops killing blacks can’t be murder, they always get off.”

Dick Cheney says it was all legal because lawyers wrote memos that said it would be.The US led the Nuremberg Trials, signed all the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture, and has its own War Crimes Act, so the legal reasoning was, of necessity, torturous.

The memos assert that presidential power in wartime trumps any and all other laws, including the Constitution. Anyone acting on presidential orders is an extension of the president, and therefore can’t be guilty. “I was only following orders,” the slogan of Nazi war criminals, was reconstituted as a valid defense.

The grand excuse for torture is necessity. Antonin Scalia said, “It’s very facile for people to say, ‘Oh, torture is terrible.’You posit the situation where a person that you know for sure knows the location of a nuclear bomb that has been planted in Los Angeles and will kill millions of people. You think it’s an easy question? You think it’s clear that you cannot use extreme measures to get that information out of that person?” Who is Scalia? He is a justice on the United States Supreme Court. What precedent does he cite? The TV show “24.”

There are two big problems with this.The first is Antonin Scalia. He believes that government “derives its authority from God.” That should create severe cognitive dissonance because the very first sentence of the Constitution says, “We the people…do ordain and establish this Constitution,” along with the very secular reasons for doing so. Which is a sideways way of saying that Scalia is disingenuous, delusional, or a religious loon.

That, in turn, explains the second problem. The theory is based totally on fiction. There is no known real world event in which a real-life Jack Bauer— yes, Scalia has cited Jack Bauer by name—tortured the truth out of a mad bomber and saved Los Angeles, or Bensonhurst, or even a street corner of western Saugerties. The American War Crimes Act, 18 USC §§ 2340; 2340A, which includes the Convention Against Torture, anticipated the temptation of the Jack Bauer-Antonin Scalia fiction-panic scenario. It explicitly states: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

Soft-boiled critics of the report say that it contains nothing new. But it does.

It uses the actual word “torture” instead of “enhanced” or “harsh” interrogation.

Which forced Barak Obama to use the T word, breaking the soft-core, fuzzbrain silence. Until that moment, we had been living in a world in which our leading news outlets, including, and perhaps especially, the August New York Times*, participated in an unspoken conspiracy of euphemism, a cozy cuddle up with uniformed consent.

There are many claims that torture foiled dastardly plots or led to the capture of despicable subhumans. The Committee examined each one in detail.

It discovered that any useful information had been gathered either before or without torture.There has not been one single documented instance that proves that all this torture worked.

The report puts them all in one document. So that we can’t pretend when we see one claim has been dismissed, that there are lots of others. Unless, of course, we want to. It enables any of us to say what the US Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation had already said, long ago. “Experience indicates that the use of prohibited techniques is not necessary to gain the cooperation of interrogation sources. Use of torture and other illegal methods is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”

Note the first two words, “experience indicates.” Given our basic human reflex, that we can beat the truth out of anyone, lots of prisoners, hundreds, possibly thousands, were beaten and burnt and tormented in a variety of ways before anyone was willing to consider, let alone codify, that the “use of torture and other illegal methods is a poor technique that yields unreliable results.” The news stories have revealed as much about the media, and about us as a people, as they have about the report itself. I have yet to see a story that mentions Nuremberg or our ownWar Crimes Act or the US Army Field Manual, revealing the inability of journalists to do any simple basic research of their own.They can only quote. Which is partly why many of the stories continue to use “harsh” or “enhanced” instead of the T word.

A few stories mention the most obvious standard. If these “techniques,” including beating people to death, or letting a prisoner freeze to death, were applied to captive Americans, would we call them war crimes? Every article that I’ve seen that raises this question immediately goes into the litany that terrorists don’t wear uniforms, they might not have countries, those not-countries have not signed the Geneva conventions or any other treaties, and they do horrible, terrible things, so the protection of laws, or humanity, or good sense do not apply to them.

Washington Post-ABC, and NBC-Wall Street Journal, among others, have polled us about the use of “harsh” techniques against “terrorists.” The questions are formatted, like our collective minds, to separate out the word “torture,” either by asking if the “techniques” might be torture separately from asking if the respondents approve of them, or by dropping the T word into a modifying clause, “Are the enhanced tactics, which have been defined as torture….” Overall, the majority of Americans approve of past torture and of continued torture.

There is, of course, breakdown by political orientation. Depending on which poll you choose, it appears that Democrats, by a slim margin, disapprove of torture. While between 85-90 percent of Republicans approve of torture. I so wanted to refrain from Republican bashing—I’m a good person; I wouldn’t do such a thing—But 90 percent approve of torture.What? What am I to do? Invite them to an S&M club? Not one with pleasure, just with righteousness and pain. * In the many years I’ve been writing this column two weeks before publication, this is the first time events have turned things around. On December 22,the New York Times ran an editorial calling for prosecution of the torturers and the men who sent them to it, including the lawyers.The editorial even mentioned that torture is prohibited by federal law and by treaty.

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CHILDREN ON THE RUN CENTRAL AMERICAN YOUTH SEEK ASYLUM IN THE HUDSON VALLEY Text and photos by Leanne Tory-Murphy

The Journey Cristian is a shy 16-year-old with a meticulously gelled mohawk. On a late July afternoon, in the uptown Kingston offices of the Worker Justice Center, he begins to recount his journey.

Four months earlier, he crossed an entire continent by bus, foot, taxi, van, freight train, and finally plane, from his rural hometown of Santa Cruz, Guatemala, to Kingston. It took almost 30 days between the travel and staying in “bodegas,” stash houses, or spaces where groups of migrants sleep, often sideby-side on the floor, awaiting the next step of their journey. Before crossing the border, he stayed in one bodega packed with about 50 people for whom there were seven mattresses and three beds. Once he was in Texas, he hid in another with about 30 people for 12 days, eating only two or three sandwiches per day.

From there they took a van to be dropped off to walk across the desert, hoping to avoid being pulled over on the highway on their way into the interior of the US. After walking for about four hours, Cristian and several others were apprehended by the Border Patrol, taken to a juvenile detention center in Corpus Christi, and entered into the immigration system. He was there for three days and was then transferred to a youth shelter for another eight days before finally being put on a plane, alone, to reunite with his father in New York. Cristian hadn’t seen his father in four years.

A Global Trend Cristian is one amongst a rapidly growing number of unaccompanied youth who are migrating northward from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

According to the US Department of Homeland Security, almost 70,000 unaccompanied minors were apprehended at the US-Mexico border during fiscal year 2014 (October 1, 2013 — September 30, 2014). This is a 77 percent increase over the year prior.

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The Central Americans who are apprehended are taken into detention and processed. Under a Bush-era anti-human-trafficking law, minors from countries other than Mexico and Canada who enter the US have the right to make a case for themselves as refugees instead of entering deportation proceedings automatically as adults.

According to the recent report Children on the Run put out by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, the number of unaccompanied and separated children from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador who have been apprehended at the border has doubled each year since 2011, and migrants expressing a fear of persecution or torture were they to return to their home country increased nearly seven-fold between the years of 2009 and 2013, when 36,1745 individuals sought asylum. The youth are not only coming to the US but are also seeking asylum in the neighboring countries of Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Panama. These countries registered a combined 435 percent increase in asylum applications in 2012.

According to the UN, the reason for the surge is increased criminal activity in countries with weak governments, combined with entrenched poverty.

Honduras and El Salvador consistently rank among the countries with the highest homicide rates worldwide.

Why They Are Coming Felipe has sharp eyes and a quick smile and speaks the indigenous language of Q’eqchi’ in addition to Spanish. He works in a local restaurant and crossed the US/Mexico border for the first time in 2002.

Late one night in December he received a surprising phone call from authorities in Texas—his sons were in custody. Without telling him, they emigrated from the rural Petén region of Guatemala, known for its Mayan ruins.

For over two weeks, they traveled through Mexico, sleeping under bridges and

Volunteers from the Samaritans, a humanitarian group in Arizona, walk the migrant trails with water, food, and blankets.

In the past six years, there have been over 2,000 known migrant deaths in the state.

in the countryside before being detained with 16 others in Houston, Texas.

Gelber, the younger son, who is 17, has been reunited with his father. His 22-year-old brother was deported in August as he was not covered under the antitrafficking law. From the age of seven, Gelber had worked as a goat shepherd and at 12 left school altogether. Both father and son refer consistently to the armed gangs and narco-traffickers that roam the countryside in their native region, which is near the Mexican border.

On his reasons for coming Gelber says, “I didn’t have a way to move forward in Guatemala. I wanted to study and I couldn’t because of the money and the school was far away. Also, [the narcos] come to your house and demand money and you have to give it, otherwise they will kill you.”

Felipe says that they have been hearing about this type of violence for many years but that the killings have become commonplace, including an incident in 2012 in which 28 people were shot on a nearby farm. “The people have become scared, people don’t want to go out, they don’t even go to church so they have closed the churches. It is quite dangerous.” His son adds, “Just a little while ago, [the narcos] killed my dad’s cousin, and just before I came here they went to my cousin’s house and told him they would kill him.”

Guatemala is not alone in being plagued by gang and drug-related violence.

Manuel moved to Sullivan County in 2006, after working packing bananas for Chiquita in his hometown of La Lima, Honduras. His wife made the journey north two years later, leaving her young son, Manuel Jr., in the care of her sister.

In New York, they worked in various chicken processing and egg factories, and now Manuel works doing year-round maintenance at a Jewish bungalow camp.

Over the years, their only child recounted incidents of seemingly random and ubiquitous violence at the hands of the gangs. Manuel remembers, “My son was once almost killed for his cell phone! For an entire year he hardly left the house except to go to school. My wife and I just kept thinking about the situa-

tion our son was in, how he was abandoned there, living with my sister-in-law.

He was well cared for, he went to church, he was a good young man, but the violence in Honduras is dire.”

They made the difficult decision to have their 15-year-old attempt to enter the United States illegally. “He didn’t want to come here like this. If he could not have come legally to visit, to see us, he would not have come [like this].

He went to ask for a visa to be able to come legally to the country and they didn’t give it to him. Because of the situation, we made the decision.” After being detained and sent to a shelter, Manuel Jr. now lives with his parents while awaiting his hearing.

Not only are the youth at risk of experiencing violence or being killed, but many are also actively recruited to become gang members themselves, especially young men. “In Honduras there is an extreme violence that the military cannot control,” Manuel says. “The gangs have taken control of almost everything there.

They are recruiting young people, like my son, that are 14-, 15-, 16-years-old.”

Many families are deciding that it is more risky to have their children stay home than to undertake the journey north. When asked if entire communities are leaving, Felipe and Gelber nod emphatically and answer in unison, “Sí, muchísimas.” One can begin to imagine a countryside littered with ghost towns.

Many immigrants feel that these Central American governments cannot do anything to protect their citizens, or worse, that government authorities might be just as corrupt as the gang members. Gelber paid bribes to Mexican police during his journey through the country, something he was accustomed to because his experience with the Guatemalan authorities was no different. Manuel expresses frustration with those in the government who don’t eradicate the roots of the violence through economic development or a stronger social net.

He says, “The most important thing would be that [if] the Honduran people [had] work, maybe there would be less violence, less crime.”

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Cristian with his father MIguel, in front of the Old Dutch Church in Uptown Kingston.

Local Response After being detained at the border and logged into the system to await an immigration hearing, the youth are placed in temporary shelters across the country.The Hudson Valley is home to a number of these shelters, which work to reunite the youth with members of their families. If that is not possible, they will ultimately be transferred to the foster care system.

Many of the youth reunite with family members who are already established in the large immigrant communities of the New York metro region. Almost 6,000 minors were reunited with sponsors in New York State from October 2013 to September 2014. Once they are here, their families struggle to find legal representation, enroll the child in school, apply for health insurance, and connect with mental health services, often lacking legal status themselves and all the while not knowing if the child will be able to stay or if he or she will be deported in a matter of months.

Because this is a new and growing trend, many community-based and regional service agencies have had to organize their efforts to serve recently arrived youth and their families.

On September 19, the Worker Justice Center, in collaboration with La Voz magazine, organized a forum on unaccompanied minors for service providers throughout the Mid-Hudson region at the Everett Hodge Center in Kingston. The room was packed with social workers, lawyers, healthcare providers, and the police chiefs of Kingston and Saugerties.

Kerry Conboy, an immigration counselor with Catholic Charities, the agency contracted to represent youth who are housed in the shelters, explained some of the possible legal remedies, including asylum and 24 FEATURE CHRONOGRAM 1/15

Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), an immigration remedy available to young people who have been abandoned or neglected by one or both parents.

Lawyer Mark Grunblatt, who has provided services to the Salvadoran community for many years, says, “Immigration court is a crazy place. You have the language barriers, but also you are dealing with the issue that the governments back home are just not very functional.” For that reason, it can be difficult to secure basic paperwork. In regard to the processing of the youth he said, “There is a special court on the 12th floor of 26 Federal Plaza that is absolutely flooded right now, that just hears SIJS cases.” The youth will have their first appearance before a judge many months after they were first detained, and the backlog continues to grow. Because many youth will be unable to obtain counsel, some nonprofits and legal clinics send volunteer attorneys to the immigration court to represent whomever comes in that day.

Advocates voiced concerns about the potential psychological trauma of the young people who are arriving. Emma Kreyche of the Worker Justice Center said, “Most of the young women who cross are expecting to be raped. When that is the expectation, we can only imagine what they are fleeing from.” The group has begun to compile a list of mental-healthcare providers who speak Spanish to distribute to youth and sponsoring family members.

Overall, many local agencies do not have enough Spanish-speaking staff who are trained to work with youth who may have been traumatized to keep up with the demand.

A cross marks the spot where Josseline Jamileth Hernandez Quinteros, a 14-year-old Salvadoran girl, died while crossing the desert.

Seeking Home Some of the children who are coming are reuniting with parents whom they haven’t seen in many years. Others have left their parents behind. Manuel tears up when he describes meeting his son at La Guardia. “After so many years, when I saw him, I hugged him—it had been so long since I had seen him. It was a huge joy for my wife and I when we saw him.” Given the danger of the journey, the joy of parents seeing their children again is mixed with relief that they have arrived safely.

Grunblatt estimates that somewhere between a quarter and half of the youth will be able to stay in the US legally. He emphasizes that “immigration law is a wild and self-contradictory pile of rules from the days when the door to the US was wide open to the days when it swung shut again. It’s done this repeatedly for 238 years now. Some of the laws are ancient, some now have to do with being a terrorist. It keeps shifting as attitudes keep shifting.”

The outcome of these cases is impacted greatly by whether the youth are able to secure legal counsel. Because immigration is a civil matter, there is no right to representation. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, approximately a third of the youth who went to court over the last three years were represented by an immigration attorney.Almost three of four youth with representation have been permitted to remain in the United States, while 85 percent of youth without representation were given deportation orders. Because of the expedited nature of many of

these removal proceedings, advocates have voiced concerns about a lack of due process. The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have filed a class-action lawsuit against the federal government for failure to provide legal representation during deportation hearings.

Obama’s recent announcement of administrative relief indicates a shifting attitude on a national level. Time will tell if this will trickle down to the hearings many of the youth will be attending this year. Cristian, Gelber, and Manuel Jr. are currently awaiting their hearing before an immigration judge.

In the meantime, they and their counterparts have entered American public schools for the first time.

As they learn English and acclimate to their new lives, they begin to dream about the possibilities, even though their time in the US may be limited.

Manuel Jr. is applying for political asylum, as are many others, though one has to meet quite a high bar to qualify. Gelber hopes to study literature, especially poetry, which he grew up reading in Guatemala. Cristian might want to be a mechanic.

Speaking on the differences between his hometown and Kingston, Gelber says, “Well, it’s not the same as being in your own country. It’s different. Here you can walk in the street and nothing happens to you.”

Their parents have high hopes that they might be able to stay, enjoy their newfound safety, and study. But as Manuel says, “I don’t get to decide this. It’s decided by an immigration judge.”

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The House

Because the Umbrella House backs into the woods, it lacks a backyard, but it is fronted by a spring-fed pond and seating area.

Creative in Cragsmoor CHUCK DAVIDSON’S UMBRELLA HOUSE

By Susan Piperato Photographs by Deborah DeGraffenreid

W

hen artist and former watch designer Chuck Davidson set out to design a retirement home for himself and his wife Deena, his first thoughts were as much about time as they were about space. “I based the design on this premise: How do we want to move through time and space at this point in our lives? It’s about fluidity and lightness of being,” says Davidson. “I wanted a space we could kind of float around in—a kaleidoscope of art.”

Before building their house on a scenic bluff in Cragsmoor overlooking the Walker Valley, the couple had lived in a farmhouse built in 1750 in Croton-onHudson for more than 30 years.There, they raised four daughters, kept horses, and collected antiques and art. Davidson commuted to New York City, where he was the creative director for Movado Watch Company for 20 years and for Citizen Watch Company for 12 years.

But once he retired from the watch industry, Davidson wanted a place where he could create a living art gallery to exhibit his own work and the Davidsons’ art collection, and immerse himself in creating fine art stemming from his interests in paleontology, geology, and archeology. Nine pieces of his “archeo art” and “geolomorphosistic” sculptures, which incorporate found objects with natural ones, are housed in the permanent collection of the Russian Academy of Art in St. Petersburg. “Living in a historical house worked for us when I was working in a very modern world, designing very cutting-edge watches,” he says. “But now I wanted to turn a page, start a new chapter. When you’re younger, you like old things, but as you get older, the lightness of things starts to play on you. This modern house gives us vitality and happiness.”

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The Davidsons chose Cragsmoor as the site of their new home in order to be near two of their daughters and their families, who have settled in Pine Bush and Bullville. “We decided to make a move, not in our kids’ faces, but close by,” Davidson says. “We were looking for privacy and seclusion and an easy drive.” Although the 12-acre property, which Davidson bought in 2004, is conveniently located with easy access to Route 52, it’s also on a winding, sparsely populated country road that meanders uphill and downhill. “When we first moved out here I got lost all of the time,” Davidson admits, laughing. “I had to tie ribbons on trees to remember the way.”

Davidson began designing the house by walking the land, observing the light. As a native Californian who moved east in 1964, he says, simply, “I gotta have light.” He repeatedly headed down from the road onto the natural shelf where the house now sits, then down the steep, 60-foot slope behind it to a stream, and up the hill that lies on the other side of the stream. “I wanted a sense of the topography,” he says. “The shelf faces east, and it’s placed halfway up the oak trees that grow from about 20 feet below on the side of the cliff. So I imagined the house to be floating, like a treehouse, like Mary Poppins, like an umbrella.”

The idea of the umbrella form as both “uplifting and protective” stayed with Davidson as he refined his initial sketch into “a free-flow, move-through-space” design that was planned to showcase the culmination of his experiences in art and design and provide a peaceful haven. The house was planned down to the smallest detail, including every light fitting and light switch, even before he

Davidson calls to his West Highland terrier, Lily, from atop the house’s central and largest umbrella structure, which sits beneath a skylight.

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Top: The view from the living room takes in, from left to right, Davidson’s studio, the kitchen, and the dining area.

Bottom: The master bathroom faces eastward for optimal natural morning light. “That’s the first place you go in the morning, so it’s got to be uplifting,” Davidson says.

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[bath, bahth] [‘ki-chen – cocina] noun e

bath

bath kitchen

bath [bath, [bath, 1. bahth] Anoun roombahth] equipped for preparing, cooking noun

1. An essential part of your daily life. and storing food, dishes and appliances.

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Camphill Ghent

consulted with engineers and construction began, and its construction was complete in 2006. “The exact placement of everything was part of the original design, in order to elicit lines all in perfect places,” he says.

The 3,000-square-foot house sits at the very edge of the natural shelf, “tucked into the trees.” The structure consists of four interconnected pods, with each pod supported by a giant steel-columned umbrella with 1/4-inchthick steel bracing held with eight steel bolts. Uncovered and unencumbered wooden beams radiate across the ceilings of each room. “[The umbrella is] overkill in effect, but it supports the space,” Davidson says. “We didn’t want load-bearing walls, just a big, open space, so I had to figure out not only how we would naturally move through it, but how to support and enhance it.That’s where the umbrella came in.”

The Umbrella House is entered from a circular driveway that leads down from the road past a manmade spring-fed pond designed by Davidson— stocked with fish and frogs and ringed with stones found throughout the property—and a small lawn area. “We have to mow a little, but there’s little else to do for maintenance,” he says. A glass front door opens to a 48-foot-diameter, circular great room, with the house’s largest umbrella at its center. Tile flooring, in differing shades, is used to create distinct “islands.” For instance, beneath the umbrella is a small seating area. To the right is a den area, featuring dark- a unique opportunity for seniors to Camphill Ghenta offers tiled floor and wall, fireplace, and large-screen TV, along with the entrances live rich, fulfilling independent lives in a vibrant community. to the master bedroom pod and the garage pod. To the left is the kitchen, boasting high-tech appliances and a granite-countertopped island, and the We are located in ena beautiful rural setting, yet close to trance to the fourth pod, which encloses Davidson’s studio.

There, he does area attractions in Columbia and Berkshire counties. commercial design; volunteers for UNICEF, Ellenville Regional Hospital, and local nonprofit ArtsWAVE; and writes books, including Stamping Our History, a • the Two and three bedroom townhouses history of American postage stamps, published by Smithsonian Institution, • and One and two apartments and TEM, a self-published novel about an architect a cockroach.

Thebedroom studio pod also includes two small guest rooms sharing•a Studios full bathroom.

Directly opposite the front door, along the eastern wall of the house, is the • A licensed Adult Home dining area, overlooking a deck that meanders below 110 feet of continuous glass windows. The windows, says Davidson, not only provide an abundance For more information, please call 518.392.2760 of natural light, but also work to provide a natural heating and cooling system.

2542 State Route 66 “The leaves on all the oak trees block the light in summer, keeping the house NY a12037 cool, but when the leaves are off in winter, theChatham, windows become primary heating source,” Davidson says. “Through that and the radiant-heated floor, this www.camphillghent.org house is very efficient.”

Davidson designed the long, rectangular dining table, distressing its glass top by hand to create dreamy, cloudlike images. Over the table hangs a row of eggplant-shaped glass pendulum lights that serve as elegant counterpoints We offer a unique opportunity for seniors to live rich, fulfilling to the many natural objects displayed directly below along the table’s center, and independent lives in a vibrant community. All living spaces including a cone shell from the Baja Peninsula, an onyx “Apache Tear” from volare filled with light and color, and large picture windows offer scenic views of our beautiful gardens, ponds and trails. canic Mt. Shasta in Northern California, and a pine cone from the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park’s “General Sherman” tree—the largest known living Vacancies now available! single-stem tree in the world. “These are not just for looking. I want people to • 2 & 3 Bedroom Townhomes pick these up and touch them and talk about them,” he says.

• Apartments & Studios In keeping with Davidson’s mission to create a living environment for art, • Licensed Adult Home each wall features a single artwork or museum-quality artifact, creating a play• Diverse activity & cultural programs ful atmosphere. There are pieces by national and local artists, including sev• Fresh, organic meals prepared eral by Ellenville artist Judy Siguick, as well as by Davidson himself, including by on-site chef • Scheduled transportation to local sculptures assembled from found objects like “Elizabeth, Cynthia, Jane and shops and appointments Margaret”—four graceful female forms made from the upside-down claw feet of an antique bathtub. And there are plenty of surprises: a whale’s tooth, a piece of a pre-Columbian water jar, and a small iron horse from one of the 13th-century Spanish galleons that brought horses to North America.

The light-filled, white-walled master bedroom opens to the deck, where, in the summer, the Davidsons begin each day with coffee and spend evenings gazing at the distant houselights “looking as far away as stars.” The large master Call today for information, or to arrange a tour bathroom features two separate sinks and cabinets as well as a Jacuzzi bathtub and shower. Out on the deck is another Jacuzzi from which Davidson often surreptitiously participates in conference calls. The master bedroom also opens to a small alcove exercise area featuring a “family wall” of snapshots uni2542 State Route 66, Chatham, NY www.camphillghent.org formly cropped and glued to squares of wood, and well stocked with weights and exercise machines. There’s a window overlooking the front yard and a LEED Certified Green Community television to watch, “so we have no excuse not to work out,” says Davidson.

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Above: The house plan.

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1/15 CHRONOGRAM HOME 33

The Craft

Above: Examples of Kim Markel’s resin chairs. Below: Kim Markel.

Spectral Fixtures KIM MARKEL’S HOME DÉCOR

By Laura Farrell

W

hat makes Beacon-based artist Kim Markel’s furniture stand out from the crowd is its ability to convey the question, “Is it art, or is it furniture?” “There’s a conceptual basis for the pieces,” Markel explains. “I want them to be perceived as incredibly delicate objects when they are really quite strong.”

Markel’s work currently comprises two home décor series, which include rococo frames and Louie XVI chairs, both projects working to convey a sense of delicacy and stability in one work of art. The clear resin frames are crafted with an intricate, hand-sculpted design that provides a faint-but-beautiful silhouette in a room. Markel’s second project originates from a classically sturdy Louie XVI chair, deconstructed and transformed using dark velvet cushions and a clear resin frame that creates a bold skeletal effect. “I hesitate to call it furniture because of the conceptual ideas behind it,” says Markel. “When I built it, I didn’t want to make a chair, I wanted to make something that is very stable look unstable.”

All of Markel’s pieces start with a concept that is informed by how she wants the viewer to feel when taking in her work. She executes these ideas through furniture. After a concept is distinguished, she begins to sketch, draw, and build an armature. The armature is then sculpted into a design that becomes molded and casted using various materials, including resin—a plantbased hydrocarbon.

After deciding on the concept for the chair—“something functional and beautiful, still with detail, but without it being glaringly obvious from across the room”—it took Markel a year to execute the look she was going for. “The number of little decisions that have to be made every step of the way is almost overwhelming to think about,” Markel explains. She relies on trial and error to solve problems that inevitably arise in the process of trying to make a functional object, such as how the pieces will fit together and what kind of joints to use. Markel says that she finds a lot of her pieces on the side of the road. “They are trash,” she explains. “They’re usually broken or not structural anymore. I use what’s left, like an intricately carved leg or an angle, to form a piece I’m making.”

34 HOME CHRONOGRAM 1/15

Aside from the conceptual ideas fueling Markel’s work, she also attributes Ursula von Rydingsvard as an inspiration. At age 70, Rydingsvard continues to make intricate large-scale sculptures (which have been featured at Storm King Art Center) using little more than cedar and a chainsaw, a process that depends on what’s typified as a masculine trade: carpentry. Markel, too, has joined a field that’s deemed nonfeminine. Constructing furniture can be hard, Markel explains, but “having a role model like [Rydingsvard] is really helpful.”

Markel currently creates all of her work in her Beacon-based studio, which she shares with two other artists. The Hudson Valley native was raised in the Middletown area, and then attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh for her undergraduate and graduate studies. After school, she moved around the East Coast until she ultimately ended up back in the Hudson Valley. With Beacon being so close to NewYork City, as well as more affordable, renting a studio in the area has enabled her to push her work forward rather than worrying about making rent. Visit Markel’s website to view her delicate-yet-bold pieces, which meld the seeming binaries of function and art. Kimmarkel.com.

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Community Pages

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NEW PALTZ COSMOPOLITAN VILLAGE

BY SARAH IMBODEN PHOTOGRAPHS BY THOMAS SMITH

W

hatever the Huguenots saw in the Hudson Valley when they settled here in 1687, New Paltz still has it. Today, that means that New Paltz has something to offer everyone: from outdoor adventure and historic byways to cozy eateries, shopping, and arts and cultural events.

Whether visitors plan a winter hike in the nearby Mohonk Preserve, or prefer to skip the hike and go right to the meal, eating is a must in New Paltz.

The village proper is jammed with great options, from Main Street Bistro to Mexicali Blue to Suruchi Indian Restaurant. Of course as a college town, there are a fair number of delis and pizza shops, but the town also reflects its farming roots with many restaurants that cater to the farm-to-table scene, such as The Huguenot or Rock and Rye Tavern.

Peter Ingellis, outgoing president of the New Paltz Chamber of Commerce, says the town’s bohemian vibe is a big draw for all ages. “With the unique stores and restaurants, there’s a real mix of retail and dining options available here that aren’t available in other towns. It crosses all generations. Students are drawn to stores like Groovy Blueberry where you won’t see older people, but there’s [also] antique stores and high-end spots like Water Street Market, so there’s something for all ages here.”

Ingellis credits long-established institutions like Historic Huguenot Street, SUNY New Paltz, and Mohonk Preserve with the town’s success. “They are all community oriented and interested in seeing New Paltz successful and thriving,” he said.

SUNY New Paltz has a sterling reputation as the state’s most sought-after college, but does a thriving town make a college attractive, or vice versa? The answer is clearly that they feed each other—sometimes literally. Students participate in local farming initiatives through the Phillies Bridge Farm Project and

study ecology at the Mohonk Preserve, as they have since the preserve opened in the 1960s.

While SUNY New Paltz is known for its excellent academics and funky college town, its position as a regional cultural anchor may not receive the recognition it is due. The college’s Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art currently holds an impressive collection of regional and international photography thanks to a partnership with the Center for Photography at Woodstock. The Dorsky has more than 5,000 pieces in its permanent collection, with a focus on the Hudson Valley and Catskill regions. It is also known for its forward-looking exhibitions, such as the upcoming “Videofreex: The Art of Guerilla Television,” which opens in February.

Mayor Jason West sees New Paltz as a place that welcomes the new. “We’re a very cosmopolitan village,”West says. “You have a constant turnover of people bringing in a fresh perspective. It’s a place where you can make change. It’s very progressive, very open to new ideas, and it’s just a place where you can do things like ban plastic bags.You can get a lot done and you can experiment, and the community is open to that.”

So what’s in store for this historic-progressive town? Definitely further land preservation. The Open Space Institute Land Trust announced recently that another 857 acres—the Mohonk Preserve foothills—have been protected through the Mohonk Preserve.

Meanwhile, Wildberry Lodge is an indoor-outdoor water park proposed to be situated near the town’s Thruway exit as part of a more than 250-room resort and conference center. While still in the planning phase, the project presents enticements and challenges to all who savor New Paltz’s ability to continually change…and stay the same.

1/15 CHRONOGRAM NEW PALTZ 37

Rob and Skyler Hart outside of Cafeteria in New Paltz.

38 NEW PALTZ CHRONOGRAM 1/15

Top row from left: Jeff Bisti and Khaleesi on North Chestnut Street; Mimi Kaneeva and Matt-mon on Main Street; Sanjeev Neupane on his way to get a cup of afternoon coffee. Middle row from left: Dominick and Allison Sassone at Inquiring Minds; Harper Keehn and Lola talking a stroll through downtown; Rosalie Murray and Tara Grzinic. Bottom row from left: Chloe Baker walking up Main Street; Jeannette Lapointe and Jacqui Mccullough head to Krause’s Chocolates; Cameron on Main Street.

1/15 CHRONOGRAM NEW PALTZ 39

TEN THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT NEW PALTZ Nature Conservancy named the Shawangunk Ridge one of Earth’s “Last Great Places” and pointed to the dynamic cliffs and biological diversity as significant features. With the recent addition of 857 acres of foothills to the Mohonk Preserve, much of the rich farmland at the base of the cliffs between the existing preserve and the village will now be protected. New Paltz is recognized state-wide for its density of family farms, such as Dressel Farms and Wallkill View Farm, and CSAs like Huguenot Street Farm, Taliaferro Farms, and the Phillies Bridge Farm Project.

That farmland was a big attraction for several Huguenot families who settled in the area in 1678. They fled religious persecution and arrived in the Hudson Valley by way of the Pfalz region of southern Germany and honored that haven when they named their new home.

Today, that history is preserved on Huguenot Street, where visitors can explore 30 historic buildings and many other remnants of the area’s history.

Visitors can also taste history by visiting the 14 wineries, two in New Paltz, that make up the Shawangunk Wine Trail and feature an array of wines produced in the Hudson Valley. The Huguenot settlers are believed to have created the earliest American vineyards from vines they brought with them from Europe.

The “Gunks” have long been recognized as a premier spot for rock climbing in the East. Up to 50,000 climbers are estimated to visit the cliffs each year. Visiting climbers can find all the gear they need in town at Rock & Snow and later refuel at one of the many local watering holes, such as the Gilded Otter brewpub, Bacchus restaurant and brewery, and P&G’s restaurant and bar.

They say good things come in pairs; among the many small businesses New Paltz boasts are two record stores (Rhino Records and Jack’s Rhythms), two bike shops (Bicycle Depot and The Bicycle Rack), and even two independent bookstores (Barner Books and Inquiring Mind Bookstore) on the same street.

New Paltz Hostel offers “serendipitous lodgings for the weary traveler” and is the only one of its kind in the area, making it easier for travelers on a budget to enjoy its environs.

When you visit, be sure to bring your dog. The For Paws of Ulster County Dog Park opened last September across from the Ulster County Fairgrounds in New Paltz. Organizer and executive director of the Wallkill Valley Land Trust Christine DeBoer says she and a group of local women began work on the park about five years ago after being inspired by one in Orange County. The 1.5-acre park is a nonprofit hosted on land that is owned by the county and leased to the Town of New Paltz. “It’s a huge success,” DeBoer says, “and not just for New Paltz community members and visitors, but for this entire area. We see new faces every day.” The park is open dawn to dusk, year-round, and has separate areas for large and small dogs.

New Paltz has long been known as a progressive spot, but that reputation was kicked up several notches when Mayor Jason West began performing same-sex marriages in 2004, long before it became legal statewide. Every year since, the village has hosted the annual Hudson Valley LGBTQ Pride March and Festival, which is sponsored by the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center.

In 2012, SUNY New Paltz celebrated 23 consecutive years of receiving the most admissions applications of any public college in the state.

As befits a town surrounded by so much natural beauty, New Paltz also has a reputation for environmentalism. Starting in April 2015, plastic bags will be banned in the village and patrons will be asked to bring their own bags or use paper in an effort to cut down on pollution. Meanwhile, the town has committed to becoming a zerowaste community by 2018.

Left, above: Tea from the Village Tea Room in New Paltz.

Left, below: Sam Reeder at Rhino Records in New Paltz.

40 NEW PALTZ CHRONOGRAM 1/15

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Kids & Family

HILLARY HARVEY

Timmy Kortan outside his home in New Paltz.

A PERFECT CHAOS

GROWING UP WITH PHYSICAL DISABILITIES

By Hillary Harvey

T

immy just wants to keep riding his bike. His mother, Darcie Whelan Kortan, calls him yet again and admonishes him to take the shortcut.

When he arrives, Kortan unclips Timmy’s seat belt at the waist and chest, unstraps the leg braces from the foot pedals, folds the back brace, and turns off the lights that decorate the down tube.

There was a time when the Kortans weren’t sure if Timmy would ever walk.

When he and his twin sister, Evie, were born full-term, everything seemed fine. At 18 months, the doctors called him a late bloomer. But when he was two, the Kortans discovered he had some form of rare genetic disorder. That began a slow process of the Kortans figuring out the extent of Timmy’s impairments and abilities. First, it was speech and mobility. Then, Timmy’s vision impairment was diagnosed. Last year, they discovered his hearing impairment.

With each new piece, Kortan felt another blow. “I thought, ‘I can’t handle another thing!’ But we are handling it.” Twice a year, the Kortans bring Timmy to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where they see a parade of specialists.

But Timmy remains undiagnosed.

The chaotic part of caretaking a child with disabilities is how easily one can become obsessed with medical diagnoses. They live with unpredictability. “I do follow up with the doctor,” Kortan says, “but I’m certainly not pushing hard for an answer, because I don’t think it makes a difference.” In Far From the Tree, Andrew Solomon writes, “Most parenthood entails some struggle to change, educate, and improve one’s children; people with multiple severe disabilities may not become anything else, and there is compelling purity in parental engagement not with what might or should or will be, but with, simply, what is.”

42 KIDS & FAMILY CHRONOGRAM 1/15

When Timmy comes out to meet me, I’m surprised. There’s a shakiness and limp, but he’s walking unassisted. He wears standard glasses and looks at my eyes when we meet. I use my baby-talk experience to understand him, and Kortan speaks loudly as if with someone elderly. I expected a sight more upsetting than the handsome, friendly 10-year-old before me.

We sit in front of a 27-inch computer monitor where Timmy eagerly displays his favorite website, AccuWeather. Timmy wants to be a meteorologist.

Cognitively, he seems fine. Using this monitor and the CCTV nearby, Timmy can enlarge text from a book and read independently, which he does at a firstgrade level. “He does have cognitive delays,” Kortan explains, “mainly due to the fact that he has so many disabilities. He has fewer ways to absorb things around him.”

Finding the right technology occupies Kortan. Braille works for the blind, but not for the motor impaired; voice-recognition programs for the motor impaired don’t work well for speech-impaired kids; and iPad programs for the speech impaired don’t work for a motor-impaired, visually impaired child.

Kortan attends technology expos and has custom-made keyguards, which help Timmy to touch his mark. “He’s one in a million, so there’s no one solution for him.”

The Big IDEA Functionally, parents of special needs kids collaborate with their public school to classify a child (sometimes requiring evaluation) and form an IEP (Individualized Education Plan). Dorothy Richards, the special education advocate

at the Resource Center for Accessible Living (RCAL) in Kingston, can help with that. She offers trainings and workshops to walk parents and school districts through the Part 200 NY State regulations, which cover special ed. It’s based on the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which guarantees a Free Appropriate Public Education to American children with disabilities. “It’s like reading an insurance policy,” Richards says. She helps people understand their rights and the school district’s responsibilities.

Richards says that school districts and municipalities are becoming more accessible, and teachers and administrators more accepting. “Sometimes there’s just poor communication between parents and school districts. At times, there’s a lack of trust on the parents’ side towards the school district.

As an advocate, I try to bridge that gap. By collaborating, we can achieve the best outcome for students.” One family requested help from school officials for years, but was told there was nothing. With Richards’s guidance, they got the seventh grader classified and the special education support that she and her family needed. “Sometimes mistrust comes from parents asking for help and never being told how to get it.”

It was determined that Timmy needed an aide throughout the school day, where he fist-bumps and hugs his way through a morning filled with special services, like beginning Braille, speech and occupational therapy, adaptive PE, and a social skills group. His iPad, on permanent loan from the school district, reads aloud and allows him to type. “When people don’t understand me,” Timmy says, “I make them understand with this.” Its Subway Surfer game also helped his hand-eye coordination so much that he’s now able to use a touchscreen monitor in lieu of difficult mouse controls.

This year, the Kortans turned to homeschooling. Curriculum must be scanned for Timmy to read independently. That adaptation didn’t always happen at school. And with a half day spent in special services, Timmy would get the academics in bits and pieces. Now the Kortans can do a block of learning after his school services, and Timmy says his day isn’t so tiring anymore.

Debbie Major, the founder of Zylofone, a mobile music program in Orange County for people with special needs, feels a one-size-fits-all approach is the biggest problem. “School districts don’t give typical children the opportunity to be what they can be,” Major says. “Every person has their own style of learning. Special-needs kids are given that opportunity. They look at the child to make personal assessments. Why don’t they do that for typical kids, too?” Major brings personalized weekly music opportunities to habilitation facilities like Graystone Programs in Poughquag. For children’s workshops, Major might do music and movement with an educational theme, or drum therapy, where kids who can’t speak learn to talk through the drum. Zylofone just finished a musical theater program with three typical and seven special-needs kids. Experts find that integrating children with and without disabilities encourages diversity and compassion. Typical kids model positive social behavior, like eye contact and taking turns. And concurrently, kids with disabilities seem less foreign.

Major finds society’s recent acknowledgment of the special needs community’s value heartening. “In the last 50 years, we’ve come such a long way in giving them an honorable place in our world: not shunning them, finding them work, and making them feel like they don’t just matter, but that they’re important.” It’s especially poignant to Major, whose 20-year-old twin sons are both autistic.

Kortan says the biggest challenge for her family is making friends. Kids can be compassionate and make attempts to understand Timmy, but it feels to Kortan like there’s an element of doing the right thing rather than balanced friendship. Other times, the obstacle can be other parents. “Sometimes when I call the family, I get no call back. They think it’s easier not to call so they don’t say the wrong thing.” Richards says that people also need to get over the stigma of “those kids.”

But even self-acceptance can be challenging without a diagnosis. Kortan wrote a personal essay describing how she told Timmy about his genetic disease. He was just about to go to a sleepaway camp for kids with certain life-threatening diseases, and Kortan realized she needed to explain Timmy’s condition to him. There’s a scene where Timmy, in the back of the car, tells Evie about it. “I glimpsed his face in the rearview mirror. He was flashing Evie a mouthful of large teeth, grinning widely. Not sad, but proud.” Like everyone else, Timmy wants to belong.

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Journey of Discovery Open House – January 31st, 10am-12pm

open house

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44 KIDS & FAMILY CHRONOGRAM 1/15

0033

Look for it in the February issue!

BILL BRAMSWIG The Class of 2018 performs West Side Story ©DYANA VAN CAMPEN

An Education as Unique as Your Child Interns Annalie and Maeve Aplin (far left and far right), faculty member Annie Doss, and dancer Marcy Ryan (in chair) in the Moving Wheels & Heels Dance Intensive.

Gifts The Moving Wheels and Heels dance program at the Steffi Nossen School of Dance in White Plains started as a one-day workshop in 2003 and blossomed into an annual weeklong intensive of technique and choreography classes for dancers of all abilities. Nossen, a German refugee, started the school in the 1930s because she believed that dance is a unique form of education for the body, mind, and spirit. Judy Ross, the community relations director, says, “She felt that everybody can and should dance.That ‘everybody’ became the basis for the special-needs program.” The school also offers weekly ongoing classes, and encourages siblings to attend together. One student was so excited to finally share something with her little sister.

In another essay,Kortan writes that Evie, momentarily upset about the family’s situation, only reluctantly helped when Timmy’s bike chain broke during a ride. “Even then, on the trail as her face scrunched up and reddened with tears and sadness,” Kortan writes, “I couldn’t totally give myself to her, with one eye on Timmy at all times.” Back in the day, children with disabilities were institutionalized for exactly that reason: to save their siblings from suffering a lack of attention or the jealousy, guilt, anger, and overwhelm associated with caretaking. It also might keep them from a deeper level of compassion. Life with a disabled child isn’t necessarily miserable, any more than life with a terrible two-year-old is. As one of the families in Far From the Tree describes, children with disabilities are a gift when the family chooses to see them that way.

Timmy’s dad says, “This whole experience is exactly what each of us in our family needs.” For most of Timmy’s life, Damian Kortan didn’t feel that way.

“I perceived his condition as a burden and hardship that our family and Timmy were unfairly forced to endure. This feeling grew until last spring, when the dam finally broke, and I realized all the joy I was missing.” His transformation happened when he realized that not only was the situation perfect, but so was Timmy. “It can still be a challenge, but I’m approaching it with more acceptance than ever. I make it a daily practice to not judge his condition, but just love him.”

RESOURCES Moving Wheels and Heels Adaptive Dance Programs Steffinossen.org Resource Center for Accessible Living Rcal.org Zylofone Zylofone.org

w

Green Meadow’s unique Early Childhood through 12th Grade curriculum builds the capacities, creativity, and confidence your child needs for tomorrow.

Monthly Introductory Sessions for Prospective Parents.

845.356.2514 www.gmws.org

Woodstock day school nursery through grade 12

A huge, happy welcome to Kara Stern as our new Head of School July 1, 2015 Early Childhood: Nursery School – Grade 1 Lower School: Grades 2 – 6 Upper School: Grades 7 – 12

An option your kids will love.

Open House

Feb 26@4:00pm

1430 glasco turnpike , 1/4 mile east of rte. 212 saugerties, ny 12477

• Beautiful Campus • Dynamic, engaged faculty • Small class size • Buddy Groups NS-Grade 12 • Integrated learning • Progressive Education • Service Learning • State-of-the-Art Media Dept.

• Radio/TV Station • 3 Seasons of Sports • French/Spanish • Music Ensembles /Chorus • Suzuki VIolin Program • African Drumming & Dance • Graphic Arts & Ceramics • Partnership with Bard and suny ulster • Excellent College placement

woodstockdayschool.org for more information. Call for a tour of the campus or a conversation. 845-246-3744 ext. 103 Woodstock Day School is accredited by the New York Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS) 1/15 CHRONOGRAM KIDS & FAMILY 45

A wedding at Art OmiThe Fields Sculpture Park in Ghent. Sculpture by Dewitt Godfrey.

46 WEDDINGS & CELEBRATIONS CHRONOGRAM 1/15

Robin Roemer; Robinroemer.com

WEDDINGS & CELEBRATIONS

The Love of Art

for the Art of Love Wedding Venues for the Artist in You

By Mary Angeles Armstrong

1/15 CHRONOGRAM WEDDINGS & CELEBRATIONS 47

48 WEDDINGS & CELEBRATIONS CHRONOGRAM 1/15

Emma McIntyre; Emmamcintyreweddings.com

M

arriage, by its very nature, is a creative endeavor. And just as each marriage is unique, each wedding celebration uniquely reflects the two individuals who stand together in front of friends and family vowing to jointly travel life’s journey. Every great creative endeavor—whether it be an avantgarde film, a retrospective showing of an old master, or a wedding celebration— provides a multitude of opportunities for creative expression, but the cornerstone of the celebration is its venue. Both stage and palette, the right wedding venue can be a vehicle for a couple’s artistry, setting the tone for an event that guests will remember for years to come.

The Hudson Valley, home to creatives and artists of all stripe for the last 200 years, is also a center of myriad art colonies, performance spaces, and museums that welcome outside events.Whether by providing a backdrop of art intermingled with nature or by allowing couples to infuse their celebration with the area’s rich artistic heritage, they all invite and encourage the artist inside to take charge in designing nuptial events. What’s more, all proceeds from the venue rentals go straight back into the organizations that run them, helping to provide the Hudson Valley with artistic, cultural, and educational programming, and adding to its rich artistic legacy.

Sculpt a Life Together—Omi International Arts Center Surrounded by world-class sculpture and providing incredible views of the nearby Catskills, the 90-acre Omi International Arts Center outside Ghent offers soon-tobe newlyweds and their guests endless inspiration. In the warmer months, couples can rent space and erect tents in one of the many outdoor locations, including the center’s Fields Sculpture Park, saying their vows amidst acres and acres of quiet, artadorned fields. They also have the option to place a tent contiguous to the Charles B. Benenson Visitors Center, a LEED-certified green building whose architecture resembles the simple artistry of the sculptures that it’s nestled among.

With year-round event facilities, Omi’s cluster of hilltop houses is perfect for winter celebrations. The three buildings, including a fully restored 1860s Federal farmhouse and two smaller cottages, provide 21 rooms for lodging. A library, fully equipped kitchen, and communal spaces filled with art make Omi an ideal destination wedding spot. (518) 392-4747; Artomi.org.

A wedding at Mt. Tremper Arts in the heart of the Catskills.

Two Minds, One Imagination—Shakespeare-on-the-Hudson If you are planning a wedding with a high production value, head north to Athens. True to the theatrical spirit of the bard, Shakespeare-on-the-Hudson gives a couple’s imagination free reign. When touring the facilities, which include a dance and music pavilion, a sprawling lawn, and on-site catering, engaged couples are given permission “to create their own dream.” The expansive grounds have been the stage for all sorts of matrimonial productions—everything from 1940s-style to Halloween-themed wedding events that often incorporate grand flourishes such as horse and carriages.

The property, offering tranquility and privacy as well as birds and other wildlife, can accommodate events for up to 500 people and provide on-site lodging for up to 40 guests. Additional guests can be accommodated 10 minutes away at the historical Stewart House in the Athens Hotel. With almost a mile of unsullied Hudson River frontage and 100 acres of woods straight from one of Shakespeare’s plays, the site also offers hiking and biking trails, boating facilities, and swimming in the Hudson and Corlear Creek. (518) 947-1104; Shakespeare-on-the-hudson.com.

Love in the Wild—Mount Tremper Arts Infused with the spirit of the new and avant-garde, and located right in the heart of the Catskills, Phoenicia’s Mount Tremper Arts (MTA) provides a support system for working artists, offering residencies to a wide variety of artists cumulating in performances that form an annual summer-long festival open to the public. MTA also rents event space and welcomes inquiries for year-round weddings. Come here for an off-beat, family-reunion-style nuptials amidst the 150 acres of woods and fields adjacent to forever-wild state lands. Plan an outdoor ceremony under starry skies or erect a tent on one of the property’s many large outdoor areas. Or come to dance: MTA’s post-and-beam-inspired studio has 25-foot ceilings and is equipped with a professional sound and lighting system, both AC and radiant-floor heat, and a sprung wooden dance floor. Couples and their guests have utilized the 32-foot-by-50-foot space for ceremonies seating up to 75 people, raucous musical receptions, and even welcoming-night karaoke parties.

1/15 CHRONOGRAM WEDDINGS & CELEBRATIONS 49

Liz Ligon; Lizligon.com A wedding reception at Basilica Hudson.

In addition to hiking trails and tubing in the nearby Esopus River, a couple’s friends and family members can enjoy the campus gardens, campfire pit, and pond.

These add up to make MTA an ideal minidestination wedding spot. (845) 688-9893; Mounttremperarts.org.

Collaboration, Community, and a Bit of Glue—Basilica Hudson Basilica Hudson prides itself on being a center for creative collaboration. Striving to enliven Hudson’s riverfront with art and music, the center hosts numerous festivals every year, including Basilica Soundscape and Basilica Farm and Flea as well as fundraising events benefiting the local community. All combine art and performance in the center’s Forge and Foundry building, a reimagined factory space that at one time was used to manufacture railway wheels and another glue.

This sense of creative collaboration extends to couples who elect to tie the knot at one of the site’s many event spaces. Basilica attracts a lot of couples who are interested in the venue’s arts activity. Often those couples become invested in the center and the community it serves, incorporating current happenings into their wedding planning and donating time or resources to the center and surrounding community. Basilica’s Main Hall, with industrial windows, brick walls, and steel girders, can accommodate large celebrations, and the smaller space in the North Hall can accommodate up to 150 guests. While the town of Hudson makes Basilica a great destination wedding spot, be forewarned: Couples often fall in love with the center and surrounding community, returning to visit and even relocating to the area. (518) 822-1050; Basilicahudson.com.

Held Together by Love—Opus 40 Sculptor Harvey Fite spent 37 years crafting the stone art installation that is Opus 40 from an abandoned quarry in the woods of Saugerties. Perhaps it’s the evidence of Fite’s unflagging dedication and longevity of purpose, or the romantic and whimsical stone sculptures spread throughout the 70-plus-acre complex, or just the sheer beauty of the place that make this a popular and fascinating wedding venue. The millions of individual bluestones, held together by nothing but superior craftsmanship and gravity, form a striking blend of artistry and landscape, which acts as a backdrop 50 WEDDINGS & CELEBRATIONS CHRONOGRAM 1/15

for an event space that can accommodate over 300 guests. The site’s acoustics, as well as its proximity to one of the world’s most famous musical towns, make this an ideal venue for serious music lovers who want to incorporate live performance into their event.

Opus 40’s Quarrymen’s Museum houses the traditional, hand-forged quarryman’s tools used by Fite to build his masterpiece. The museum can be reserved as a private space for the bridal party, and the installation and surrounding grounds, open weekends from Memorial Day through October, are available for events. (845) 246-3400; Opus40.org.

Kindness Begets Kindness—The Byrdcliffe Colony of the Arts Built in the mountains above Woodstock, the Byrdcliffe Colony of the Arts began as a utopian arts community in 1903. The dark wood Swiss chalet-style buildings with the iconic Byrdcliffe Blue trim were designed to provide a home for artisans of all kinds. The colony quickly became a center for arts-and-crafts handiwork, architecture, and pieces displayed throughout the country today.

Byrdcliffe founders Ralph and Julia Whitehead hand-built the heart of the colony, their home “White Pines,” and the house and surrounding grounds are currently utilized for public and private events. The manicured lawns can be rented for both ceremony and reception. More intimate gatherings can be accommodated in the White Pines’ living room or Julia Whitehead’s “Loom Room,” built adjacent to the main house and still displaying her loom and spindles of dyed wool. Down the road, the Byrdcliffe Barn tends toward the more rustic and is a popular venue for up to 135 people. Byrdcliffe’s black-box theater is also for rent—hosting receptions, galas, and dinners as well as the Woodstock Fringe Festival each year.

Byrdcliffe is still a thriving arts colony and guests can mingle with the ceramicists, landscape painters, musicians, and writers who live and work on the 600-acre property. A remnant of the long-lasting marriage of the Whiteheads, a Sophocles quote from his play “Ajax,” is engraved over the Loom Room fireplace. Translating as “Kindness begets kindness evermore,” it offers wise and timeless advice for beginning a life with your beloved. Byrdcliffe facilities are available May through October. (845) 769-2079; Woodstockguild.org.

Tuthill House

Since 1960

Mon. thru Sat. 9-9, Sun 12-6 15 BOICES LANE, KINGSTON Next to Office Depot

845.336.5155

Wine Tastings Every Saturday from 1PM - 4PM LIKE US ON FACEBOOK

Fo r I n fo r ma t io n o n N ew I te ms an d Sp e c i al Promot i on s

1/15 CHRONOGRAM WEDDINGS & CELEBRATIONS 51

SPEC I A L A DV E RT I S I N G S E C T I O N

Wedding Guide Plan the perfect celebration.

Explore some of the Hudson Valley’s best wedding venues and resources.

BYRDCLIFFE ART COLONY Woodstock, NY

PHOTO BY NANCY DONSKOJ

Pastoral Beauty

Vintage Charm THE BELLTOWER Rosendale, NY

(845) 679-2079

(845) 658-8077

weddings@woodstockguild.org

events@belltowervenue.com

woodstockguild.org

belltowervenue.com

Weddings at the Byrdcliffe Art Colony, founded in 1902, are

The Belltower, once a church and since 1985 a glass art studio, is an architecturally prominent 1896 Gothic-style building in the heart of historic Rosendale. The main nave’s soaring vaulted tin ceilings, a vintage wood-staged pulpit, the 1950s curved bar, original fir flooring, and a magnificent front window provide for an atmosphere of warmth and artistic chic for unforgettable celebrations.

steeped in the pastoral beauty of the Catskills, the warmth of an artists’ community, and over a century of creativity. Whether you choose the rustic elegance of Byrdcliffe’s Barn or the historic Arts & Crafts style house White Pines, come celebrate love and life at the colony that made Woodstock . . . Woodstock.

REV. PUJA A.J. THOMSON

PHOTO BY J FERRARA

Roots & Wings

Tell Your Story!

NOVELLA’S NEW PALTZ

New Paltz, NY

New Paltz, NY

(845) 255-2278

(845) 255-2122

puja@rootsnwings.com

dstewart@novellasnp.com

rootsnwings.com/ceremonies.html

novellasnp.com

In the spirit of your tradition or beliefs, Rev. Puja Thomson

Special events that tell your story! We host only one wedding

will help you create a heartfelt ceremony that reflects the

a day in our newly renovated 9,000 square foot facility that

uniqueness of your commitment to each other. Puja welcomes

accommodates parties up to 250.

inquiries from couples blending different spiritual, religious, or

impeccable service and meticulous staff will surely make your

ethnic backgrounds as well as those with a common heritage.

wedding a day to remember. We have a built-in, state-of-the-art

Her presence and lovely Scottish voice add a special touch.

sound system and strobe lighting. Adjacent to area hotels.

52 WEDDING GUIDE CHRONOGRAM 1/15

Our culinary cuisine,

SPECI AL ADVERT I SI NG SECT I O N

Picturesque Vineyard Weddings PELMO VINEYARDS 200 Strawridge Road, Wallkill, NY 12589 | (844) 583-3053 | pelmovineyard.com Begin your new marriage with an elegant outdoor, green wedding at the Hudson Valley’s only “True vineyard wedding venue”.

Named for the Italian mountain, PELMO Vineyards in Wallkill, NY offers a magnificent tented wedding site as well as a host of amenities to make your big day perfect.

Spacious Sailcloth Tent Start your new life together under the beauty of our main tent.

Fully protecting you and your guests from inclement weather, the floored sailcloth tent stands proudly on a raised ridge overlooking the vineyards, wild flower field, lake side amphitheater ceremony site, and surrounding farmlands. It holds up to 600+ people standing or 270 people seated. Capacity changes as you add items based on your layout and needs.

Lake Side Ceremony Paint a memorable picture for your guests with our white garden ceremony chairs in the lake side amphitheater. The lake also has resident swans adding to the scenic beauty. All of the chairs that you will need for the event are included in the package price.

Additional Tents & Equipment Make your wedding as grand as you would like. We can provide additional equipment if needed for your special day. Need more tables, chairs, or additional tents? No problem. We can make accommodations for everybody on your guest list.

Your Site for the Entire Day! When you book our space, it’s yours for the entire day. The venue is available for your wedding and reception from 9am until around 10pm. You are welcome to come in for decorations and any other necessary setup as early as 9am. Book a Saturday by Feb 1st and Friday will be available FREE for rehearsal dinner, guaranteed!

Included Amenities • Floored main tent, perimeter lights, tables, chairs, white linen, bar, walls, cocktail tables, heat, and electricity • Cocktails on lawn or in vineyards • Floored cater tent, complete commercial kitchen, water, power, and lighting • Floored, air conditioned, and fully furnished bridal suite tent • Deluxe premier restroom trailer • Event staff, carts, lighted parking lot, private entry road, and secluded setting • Packages for 150-180, 180-210, 210-240, and 240-270 person weddings, inclusive for one price. Extra Guests? No problem!

• General event rates available for fundraisers, reunions, galas, corporate, community, etc.

Extras Additions such as table settings, linen upgrades, specialty lighting, ceremony site, special requests, additional rentals, and bar & wine special packages are available upon request.

Preferred & Exclusive Vendors Take advantage of our list of preferred vendors to help plan a stress-free day, the list is available to every inquiry! We also work exclusively with some of the region’s best vendors, including magwine.com, classictent.com, and Vineyard Events, Inc! Call us today Please contact us with any questions. Let us know what we can do to make this the fabulous, fun-filled day that you have always dreamed of! The owners and staff have over 60 years of wedding experience and we look forward to helping you plan your special day!

1/15 CHRONOGRAM WEDDING GUIDE 53

S PE CIA L A DVERTISI N G SEC T I ON

Where Nature Inspires

Majestic Farm Weddings

THE ASHOKAN CENTER

LIBERTY FARMS

Olivebridge, NY | (845) 657-8333 x10 | info@ashokancenter.org | ashokancenter.org

Ghent, NY | Contact Jennifer Houle: (917) 690-9911 | eventslibertyfarmsny@gmail.com

The Ashokan Center, where nature inspires, is a place you can relax, smile, and celebrate your family and friends. The natural beauty of the land is magical. Come see for yourself.

The Ashokan Center has the staff, facilities, and property to help you create your dream wedding. Situated on 385 acres of pristine forest, with the meandering Esopus Creek and Cathedral Falls just below our main lodge, the Ashokan Center is the perfect location for couples searching for a beautiful mountain setting for their special day.

We are excited to work with you to create the wedding of your dreams. For more information, please contact us by emailing info@ashokancenter.org or give us a call at (845) 657-8333 ext 10.

We look forward to planning your special event! •

Liberty Farms offers everything you could dream of for a majestic farm wedding or any special event.

Whether you choose to host your event in the stunning newly refurbished stallion barn, on the spacious meadow overlooking the farm or on the hilltop with priceless Catskill and Berkshire Mountain views, Liberty Farms is the perfect location for memories that will last a lifetime.

Just two hours from New York City and minutes from Hudson, New York, Ghent is easily accessible, has many options for accommodations, and provides plenty to do and see while in town for your event.

Contact us to schedule a visit and tour of our beautiful grounds and to ensure that your preferred date is reserved. •

The Perfect Pairing

Make History

MIRON WINE & SPIRITS

HISTORIC HUGUENOT STREET

15 Boices Lane, Kingston, NY | (845) 336-5155

New Paltz, NY | (845) 255-1660 | info@huguenotstreet.org | huguenotstreet.org

You’ve picked the right rings, the perfect wedding location, and started on your guest list. With only a few months to go and your time becoming more and more valuable, sometimes a unique and well-stocked bar for the reception can be overlooked.

Whether you’re looking to supply champagne, wine, or signature cocktails, let the knowledgeable staff at Miron Wine & Spirits facilitate your experience. From information on the latest trends and exciting cocktail recipes to ordering custom bottle labels and hard to find items, saving time by shopping for your wedding at Miron’s will enable you to focus on the vital aspects of the ceremony. Like where to sit your Uncle Ralph and Aunt Gloria. •

Make history with your event at one of the most significant historic sites in America. Including seven stone houses that date to the early eighteenth century, this National Historic Landmark District offers a variety of options for memorable weddings and rehearsal dinners.

The non-denominational French Church, a reconstruction of the original 1717 Huguenot Church, can accommodate up to 65 guests. The grounds behind the Deyo House, a breathtaking Victorian mansion, can accommodate tents for large parties and is just steps away from a state of the art catering kitchen. Event space is also available in Deyo Hall. Located in the heart of New Paltz, the site is close to a number of overnight accommodations. •

54 WEDDING GUIDE CHRONOGRAM 1/15

SPECI AL ADVERT I SI NG SECT I O N

The Hudson Valley’s Best Chef NEW WORLD CATERING Saugerties, NY | (845) 246-0900 | team@newworldcatering.com | newworldcatering.com Albany Kitchen and Tasting Room: 250 Delaware Ave | (518) 465-3465

Ric Orlando, recently voted the Hudson Valley’s Best Chef, has been bringing the world’s greatest flavors to the table for over 20 years. At New World Catering, he designs delicious and sustainable custom menus with foodie flair. New World Catering specializes in global bistro style food made with local ingredients; we showcase natural meats, artisan cheeses, craft beers, and indie spirits. Rustic farm-to-table, big flavor BBQ, ultra-modern lounge, or vintage boho chic: let’s make your wedding one of a kind. Full-service or DIY options. Vegan and gluten-free menus available. Looking for a venue, too?

Our art-filled converted barn, in the embrace of magical Blue Mountain between Woodstock and Saugerties, can accommodate up to 175 guests.

Custom Bridal Wear STYLE DES REVES (845) 626-5353 barbara@styledesreves.com | styledesreves.com

Award-winning Style des Reves specializes in custom bridal wear. Each piece is designed to the bride’s unique specifications and carefully hand-crafted. Or, choose to have your gown sustainably re-styled from vintage or contemporary store-bought dresses.

Custom-made dresses for, or alterations to, bridal party, mother-of-the-bride/groom, other special occasion clothing. Groom’s accessories. Rainbow weddings.

This section’s online directory can be found on our website at

chronogram.com/weddingguide

photo by Andrew Franciosa

www.windhammountain.com - Contact Erika DeWitt at 518-310-2725

1/15 CHRONOGRAM WEDDING GUIDE 55

galleries & museums

HUDSON VALLEY EVENTS DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX EACH THURSDAY.

December 6, 2014 - January 24, 2015

Hotchkiss in Ku r t Vi l e a t B S P K i n g s t o n .

50 Objects

Friday, January 16, 2015 ~ 7:00 p.m.

Faculty Room You are cordially invited to attend a presentation by poet, Susan Howe, in conjunction with the exhibition.

Subscribe to 8-Day Week to stay in the know about the week’s most exciting events. Plus, enter to win free concert and event tickets with a new giveaway each week.

SIGN UP NOW chronogram.com/8dw

8DW

Photos by Jonathan Doster

EIGHT DAY WEEK

11 Interlaken Road, Lakeville, ct | Open Daily | 860.435.3663 | hotchkiss.org/arts

56 ARTS & CULTURE CHRONOGRAM 1/15

ARTS &

CULTURE

Kazuhiro, Richard Osaka , gesso, acrylic, resin on wood, 2010 Showing from 4pm to midnight every evening through March 31 at the Drive By Gallery, Lift Trucks Building, Route 22 in Croton Falls.

Facebook.com/LiftTrucksProject

1/15 CHRONOGRAM ARTS & CULTURE 57

galleries & museums

Scott Cronin’s painting Landscope, showing at Coldwell Banker Village Green Realty in Stone Ridge.

510 WARREN ST GALLERY

CARRIE HADDAD GALLERY

510 WARREN STREET, HUDSON (518) 822-0510.

“H. David Stein: Frigid Fractals.” Photographs of ice crystals that formed on windows when the temperature and humidity were ideal. January 2-25.

Opening reception January 3, 3pm-6pm.

CATALYST GALLERY

ALBERT SHAHINIAN FINE ART GALLERY 22 EAST MARKET STREET SUITE 301, RHINEBECK 876-7578.

“Figuartives: David Eddy, Polly Law, Dick Crenson.” Through January 30.

AMERICAN GIFTS GALLERY & SHOWROOM 62 EAST MARKET STREET, RED HOOK 758-1653.

“Local Artists on Display.” Featuring work from over 30 area crafters & artisans.

Through September 28, 2015.

ANN STREET GALLERY

622 WARREN STREET, HUDSON (518) 828-1915.

“Photography.” Through January 25.

137 MAIN STREET, BEACON 204-3844.

“Catalyst Small Works Show.” Painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, mixed-media work by more than 50 artists. Through January 3.

CATSKILL CENTER FOR CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT

ROUTE 28, ARKVILLE CATSKILLCENTER.ORG. “Hemlocks: The Backbone of the Catskills.” Celebrating the past, present and future of a quintessential Catskills’ species, the Eastern Hemlock, created by The Catskill Center and The Catskill Regional Invasive Species Partnership. Through April 24.

CLARK ART INSTITUTE

104 ANN STREET, NEWBURGH 784-1146.

“An Aberrant View.” Through February 7.

225 SOUTH STREET, WILLIAMSTOWN, MA (413) 458-2303.

“Monet | Kelly.” This exhibition will shed new light on Monet’s continuing influence on American artist Ellsworth Kelly. Through February 15.

BABYCAKES CAFÉ

COLDWELL BANKER VILLAGE GREEN REALTY

1-3 COLLEGEVIEW AVENUE, POUGHKEEPSIE 485-8411.

“Rudy Vavra.” 2014 Holiday Trees. Through January 12.

3656 MAIN STREET, STONE RIDGE 687-4355 “Scott Cronin Solo Show.” Through February 22.

BEACON ARTIST UNION

COLUMBIA COUNTY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

506 MAIN STREET, BEACON 222-0177.

“Decade.” Beacon Artist Union Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary. Through January 4.

BEEKMAN LIBRARY 11 TOWN CENTER BOULEVARD, HOPEWELL JUNCTION 724-3414.

“Paintings by Doreen O’Connor.” Through January 29.

BERKSHIRE MUSEUM 39 SOUTH STREET, PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS (413) 443-7171.

“Festival of Trees 2014 On Safari.” The annual holiday event features more than 100 holiday trees decorated to evoke an exotic safari adventure. Through January 4.

BETSY JACARUSO STUDIO & GALLERY 43 EAST MARKET STREET, RHINEBECK 516-4435.

“Small Works Show.” Through January 30.

BYRDCLIFFE KLEINERT/JAMES CENTER FOR THE ARTS 36 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK 679-2079.

“15th Annual 5x7 Show.” Through January 4.

CAFFE A LA MODE 1 OAKLAND AVENUE, WARWICK 986-1223.

“Paintings by Diane Kominisk-Ouzoonian.” Through January 5.

CANAJOHARIE LIBRARY & ARKELL MUSEUM 2 ERIE BOULEVARD, CANAJOHARIE (518) 673-2314.

“Winslow Homer: The Nature and Rhythm of Life.” Through January 4.

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1 NORTH FRONT STREET, HUDSON (518) 828-4417.

“True North.” Expressionist collage by Lynne Perrella. Through January 10.

COLUMBIA COUNTY COUNCIL ON THE ARTS

209 WARREN STREET, HUDSON (518) 671-6213.

“Members Annual Smal Works Show.” Through January 10.

DUCK POND GALLERY

128 CANAL STREET TOWN OF ESOPUS LIBRARY, PORT EWEN 338-5580.

“Mohonk Preserve Volunteer Photographers.” January 3-24.

Opening reception January 3, 5pm-8pm.

FIELD LIBRARY

4 NELSON AVENUE, PEEKSKILL (914) 737-1212.

“Local Color: A Field Gallery Retrospective.” Through February 8.

GALERIE BMG

17 CRICKET LANE, WOODSTOCK 679-0027.

“Unlocking Whimsy.” New photographs by Leah Macdonald and paintings by Kathleen McGuiness. Through January 4.

THE GALLERY AT R&F

84 TEN BROECK AVENUE, KINGSTON 331-3112.

“Stephanie Bell: f(l)ight.” Through January 17.

GALLERY 66 NY

66 MAIN STREET, COLD SPRING 809-5838.

“The Face of Winter” January 2-January 25.

Opening reception, January 2, 6-9 pm.

Beacon Carl Andre Sculpture as Place, 1958–2010 through March 2, 2015

Chelsea

Dia:Beacon 3 Beekman Street Beacon New York 845 440 0100 www.diaart.org

Sites Brush with History

January 5 – January 30

Affiliates

Crawford Gallery of Fine Art

A Gift of Art is Remembered Forever.

In the Gallery Shop: Paintings, Jewelry, Ceramics

www.crawfordgalleryoffineart.com

Over 475 Bikes

A collection of paintings by artists who have recorded historic homes, landscapes and still life, now, marking a moment and place in time.

GALLERY HOURS: WED. - SUN. 1PM - 5PM

250 Lake Street Newburgh NY 12550 - 845 569 9065

85,000 Sq. Ft.

Each 20-minute episode will explore the artists, galleries and museums, and

Our Collection Features: Harley Davidson, Racers, Police, Military, 1880s & up, Choppers, 1901-1953 Hours: Friday - Sunday 10-5 Admission: Adults $11 Children $5 Under 3 Free

A new monthly web TV series about the Hudson Valley art scene.

history that forms the vibrant creative community in the region. Produced by 1922 Ace 4-Cyl

local independent filmmaker Stephen Blauweiss and hosted by Chronogram

WWW.MOTORCYCLEPEDIAMUSEUM.ORG

editor Brian K. Mahoney.

Tune in for the series launch in January.

chronogram.com/tv brought to you by:

1/15 CHRONOGRAM ARTS & CULTURE 59

galleries & museums

65 Main Street, Pine Bush 845-744-8634 cgfa@hvc.rr.com

OPENING NIGHT

January 10, 5:30pm

Arms, a mixed-media piece showing in the exhibition “Laws of Sympathy: New works by Katarina Riesing,” on view January 10 to March 14 at the Seligmann Center in Chester.

GALLERY LEV SHALEM, WOODSTOCK JEWISH CONGREGATION

HUDSON VALLEY LGBTQ COMMUNITY CENTER, INC.

1682 GLASCO TURNPIKE, WOODSTOCK 679-2218.

“The Small Works Art Show.” Through January 5.

300 WALL STREET, KINGSTON 331-5300.

“LongReach Arts at the Center.” January 3-March 31.

Opening reception January 3, 4pm-6pm.

GARDINER LIBRARY

JOHN DAVIS GALLERY

133 FARMER’S TURNPIKE, GARDINER 255-1255.

“Contemporary Woodcuts-Five Fathoms: A Portfolio.”

Through January 13.

GARRISON ART CENTER

23 GARRISON’S LANDING, GARRISON 424-3960.

“Fragments, Bundles and Clusters.” Works by Stacey Farley including two-dimensional work, as well as sculpture and installation.

Through January 4.

GOOD PURPOSE GALLERY

40 MAIN STREET, LEE, MA (413) 394-5045.

“Adventures in Color.” The bright and colorful works of Jimmy Reagan.

Through January 5.

GREENE COUNTY COUNCIL ON THE ARTS GALLERY

398 MAIN STREET, CATSKILL (518) 943-3400.

“Salon 2014 & Handmade Holidays.” Fine arts and crafts exhibition and sale. Through January 3.

HOTCHKISS LIBRARY

10 UPPER MAIN, SHARON, CT (860) 364-5041.

“Northwest Corner Holiday Show.” Through February 7.

HOWLAND PUBLIC LIBRARY

313 MAIN STREET, BEACON. “Barbara Masterson: Seasons.” Oil bar paintings by Barbara Masterson.

Through January 18.

HUDSON OPERA HOUSE

327 WARREN STREET, HUDSON (518) 822-4181.

“18th Annual Juried Art Show.” January 17-February 15.

Opening reception January 17, 5pm-7pm.

60 ARTS & CULTURE CHRONOGRAM 1/15

362 1/2 WARREN STREET, HUDSON (518) 828-5907.

“McWillie Chambers: Paintings.” January 10-February 1.

Opening reception January 10, 6pm-8pm.

KATONAH MUSEUM OF ART 134 JAY STREET, KATONAH (914) 232-9555.

“Lethal Beauty: Samurai Weapons and Armor.” The striking duality of deadly weaponry forged with artistic beauty. Through January 4.

KLEINERT/JAMES ARTS CENTER 34 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK 679-2079.

“Woodstock Day School Student Exhibit.” January 9-11.

Opening reception January 10, 4pm-6pm.

LABELLA PIZZA BISTRO 194 MAIN STREET, NEW PALTZ 255-2633.

“Here & There: The Photography of Maxine Kamin.” Images of the Mid-Hudson Valley and recent travels on six continents (so far). Through January 20.

LAUREN CLARK FINE ART 25 RAILROAD STREET, GREAT BARRINGTON, MA (413) 274-6400.

“Small Works in Several Dimensions, 2014.” More than 20 artists from the Berkshires and beyond present their small works.

Through January 11.

MARK GRUBER GALLERY 17 NEW PALTZ PLAZA, NEW PALTZ 255-1241.

“38th Annual Holiday Salon Show: Jingle All the Way.” A European Salon-style show with a huge variety of artists, styles, and media.

Through January 17.

NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 222 MADISON AVENUE, ALBANY (518) 574-5877.

“The Shakers: America’s Quiet Revolutionaries.” Over 150 historic images and nearly 200 Shaker artifacts, including artifacts from three Shaker historical sites. Through March 6.

ORANGE HALL GALLERY SUNY ORANGE, MIDDLETOWN 341-4790.

“Orange County Arts Council Members Show.”

January 9-February 7.

ORANGE REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER 707 EAST MAIN STREET, MIDDLETOWN 333-1000.

“American Dream.” Features four regional artists whose work focuses on the influence of automobile culture on the American landscape.

January 9-February 27.

SAFE HARBORS OF THE HUDSON 111 BROADWAY, NEWBURGH 562-6940.

“Works by Artist Bruno Krauchthaler.” Through March 31.

SELIGMANN CENTER FOR THE ARTS 23 WHITE OAK DRIVE, SUGAR LOAF 469-9459.

“Laws of Sympathy: New Works by Katarina Riesing.”

January 10-March 14.

Opening reception January 10, 6pm-9pm.

THE CHATHAM BOOKSTORE

THOMPSON GIROUX GALLERY

57 MAIN STREET, CHATHAM (518) 392-3336.

“En Masse.” Featuring small works by more than 40 artists.

Through January 4.

TREMAINE GALLERY AT THE HOTCHKISS SCHOOL 11 INTERLAKEN ROAD, LAKEVILLE, CONNECTICUT (860) 435-4423.

“Hotchkiss in 50 Objects.” Through January 24.

UNISON

68 MOUNTAIN REST ROAD, NEW PALTZ 255-1559.

“Mini Works Show: Leisure.” Through January 4.

VALLEY VARIETY

705 WARREN STREET, HUDSON (518) 828-0033.

“Improvisational Sketch Paintings by Daryl Hudak.” Through January 12.

WALLKILL RIVER SCHOOL AND ART GALLERY

232 WARD STREET, MONTGOMERY 457-ARTS. “Member’s Exhibit Reception.” Featuring works by 200 regional artists who are members of the Wallkill River School. January 1-31.

Opening reception January 10, 5pm-7pm.

THE WILLIAMS COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART

15 LAWRENCE HALL DRIVE, WILLIAMSTOWN, MA (413) 597-3055.

“Franz West.” Austrian, 1947-2012. Known for willfully unserious, non-ideological, and sometimes mischievously erotic mixed-media drawings, sculptures, and furniture. Through January 25.

27 MAIN STREET, CHATHAM (518) 392-3005.

“Roger Mason Paintings of Chatham and Beyond.”

Through January 12.

WIRED GALLERY

THEO GANZ STUDIO

WOODSTOCK ARTISTS ASSOCIATION AND MUSEUM

149 MAIN STREET, BEACON (917) 318-2239.

“In-Between.” Recent work from abstract painter Hiro Ichikawa.

Through January 4.

11 MOHONK ROAD, HIGH FALLS (682) 564-5613.

“Group Show #9: Color Galaxy.” Works by 35 artists fueled by color.

Through February 22.

28 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK 679-2940.

“Georges Malkine: Perfect Surrealist Behavior.” A retrospective of the work of Georges Malkine (1898-1970). Through January 4.

1/15 CHRONOGRAM ARTS & CULTURE 61

Music

Turning the Turntables Chronogram’s Year-End Music Survey By Peter Aaron

W

elcome to our second annual Turning the Turntables music survey. With the aim of getting other perspectives of the Hudson Valley music scene, we asked a select cast of local musicians, writers, record store folks, radio DJs, venue bookers/owners, and others to tell us what sounds they dug in 2014, which local artists they enjoy, what releases they’re looking forward to in 2015, and which artists they have their eyes and ears on.

TONY FLETCHER Author of Dear Boy: The Life of Keith Moon, All Hopped Up and Ready to Go, and others Due to the fact that I’m writing a biography about him, I have been listening to vast amounts of Wilson Pickett.

Two artists whose music I was listening to in the late 1980s delivered some of their strongest work to date in 2014—the band James, from Manchester, with La Petite Mort (Cooking Vinyl Records), and Sinead O’Connor, with I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss (Nettwerk Music Group).

Both records deal explicitly with sexuality, proving that such intimacy is not the exclusive provenance of young pups. They also both deal with death: in James’s case, by embracing the passing of front man Tim Booth’s mother as a rebirth, and in Sinead’s case, with a typically naked confession of her suicidal tendencies. They are the kind of songs that can only be written after decades of accrued experience and wisdom. Equally satisfying were the not one but two full-length collaborations between Brian Eno and Karl Hyde, the former man needing no introduction, the latter beloved in our household as the charismatic front man with Underworld. Eno initially recruited Hyde to help finish various riffs he had scattered around his life; the pair enjoyed the results of that collaboration (Someday World) so much that they immediately headed back to the studio to record an exuberant fresh set of poetry and rhythm, High Life, released just two months later. Naturally, Eno simultaneously unveiled an app that turned the spinning vinyl (yes, vinyl) into 3D grooves. Visiting Muscle Shoals in November for research on the Pickett book, I was fortunate to see a show by Hannah Aldridge, a singer-songwriter better known in Europe than her native Alabama. Her latest album, Razor Wire (Trodden Black Entertainment), exemplifies what I would call “Americana noir,” and I highly recommend the video for the single “Howlin’ Bones.” I’m also eager to hear a full 62 MUSIC CHRONOGRAM 1/15

album by Australian wunderkind Courtney Barnett, whose songs “History Eraser” and “Avant Gardener” were two of the lyrical highlights of my year. And my children, 19 and 9, are big fans of Steam Powered Giraffe, who embody the steampunk ethic from the perspective of their robot alter egos. When not being too clever for their own good, they write songs of some beauty.

IDA HAKKILA Host of RadioWoodstock’s “The Heavy Light Show” My favorite album of the year was Freeman (Partisan Records) by Aaron Freeman from Ween. All the songs are really good. The song “Gimme One More” just grabs you, slow and intense and driving, and really soulful too.

Kelis’s album Food (Ninja Tune Records) was also really good, with each song strong and different from the last.

I liked a lot of tracks off the two new Prince albums and Angel Olsen’s BurnYour Fire for NoWitness (Jagjaguar Records). This year, there were a lot of smart, fun, funky punk songs by bands like Parquet Courts, Future Punx, and Plague Vendor. Bands that remind me of early Devo, the Minutemen, and the Big Boys.

The song I played the most this year was Meatbodies’ “Wahoo.” [In the Hudson Valley] we are surrounded by amazing talent.You have to see Joey Eppard play live. It is actual magic. Of course, Amy Helm. She is channeling the Great Spirit and her band is flawless. Tracy Bonham, Elizabeth Mitchell, Lindsey Webster, Simi Stone!

Arc Iris made an incredible album this year and they’re great live. Connor Kennedy and everything he is a

part of, including Cows and Thunder, who I’ve seen a few times this year. Also, see any show with the kids from the Paul Green Rock Academy. They work so hard, and it really shows, plus it’s a blast! I can’t wait for Mark Ronson’s new album! The Mystikal and Bruno Mars singles are out as I write this, and they are great. Also looking forward to Harts to release a fulllength, and one of my favorites, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, should have a third album out pretty soon.

MIKE AMARI Booking agent at BSP Kingston and promoter at Output Agency I thought 2014 was a particularly good year for new music! I’m a sucker for hook-heavy riff rock, so the two records I’ve probably spun the most are Broncho’s Just Enough Hip to Be Woman (Dine in Records) and Ex Hex’s RIPS (Merge Records). The West Coast well of lo-fi guitar maniacs was as deep as ever: Ty Segall’s Manipulator was my favorite of his since Goodbye Bread (both Drag City Records), and he also made crucial contributions to LPs from White Fence and newcomers Meatbodies. The most artistically bold record for me this year was Too Bright from Perfume Genius (Matador Records); there is so much pain in this dude’s struggle to be gay and feel “normal” and “accepted,” it makes for some absolutely heartbreaking and compelling material, no matter what you’re into. I had the pleasure of booking some bands who put out great records this year too: the War on Drugs, Future Islands, Viet Cong, and there are so many great bands from the Hudson Valley who are breaking through on a national level. Look for big things in 2015 from locals Quarterbacks (Poughkeepsie), What Moon Things (New Paltz), and Breakfast In Fur (New Paltz).

WILL HERMES Author of Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever, senior critic at Rolling Stone, NPR contributor I haven’t played any record this year more than Brill Bruisers (Matador Records) by The New Pornographers, who I guess qualify as an honorary local band now. I just never took it out of my car’s CD player. Irresistible hooks, shout-along harmonies, sly wit. I think the debuts by FKA Twigs and Sylvan Esso were the most compelling electronic pop records of the year—beautifully realized and deeply emotive. I also spent a lot of time with Commune (Sub Pop Records) by the psychedelic Swedish

band Goat, and Electric Ursa (No Quarter Records) by the Kentucky alt-folk singer Joan Shelley. They just hit my aesthetic sweet spot. And I’m working on a biography of Lou Reed, so I’ve been deep in the stacks on his work. It’s hard to calibrate who is “local” these days, as musicians especially are often on the move. I’m always interested in what John Medeski is up to, ditto Jamie Saft—another improvising keyboardist who I’ve seen twice locally with New Zion Trio, though he’s got many other cool projects. I generally dig anything Elizabeth and Dan Littleton are involved in. And I’m super stoked lately for the curation at BSP Lounge, Club Helsinki, the Falcon, Team Love Ravenhouse Gallery, the Tin Roof Sessions, and other adventurous local outposts. It’s a good bet that anything they’re presenting will be high quality. Locally, there are new LPs due from Shana Falana, Breakfast In Fur, and Quarterbacks that I’m psyched about.

DEAN JONES Musician, producer, and big daddy of HudsonValley kids’ music My most-played album of the year is Juana Molina’s Wed 21 (Crammed Discs). I think she’s a genius. She’s created her own little world and I love going there. She plays everything herself and I can’t figure out half of what she’s doing. Inspirational. Other favorites: Son Lux’s Lanterns (Joyful Noise Records), Alash, Toumani and Sidiki Diabate, St. Vincent, Kasai Allstars. Also, I’m mostly working in the world of music for kids, and there are a lot of great things happening right now.

Gustafer Yellowgold, the Pop Ups, and Frances England are just a few that are doing unique and fun music that I listen to with my kids, and when they’re not around. I’m loving a lot of the music coming out of our area right now. So many great things. But I just have

to draw attention to one of my musical heroes, Paul McMahon. When I listen to music, I mostly tune out the words, but I love this man’s words and mind.

I’m hoping that someone volunteers to be his sugar daddy/mommy and funds a retrospective recording of all his songs. Paul’s music should be documented and dispersed. Things I’m looking forward to? There’s so much out there. I’m just always thrilled that it’s so easy to search and find out, for instance, what music was happening in Kinshasa in 1955, and then see what’s happening there now. There are always hotspots of musical innovation, like, say, Jamaica in the ’60s, and I love the hunt for where the hotspots are now, and where they’ve been throughout the history of recorded music.

A lifelong pursuit. Forgot about Michael Hurley, too. Probably my second-most played artist this year.

TIM LIVINGSTON General manger of reissue record label Sundazed Music and Last Conspirators vocalist Getting the most spins on my turntable this year were new albums from old-school punk rockers: UK pop-punk sensations the Boys’ Punk Rock Menopause (Wolverine Records), Australian garage rockers the New Christs’ Incantations (Impedance Records), and Sonny Vincent and Spite’s Spiteful (Ultramafic Records), with his band consisting of Rat Scabies (the Damned) on drums, Glenn Matlock (Sex Pistols, Rich Kids) on bass, and Steve MacKay (the Stooges) on the lost rock ’n’ roll secret weapon—the saxophone! As far as local artists go, Albany-based singer-songwriter Bryan Thomas continues to amaze me with his voice and songs. What I’m looking forward to most in 2015 is that band or artist that I don’t already know who steps up and blows me away with their power and passion.

JUSTIN JOHNSON Co-owner of Darkside Records in Poughkeepsie There have been quite a few records that have seen a lot of play for me.The new Weezer album, EverythingWill Be Alright in the End (Republic Records), has been a constant, as it was finally the return to form they had been promising for so long. The songs got that element of fun back into the mix, but with a dose of maturity. Both of the new Prince albums (surprised, I know), Art Official Age and PlectrumElectrum (both Warner Bros. Records, the latter by his new side project, 3rdeyegirl), mainly because they just get embedded in my head for days on end. The latest Beck album, Morning Phase (Capitol Records), took up a good chunk of the early part of the year. Hard to say what it is about him, but he’s turned himself into quite the enigma. And lastly, there is a pretty solid Swedish group that seems to have mastered the Americana sound: First Aid Kit is a band that needs to be heard. There is a local stoner instrumental metal band called Dead Empires that has been getting some heavy play amongst the guys in the store. Great guitar work, solid grooves, and really great production work. New album comes out in February, and it’s gonna be killer. It’s hard to keep track of all of the new stuff slated to come out. Blind Guardian has a new album for early next year, which is almost a sure thing. Faith No More is something I’ll definitely listen to. New Megadeth? Metallica? And is it wrong to want to hear a new Marilyn Manson, just so I can tell my 16-year-old self I was wrong all along?

Clockwise from top left: Quarterbacks, Juana Molina, Paul McMahon, Bryan Thomas & The Buggy Jive, Dead Empires, Breakfast in Fur. Opposite page, clockwise from top left: FKA Twigs, Hannah Aldridge, Meatbodies, The New Pornographers.

1/15 CHRONOGRAM MUSIC 63

NIGHTLIFE HIGHLIGHTS Handpicked by music editor Peter Aaron for your listening pleasure.

ANI DIFRANCO January 23. January marks the regional return of the Buffalo-born Ani DiFranco for this show at the Egg. DiFranco now makes her home in the warmer climes of New Orleans, where she’s soaked up the local flavors of traditional jazz and other styles to work into her own music. The beloved singer-songwriter, activist, and mother of two is currently trumpeting the release of Allergic to Water, her 18th studio album, which boasts her longtime rhythm section of bassist Todd Sickafoose and drummer Terence Higgins, as well as violinist Jenny Scheinman and legendary local Ivan Neville of the Neville Brothers. (Comedian Dmitri Martin jokes January 29.) 8pm. $33.50. Albany.

(518) 473-1845; Theegg.org.

SARAH BORGES / GIRLS GUNS & GLORY

JOE CROOKSTON

January 2. With their rip-snortin’ rockabilly pop, Boston-based Sarah Borges and her late backing band the Broken Singles were staples at Club Helsinki. Now working in a solo mold, Borges returns to the club once again for this post-New Year’s hit. Her new album, Radio Sweetheart, was produced by Steve Berlin (Los Lobos, Flesh Eaters), engineered by David Minehan (Neighborhoods, Replacements), and features guest Terry Adams (NRBQ). Co-headlining are Borges’s Beantown label mates, the roots-rocking Girls Guns & Glory. (Mark Gamsjager and the Lustre Kings whoop it up January 10; Sister Sparrow and the Dirty Birds get down January 16.) 9pm. $15. Hudson. (518) 282-4800; Helsinkihudson.com.

January 16. Hey, folk fans, did you happen to catch Joe Crookston when he opened for Suzanne Vega at the Towne Crier this past November? If not, you have another chance to check out the acclaimed Ithaca folksinger’s quiet, image-rich songs when he revisits the Crier with his band to headline this month. Crookston’s newest album, Georgia I’m Here, has been highly praised by No Depression. “Crookston makes music that’s rarely heard on radio anymore,” says the folk-roots bible. “This is wonderful, engaging, and gorgeous music, borne from an artist who fully deserves a boatload of acclamation.” The Kennedys open.

(Red Molly returns January 3; Junior Brown jams January 24.) 8:30pm. $20, $25. Beacon.

(845) 855-1300;Townecrier.com.

DAVE MASON January 9. Not to be a bummer, but the recent losses of Jack Bruce, Bobby Keys, and Ian MacLagan add up to a sobering reminder: Catch those classic rockers while you still can, people. One of them is Traffic founder and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Dave Mason, 68, who here makes his way to Infinity Music Hall. (To inject some optimism: At the same venue last month we caught Ian Hunter, still kicking ass at age 75.) The singer-guitarist and author of hits like “Feelin’ Alright” and “Hole in My Shoe” lays out his calling card with the name of his current band: Dave Mason’s Traffic Jam. (The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies swing

by January 11; Jeff Daniels appears with the Ben Daniels Band January 15.) 8pm. $60-$80 ($125 meet-and-greet with Mason). Norfolk, Connecticut. (866) 666-6306; Infinityhall.com.

64 MUSIC CHRONOGRAM 1/15

THE ALBRIGHTS / THE LOVE WAYS January 23. Like the above-mentioned Joe Crookston, the Albrights hail from the up-north of upstate—Buffalo, to be precise. Formed in 2009, the quartet features two lead vocalist-songwriters and has opened for acts ranging from Eve 6 to Blood, Sweat & Tears. Their song “Good Woman” was featured on Nick at Nite’s “Hollywood Heights.” Sharing the bill at this show at the Anchor is the similarly minded melodic indie-pop outfit the Love Ways. The Brooklyn band originated in Goshen and cites the Replacements, New Order, Weezer, and Titus Andronicus as influences. (Neversink and Driftwood Soldier float in January 24; S.S. Web weaves acoustic punk sea shanties January 27.) 9:30pm. $5. Kingston. (845) 853-8124; Theanchorkingston.com.

CD REVIEWS FRENCHY AND THE PUNK BONJOUR BATFROG (2014, E. A. RECORDINGS)

Steampunk seems to be more about image than art. But in spite of their deep roots in this most intriguing niche of American pop culture, New Paltz’s Frenchy and the Punk understand the art of songwriting in such a masterful way that the visual aspect of their thing is almost secondary to the penchant of singer/percussionist Samantha Stephenson and multi-instrumentalist Scott Helland for writing great pop songs. And on this fifth full-length of theirs, Bonjour Batfrog, the duo deliver their strongest set yet.

These 11 largely acoustic songs strip down the kind of vamp you loved on albums like Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds or PJ Harvey’s To Bring You My Love into a gypsy-kissed jar of that absinthe-and-moonshine concoction you always knew existed. The imagery of their lyrics, meanwhile, will no doubt sate the thirst for the unusual that long-time Frenchy and the Punk fans have come to expect, especially on tracks like “Bringin’ Out the Dead (Edward Gorey Séance)” and “Batgirl,” which conjures the notion of Morticia Adams, Lily Munster, and Vampira as the greatest three-woman act network television never had. This Batfrog has some serious wings to fly beyond the parameters of steampunk and into the stereo systems of anyone who loves quality folk punk. Frenchyandthepunk.com.

—Ron Hart

MARCO BENEVENTO SWIFT (2014, ROYAL POTATO MUSIC)

No, keyboardist Marco Benevento’s latest offering is not titled after ubiquitous and infectious country pop diva Taylor Swift, but after producer Richard Swift (no relation), who does double duty as a backup vocalist on this eclectic release. Multi-instrumentalist Swift brings considerable indie-rock credibility to this project, having worked with Jeff Tweedy (Wilco), Sean Lennon, Ryan Adams, and the Black Keys. Benevento has been rewarding listeners since the late 1990s with his unique brand of experimental jazz. He’s sharpened his teeth by playing alongside heavyweights like keyboardists Brad Mehldau and John Medeski, and drummer Joe Russo, with whom Benevento often works as a duo.

For Swift, the always adventurous Benevento takes another bold step by singing lead vocals for the first time. His voice has an appealing regular-guy quality that lends accessibility to the proceedings. Benevento is joined by bassist Dave Dreiwitz (Ween) and drummer Andy Borger, along with the titular Swift and Rosie Kirincic on backup vox. All of the components add up to an exceptional indie-rock outing in the vein of Wilco, Conor Oberst’s Bright Eyes, or My Morning Jacket. Both the lead track, “At the Show,” and the standout “Witches of Ulster” distinguish this jazz-influenced effort. The songs are well written and brilliantly executed. The hazy atmosphere adds a touch of psychedelia to the proceedings. For listeners interested in the direction of modern rock, Swift is a worthy listen. Marcobenevento.com.

—Alexander M. Stern

THE LINDA WAMC’S PERFORMING ARTS STUDIO

339 CENTRAL AVENUE ALBANY The Men Chronicles

A FOOD FOR THOUGHT FILM JAN 15 /67

PM -RECEP PM- FILM

JAN 10 / 8pm

THE CAPITAL AREA MUSIC AWARDS

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RICHARD CARR MUSIC FOR FOUR ELECTRIC VIOLINS (2014, INDEPENDENT)

In the folksy and self-effacing liner notes that accompany his Music for Four Electric Violins, Rosendale’s Richard Carr halfheartedly offers “possibly post-minimal” as a genre descriptor for this batch of original music, and the glove sort of fits. In these 14 colorfully titled instrumental compositions, one hears the perspective-shifting pattern studies of the Minimalist composers, as well as their keen interest in electronics and in the subtleties of “world” rhythms (more Reich than Glass). As for the “post” in “post-Minimal,” Carr routinely violates the ascetic, reformer’s principles of pure academic Minimalism by stepping to the front with snatches of lyrical, expressive, and most likely improvised violin playing, as on “Back the F Up,” on which Carr the soloist stretches out over a variety of delay-tap Minimalist patterns.

It comes as no surprise that Carr, who holds a doctorate in music education from Columbia, has worked with the likes of Bill Laswell, Fred Frith, and Swans, all of whom have found ways to integrate avant-garde and Minimalist processes into pop contexts (stretching the definition of “pop” about as far as it will go before snapping). There are no club beats and voice samples on Music for Four Electric Violins, and the vibe here is as introspective as you’d expect a oneman-as-band project to be. Such winners as “Blowfish” and Particleboard” overlay serenity and distress, euphony, and dissonance like a warring ensemble formed in the Jungian unconscious.

Rcarr1018@gmail.com.

—John Burdick CHRONOGRAM.COM LISTEN to tracks by the bands reviewed in this issue.

Your work deserves attention. Which means you need a great bio for your press kit or website. One that’s tight. Clean. Professionally written.

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When you’re ready, I’m here.

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Award-winning music columnist, 2005-2006, Daily Freeman.

Contributor, Village Voice, Boston Herald, All Music Guide, All About Jazz.com, Jazz Improv and Roll magazines. Musician.

Consultations also available. Reasonable rates.

See samples at www.peteraaron.org.

E-mail info@peteraaron.org for rates.

I also offer general copy editing and proofreading services, including editing of academic and term papers.

1/15 CHRONOGRAM MUSIC 65

Books

GIVING VOICE

THE WORLDS OF LOIS WALDEN

By Nina Shengold Photograph by Roy Gumpel

66 BOOKS CHRONOGRAM 1/15

I

t got worse,” Lois Walden announces. Grinning, the singer, actress, and author of One More Stop (Arcadia, 2010) and Afterworld (Arcadia, 2014) ushers me inside her gabled Victorian home in Milan. She bustles around the flower-filled kitchen in stocking feet, offering tea (a fragrant home blend of vervain and silver-needle white) while unspooling the latest installment of a five-day saga to get the propane heating fixed. She’s combating the chill with a crackling fire on the hearth, but it barely seems necessary: Walden radiates warmth. With her wide-set blue eyes, ready smile, and flying wedge of Harpo Marx curls, she’s a cheerful host with a bottomless treasure of stories.

There’s the one about landing a role in Martin Scorcese’s Mean Streets.

The affair with a member of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue. The incapacitating car accidents in Tahoe and Red Hook. Oh, and the time her gospel group sang for the pope. More tea? Maybe a headstand or two?

The whirling dervish of creative energy that manifests as Lois Walden has lived here for 28 years with Margot Harley, producer and co-founder of The Acting Company, who’s based in Manhattan during the week.

Painted in calming pastels, with hand-painted tiles by Martine Vermeulen and a felicitous jumble of books, artwork, musical instruments, unfinished knitting, crystals, and plants, it’s a cozy retreat. “I never go out,” says Walden, who nevertheless studies yoga at Sacred Space and raves about Red Hook’s Get Juiced. “It’s not that I’m a hermit, but I really love beauty. I like comfort.

I like feeling that I belong somewhere.”

Maybe so, but a glance at her website bio (nicknamed The Saga) attests to a lifetime of packed suitcases. Walden dropped out of Boston University to tour the segregated South as the singer and only white member of trombonist Snub Mosley’s jazz band. She opened for Rodney Dangerfield and Red Skelton in Borscht Belt hotels and Atlantic City, acted in New York, and moved to LA for what she now calls “my lost years. I did more drugs, had more sex. I don’t know what else you do in California, except drive your car.”

In the 1990s, Walden helmed the SongmastersInsideOut series at the Algonquin’s famed Oak Room, appearing with Laura Nyro, Brian Wilson, Roberta Flack, Al Jarreau, and other legends. With gospel supergroup Sisters of Glory (whose members included Thelma Houston, Mavis Staples, Chaka Khan, and Phoebe Snow, among others), she performed at Woodstock ’94 and at the Vatican. And for nearly two decades, she’s crisscrossed the country as a teaching artist with The Acting Company. It’s no accident that her first solo album is called Traveller and her first novel One More Stop.

If there’s a downside to following so many different creative paths, Walden doesn’t see it. “I’m a triple Aquarian—I like things to be electric, to move quickly,” she says. “Every seven years we grow a new body. Our cells morph.

We’re constantly transforming, so why as artists can’t we tap into that?”

“I guess I’m all about expression,” she says, adding, “I’m a chameleon.” This flexible self-definition extends to her personal life. For Walden, “Gender issues are nonissues. I’ve lived with a woman for 26 years, who I adore, so I guess I’m gay.” But there’ve been significant men too, including a long relationship with actor Lenny Baker (Next Stop, Greenwich Village), who died in 1982. Walden says, “Physically I love men, emotionally women, and I’ll take the emotional.

The physical you can get anywhere.”

She excels at libidinous characters, from the pansexual Loli in One Last Stop (a Lambda Award finalist) to Afterworld’s rapacious Duvalier clan, who steam up the Louisiana swamps with a Pandora’s box of forbidden lusts. How did she start writing novels? Walden tucks her legs onto the couch, yogaflexible. Seven years ago, when she was feeling at sea, a friend sent her to a psychic. “I said, ‘I don’t do psychics. I lived in California. I am psychic.’” But her friend insisted, saying, “He’ll change your life.” Walden recalls, “So I walk into this really strange apartment in Manhattan Plaza, and he greets me with, ‘The book. There’s a book in a drawer.You wrote it many, many years ago, but you didn’t know what it was about. It’s your life’s work.’” She was astonished.

“I never wanted to be a writer,” she says. “I don’t have the patience.” But she dug through the drawers in her office, and found something she’d written in the ’80s while her father was dying. “Just vomit,” she says. “Page after

page about how much I couldn’t stand him.” Still, she followed the psychic’s instructions, picking a passage at random. It was about her mother, who’d taken her own life when Walden was 27. “I said, ‘Oh no. No, no, no. I can’t deal with it.’ But then I sat down and started to write.”

A comic and passionate road novel, One Last Stop borrows a lot of particulars from Walden’s life—narrator Loli is a mostly lesbian traveling arts teacher with a gift for inspiring recalcitrant teens—and takes the reader deep inside its narrator’s head, where her dead mother’s voice asserts itself freely.

After Walden’s mother died, she stopped singing for years. Music was something they’d shared; her mother was “a great pianist, very musical.”

The family was prosperous. “We lived in Larchmont, very privileged. My father was a successful broker—an arbitrageur, very handsome. My mother was beautiful, talented. It looked like perfection.” Walden’s sister, five years older, remembers an idyllic childhood. But their mother slid into depression and drink during Walden’s teen years. “When I grapple with my emotional issues—which I have—I go to yoga, meditation, herbal medicines, therapy. I put my foot on a different path early on,” she says, gazing out at the snow that’s beginning to fall. “I tried as hard as I could, but I couldn’t save her. This notion of saving somebody, or being saved, it haunts you.”

The dead and the haunted fill Walden’s Afterworld, a wiggy Southern gothic narrated by four generations of a profligate Louisiana sugar-cane dynasty, along with some loquacious nonhuman entities—Swamp, Sugar, and the title character, a magisterial presence who orchestrates the transitions from life to death (and sometimes back) during one fateful hurricane season: “As the blues come to roost in God’s hallowed halls across the city, parishioners wail. They grieve for the sudden loss of loved ones. There will be no goodbyes. There will be sorrow for years to come. Once again, New Orleans will be a deeply wounded city.”

Walden is about to deliver a revision of her third novel Beyond Expectation to editor Ann Patty, who also helped her shape Afterworld. It’s about Daisy Wentworth, a “visual genius” with Asperger’s, and her estranged father, an equally brilliant musician who left the family when she was young and who shares her condition. Like all Walden’s work, it’s written in first person, and when she reads the opening aloud, the change in her affect and vocal rhythms is startling. She writes like a character actor, disappearing into other voices and skins. “I’m a process person, so I can’t detach. I feel their emotions in my body.” This process is grueling, but richly rewarding. “I’ve tapped into my heart more than anything I’ve ever done, even writing songs,” she says of Beyond Expectation. “I’ve gone into places I never wanted to go. But I did it, kicking and screaming.”

Will there be more novels? Walden’s not sure. “At the end of every project I think, now I’m going to be a plumber, or raise seedlings,” she says.

“Books take forever. I disappear from the world. I don’t see friends. I don’t see myself—I disappear into these characters.” Meanwhile, she’s working on two collaborative projects. The Buddhist-themed opera Mira: Great Sorcerer, written with Jean-Claude Van Itallie and composer Andrea Clearfield, will have its first workshop this winter. She’s also writing High School Yearbook, a nonfiction book about teenagers with cancer, for the multiplatform organization of the same name.

Walden’s been teaching teenagers for years, and loves tapping the deep emotions and vulnerability underlying an often-resistant facade. “Teaching is the true collaboration. Every time I get in front of a class, I think I’m going to throw up. Because it means so much, working with teens. I feel a real responsibility. I’ve watched the educational system in this country be destroyed,” she asserts. “I believe that everyone is a writer and everyone has a story, just like everybody can sing—not necessarily sing well, but everyone has a voice.”

Lois Walden’s unique voice rises with passion. “We’re meant to change.

Everything in life is about learning—not learning, understanding. I’ve been trying to understand this world in its chaos for decades. Getting older is really challenging, especially when you’re someone like me. Inside, I’m Peter Pan.” 1/15 CHRONOGRAM BOOKS 67

SHORT TAKES Six new books by Hudson Valley authors explore the complexities of women’s lives in fact and fiction.

THE PERFECT MOTHER NINA DARNTON PLUME, 2014, $16

What would you do if your child was accused of murder? Veteran journalist and New Paltz author Darnton uses the Amanda Knox story as a springboard, spinning a taut page-turner from every parent’s worst nightmare. An exchange student in Spain, Emma cuts loose from her “perfect” past with a vengeance. When a boy is stabbed, her cover story is full of holes. Darnton’s title is a barbed hook: Jennifer’s insistence that her daughter is innocent demonstrates both unconditional love and blind narcissism.

WHO WAS THAT LADY? CAREY HARRISON DR. CICERO BOOKS, 2014, $35

No one has ever called Carey Harrison a man of few words. The überprolific Woodstock playwright, novelist, and actor has unleashed a new novel of Falstaffian proportions and Mae West attitude: Too much of a good thing can be wonderful. This picaresque, multicontinent saga of double-digger (archaeologist/psychiatrist) Roley Watkins and his beloved Bunny rambles through many rooms of the human cavern, admiring the dripping stalactites and art on the walls.

MEAN BASTARDS MAKING NICE: TWO NOVELLAS DJELLOUL MARBROOK LEAKY BOOT PRESS, 2014, $14.99

Dutchess County poet Marbrook brings a remarkable density of image and texture to his prose, and this slender book packs a one-two punch. “The Pain of Wearing Our Faces” charts the volatile relationship of a hard-living painting teacher and her adult student, starting when she impulsively paints his expensive white shirt, and winding up—where else?—in Woodstock. “Grace” reverses the geography, following a runaway teen from the Catskills to Manhattan’s smoke-and-mirrors art world.

CHINESE COMFORT WOMEN: TESTIMONIES FROM IMPERIAL JAPAN’S SEX SLAVES PEIPEI QIU WITH SU ZHILIANG & CHEN LIFEI UBC PRESS, 2014, $24.99

Vassar professor Peipei Qiu’s meticulously researched account of the systematic rape and enslavement of thousands of Chinese women by the Japanese military during the 1930s and ’40s is a heartrending, necessary book. Qiu provides historical context and a summary of the ongoing fight for acknowledgment, redress, and reconciliation; the oral history testimonies of former “comfort women,” now in their 80s and 90s, bear painful witness to crimes against humanity.

AIN’T GONNA LET NOBODY TURN ME AROUND: FORTY YEARS OF MOVEMENT BUILDING WITH BARBARA SMITH ALETHIA JONES & VIRGINIA EUBANKS, EDITORS, WITH BARBARA SMITH SUNY PRESS, 2014, $29.95

As a black lesbian feminist, activist, scholar, and elected official, Barbara Smith has been speaking truth to power for four decades.

This extensive collection of writings and interviews portrays one indomitable woman and many invaluable movements, from civil rights and gay liberation to Occupy Wall Street and the Crunk Feminist Collective. In her preface, Smith calls this book “a series of many layered conversations.” As usual, she’s right.

THE QUACK’S DAUGHTER: A TRUE STORY ABOUT THE PRIVATE LIFE OF A VICTORIAN COLLEGE GIRL GRETA NETTLETON UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PRESS, 2014, $24.95

A freshman at Vassar in 1884, Cora Keck came from wealth and privilege, with a twist: The self-made millionaire was her mother, Mrs. Dr. Rebecca Keck, the self-proclaimed “Greatest Lady Physician of the West,” who built a fortune on patent medicine. Cora rebelled, eloping with a man more than twice her age. Lucky for us, the real Cora kept a diary, and her great-granddaughter Nettleton used it to channel her voice and re-create her life’s unconventional path in this enticing book.

68 BOOKS CHRONOGRAM 1/15

Rope & Bone

Ruin Falls

Ginnah Howard

Jenny Milchman

Illume Writers and Artists, 2014; $15

T

Ballantine, 2014; $26

he Real Upstate is developing a well deserved literature all its own, and two keenly observant, lyrical wordsmiths have just released new works that capture the heroism and lunacy of New York’s back country.

Ginnah Howard’s Rope and Bone introduces two mothers—an art teacher and a bartender—as they meet each other for the first time in early midlife, one of those odd chance meetings that leads to unlikely friendship. It starts with a flat tire and ends with a missing child.

From there, Howard draws the lens back and shows us the beginning of each woman’s journey, building a series of vignettes through pivotal moments in both lives. A free-standing prequel to two earlier novels, Rope and Bone forms part of a wide-angle meditation on family life that includes Howard’s Night Navigation and Doing Time Outside, both gritty and eloquent takes on mothering in the modern world. In Rope and Bone, we get their backstories.

In the vivid, searching light that Howard sheds upon each woman’s life in turn, we see the forces that pull them together and push them apart without judgment, without any oversimplified sense of angels and demons. Carla’s life spins farther out of control, while Del strives to rein hers in; we come to love them both.

Howard’s time-shifting Zen take on the perils and pleasures of loving rings very true. Families, friendships, catastrophes, achievements: life really is what happens when you’re making other plans, and Howard excels at telling the truth about women who live on the hardscrabble edge.

Mary Higgins Clark Award winner Jenny Milchman makes splendid use of New York’s wildlands, the Adirondacks, in her tight second thriller Ruin Falls.

Liz Daniels is an artisanal farmer married to a college professor, white-knuckling her way through what would appear on the surface to be an idyllic life, but Milchman doesn’t leave readers on the surface, any more than she lets Liz stay there.

As the story begins, they’re off on a rather fraught trip to visit Paul’s folks. Or so Liz believes. She’s not unaware that her husband has a few control issues, but she’s blindsided when he abducts their two kids. There’s no divorce in progress, no custody to enforce, so the police are officially useless. Heart aching and pounding, Liz sets out to get her children back, knowing that wherever Paul has taken them can’t be good.

Figuring out what’s going on and finding the children, Liz must decipher the darkest chapter of her husband’s distant, murky past, long before he established himself as an Authority Figure with minions and followers. It’s hard work. She has, until recently, been a follower herself.

What’s really going on around Wedeskyull is much bigger and darker than Liz, or the one helpful cop who becomes her staunch ally, could ever have guessed.

To save her children, Liz needs to plunge into the deep woods of the ‘Dacks and the dark heart of narcissism.

A chilling, believable thriller about misguided responses to modern problems—romantic dilemmas, the urge to get off the grid—and a mild-mannered woman finding her inner Mama Bear, Ruin Falls is a fresh, intense read.

—Anne Pyburn Craig

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The Dog: A Novel Joseph O’Neill

Pantheon, 2014, $25.95

T

he Dog, the marvelous new novel by Bard visiting faculty and Netherland author Joseph O’Neill, presents an image of Dubai that’s in keeping with what one expects—a bright, air-conditioned mirage hovering over excess billions, a place where human habitat and mall culture blend as coherently as a mirrored elevator and a shiny Gucci purse. The unnamed expat lawyer who relates his Dubai experience (with a thoughtful nod to Robinson Crusoe) is still ruminating over a sour breakup in New York. The eponymous “dog” fleeing his “doghouse” of “phony coupledom,” he relishes his massage chair and the sensation of vanishing in a cozy desert. His appreciation of the city’s growing skyline rings with naïve gusto: “I can’t pretend to understand what I’m looking at, but nor can I deny the spectacular pleasure I get from tall rebars standing in thickets in concrete, or from the short-lived orange plastic mesh that is like orange peel....Most compelling of all are the tower cranes.”

An irony not lost on the narrator is that he landed his Dubai job because of a remote connection to Donald Trump. The super rich family of a school chum who’s hired him to keep tabs on his brother’s reckless spending is unduly impressed by the fact that he attended Trump’s Palm Beach wedding, even if only as a last minute stand-in for a partner at his law firm (in an interesting reciprocity, he uses the partner’s name as an alias when meeting prostitutes in Dubai). Returning to “the land of President Obama” after getting tangled in some illegal transactions, he is irked by the potholes that remained unfixed during his years away. When he compares the partially built Freedom Tower, quite unfavorably, to the Burj Khalifa, it seems likely that his architectural sensitivity will draw him back to the emirate. The appeal is not only sensual— he is captivated by the aspirational rhetoric that underscores his oasis lifestyle.

He lives on a manmade lagoon called Privilege Bay in a high-rise called The Situation. This illusion of capitalism on steroids is one Trump himself would admire. O’Neill’s dog sees it for what it is, but loves it anyway.

Our narrator spins his yarn with scenes elongated by legal and ethical scrutinizing. He justifies using an escort service by likening the women to tourists, but changes his tune when an unhappy Russian sex worker gives him the lowdown. He composes oodles of jargonish e-mails to his unresponsive bosses, many unsent, to clear himself of blame for their decisions. Meditating on the arc of his doomed relationship, he deconstructs what he terms the “outdated ‘hell hath no fury’ license,” all the while assuring us he is merely being up-to-date on gender equality. It starts to seem his law training is poorly utilized.

The tragicomedy within the tragicomedy is that of the Man from Atlantis, a scuba-diving neighbor who is rumored to spend more time underwater than above. Rarely does a protagonist have such a perfect foil. The Man’s mysterious disappearance ripples with revelatory effect. As word spreads that his neighbor is a bigamist, the narrator tries to imagine a world where hiding is still possible.

When the Man’s stewing Chicago wife comes searching, she provokes the narrator, asking him what he’s running from. With uncharacteristic rage, he throws an issue of Dwell magazine at her. Absent the stinging sobriety of O’Neill’s landmark Netherland, and more quixotic, The Dog is an equal and opposite adventure.

—Marx Dorrity

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1/15 CHRONOGRAM BOOKS 69

POETRY

Edited by Phillip X Levine. Deadline for our February issue is January 5. Send up to three poems or three pages (whichever comes first).

Full submission guidelines: www.chronogram.com/submissions.

My favorite piece is the knight Because it knows how to fight.

Although it can jump over pawns It cannot mow tall green lawns.

It’s a chess piece that really works, Since it can do checks and forks!

No chess piece can beat the horse, Making two knights an unstoppable force!

it was either me or somebody else —p

—Isak Dubrow (7 years old)

BIRTHWEIGHT

COLLIDE

Spring comes without a grudge against winter. Each casual daffodil just shows up. Outside our stories.

It was forceful, but it didn’t hurt In fact, she welcomed it After all, it had been so long She can vaguely remember the feeling But it hit her when she least expected it Soft, sarcastic wittiness in a 5’10” frame Years of doubt flowed passed her like a dissipating fog Her intellectual match stood before her But it was more than that There were moments their eyes connected, deeply Unspoken words with hints of desire for more These feelings consume her with mild trepidation She pushes the uncertainty aside And…collides.

Once I held my son in my hands.

About the weight of our old cat.

His gaze and mine: peers at a birth in a hospital.

From the unseen, something just shows up. An old weight of feeling unseen? or something that is light. That is, light.

Fall promises nothing. Coolness.

A hollowing of space into distances.

The blazing amid the conifers fades.

To stand there, clearly visible

—LissySha

as the stories go out of season.

—Robert Duffy

FIRES CRY ALL ALONG HER LIMBS The invisible pyramid over Cooper Lake

—Sam Truitt

—Jeanne Verrilli

An irrational impulse in a rational form, Nietzsche said. Or is it a rational impulse in an irrational form? We make sense of it: like a disaster, a suicide.

opens to touch

The joke’s on us: anybody could do that! You could do that.

The artist expressing how he felt at a particular moment in time: 3am in winter.

OUTDATED Once you sat Under The tree of Desire All night To taste the Elusive Difference —Will Nixon

70 POETRY CHRONOGRAM 1/15

and somewhere out there the sea the churning never resting Mediterranean the blue so dark for one hundred leagues the waves building the clouds holding over distant isles Sardinia Malta where under terracotta roofs the men sleep soundly waiting only for morning —Richard Donnelly

Silence is so accurate.

—Mark Rothko

up under the mind of Orion the world

think of the love that is generated by these streets think of the piazzas the porticos and stout doors the smell of gardenias the beautiful women just beyond broad marble steps her willingness the grace of her arms and hands her dark hair the sun the clouds as they pass in the gauze-wrapped window

Phosphorescent moon Shines life onto dead rusted leaves No shadows are safe

THE BLACK PAINTINGS

glints in the moonlight to line

PALERMO

He was depressed. He was beyond depression.

He was searching in the darkness for the inner light.

He found gradations of black, from flat to pitch to pearl, from dusk to night— the opposite of blindness, which can be white.

The work speaks for itself. Mum’s the word.

—Ed Meek

FIRST uply slowed

bended to the window then that to the floor of a gray cold lights flicker on the outside of her toes heels to toe heel to toe cold

ripped then fold a list of feelings in motion and emotion clear then what is clear and thought out the thought clouds the emotion of knees to the corner of the chapel of her height and low connected consistency two bodies at once right and left creep together to make a whole then there is no whole then there is a cold a breath of fold —Alana Shaw

BEND

ADVICE

CONFESSION OF THE SAWBONES

Troubled hearts hold wonders guarded Beware songs They will not sing

Take advice from one who just turned eighty-four Ladies, you don’t have to shave your legs anymore The hair once crowning your head grows thin Because all that hair is now on your chin.

One of the most terrible things is when a man telling the truth goes unbelieved and can’t sway his detractors—

While your hearing aid is in the shop for repair Just carry on as though it were still there Smile a lot even if you can’t hear what’s said And hope they didn’t tell you their spouse is now dead.

which is why I never tell the truth: to avoid terrible things.

—Gary Barkman

LOIS Curly hair bouquet Smiling behind large glasses You’re in the tenth grade She strums Joni style Dark Scorpio ruled by Mars Feeling all the words Winter afternoon Ouija board candles séance She is Queen of Wands You are fifteen, you don’t know anyone who’s dead Except for Woody You own the night streets Cool, inhaling Marlboros the Two of Wands rule Flower power folk music Washington Square afternoons Positively fourth Graduation day You leave for college alone You forget to write Thirty years later You meet again on Facebook Two mothers of sons

Wear those glasses with a nonchalant air They’re so stylish either round, oval, or square Flaunt them on your face not hidden on your neck You can still see the big things, so what the heck.

—Mike Vahsen

NO-NAME BOY Each day the no-name boy read to me, his new teacher.

No more dentists humming behind his drill As he tells you how many teeth he must fill You’ve won that war with your teeth at last See them smiling at you from your bedside glass.

I’d met kids like him before— worn-out clothes, pale skin,

Don’t get upset if your kids come home and yell “What in heaven’s sake is that horrible smell?”

You were doing just fine without their commentary You didn’t smell anything out of the ordinary.

No-names never stuck around long enough to be remembered.

Just a few thoughts as I turn eighty-four I’ll have even more to say when I’m ninety-four Remember to keep a sense of humor as you age Adjust your expectations of fun at every stage.

dad in jail, younger siblings, mom frazzled.

The reading teacher had no time for him, even though he was eight years old and reading like he was six.

—Anna M. Ulman

We’d meet for ten minutes.

He’d read a page, I’d read a page.

SNOW PLOWING, TREE REMOVAL

I had no plan, since he’d be leaving soon, wouldn’t he?

Classified ad Those small evergreens planted along the driveway in the fall? Gone.

The young maple still braced with stakes and wire, leafless

It seemed a miracle when the words started flowing.

Book in hand, face aglow, he’d sit beside my desk,

in winter? Uprooted by the plow after that first snowfall before

turn to page one, and take off.

I was just along for the ride.

there was frost in the ground.

The weeping cherry purchased

Before I knew it, the memo arrived.

at the nursery for a price that was dear? You guessed it: gone as well.

He is moving to Florida.

Prepare a report card.

—Alice Graves

Snow Plowing, Tree Removal.

Truth in advertising, it seems.

“________ has made great progress in Reading this quarter.”

HIGH FIDELITY

Makes one wonder about Plumbing, Basement Cleanouts,

I asked my wife Does size matter She said So they say.

or Roofing, Full Renovations.

Carpentry, Demolition

Today’s her birthday You click on her timeline page And read the farewells You light a candle Look for her in the night sky the Five of Cups drawn

—Cliff Henderson

is a surefire concern as well.

—Matthew J. Spireng

He cried and told me I was the best teacher he’d ever had.

If that was true, I could do a lot better.

And I did, thanks to a boy whose name I forget.

—Carol Shank 1/15 CHRONOGRAM POETRY 71

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72 FOOD & DRINK CHRONOGRAM 1/15

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310 Wall Street, Kingston, NY (845) 339-9310 Tues - Sat 5-10pm www.elephantwinebar.com

Food & Drink

Chef Martin Matysik and Senior Director of Food and Beverage Operations Waldy Malouf testing dishes at the CIA’s new pop-up restaurant, Pangea.

1/15 CHRONOGRAM FOOD & DRINK 73

Food & Drink

Pop Goes the Restaurant Story by Max Watman Photos by Karen Pearson

Chef Martin Matysik cooking at the CIA’s new pop-up restaurant, Pangea.

P

op-ups and food trucks have become integral to the latest wave of American cuisine, and two events in the Hudson Valley—one just passed and one to come—illustrate just how important this roughand-ready, run-and-gun restauranteering is to (new) New American food and the way we eat now. Despite their similarities—both pop-ups feature bold flavors, CIA-trained chefs, and friendly price points—they are as different as soul food and sushi.

In early December, Elephant—the much-loved tapas and wine bar in Kingston—generously let Michael Pardus and Brian Donahoe take over on Sunday night to roll out their first attempt at Lucky Mee, a noodle shop. Donahoe was a student of Pardus’s at CIA 10 years ago, and after graduation they stayed in touch as friends, regularly discussing the possibility of doing something together, and what it might be. The noodle shop is something that Pardus has been thinking about for six years. This seems excessive, perhaps, until you start talking to him about the broth. “The whole concept is based around the broth,” says Pardus. “I would stack our broth up against anyone’s.”

By using bits of meat less used by cooks—chicken feet, for instance—and getting maximum extraction of flavor, they end up with a broth that is low in fat, with a rich, collagen mouth feel. “You taste this broth plain and it will make your lips come together,” says Pardus, clearly joyful and proud.

The team isn’t chasing the obsessives, such as Ivan Ramen and Momofuku, but rather envisioning a noodle shop for the masses. The pop-up played the dual role of putting them through their paces and attracting investors for the project. “We have potential investors, but they wanted to see it live,” said Pardus. “I wanted to take it to the next level of conversation. There’s still room,

74 FOOD & DRINK CHRONOGRAM 1/15

especially for investors with a sense of urgency.” “We’re seeing a lot of this food in first-year cities,” says Donahoe. When you get out of the trendsetting areas, you find yourself in what they are calling a noodle desert. “We’re trying to bring it to a regional market, and ultimately nationwide.”

I suppose I might have scoffed at the idea of a noodle desert had I not just driven through one. I was smiling for every minute of the hour-plus ride from Cold Spring to Kingston, knowing that there would be noodles when I got there. Others seemed to agree: 120 covers in Kingston on Sunday, and in New Paltz, at the Cafeteria Coffee House, 140 diners showed up (on a cold Monday night, I’ll remind you) to slurp through Lucky Mee’s take on five noodle soups.

They served soups in Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Malaysian, and Vietnamese styles. Four of the five soups use the same mother broth, hinted and flavored in different ways: katsuobushi (dried, fermented, smoked skipjack tuna) flavors the Japanese broth, while hoisin spikes the Chinese. The fifth broth is “almost vegan,” says Pardus with a chuckle. The Malaysian soup is based on a broth of shiitake mushroom stock and coconut milk. It’s spiked with fish sauce, hence the “almost,” but he’s working on vegan alternatives to bring the umami depth.

My table had a fine time passing around all five bowls (as well as some fresh spring rolls, a late addition to the menu). The light portions of pork belly and thinly sliced beef were bite size and nicely done, the noodles fresh and toothsome.

The broth was restorative and fulfilling. The bamboo soup spoons didn’t make it very far—a few slurps and they started to flatten out. But that’s why you start with a pop-up: to learn what’s what. “We ironed out a few of the kinks right away,” said Pardus. Donahoe echoed him: “Lessons learned on Sunday were in place on Monday.” “It was so much easier,” said Pardus. Some of it was, anyway:When they

Above: Assorted wild mushrooms on the prep board. Bottom: Preparing the root vegetable couscous tagine

1/15 CHRONOGRAM FOOD & DRINK 75

Mussels steamed in retsina broth with fregola, spinach, and pine needle fries.

got to Cafeteria to set up, not long before they were to open, Pardus said: “We plugged in our induction burners and blew every fuse in the house. Everything else was so tight, we had the time to figure out what went wrong.”

The two got about 12 hours of sleep each between Thursday and Monday.

“Doable, but not sustainable,” said Pardus. Lucky for us they plan to do it again.

“I’d like to do something with Bruce at Main Street Catering; he let us use his kitchen as a commissary.”

Our second story comes from the campus of the CIA itself, where a new restaurant, Pangea, is about to open in a student dining hall. Waldy Malouf, the senior director of special projects, said that the idea was reflective of what is happening in the food world. “In Michelin Star restaurants, food was fussy, plated. Now they want real food.” Malouf says Pangea will reflect the trends toward bolder flavors “from around the world, flavors and techniques from Southeast Asia, from India, Africa, from our own traditions. There will be more vegetables, more grains. It’s not a vegetarian restaurant—well, maybe it is, but you’d never know it.”

Dinner at Pangea will consist of five courses, and each course will come with a family-style plate for the table to share. Malouf insists it’s not a 10-course, four-hour tasting menu. “We want to reach out to a demographic that will enjoy it.” The CIA doesn’t only want to keep current in the educating of its students—they’d like to refresh and recharge the people who come there to eat. For while there is excellent stuff going on, and lots of it is approachable, there is no denying that the main restaurants on the Hyde Park campus are fancy, and that as you approach the gates, you wonder if someone is going to ask who your father is and whether or not you’re a member. Malouf hopes that 76 FOOD & DRINK CHRONOGRAM 1/15

Pangea will help to change all that.

The price of dinner certainly will help: Diners will get all five courses for $29. The place itself, Malouf promises, is going to look unlike anything else at the Culinary. He worked with the set director and the art director of the Half Moon Theater group to put the space together, and the students raided the attic to appoint the room. “People have been putting stuff up there for 80 years,” said Malouf.

“What is the future of dining?” asked Malouf. “How does it affect the environment, people’s health, the community?” These are things that the culinary world is thinking about, and things that Malouf hopes Pangea will address.

Clearly, if you’re educating people to participate in the future of dining, you need to teach them how to run an improvisational restaurant—what we’ve come to call a pop-up. At some point during our conversation, I asked Malouf what a pop-up really is. What makes it different from a guest chef? A takeover?

Catering? “It’s a useful term,” said Malouf. “It lowers the expectations.”

I don’t know if I agree wholly—people get jazzed for pop-ups, they breed excitement—but I know what he means. He means that if the soup spoons fall apart before you’ve finished your delicious bowl of noodles, you’ll forgive it.

Watch for the next iteration of Lucky Mee by following them on Twitter @luckymeenoodles and on Facebook. Pangea opens in January and will operate until May. Make reservations at their website (you need a ticket): Pangeany.com.

Max Watman’s most recent book is Harvest: Field Notes from a Far-Flung Pursuit of Real Food (W. W. Norton & Co.).

tastings directory

Bakeries Ella’s Bellas Bakery 418 Main Street, Beacon, NY (845) 765-8502 ellabellasbeacon.com

Cafés Bistro-to-Go 948 Route 28, Kingston, NY (845) 340-9800 bluemountainbistro.com

Frida’s Bakery & Café 26 Main Street, Milton, NY (845) 795-5550 /facebook.com/Fridasbakerycafe

Craft Beer 554 Main Street, Beacon, NY thehopbeacon.com (845) 440-8676

Keegan Ales 20 Saint James Street, Kingston, NY (845) 331-2739 keeganales.com

28 E Market Street, Red Hook, NY (845) 758-2666 redhookcurryhouse.com

Suruchi–A fine taste of India 5 Church Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-2772 suruchiindian.com Homemade Indian cuisine served in a beautiful, serene setting in the heart of New Paltz. Includes Local, Organic, Gluten-Free. Fine Wine, Craft Beer.

Buffet Dinner Wednesdays (a la carte available). 10% Discounts for Seniors, Students, and Early Birds (1st hour weeknights).

Monday/Wednesday/Thursday 5-9pm, Friday 5-10pm, Saturday Noon-10pm, Sunday Noon-9pm.

Elephant

Terrapin Restaurant and Bistro

310 Wall Street, Kingston, NY (845) 339-9310 elephantwinebar.com

6426 Montgomery Street, Rhinebeck

79 Main Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-2244

Restaurants Culinary Institute of America 1946 Campus Drive (Route 9) Hyde Park, NY (845)-452-9600

LaBella Pizza Bistro 194 Main Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-2633 labellapizzabistro.com

Osaka Restaurant 22 Garden Street, Rhinebeck, NY, (845) 876-7338 or (845) 876-7278 74 Broadway, Tivoli, NY osakasushi.net Foodies, consider yourselves warned and informed! Osaka Restaurant is Rhinebeck’s direct link to Japan’s finest cuisines! Enjoy the freshest sushi and delicious traditional Japanese small plates cooked with love by this family owned and operated treasure for over 19 years! For more information and menus, go to osakasushi.net.

★★★★ DINING Daily Freeman & Poughkeepsie Journal ZAGAT RATED

HUNDI BUFFET

TUESDAY & SUNDAY 5-10PM

4 Vegetarian Dishes • 4 Non-Vegetarian Dishes includes: appetizers, soup, salad bar, bread, dessert, coffee & tea All you can eat only $12.95 • Children under 8- $7.95 28 E. MARKET ST, RED HOOK (845) 758-2666 See our full menu at www.RedHookCurryHouse.com

OPEN EVERY DAY Lunch: 11:30am-3:00 pm Dinner: 5:00pm-10:00pm Fridays: 3:00pm - 10:00pm

Catering for Parties & Weddings • Take out orders welcome

4 Grinnell Street, Rhinecliff, NY (845) 876-0590 therhinecliff.com reception@therhinecliff.com

ciachef.edu

Jack’s Meats & Deli

Red Hook Curry House

The Rhinecliff

Farm to table Gastropub on the Hudson, beautifully restored historic railroad hotel.

Outdoor seating, riverside patio. Favorites include – Ploughman’s Board, Steak Frites, Grilled Ribeye, Fish ‘N’ Chips, “Sticky Toffee Pudding.” Extensive wine/beer list.

Bkfast & Dinner Daily (Lunch- Memorial Day - Labor Day) Sat Brunch & Sunday Live Jazz Brunch. Off-premise catering .

Weddings/Special events. All rooms enjoy river views, pvt balcony’s.

Delis

Voted Best Indian Cuisine in the Hudson Valley

(845) 876-3330 terrapinrestaurant.com custsvc@terrapinrestaurant.com

Tuthill House 20 Grist Mill Lane, Gardiner, NY (845) 255-4151 tuthillhouse.com

The Would 120 North Road, Highland, NY (845) 691-9883 thewould.com

Wine Bars Jar’d Wine Pub Water Street Market, New Paltz, NY jardwinepub.com 1/15 CHRONOGRAM TASTINGS DIRECTORY 77

tastings directory

The Hop

Red Hook Curry House

business directory

Accomodations Buttermilk Falls 220 North Road, Milton, NY (845) 795-1310 buttermilkfallsinn.com Buttermilk Falls is an extraordinary seventy-five acre Hudson River estate offering a remarkable selection of lodgings, a farm-to-table restaurant, an organic kitchen garden and orchard and a world class spa. Join us at Buttermilk Falls for the day, for an evening, for a weekend or a week-long retreat, or for your very special event.

business directory

Alternative Energy Hudson Solar (845) 876-3767 hvce.com

Antiques Hudson Antique Dealers Association Hudson, NY hudsonantiques.net hudsonantiques@gmail.com The Hudson Antiques Dealers Association (HADA) represents over 60 businesses in the City of Hudson, New York, which has become widely recognized as a premier antiques and art center in America. Our members feature a wide range of antiques, decorative objects, vintage and new clothing, jewelry, home furnishings and more.

HADA also includes members in the restaurant, hotel and service industries.

Architecture Richard Miller, AIA 28 Dug Road, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-4480 richardmillerarchitect.com

Art Galleries & Centers Crawford Gallery of Fine Art 65 Main Street, Pine Bush, NY (845) 744-8634

Dia: Beacon, Riggio Galleries 3 Beekman Street, Beacon, NY (845) 440-0100 diaart.org 78 BUSINESS DIRECTORY CHRONOGRAM 1/15

Dorsky Museum SUNY New Paltz 1 Hawk Drive New Paltz, NY (845) 257-3844 newpaltz.edu/museum sdma@newpaltz.edu

Mark Gruber Gallery New Paltz Plaza, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-1241 markgrubergallery.com

Mill Street Loft Poughkeepsie, Pawling, and Red Hook (845) 471-7477 millstreetloft.org

Motorcyclepedia Museum 250 Lake Street (Route 32) Newburgh, NY (845) 569-9065

Tremaine Gallery at the Hotchkiss School 11 Interlaken Road, Lakeville, CT (860) 435-3663 hotchkiss.org

Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild Woodstock, NY (845) 679-2079 byrdcliffe.org events@woodstockguild.org

Art Supplies Catskill Art & Office Supply Kingston, NY: (845) 331-7780 Poughkeepsie, NY: (845) 452-1250 Woodstock, NY: (845) 679-2251 catskillart.com

Artisans Stacie Flint Art (845) 255-2505 stacieflint.com

Attorneys Traffic and Criminally Related Matters. Karen A. Friedman, Esq., President of the Association of Motor Vehicle Trial Attorneys 30 East 33rd Street, 4th Floor New York, NY (845) 266-4400 or (212) 213-2145 k.friedman@msn.com newyorktrafficlawyer.com

Representing companies and motorists throughout New York State.

Speeding, Reckless Driving, DWI, Trucking Summons and Misdemeanors, Aggravated Unlicensed Matters, Appeals, Article 78 Cases. 27 Years of Trial Experience.

Auto Sales & Services

we sell. From ground breaking to move in, our expert staff is on hand.

With over 4,949 homes under our belt, experience IS the difference!

Millbrook Cabinetry & Design 2612 Route 44, Millbrook, NY (845) 677-3006 millbrookcabinetryanddesign.com

Fleet Service Center

N & S Supply

185 Main Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-4812

nssupply.com info@nssupply.com

Kinderhook Toyota

Robert George Design Group

1908 New York 9H, Hudson, NY (518) 822-9911 kinderhooktoyota.com

Red Hook, NY (845) 758-7088 robertgeorgedesigngroup.com

Books Monkfish Publishing 22 East Market Street, Suite 304 Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-4861 monkfishpublishing.com

Bookstores Mirabai of Woodstock 23 Mill Hill Road, Woodstock, NY (845) 679-2100 mirabai.com

Olde Warwick Booke Shoppe 31 Main Street, Warwick, NY (845) 544-7183 yeoldewarwickbookshoppe.com warwickbookshoppe@hotmail.com

Building Services & Supplies Cabinet Designers 747 Route 28, Kingston, NY (845) 331-2200 cabinetdesigners.com

Glenn’s Wood Sheds (845) 255-4704

Ice B’Gone Magic ibgmagic.com

John A Alvarez and Sons 3572 Route 9, Hudson, NY (518) 851-9917 alvarezmodulars.com Custom Modular Homes. Family owned, family run business for over 50 years. We stand behind every product

Williams Lumber & Home Centers (845) 876-WOOD williamslumber.com

Business Services Tracking Wonder - the art & science of captivating creativity Jeffrey Davis, Founder, Accord, NY (845) 679-9441 trackingwonder.com We build business artists. We help creatives, business owners, & teams shape their captivating Story - namely in remarkable books, astonishing brand stories, and intentional work flows. 4 consultants, design team, videography.

Cinemas Rosendale Theater Collective Rosendale, NY rosendaletheatre.org

Clothing & Accessories Pegasus Comfort Footwear Woodstock, NY: (845) 679-2373 New Paltz, NY: (845) 256-0788 Rhinebeck, NY: (845) 876-7474 pegasusshoes.com

Computer Services Tech Smiths 45 North Front Street, Kingston, NY (845) 443-4866 tech-smiths.com

Custom Home Design & Materials Atlantic Custom Homes 2785 Route 9, Cold Spring, NY lindalny.com

Dance Lessons

Primrose Hill School Elementary and Early Childhood Education inspired by the Waldorf Philosophy 23 Spring Brook Park, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-1226 primrosehillschool.com

Got2LINDY Dance Studios

Randolph School

(845) 236-3939 got2lindy.com

Wappingers Falls, NY (845) 297-5600 randolphschool.org

Education Bard MAT Bard College (845) 758-7151 bard.edu/mat mat@bard.edu

Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies 2801 Sharon Turnpike, Millbrook, NY (845) 677-5343 caryinstitute.org

Center for Metal Arts

Center for the Digital Arts at Westchester Community College Peekskill, NY (914) 606-7300 sunywcc.edu/peekskill peekskill@sunywcc.edu

Green Meadow Waldorf School (845) 356-2514 gmws.org

Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School 330 County Route 21C, Ghent, NY (518) 672-7092 hawthornevalleyschool.org info@hawthornevalleyschool.org Located in central Columbia County, NY and situated on a 400-acre working farm, Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School supports the development of each child and provides students with the academic, social, and practical skills needed to live in today’s complex world.

Also offering parent-child playgroups and High School boarding. Local busing. Nurturing living connections, from early childhood through grade 12.

Montgomery Montessori School 136-140 Clinton Street Montgomery, NY (845) 401-9232 montgomeryms.com

40 Bulls Bridge Road, South Kent, CT (860) 927-3539 x201 southkentschool.org

Trinity - Pawling School 700 Route 22, Pawling, NY (845) 855-4825 trinitypawling.org

Wild Earth Wilderness School New Paltz / High Falls Area (845) 256-9830 wildearthprograms.org info@wildearthprograms.org

Woodstock Day School 1430 Glasco Turnpike Saugerties, NY (845) 246-3744 x103 woodstockdayschool.org

Equestrian Fox Run Farm Lynn M. Reed (845) 494-6067 fox-run-farm reedlmr@aol.com Premier facilities located between Rhinebeck and Millbrook NY and Ocala Fla feature indoor/outdoor rings, jumping fields and trails. We offer advanced training for competitions at elite venues, instructions for all levels, quality horses for share board, lease or sale.

Farm Markets & Natural Food Stores Adam’s Fairacre Farms

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Newburgh, NY: (845) 569-0303 Lake Katrine, NY: (845) 336-6300 Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 454-4330 adamsfarms.com

Hawthorne Valley Farm Store 327 County Route 21C, Ghent, NY (518) 672-7500 hawthornevalleyfarm.org storeadmin@hawthornevalleyfarm.org A full-line natural foods store set on a 400-acre Biodynamic farm in central Columbia County with on-farm organic Bakery, Kraut Cellar and Creamery.

Farm-fresh foods include cheeses, yogurts, raw milk, breads, pastries, sauerkraut, and more. Two miles east of the Taconic Parkway at the Harlemville/Philmont exit. MondaySunday, 7:30 to 7.

Fall 2014

upstate AT H O M E I N T H E H U D S O N V A L L E Y

On the Cover:

FEATURED LISTING + Story Inside!

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KI ND E R H O O K, NY

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1/15 CHRONOGRAM BUSINESS DIRECTORY 79

business directory

44 Jayne Street, Florida, NY (845) 651-7550 info@centerformetalarts.com centerformetalarts.com Foundation and master classes in Blacksmithing and Small Metals, at the 1890’s Icehouse. No prior metals experience required for many workshops, with master classes designed to open up new skill levels for practicing artisans. Class details and registration are online at centerformetalarts.com.

South Kent School

Hudson Valley Farmers Market Pitcher Lane, Red Hook, NY

Financial Advisors Third Eye Associates, Ltd. 38 Spring Lake Road, Red Hook, NY (845) 752-2216 thirdeyeassociates.com

Graphic Design Annie Internicola, Illustrator aydeeyai.com

Hair Salons Androgyny 5 Mulberry Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 256-0620

Home Furnishings & Décor Hunt Country Furniture Locations in Wingdale, NY; Dover Plains, NY; and Chadds Ford, PA. huntcountryfurniture.com

Insurance

business directory

Devine Insurance Agency 58 N Chestnut Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-7806 devineinsurance.com

Interior Design New York Designer Fabric Outlet 3143 Route 9, Valatie, NY (518) 758-1555 nydfo.myshopify.com

Jewelry, Fine Art & Gifts

Picture Framing

Performing Arts Bardavon 1968 Opera House

Atelier Renee Fine Framing

35 Market Street, Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 473-2072 bardavon.org

The Chocolate Factory, 54 Elizabeth Street, Suite 3, Red Hook, NY (845) 758-1004 atelierreneefineframing.com renee@atelierreneefineframing.com A visit to Red Hook must include stopping at this unique workshop!

Combining a beautiful selection of moulding styles and mats with conservation quality materials, expert design advice and skilled workmanship, Renee Burgevin, owner and Certified Picture Framer, has been framing since 1988. Special services include shadow-box and oversize framing as well as fabric-wrapped and French matting. Also offering mirrors.

Falcon, The 1348 Route 9W, Marlboro, NY (845) 236-7970 liveatthefalcon.com The Falcon in Marlboro NY, perched over Marlboro Falls, is the Hudson Valley’s premier venue for live world class music, dining, libations and vibrations. There are no tickets or cover charges. The Falcon encourages contributions to a careworn donation box, a symbol of democracy in the arts and a way for patrons to give what they will and what they can. Support living artists!

Kaatsbaan International Dance Center 33 Kaatsbaan Road, Tivoli, NY kaatsbaan.org Kaatsbaan International Dance Center is the Hudson Valley’s Cultural Park for Dance set on 153 acres in Tivoli.

It provides national and international dance companies and choreographers with a state of the art facility where they can experiment, create new work, rehearse, perform, train, and develop productions. Spring and Fall seasons present professional dance performances in the 160-seat theater.

Residencies are offered throughout the year to established and emerging companies of all sizes with varied styles as is quality training for dance students.

Pools & Spas Aqua Jet 1606 Ulster Avenue, Lake Katrine, NY (845) 336-8080 aquajetpools.com

Real Estate The Shirt Factory 77 Cornell Street, Kingston, NY (845) 340-4660 mike@mpiazzarealestate.com

Paula Redmond Real Estate 51 East Market Street, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-6676 paularedmond.com

Specialty Food Items Dohnut.

Water Street Market, New Paltz, NY (845) 464-0756

Dorrer Jewelers

Mid-Hudson Civic Center

54 East Market Street, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 516-4236 dorrerjewelers.com

Poughkeepsie, NY midhudsonciviccenter.org

Metro North

The Linda WAMCs Performing Arts Studio

(877) 690-5114 mta.info/mnr

Dreaming Goddess 44 Raymond Avenue Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 473-2206 DreamingGoddess.com

Hudson Valley Goldsmith Academy Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-5872 HudsonValleyGoldsmith.com

Hummingbird Jewelers 23 A. East Market Street Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-4585 hummingbirdjewelers.com hummingbirdjewelers@hotmail.com

Landscaping Coral Acres, Keith Buesing, Topiary, Landscape Design, Rock Art (845) 255-6634 80 BUSINESS DIRECTORY CHRONOGRAM 1/15

339 Central Avenue, Albany, NY (518) 465-5233 thelinda.org The Linda provides a rare opportunity to get up close and personnel with world-renowned artists, academy award winning directors, headliner comedians and local, regional, and national artists on the verge of national recognition. An intimate, affordable venue, serving beer and wine, The Linda is a night out you won’t forget.

Photography Fionn Reilly Photography Saugerties, NY (845) 802-6109 fionnreilly.com

Karen Pearson Photo karenpearson.com

Transportation

Weddings The Belltower Venue Rosendale, NY (845) 658-8077 belltowervenue.com events@belltowervenue.com

Byrdcliffe Art Colony Woodstock, NY (845) 679-2079 byrdcliffe.org events@woodstockguild.org

Durants Tents & Events 1155 Route 9, Wappingers Falls, NY (845) 298-0011 durantstents.com info@durantstents.com

Historic Huguenot Street Huguenot Street, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-1660

JTD Productions, Inc. (845) 679-8652 JTDfun.com

Liberty Farms Ghent, NY eventslibertyfarmsny@gmail.com www.libertyfarmsny.com

New World Catering Saugerties & Albany, NY (845) 246-0900 newworldcatering.com team@newworldcatering.com

Pelmo Vineyards 202 Strawridge Road, Wallkill, NY (914) 755-5980 pelmovineyard.com

ROOTS & WINGS Rev Puja Thomson P.O. Box 1081, New Paltz, NY (845) 255-2278 rootsnwings.com/ceremonies puja@rootsnwings.com

Style des Reves (845) 626-5353 styledesreves.com barbara@styledesreves.com

The Ashokan Center 477 Beaverkill Road, Olivebridge, NY (845) 657-8333 x10 http://ashokancenter.org/

Wine & Liquor Hetta (845) 216-4801 hettaglogg.com

Kingston Wine Co. 65 Broadway on the Rondout Kingston, NY kingstonwine.com

Miron Wine and Spirits 15 Boices Lane, Kingston, NY (845) 336-5155 mironwineanspirits.com

Workshops Hudson Valley Photoshop Training, Stephen Blauweiss (845) 339-7834 hudsonvalleyphotoshop.com

Writing Services Peter Aaron peteraaron.org info@peteraaron.org

Wallkill Valley Writers New Paltz, NY (845) 750-2370 wallkillvalleywriters.com khymes@wallkillvalleywriters.com

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whole living guide

DARING TO BE SILENT TURN OFF YOUR SMARTPHONE AND SEE WHAT SILENCE CAN TEACH YOU.

by wendy kagan

illustration by annie internicola

F

or Kelley Amadei, every year begins with silence. Just after New Year’s, when a deep chill has settled in, she checks intoThe Garrison Institute for a nine-day silent meditation retreat with the American Buddhist teacher Lama Surya Das, and wraps herself in a warm duvet of quietude and stillness.

Asked to honor a code of Noble Silence when the retreat begins, Amadei joins a hushed group of 20 to 50 people who have sworn off cell phones, devices, media, books, and everyday chitchat for the gathering’s duration. Together yet alone in a veil of reticence, they walk the corridors of the sprawling former monastery, smell its dark wood and incense, eat in the dining hall, stroll the grounds on the Hudson riverfront, listen to the lama’s teachings, and sit for meditation. It’s an experience that stands in stark contrast to her digitally connected life—as an executive coach to high-powered business people, Amadei is always online—and that’s exactly what she likes about it. “I think it started out as a search for better self-awareness,” says Amadei, who lives with her wife and son in Garrison, not far from the Institute (it was Lama Surya Das who led her to the area). Over 15 years she has built up her practice from a half day of silence on her own to a yearly nine-day retreat. “I get to connect with myself in a way that feels more authentic.”

Introducing the Digital Detox Silence as a spiritual practice comes cloaked in a rich history; nearly all religions weave some aspect of quiet contemplation into their tapestry of rituals. Carthusian and Benedictine monks pass in and out of great islands of silence. In the Quaker meeting tradition, silence is the mystic heart: People may speak out of it, yet no vocalization is frivolous. Secular life has rarely prized silence, but in today’s Age of Distraction—where social interactions preclude physical presence via an array of devices from mobiles to tablets—silence is more exotic than ever, and perhaps more necessary.

“We are pretty constantly always in touch with someone else these days,” says Sharon Salzberg, an internationally known meditation teacher who leads three or four silent retreats a year at places like The Garrison Institute and the Insight Meditation Society, which she cofounded, in Barre, Massachusetts. Salzberg references the modern malady of “continuous partial attention,” a phrase coined by the writer Linda Stone to describe the cognitive condition that arises from connecting through the digital realm. We don’t want to miss anything, yet we’re not fully present either. It’s a constant state of high alert that feeds into feelings of stress and overwhelm, compromising our ability to think clearly and be creative and effective. “You’re on e-mail and you think, what about Facebook? You’re texting and you think, what about Twitter? It’s too much,” says Salzberg, who notes that a silent retreat can act as a digital 82 WHOLE LIVING CHRONOGRAM 1/15

detox and a counterbalance to all that virtual movement. “It’s such a bold and wonderful experiment not to engage in our normal social chatter. It’s a tremendous gift to give to oneself.”

Finding Wisdom in Stillness Amadei doesn’t have to travel far to reach The Garrison Institute, but as she approaches, a shift in consciousness begins. “It’s really beautiful to see the enormous shadow of the monastery as you’re driving up the private road. When you step inside, there’s this feeling of Noble Silence even before it begins, a seriousness or deliberateness.” After checking in and leaving her cell phone with a staff member, she finds her room before the group meets in the meditation hall. “The senior teachers and retreat managers come in to welcome us, lay out the ground rules, and tell us what to expect,” says Amadei. Even though retreatants are instructed to be silent with one another, they listen to teachings at prescribed times, and they can talk to a staff member whenever they have questions or concerns. “The staff tries to set us at ease that this is an intense and beautiful experience, that it’s going to be uncomfortable at times and that’s okay.” Amadei likes this sort of honesty—because the silence is not always easy for her. Sometimes inner demons claw through. “There’s always this anticipation of what’s going to come up for me in the silence. Where’s my mind going to go? What deep, dark, uncomfortable thing am I going to uncover this time?

Am I going to be willing to face it?”

It’s natural that when quiet descends outside, the noise level increases within. “The silence acts as an intensifier: We can see more clearly the lack of silence that’s going on in our mind,” says Salzberg, who considers this a good thing. “A lot gets revealed. The things in our mind become more workable because we actually see them.” Used in this way, silence can be a tool to help train our attention, just like meditation. “We look at what we’re thinking and feeling, and we understand more about the things that motivate us. We realize that we have a choice; we don’t have to buy into every thought that comes up in our mind.” Salzberg gives an example of negative self-talk such as “I can’t do it, I can’t do anything.”Within the silence, this kind of terribly limiting habitual thought reveals itself as just a thought. If we see it that way, we can more easily let it go.

Amadei finds that the silence also forces her to be more honest with herself. “You start to realize the motivation behind the words you would say and how self-centered your speech can be. It makes me realize how much I complain about trivial things.” On her last retreat Amadei had a cold, but since she couldn’t talk about it, it went away faster. Refraining from speech, even for just a few days, can help to break the social habit of constantly externalizing.

“When you don’t get to say things out loud, you’re more aware.”

1/15 CHRONOGRAM WHOLE LIVING 83

Freshlayde Handm in the

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You receive 5-8 different types of fruits and vegetables. Field Goods chooses the items delivered and purchases them from Hudson Valley farmers. A subscription costs $20, $25, or $30 a week depending on the size. All our products are Certified Organic, organically grown or grown by farms using integrated pest management or small farm farming methods. In the Bag, our newsletter, gives you information about the produce and how to prepare it. We deliver 150+ varieties of fruits and vegetables, more than a dozen types of local cheese and bread, all grown by local small farms or local producers. We deliver all year. You can sign up anytime. No long-term commitment.

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84 WHOLE LIVING CHRONOGRAM 1/15

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The Slow Life Movement As life speeds up via our omnipresent technology, we’re seeing a countermovement these days toward practices that wind us down. Mindfulness, a form of meditation that focuses on awareness of the present moment, is going mainstream: The CBS show “60 Minutes” recently ran a segment in which reporter Anderson Cooper surrendered his cell phone—and stepped bravely out of character—for a weekend silent retreat with mindfulness teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn. Some people choose to float in sensory deprivation tanks to find quietude (New Paltz now has the Hudson Valley’s first hydrotherapy spa, Mountain Float Spa). At Camp Grounded, a summer camp for adults tucked into the redwoods of Northern California, staff members in hazmat suits collect campers’ devices when they arrive. Forbes calls it the camp “where people pay $570 to have their smartphones taken away from them.”

They don’t see their electronics again until camp is over four days later—meanwhile enjoying an unplugged life with a choice of activities that range in flavor from nostalgia feeding (kickball and capture the flag) to wellness warrior (qi-gong and Thai massage). All-camp silence and a silent dinner are among the signature Camp Grounded experiences. (Yes, they have sing-a-longs and make s’mores too.)

“We’re overstimulated most of the time,” says Liz Schulman, a yoga teacher and the co-owner of Living Yoga studio in Cold Spring. Cultivating silence is similar to the yogic practice of Pratyahara, or sensory withdrawal—a Sanskrit term from the Yoga Sutras, the ancient text by the Indian sage Patanjali dating back about 2,000 years. Practitioners consider theYoga Sutras to be an instruction manual for how to achieve Samadhi, or bliss; Patanjali lays it out in eight steps, or limbs. “Pratyahara is the fifth limb of Patanjali’s eight-limbed path,” says Schulman. “It’s a shifting or refocusing of all of your senses to what’s happening in your inner landscape. They say in yoga that the senses dominate the mind, the senses are the king of the mind.

If the senses are drawn out, then the mind is drawn out. When we learn to turn our senses in, we can turn our mind in, and it readies us for the last three limbs of the eight-limbed path, which are concentration, meditation, and bliss.”

The Courage to Go Inside For those who are not used to self-exploration practices like these, there can be a lot of resistance. Schulman recently taught a three-week meditation course and found that even a 10-minute sit was highly uncomfortable for many people. Similarly, the idea of dropping into silence for even two or three days is terrifying for most of us. “People come to a retreat and they’re nervous, asking, ‘How am I going to be silent?’” says Salzberg. “They say, ‘My partner doesn’t think I can be silent.’

Somebody said once, ‘They’re doing a betting pool at my office because they don’t think I can be silent.’” But the anticipation is nearly always worse than the silence itself, which usually wins people over in the end. They appreciate the peace, the restfulness, and the way that the present moment becomes more available and more vivid. Eating food in silence becomes really about eating food and tasting it, because you’re not distracted by a conversation with the person sitting next to you.

“Almost always people look back on it at the end, and the silence is one of the most beautiful aspects of having been on retreat. For once in our lives we can let go of trying to impress people or make a certain impression. We can just be ourselves, and it’s great.”

For Amadei, starting off the year in silence feeds her in countless ways. “I’m a better mom for it; I’m more thoughtful about how I interact with my son and how I communicate with my wife. I’m more aware of my own habits, my own patterns of reaction. I’m more compassionate and more present. In my work, it helps me to practice what I preach, which is self-awareness.The more we understand ourselves, the more we can understand our impact on other people.” Amadei also gets to steep herself in the Tibetan Buddhist wisdom of her guru, Lama Surya Das, who teaches about Dzogchen, or the Great Perfection. “The silence compounds his teachings,” she adds. Once she returns home and starts talking again, her speech feels more pointed and effective.

In the end, it’s the grand prize of the present moment that Amadei carries away with her. “On the first full day of silence, I always hike,” she says. “I notice so many more details around me—the sensations on my face, the different angles of branches and trees.” Last year, meditating on a rock by the water’s edge, she witnessed for the first time the Hudson River flowing both ways. It startled and amazed her. “I happened to be sitting at the exact moment when the current started to shift and move back upstream. It’s moments like that. They couldn’t happen without the silence.”

RESOURCES Kelley Amadei Spark-shift.com The Garrison Institute Garrisoninstitute.org Sharon Salzberg Sharonsalzberg.com Liz Schulman Livingyogastudios.com

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1/15 CHRONOGRAM WHOLE LIVING 85

whole living guide

Acupuncture

whole living directory

Creekside Acupuncture and Natural Medicine, Stephanie Ellis, LAc 371A Main Street, Rosendale, NY (845) 546-5358 creeksideacupuncture.com Private treatment rooms, attentive oneon-one care, affordable rates, sliding scale. Accepting Blue Cross, no-fault and other insurances. Stephanie Ellis graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University in pre-medical studies. She completed her acupuncture and Chinese medicine degree in 2001 as valedictorian of her class and started her acupuncture practice in Rosendale that same year. Ms. Ellis uses a combination of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Classical Chinese Medicine, Japanese-style acupuncture and trigger-point acupuncture. Creekside Acupuncture is located in a building constructed of non-toxic, eco-friendly materials.

Hoon J. Park, MD, PC 1772 South Road Wappingers Falls, NY (845) 298-6060 Transpersonal Acupuncture (845) 340-8625 transpersonalacupuncture.com

living in townhomes, apartments and studios, and a fully-licensed adult home.

Fresh, organic meals and transportation to local shops and appointments.

Astrology Planet Waves Kingston, NY (845) 797-3458 planetwaves.net

Body and Skincare Dermasave Labs, Inc. 3 Charles Street, Suite 4 Pleasant Valley, NY (845) 635-4087 hudsonvalleyskincare.com

Counseling break / through career and life coaching (845) 802-0544 heymann.peter@gmail.com The Accord Center for Counseling & Psychotherapy (845) 646-3191 theaccordcenter.com

Cranio-Sacral Therapy

Aromatherapy Joan Apter (845) 679-0512 joanapter@earthlink.net See also Massage Therapy

Assisted Living Centers Camphill Ghent 2542 Route 66 , Chatham, NY (518) 392-2760 camphillghent.org A vibrant residential community for seniors that offers a meaningful quality of life and a rich, active social program in a neighborhood setting¬–all designed to support residents in preserving their independence and joy of living.

Situated on 110 beautiful country acres, our community includes independent

Dr. Bruce Schneider 4 Deming Street, Woodstock, NY and at The Water Street Market, New Paltz, NY. (845) 679-6700 drbruceschneider.com Dr. Bruce has developed a precise protocol using Chiropractic, CranioSacral Therapy and Neuro-Emotional Technique (NET). These complimentary modalities effectively locate and release patterns of unresolved stress in the body. Experience the improved health and vitality that emerges naturally when these barriers to health are removed.

Address the cause upstream instead of managing symptoms downstream. Dr. Bruce has been in practice for 28 years.

Call (845) 679-6700.

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Dentistry & Orthodontics The Center For Advanced Dentistry‚ Bruce D. Kurek, DDS, FAGD 494 Route 299, Highland, NY (845) 691-5600 thecenterforadvanceddentistry.com Tischler Family Dental Center Woodstock, NY (845) 679-3706 tischlerdental.com

Gynecoogy Jenna Smith Stout 3457 Main Street Stone Ridge, NY (845) 430-4300 jenna@jennasmithcm.com jennasmithcm.com Nancey Rosensweig (646) 505-8819 NBRbirth@gmail.com

Herbal Medicine & Nutrition Empowered By Nature 1129 Main Street, 2nd Floor Fishkill, NY (845) 416-4598 EmpoweredByNature.net lorrainehughes54@gmail.com Lorraine Hughes, Registered Herbalist (AHG) and ARCB Certified Reflexologist offers Wellness Consultations that therapeutically integrate Asian and Western Herbal Medicine and Nutrition with their holistic philosophies to health.

This approach is grounded in Traditional Chinese Medicine with focus placed on an individual’s specific constitutional profile and imbalances. Please visit the website for more information and upcoming events.

Holistic Health Cassandra Currie, MS, RYT‚ Holistic Health Counselor 41 John Street, Kingston, NY (845) 532-7796 holisticcassandra.com

John M. Carroll 715 State Route 28, Kingston, NY (845) 338-8420 johnmcarrollhealer.com John is a spiritual counselor, healer, and teacher. He uses guided imagery, morphology, and healing energy to help facilitate life changes. He has successfully helped his clients to heal themselves from a broad spectrum of conditions, spanning terminal cancer to depression.

Kary Broffman, RN, CH (845) 876-6753 Karyb@mindspring.com 18 plus years of helping people find their balance. As a holistic nurse consultant, she weaves her own healing journey and education in psychology, nursing, hypnosis and integrative nutrition to help you take control of your life and to find True North. She also assists pregnant couples with hypnosis and birthing. As a registered nurse and your health care advocate, Kary will help you coordinate and understand your medical care, prepare for medical appointments and procedures and support you during follow up and recovery. Through her unique approach of mind/body techniques and integrative nutrition, she will help you restore your health and embark on the road to a healthier mind, body and spirit.

Hospitals Health Quest 45 Reade Place, Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 283-6088 health-quest.org Sharon Hospital 50 Hospital Hill Road, Sharon, CT (860) 364-4000 sharonhospital.com

Hypnosis Clear Mind Arts Hypnosis (845) 876-8828 clearmindarts.com sandplay555@frontier.com Jennifer has been helping adults and children overcome obstacles and

heal past trauma in private practice in Rhinebeck since 2003. Offering Past Life Regression, Expressive Arts, Medical Hypnosis, Life Between Lives™ in a safe and supportive space. Inner exploration though Hypnosis brings greater clarity, renewed sense of purpose and wisdom.

Sand play bridges meditation, symbol formation and Jungian Principles to integrate experience beyond words.

Massage Therapy Joan Apter (845) 679-0512 apteraromatherapy.com joanapter@earthlink.net Luxurious massage therapy with medicinal grade Essential Oils; Raindrop Technique, Emotional Release, Facials, Hot Stones. Animal care, health consultations, spa consultant, classes and keynotes. Offering full line of Young Living Essential oils, nutritional supplements, personal care, pet care, children’s and non-toxic cleaning products. Consultant: Prepare for Surgery, Heal Faster with healing statements for surgery and holistic approaches to heal faster!

Mindfullness

Nutrition NuSpecies 427 Main Street, Beacon, NY (845) 440-7458 nuspecies.com

Orthodontics Sunshine Orthodontics Wappingers Falls & Kingston sunshineortho.com

Osteopathy Stone Ridge Healing Arts Joseph Tieri, DO, & Ari Rosen, DO, 3457 Main Street, Stone Ridge; 138 East Market Street, Rhinebeck, NY (845) 687-7589 stoneridgehealingarts.com Drs. Tieri and Rosen are NY State Licensed Osteopathic Physicians specializing in Osteopathic Manipulation and Cranial Osteopathy. Please visit our website for articles, links, books, and much more information. Treatment of newborns, children, and adults. By appointment.

Pharmacies Wellness Rx Route 213, High Falls, NY (845) 687-8500

Loomis Plastic Surgery 225 Dolson Avenue #302 Middletown, NY (845) 342-6884 drloomis.com

GYNECOLOGY

Psychotherapy Rachael Diamond, LCSW, CHt New Paltz, NY (845) 883-0679 Holistically-oriented therapist offering counseling, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy and EMDR. Specializing in issues pertaining to relationships, personal growth, life transitions, alternative lifestyles, childhood abuse, trauma, co-dependency, addiction, recovery, illness, grief and more.

Office convenient to New Paltz and surrounding areas. Free 1/2 hour in person consultation. Sliding scale fee.

Retreat Centers Garrison Institute Route 9D, Garrison, NY (845) 424-4800 garrisoninstitute.org garrison@garrisoninstitute.com Retreats supporting positive personal and social change in a renovated monastery overlooking the Hudson River. Featuring Tara Goleman and Daniel Goleman with Bob Sadowski and Aaron Wolf: Chemistry of Connection, November 21-23, and Healing Ourselves, Our Schools, and Our Communities: Equity, Contemplative Education and Transformation, December 12-14.

Hormone Balancing • GYN Exams • Menopause Stone Ridge Healing Arts 3457 Main Street, Stone Ridge, NY jenna@jennasmithcm.com / www.jennasmithcm.com (845) 430-4300

Treat your symptoms

Hoon J. Park MD P.C.

naturally

Acupuncture Physical Therapy Pain Management Joint Injections Stem Cell Injections

Hoon J. Park M.D. is a New York State Board Certified Medical Doctor in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and a New York State Certified Acupuncturist. Most insurance accepted including Empire Plan, Medicare, most private insurances, No-Fault, and Workers Compensation. You deserve victory over pain.

1772 South Road, Wappingers Falls ½ mile south of Galleria Mall

298-6060

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John M. Carroll H ,T ,S C EALER

EACHER

PIRITUAL

OUNSELOR

“ Miracles still do happen.”

—Richard Brown, MD Author Stop Depression Now “ John Carroll is a most capable, worthy, and excellent healer of high integrity, compassion, and love.”

—Gerald Epstein, MD Author Healing Visualizations

Menla Mountain Retreat & Conference Center Phoenicia, NY (845) 688-6897 ext. 0 menla.org menla@menla.org

Check John’s website for more information johnmcarrollhealer.com or call 845-338-8420 715 State Route 28, Kingston NY

Yoga Clear Yoga: Iyengar Yoga in Rhinebeck 17b 6423 Montgomery Street Rhinebeck, NY (845) 876-6129 clearyogarhinebeck.com Classes for all levels and abilities, seven days a week. Iyengar Yoga builds strength, stamina, peace of mind, and provides a precise framework for a yoga practice based on what works for you.

Sunday, January 4: Neck and Shoulders with Jess, 2-4.30pm. Sunday, January 18: Backbends with Bobby Clennell, 1.304.30pm. Sign up at clearyogarhinebeck. com/events.

INTEGR ATE YOUR LIFE I T ’ S

A

B A L A N C I N G

A C T

HOLISTIC NURSE HEALTH CONSULTANT

Manage Stress • Apprehensions • Pain • Improve Sleep Release Weight • Set Goals • Change Habits Pre/Post Surgery • Fertility • Hypno Birthing Immune System Enhancement • Nutritional Counseling Past Life Regression • Intuitive Counseling Motivational & Spiritual Guidance

Breathe • Be Mindful • Let Go • Flow

H Y P N O S I S - C OAC H I N G Kary Broffman, R.N., C.H. 845-876-6753 • karybroffman.com 1/15 CHRONOGRAM WHOLE LIVING DIRECTORY 87

whole living directory

Woodstock Mindfulness Woodstock, NY woodstockmindfulness.com

Plastic Surgery

publicprograms

free

NORTHERN FOREST ATLAS PROJECT Friday, January 9 at 7:00 p.m.

Shannon Houlihan

Join Wildlife Conservation Society ecologist Jerry Jenkins for a visuallyrich tour of the Northern Forest. He will distill 45 years of research on the forest, which spans New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Learn about habitat change, human impacts, and conservation priorities.

OUR RIVER ON DRUGS

Friday, February 27 at 7:00 p.m.

Lisa Dellwo

Emma Rosi-Marshall, a freshwater ecologist at the Cary Institute, will discuss her research on how pharmaceutical drugs and personal care products are polluting our nation’s rivers and streams—with consequences for sensitive aquatic life and drinking water supplies.

Learn more at www.caryinstitute.org 2801 Sharon Turnpike (Rte. 44)|Millbrook, NY 12545|845 677-5343

ROSEN DALE THEATRE 408 Main Street Rosendale, NY 1 2472 845.658.8989 rosendaletheatre.org

JANUARY 4

JANUARY 11 JANUARY 28

SUNDAY SILENTS: THE SOLO FILMS OF STAN LAUREL with live Accompaniment by Marta Waterman Q&A with Ray Faiola of the Laurel & Hardy Appreciation Society $7/$5 members, 3:00 pm DANCE FILM SUNDAYS: BOLSHOI BALLET IN THE LEGEND OF LOVE $10, 3:00 PM NATIONAL THEATRE FROM LONDON: SKYLIGHT $12, 3:00 PM

CHECK OUR WEBSITE FOR NIGHTLY FILMS AND MORE GREAT PROGRAMMING! WE RUN ON VOLUNTEER POWER! EMAIL VOLUNTEER@ROSENDALETHEATRE.ORG FOR MORE INFORMATION

BE WHERE WE ARE. Distribution Event flyers? Brochures? Catalogs? We’ll help you get them out there.

Hudson Valley and Berkshire markets. 750 distribution locations.

845.334.8600 | distribution@chronogram.com

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EVENT PREVIEWS & LISTINGS FOR JANUARY 2015

“XL: Large-Scale Paintings from the Permanent Collection” runs January 30 through March 29 at the Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. Oversized works by Milton Avery, Mark Rothko, Agnes Martin, Hedda Sterne, and a dozen other 20th-century painters will be exhibited. (845) 437-5632; Fllac.vassar.edu

the forecast

Self-Portrait, Alfred Leslie, oil on canvas, 1982, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Purchase, Friends of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Fund, 2004.18 © Alfred Leslie

1/15 CHRONOGRAM FORECAST 89

THURSDAY 1 New Year’s Camp: Winter Hoot Through January 3. Music, dance, workshops. Ashokan Center, Olivebridge.

657-8333.

MUSIC Bach at New Year’s: A Blast of Brass!

3-5pm. $26-$58. Berkshire Bach presents a festive New Year’s concert of well-known and loved works by Haydn, Mozart and Bach by the Berkshire Bach Ensemble. Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Troy. (413) 584-9032.

New Year’s Day Brunch with Big Joe Fitz and the Lo-Fis 10am-1pm. Welcome the New Year and ease those hangovers with a delicious brunch while listening to Big Joe and the Lo-Fis play some soothing jazz. High Falls Café, High Falls. 687-2699.

FOOD & WINE

OPEN HOUSES/PARTIES/BENEFITS

Kingston Farmers’ Winter Market 10am-2pm. First Saturday of every month.

Old Dutch Church, Kingston. 338-6759.

First Saturday Reception 5-8pm. First Saturday of every month. ASK’s openings are elegant affairs with wine, hors d’oeuvres and art enthusiasts. These monthly events are part of Kingston’s First Saturday art events. Arts Society of Kingston (ASK), Kingston. 338-0331.

KIDS & FAMILY Saturday Social Circle 10am-12pm. First Saturday of every month.

Whether you are pregnant, have a new baby, or older kids, we welcome you to join us for conversation, fun, and laughter over tea and homemade cookies. New Baby New Paltz, New Paltz. 255-0624.

LITERARY & BOOKS The League of Extraordinary Readers Book Launch Event 4pm. The League of Extraordinary Readers is a monthly author event series for kids ages 8-12 (and those who are kids at heart).

Come to the bookstore to meet your favorite

The Women 8pm. The Women by Clare Booth Luce is the deliciously wicked drama surrounding Manhattan socialites (and those who wish to be) and the gossip that propels and damages their relationships. Rhinebeck Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck.

876-3080.

Champian Fulton 7pm. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

Healing Circle to Nourish Your Soul 6:30-8pm. First Friday of every month. $35. Acupuncturist and intuitive healer Holly Burling will guide you through a soulful healing experience—acupuncture, meditation, aromatherapy, crystals, mantras and writing in a beautiful and serene setting.

SkyBaby Yoga & Pilates, Cold Spring.

(646) 387-1974.

SATURDAY 3 ART GALLERIES & EXHIBITS Memorial Exhibition of Work by Warren Schmahl 5-8pm. Works on view from the last years of Warren’s art-filled life. The proceeds from the sale of Warren’s spectacular sculptures will be used to purchase a maker for Warren’s grave. Kingston Museum of Contemporary Art (KMOCA), Kingston. Kmoca.org.

DANCE New Year’s Camp: Winter Hoot Music, dance, workshops. Ashokan Center, Olivebridge. 657-8333.

CHRONOGRAM.COM These listings do not include weekly recurring events, such as classes that take place every Wednesday, for example. Visit Chronogram.com for events updated daily, recurring weekly events, and staff recommendations. You can also upload events directly to our Events database at Chronogram.com/submitevent.

90 FORECAST CHRONOGRAM 1/15

Autism & ADHD Support Group 6:30pm. First Tuesday of every month. This support group is designed to meet the psychosocial needs of parents with children affected by autism and/or ADHD. The program is facilitated by a licensed clinical social worker. Vassar Brothers Medical Center, Poughkeepsie. 454-8500.

Botany for Gardeners 6-9pm. Through January 27. This course covers a wide range of topics: the roles of seeds, stems, leaves, flowers and fruits, and how plants grow. Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA. (413) 298-3926.

MUSIC

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES

KIDS & FAMILY

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES

New Year’s Camp: Winter Hoot Through January 3. Music, dance, workshops. Ashokan Center, Olivebridge.

657-8333.

The Women 8pm. The Women by Clare Booth Luce is the deliciously wicked drama surrounding Manhattan socialites (and those who wish to be) and the gossip that propels and damages their relationships. Rhinebeck Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck.

876-3080.

Breast and Ovarian Cancer Support Group First Tuesday, Thursday of every month.

Support Connection, Inc., a not–for-profit organization provides free, confidential support services for people affected by breast and ovarian cancer. Vassar Brothers Medical Center, Poughkeepsie.

(800) 532-4290.

Open Mic with Chrissy Budzinski 7pm. Inquiring Minds Bookstore, Saugerties.

246-5775.

FRIDAY 2

THEATER

TUESDAY 6

LITERARY & BOOKS

DANCE

Patrick Murphy McDowell 9:30pm. Classic rock. 12 Grapes Music and Wine Bar, Peekskill. (914) 737-6624.

Coming Home: An Art Journal Workshop with Jennifer Albin 6-9pm. $200. Four Monday evenings. The Treehouse, New Paltz. 255-0345.

HEALTH & WELLNESS

THEATER

An Odyssey into the Heart via the Power of Collective Voice 4-5:30pm. $25. Join Amy McTear and other Vocal Village musicians on a musical journey through a soundscape of drums, flute, didgeridoo, symphonic gong, crystal singing bowls, guitar, bass, spoken word, song, and silence. Unison, New Paltz. (914) 388-0632.

Mini Twang-Rock Festival 9pm. With Sarah Borges and Girls Guns and Glory Slated. Club Helsinki, Hudson.

(518) 828-4800.

MONDAY 5 WORKSHOPS & CLASSES

WEDNESDAY 7 KIDS & FAMILY Bindlestiff Family Cirkus at Club Helsinki Glitz, tricks, and just enough raunch—Bindlestiff Family Cirkus is back in town with its adult-only winter cabaret. Part Cirque du Soleil-inspired spectacle, part New York City-underground burlesque, Bindlestiff performances are a kaleidoscopic display of trapeze, contortion, acrobatic balance, physical comedy, sword swallowing, and witty original songs. Hudson’s Club Helsinki hosts the troupe on the fourth Saturday of three months—January 24, February 28, and March 28—with a rotating lineup of local legends and internationally renowned acts. Audience members who contribute to the vaudeville energy in costume receive a discounted admission. A family-appropriate matinee is available on Sunday, March 29. (518) 828-4800; Helsinkihudson.com. children’s book authors, with giveaways, snacks and fun at every event. This month, Jennifer Donnelly, Waterfire #2. Oblong Books & Music, Rhinebeck. 876-0500.

MUSIC Bryan Gordon 8pm. Acoustic. Aroma Thyme Bistro, Ellenville. 647-3000.

Celtic Night with the Irish Mafia First Saturday of every month. Sean Griffin’s Irish Mafia and invited guests connect the Celtic tradition to Galicia, Spain. Elephant, Kingston. Elephantwinebar.com.

Chris Raabe Band 9:30pm. Acoustic. 12 Grapes Music and Wine Bar, Peekskill. (914) 737-6624.

Open Mike featuring Vickie Russell 6pm. Gardiner Library, Gardiner. 255-1255.

Phil Rose and Lou Pappas 8pm. Blues. Hopped Up Café, High Falls.

687-4750.

Rob Paparozzi’s “Good Old Boys”: The Music of Randy Newman 7pm. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

Special Winter Jazz Concert with Lynne Arriale & Larry Coryell 8-9:45pm. General $25; Seniors $22; Contributors $20; Students $5. Classic Jazz at its best. Windham Civic Center, Windham.

(518) 734-3868.

Tony Jefferson & Groovocity 8pm. Jazz. BeanRunner Café, Peekskill.

(914) 737-1701.

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES DIY Sauerkraut & Home Fermentation Workshop 1-3pm. $10. Fishkill Farms, Fishkill.

897-4377.

SUNDAY 4 FILM The Solo Films of Stan Laurel 3pm. $7. Our program will show three of Stan’s best: West of Hot Dog, Dr Pykcle & Mr Pryde, and Mud and Sand. Ray Faiola “Grand Sheik” of the Them Thar Hills–Oasis 281 of the Sons of the Desert will give a prefilm talk on Laurel’s solo film career and will be available for Q&A after the movies. Live Accompaniment by Marta Waterman. The Rosendale Theatre, Rosendale. 658-8989.

MUSIC Brunch with Alexis Cole 10am. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

Karl Berger: In the Spirit of Don Cherry 7pm. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

THEATER The Women 3pm. The Women by Clare Booth Luce is the deliciously wicked drama surrounding Manhattan socialites (and those who wish to be) and the gossip that propels and damages their relationships. Rhinebeck Center for Performing Arts, Rhinebeck.

876-3080.

Infant Developmental Movement Education 12:30-1:30pm. First Wednesday of every month. $100/series. Through awareness, communicating with your baby, and play, IDME helps with sleep difficulty, digestive issues, nursing, tummy time, rolling, crawling, independent sitting and walking. New Baby New Paltz, New Paltz. 255-0624.

LITERARY & BOOKS Book Club: Nemesis by Philip Roth 3pm. Gardiner Library, Gardiner. 255-1255.

MUSIC Azzolina/Govoni/Nussbaum/Zinno 7pm. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

Ryan O’Connor 8pm. Acoustic. 12 Grapes Music and Wine Bar, Peekskill. (914) 737-6624.

Syracuse/Siegel Duo 9pm. Jazz. Catskill Mountain Pizza Company, Woodstock. 679-7969.

OPEN HOUSES/PARTIES/BENEFITS A Purple Tie Affair 7pm. Live music, dinner, and dancing.

National Museum of Dance, Saratoga Springs.

(518) 584-2225.

THURSDAY 8 BUSINESS & NETWORKING Hudson Valley Garden Association Monthly Meeting 7pm. Second Thursday of every month.

Shawangunk Town Hall, Wallkill. 418-3640.

HEALTH & WELLNESS Breast and Ovarian Cancer Support Group First Tuesday, Thursday of every month.

Support Connection, Inc., a not–for-profit organization that provides free, confidential support services for people affected by breast and ovarian cancer. Vassar Brothers Medical Center, Poughkeepsie.

(800) 532-4290.

LITERARY & BOOKS Reader’s Choice Book Discussion Group 7pm. This month: Art of Racing in the Rain.

Town of Esopus Library, Port Ewen.

331-3259.

THEATER RHAPSODY IN BLACK ANDY MILFORD

LeLand Gantt performs “ Rhapsody in Black” at the Bardavon on February 6.

Still He Rises Actor and playwright LeLand Gantt was sitting in his kitchen listening to Ben Harper’s version of the Maya Angelou poem “Still I Rise” when he was struck with an epiphany.

The lines—“You may trod me in the very dirt / But still, like dust, I’ll rise”—crystallized a paramount statement. As a black man, Gantt often felt like “The Other” in a predominately white world. But with Angelou’s words ringing strong, Gantt was filled with a newfound determination: “You’re gonna’ knock me down, but I’m going to get up.”

And with that, a play was written. “Rhapsody in Black”—a three-movement journey of one man’s personal discoveries, honest accounts, and optimistic beliefs for the transcendence of racism. In an undeniably raw, comfortably humorous, and painfully poignant exploration, Gantt’s first-time playwriting triumph not only offers an outlet for his story, but also sparks a conversation for his listeners. “I want to open up this can of words so wide that it cannot be denied—bring the truth of reality into their consciousness,” he says. “Stop dehumanizing and eradicate ‘The Other.’”

The play, an uninterrupted 90-minute one-man performance, reflects Gantt’s linear timeline of growing up in the ghetto of McKeesport, Pennsylvania, to later medicating with alcohol and battling with a lack of acceptance in both white and black communities.

Living in poor conditions, he effortlessly slipped into trouble as a child. “One of the first things you learn in the ghetto is that your life is cheap,” Gantt says. “So I became a thug.” By high school, he wanted out of a criminal lifestyle and pursued theater, which quickly led to local and national competitions. With growing self-esteem, Gantt left home for college and has been living as an actor in New York City since 1984, taking on small and large roles on stage and in movies and TV series, including several “Law and Order” episodes and an appearance in the film Requiem for a Dream.

But regardless of race, Gantt struggled with finding peace. There were times, he says, where he was the only black man in a room full of white people. More off-putting,

he says he was taken aback when they were surprised by his intelligence. When he’d return to his home, he was singled out for talking “white and not using slang and some of the verbiage of the street.” Gantt began to adress these challenges, and with very little writing experience, started channeling his stories through nine different monologues.

Eventually, nine voices blended into one: Gantt’s. “I decided to make them me. I started talking about racism and I didn’t inhibit myself,” Gantt says. Through workshops and as a member of The Actors Studio, Gantt began fully developing the play, later working with Actors Studio Artistic Director Estelle Parsons when the project was complete.

Executive director of the Bardavon Opera House in Poughkeepsie, Chris Silva, traveled to the city last year on Parsons’s recommendation and was blown away by Gantt’s performance. With the ongoing tribulations of the Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin shootings, racism is at the forefront of American culture. “Everything that’s been happening in the last year in our country has reemphasized the issue of race, and having the conversation about it is the hardest thing to do,” Silva says. “We think [Gantt’s play] is a really important piece of theater to get out into the world right now.”

Starting February, the Bardavon will be producing a Northeast minitour of “Rhapsody in Black” at performance venues and high schools, including a stop at the Bardavon itself on Friday, February 6.

Confronting such heavy subjects may be unnerving to the audience, but both Gantt and Silva believe it’s the only way to initiate a much-needed change. “It’s hard to avoid the truth when it’s square in the eye,” Silva says.

LeLand Gantt performs “Rhapsody in Black” at the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie on February 6 at 7pm. $6 suggested donation. (845) 339-6088; Bardavon.org.

—Zan Strumfeld

1/15 CHRONOGRAM FORECAST 91

MUSIC

Vomit Fist with guest Mucus 9pm. Metal. Quinn’s, Beacon.

Quinnsbeacon.com.

with many artists in various media. Engage with professional painters, sculptors, dancers, tattoo artists, and spoken word artists as they make works of art, step-bystep, with your participation. Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill.

(914) 788-0100.

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES

HEALTH & WELLNESS

Corey Henry 7pm. Opener: Trio Subtonic The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

Relatives As Parents Program Coffee & Conversation Support Group 6-7:30pm. Second Thursday of every month.

Provides education and resources to address the needs and concerns experienced by relative caregivers. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Poughkeepsie. 677-8223.

FRIDAY 9 DANCE

Cajun/Zydeco Dance with The Revelers 7-11pm. $15/$10 FT student ID. A Louisiana Supergroup that combines swamp-pop, cajun, country, blues, and zydeco into a powerful tonic of roots music that could only come from Southwest Louisiana. Lesson at 7pm. White Eagle Hall, Kingston. 255-7061.

Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement 2-4pm. $25. Awareness through Movement® lessons use gentle, mindful movements that quiet the nervous system and create opportunities for change in body and mind.

With Kevin Healy. The Living Seed Yoga & Holistic Center, New Paltz. Thelivingseed.com.

MUSIC 80th Birthday Tribute to ‘The King’ Elvis Birthday Bash 9pm. Featuring Mark Gamsjager and the Lustre Kings. Club Helsinki, Hudson. (518) 828-4800.

Cub’s Place 6-7:30pm. Second Friday of every month.

Activities and support for children in grades K-5 and their parents dealing with a serious family illness or crisis. Children engage in age-appropriate supervised games and activities facilitated by a licensed clinical social worker. Vassar Brothers Medical Center, Poughkeepsie. 454-8500.

LECTURES & TALKS

Northern Forest Atlas Project 7-8pm. Join Wildlife Conservation Society ecologist Jerry Jenkins for a visually rich tour of the Northern Forest. Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Millbrook. 677-7600.

MUSIC

3D Rhythm of Life 9:30pm. 12 Grapes Music and Wine Bar, Peekskill. (914) 737-6624.

The Good Luck Orchestra 8pm. Funk. Hopped Up Cafe, High Falls.

687-4750.

Lindsey Webster 8-11pm. Pamela’s on the Hudson, Newburgh. 562-4505.

Peter Bernstein Trio 7pm. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

Second Friday Jam with Jeff Entin & Bob Blum 8-11:30pm. The duo, who have been playing together since before the term Jam Band was coined, will be playing and hosting something a little more experimental than the usual fare. High Falls Café, High Falls.

687-2699.

Vito & 4 Guys in Disguise 9pm. Hyde Park Brewing Company, Hyde Park. 229-8277.

SATURDAY 10 ART GALLERIES & EXHIBITS

Beacon Second Saturday Join a city-wide celebration of the arts held on the second Saturday of every month where galleries and shops stay open until 9pm. Art displays, gallery talks, live music, and wine tasting. Downtown Beacon, Beacon. Beaconarts.org.

FAIRS & FESTIVALS

Live Arts Fest 1-5pm. $10/$5 HVCCA members & Peekskill residents. An art making event for all ages CHRONOGRAM.COM These listings do not include weekly recurring events, such as classes that take place every Wednesday, for example. Visit Chronogram.com for events updated daily, recurring weekly events, and staff recommendations. You can also upload events directly to our Events database at Chronogram.com/submitevent.

92 FORECAST CHRONOGRAM 1/15

Bernie Duo 8pm. Hyde Park Brewing Company, Hyde Park. 229-8277.

Eric Erickson 8pm. Acoustic. Aroma Thyme Bistro, Ellenville. 647-3000.

Lindsey Webster 9:30pm. The Shelter, Rhinebeck. 876-1500.

Soñando 7pm. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

Soul Purpose featuring Linda Richards 8pm. $10. Motown, R&B. Unframed Artist Gallery, New Paltz.

Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys 8pm. $22. Rosendale Café, Rosendale.

658-9048.

OPEN HOUSES/PARTIES/BENEFITS Cocoon Theater and Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center Open House 5:30pm. Cocoon students and local artists present music, dance, poetry, and play readings. This pot-luck event is free and open to the public, suitable for all ages.

Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center, Poughkeepsie.

486-4571.

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES Ayurveda 2-4:30pm. $50/$45 in advance. This workshop combines Ayurveda and Shakti Yoga to help us achieve optimal health and well-being. SkyBaby Yoga & Pilates, Cold Spring. Skybabyyoga.com.

Blacksmithing: Forge Building 9am-4pm. $490. Build an efficient forge with rapid-heating Gensheimer burner unit (as used at the Campbell Folk School), a fuel line kit with pressure gauge, regulator, fuel valve, fittings, hose, quick disconnect adapter at tank, Kaowall insulation, firebrick, and built-in external material rest. Full forge kit provided.

Center for Metal Arts, Florida. 651-7550.

TUESDAY 13 BUSINESS & NETWORKING

AHA ACLS Instructor Class 9am-5pm. $400. This course is designed to prepare AHA instructors to disseminate the science and skills resuscitation programs to participants enrolled in AHA Courses. Vassar Brothers Medical Center, Poughkeepsie.

475-9742.

Solopreneurs Sounding Board 6:30-9pm. Second Tuesday of every month.

Take advantage of collective intelligence and an inspiring meeting place to work out creative solutions to problems. Open to any entrepreneur or intrapreneur—consultants, freelance creatives and artists included.

Beahive Beacon, Beacon. 418-3731.

DANCE

HEALTH & WELLNESS

The Bolshoi Ballet in The Legend of Love 3pm. $10/$6 children 12 and under. The Rosendale Theatre, Rosendale. 658-8989.

Milonga des Artistes-Sunday Afternoon Tango with Ilene Marder 3pm. Second Sunday of every month. $12 at the door. Come join us for the inaugural edition of Milonga des Artistes with your host and DJ Ilene Marder, founder of the 10-yearold Woodstock Tango community. Uptown Gallery, Kingston. 331-3261.

Half Moon Theatre’s “Fully Committed” In restaurant-speak, “fully committed” refers to the none-too-popular state of a high-demand eatery that’s totally booked—a state that prompts the dreaded response “We have no tables available for this evening.” In Becky Mode’s oneperson-show, we see the aggravation that exists on the other end of the reservation line. The laugh-out-loud comedy follows a day in the life of Sam Peliczowski, a struggling-actor-turned-operator at Manhattan’s hippest, most sought-after restaurant. Directed by Brendan Burke, one chameleon-like leading man takes on a cast of 40 different characters, including the maître d’, the chef, and a crew of lessthan-patient celebrity socialites. The new, cosmopolitan Half Moon Theatre at the Culinary Institute of America’s Hyde Park campus hosts performances from January 16 to January 25. $35 general admission.

(845) 234-9885; Halfmoontheatre.org.

KIDS & FAMILY

The Black Dirt Band 8pm. Blues. BeanRunner Café, Peekskill.

(914) 737-1701.

SUNDAY 11 BUSINESS & NETWORKING

Swing Dance to a Live Band 6:30-9pm. $12/$6 FT students. Lesson at 6pm. Arlington Reformed Church, Poughkeepsie. 454-2571.

LITERARY & BOOKS Daniel and Joseph Olsen 4pm. Presenting their children’s books Dreams and Lock Away the Monsters.

Inquiring Minds Bookstore, New Paltz.

255-8300.

Hudson Valley Ya Society 4pm. Presentation, Q&A, and book signing.

Ilyasah Shabazz, X-A Novel. Oblong Books & Music, Rhinebeck. 876-0500.

MUSIC Sultans of String: World Music Fusion 7pm. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

Sunday Brunch Alexis P. Suter & The Ministers of Sound 11am-2pm. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

MONDAY 12 FILM Pee-wee’s Big Adventure 7pm. Palace Theater, Albany. (518) 465-3334.

MUSIC Rounds! Rounds! Rounds!

7-9pm. $10/$8 PS21 members. Join Conductor Sheri Bauer-Mayorga and others from the community in singing traditional and classic rounds. Open to singers of all levels.

Chatham Brewing, Chatham. (518) 392-6121.

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES College Financial Aid Night 6-7pm. Chris Chang, Director of Financial Aid at SUNY Ulster, will discuss the importance of filling out financial aid paperwork for college. Town of Esopus Library, Port Ewen.

338-5580.

Free Developmental Check-Ups for Ages 4 months to 5 years 11am-3pm. A specially trained parent educator from Astor Early Childhood Programs and the United Way will review your child’s development in five areas: communication, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, problem solving, and personal/social.

Tivoli Free Library, Tivoli. (800) 899-1479.

LECTURES & TALKS

Monthly Open House with Dharma Talk 7pm. Second Tuesday of every month Shambhala Buddhist teachers talk on a variety of topics at the Open House. Sky Lake Lodge, Rosendale. 658-8556.

LITERARY & BOOKS

Book Launch Event 7pm. Gail Godwin: Publishing: A Writer’s Memoir. Oblong Books & Music, Rhinebeck.

876-0500.

OUTDOORS & RECREATION

Safe Harbors Informational Tours 9am. Second Tuesday of every month.

The tours highlight how Safe Harbors’ transformative supportive housing, awardwinning contemporary art gallery and performing arts theater is instrumental to the revitalization of downtown Newburgh. All attendees will be entered in a drawing to win tickets to an upcoming concert at the Lobby at the Ritz. Safe Harbors of the Hudson, Newburgh. 562-6940.

WEDNESDAY 14 HEALTH & WELLNESS

Young Women’s Breast and Ovarian Cancer Support Group 7pm. Second Wednesday of every month.

Support Connection, Inc., a not-for-profit organization that provides free, confidential support services for people affected by breast and ovarian cancer. Support Connection, Yorktown Heights.

(800) 532-4290.

MUSIC

Dustbowl Revival 7pm. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

Syracuse/Siegel Duo 9pm. Jazz. Catskill Mountain Pizza Company, Woodstock. 679-7969.

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES

Landscape Design Clinic $690. Through March. Participants will learn skills essential for effective functional garden design that honor the site and meet client needs. Each week will cover a different topic or technique focusing on the importance of getting to know the client and site as a basis of effective and appealing design. Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA. (413) 298-3926.

Woods on Fire: Ornamental Shrubs and Trees for a Fiery Fall Display $25. Low maintenance woody plants are gaining in popularity as gardeners learn how to use them to their best advantage.

This program will cover ornamental aspects, varieties, cultural requirements and siting these beauties in the garden. Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA. (413) 298-3926.

THURSDAY 15 HEALTH & WELLNESS

Breast Cancer Support Group 7pm. Third Thursday of every month. Support Connection, Inc., a not–for-profit organization that provides free, confidential support services for people affected by breast and ovarian cancer. Putnam Hospital Center, Carmel. (800) 532-4290.

MUSIC THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS AT TARRYTOWN MUSIC HALL

The Psychedlic Furs play the Tarrytown Music Hall on January 17.

It Goes On The Psychedelic Furs’ US breakthrough was an incongruous occurrence. Director John Hughes decided to name his 1986 Molly Ringwald vehicle Pretty in Pink after a crashing track on the British band’s 1981 second album, Talk Talk Talk (Columbia Records). A defanged version of the song was recorded for the film’s smash soundtrack and the group, which performs at Tarrytown Music Hall on January 17, suddenly found itself plucked from the shadowy post-punk underground to become an act that many would identify with the bouncy, Day-Glo mallscape of 1980s Gen-X America.

“The first album [1980’s The Psychedelic Furs, Columbia], especially, is very dark, very moody,” says bassist Tim Butler, who formed the band in London in 1977 with his brother, singer Richard Butler. “The stuff that framed our sound then was Roxy Music, the Velvet Underground, Iggy and the Stooges, and, of course, the Sex Pistols.

I can remember me and Richard lying awake at night in our bedroom at our parents’ house, talking about the band we were going to start and who’d play what instrument.

At first I was going to be the drummer. But then I found out drums were expensive.”

The confluence of Tim’s flanged, murky bass, Richard’s hoarse vocals and evocative lyrics, and Duncan Kilburn’s haunting saxophone instantly set the outfit apart. “When we started, most of the other bands around were just kind of nihilistically thrashing. We couldn’t really play, but we wanted to do something different. So we’d just get on stage and improvise for nine or ten minutes at a time. Basically, it was this beautiful chaos.”

The band steadily beautified the chaos over the remainder of the decade, finding further mainstream success with the glossier Forever Now, Mirror Moves, and Midnight to Midnight (all Columbia), and having its biggest US hits with the MTV staples “Love My Way” (1982) and “Heartbreak Beat” (1987). Eventually, the Furs began to chafe at their pop envelope and made two less commercial (and less lucrative) sets, 1989’s Book of Days and 1991’s World Outside (both Columbia), before taking what became a nine-year hiatus. During the break, Richard led Love Spit Love for two albums, while Tim formed the likewise short-lived Feed. The group reunited in 2001 for a tour with the B-52s and the Go-Gos and have kept going ever since, last passing through the area in 2010. The band has ties to the Hudson Valley: Besides recording Forever Now in Woodstock, Richard Butler lives in Cold Spring and original guitarist John Ashton (no longer a member) is a Woodstock resident.

“It’s great to still be playing this long after we started,” says Tim. “The new lineup actually sounds even heavier than we did at the beginning, and we’re doing a lot of songs from the first album. People come to see us now with their kids, and sometimes even their grandkids.”

The Psychedelic Furs will perform at Tarrytown Music Hall in Tarrytown on January 17 at 8pm. Tickets are $35, $40, and $50. (877) 840-0457; Tarrytownmusichall.org.

—Peter Aaron 1/15 CHRONOGRAM FORECAST 93

ART "MONET/KELLY" AT CLARK ART INSTITUTE

Rocks at Port-Goulphar, Belle-Île, Claude Monet, oil on canvas, 26” x 32 3/16”, 1886.

The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Chauncey B. Borland, 1964.210

MUSIC

LITERARY & BOOKS

Thunderhead Organ Trio 7:30pm. Jazz. Wherehouse, Newburgh.

561-7240.

Storytelling with Janet Carter 7pm. Inquiring Minds Bookstore, Saugerties.

246-5775.

OPEN HOUSES/PARTIES/BENEFITS

MUSIC

Library Open House New Staff Welcome Reception 5:30-7pm. Stop by for coffee and dessert and meet the library staff. The staff will showcase all the library has to offer (databases, programs, new materials, how to save you money). Town of Esopus Library, Port Ewen.

338-5580.

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES Caring for a Greenhouse or Plant Conservatory 4-7pm. $185. Through Feb. 5. Landscape designer Bill Florek will teach how to grow, care for, and maintain plants in a greenhouse or glassed-in porch setting. Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA. (413) 298-3926.

Library Knitters 7-8pm. Third Thursday of every month. Sit and knit in the beautiful Gardiner Library. Gardiner Library, Gardiner. 255-1255.

FRIDAY 16 FILM Doctor Zhivago 7pm. $7. Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA. (413) 644-9040.

CHRONOGRAM.COM These listings do not include weekly recurring events, such as classes that take place every Wednesday, for example. Visit Chronogram.com for events updated daily, recurring weekly events, and staff recommendations. You can also upload events directly to our Events database at Chronogram.com/submitevent.

94 FORECAST CHRONOGRAM 1/15

Deni Bonet 8pm. $15. Pop/rock singer/songwriter.

Rosendale Café, Rosendale. 658-9048.

Fred Gillen, Jr and Matt Turk 8pm. BeanRunner Café, Peekskill.

(914) 737-1701.

Joe Crookston & the BlueBird Jubilee and The Kennedys 8:30-11pm. $20 Advance/$25 at the Door. Joe Crookston is an artist, writer, singer, guitar picker, painter, claw hammer banjo player, and believer in all things possible. New York duo Pete and Maura Kennedy have traversed a broad musical landscape, surveying power pop, acoustic songwriting, organic rock.

Towne Crier Cafe, Beacon. 855-1300.

Lucky House Band 9pm. Hyde Park Brewing Company, Hyde Park. 229-8277.

Mike Clark Organ Trio 7pm. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

Singer-Songwriter Showcase 8pm. Third Friday of every month. $6.

Acoustic music by three outstanding singersongwriters and musicians. Arts Society of Kingston (ASK), Kingston. 338-0311.

Sister Sparrow & Dirty Birds 9pm. Soul-funk dance party. Club Helsinki, Hudson. (518) 828-4800.

Spillway Band 7pm. Country. Catamount Banquet Center, Mount Tremper. 688-2444.

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES

The Business of Gardening 1-5pm. Through Jan. 30. Participants will learn how to write a simple business

plan, understand a team approach using subcontractors to a business advantage and ways to organize a business, from sole proprietor to incorporating (S-Corp, Inc, LLC).

Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA. (413) 298-3926.

SATURDAY 17 DANCE

Ballroom By Request Dance Lesson 8-9p.m.; Dance 9-11p.m. to DJ Joe Donato. Coaching corner for beginners to Ballroom dance from 9-10 p.m. Refreshments included. Hudson Valley Dance Depot, Poughkeepsie. 204-9833.

FAIRS & FESTIVALS

Repair Cafe-New Paltz 10am-3pm. Through September 20. A free community meeting place to bring a beloved but broken item to be repaired. Mechanical, electric & electronic, clothing, things made of wood, dolls & stuffed animals, jewelry, digital devices, knife sharpening. New Paltz United Methodist Church, New Paltz. (646) 302-5835.

FOOD & WINE

Kingston Farmers’ Winter Market 10am-2pm. Third Saturday of every month.

Old Dutch Church, Kingston. 338-6759.

Sugar-Free Chocolate Tasting 5-7pm. Come try our sugar free chocolate varieties including Coco Polo, Mariebell and Tumbador, matched with wines from Fairview Wines & Spirits. Verdigris Tea & Chocolate Bar, Hudson. (518) 828-3139.

KIDS & FAMILY

First Aid & CPR AED Class for Adult, Child & Infant 9am-3pm. $100. This course covers basic First Aid, CPR techniques, maneuvers for choking victims and how to use an Automated External Defibrillator. Instruction provided for Adult, Child & Infant. Vassar Brothers Medical Center, Poughkeepsie. 475-9742.

LITERARY & BOOKS Children’s Book Launch Extravaganza 4pm. Renowned Hudson Valley author/ illustrators James E. Ransome, Lesa Cline Ransome & G. Brian Karas will celebrate the release of not one, not two, but four new books. Oblong Books & Music, Rhinebeck.

876-0500.

MUSIC Blue Chicken 7pm. Jim Weider’s roots rock. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

Chris Jackson 8pm. Acoustic. Aroma Thyme Bistro, Ellenville.

647-3000.

The Met: Live in HD Lehar’s The Merry Widow 1pm. Bardavon Opera House, Poughkeepsie.

473-2072.

Petey Hop 8pm. Hyde Park Brewing Company, Hyde Park. 229-8277.

Satisfaction: International Rolling Stones Tribute Show 8pm. $30/$25/$20. Sugar Loaf Performing Arts Center, Sugar Loaf. 610-5335.

The Met: Live in HD Lehár’s The Merry Widow 1pm. $18-$25. Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA. (413) 644-9040.

OPEN HOUSES/PARTIES/BENEFITS Open Mike Night for Members of the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild 6:15pm. After the opening reception for the 2015 member’s exhibition re:Member, the stage at the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts will be turned over to the musical, literary, and theatrical talents of the Guild’s membership.

Kleinert/James Arts Center, Woodstock.

679-2079.

ART "MONET/KELLY" AT CLARK ART INSTITUTE

Port-Goulphar, Belle-Île, Ellsworth Kelly, pencil on paper, 19 1/2” x 24 1/2”, 2005. Collection of the artist © Ellsworth Kelly “Monet/Kelly” is being exhibited through February 15 at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Claude, Meet Ellsworth In 1952, after seeing one of Claude Monet’s late paintings, Ellsworth Kelly arranged to visit the artist’s last studio in Giverny, France, which had grown dilapidated. The next day, Kelly painted his first monochromatic painting, Tableau Vert. “Monet/Kelly,” at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, is the first art show to explore the French artist’s influence on Kelly. It includes nine canvases by Monet, two by Kelly, plus 19 of the American’s drawings. Kelly, who is 91, suggested the exhibition, and designed its layout. “Monet/Kelly” is installed in the new Clark Center, a 42,600-squarefoot addition that opened last July 4.

Ellsworth Kelly was born in Newburgh in 1923, but raised in New Jersey. In 1943, he was drafted into the Army, and volunteered for a camouflage battalion. Afterward, Kelly studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris on the GI Bill.

From 1948-1954, he remained in France, where he developed his mature style. “Kelly is of that generation of the Abstract Expressionists and the color field painters, but he’s not part of any movement,” explains Richard Rand, senior curator of the Clark, “partly because he was living in Paris during the late '40s and early '50s when those movements were coming together in New York. His brand of abstraction is really unique.”

Monet’s late paintings were ignored for decades, until Abstract Expressionism made them seem prophetic. But this lineage isn’t so simple. The young artists of the 1950s painted with fury and intensity. Monet was an elderly Frenchman gazing at his lily pond. Although he produced brushstrokes that look like multicolored, writhing snakes, Monet’s images emerged from contemplation. Ellsworth Kelly pursued Monet’s tradition—what one might call Impressionist Zen. “Kelly’s type of abstraction really does begin in nature; it’s a distillation of shapes, motifs that he has seen in the world,” Rand observes.

Kelly visited Belle-Île, an island off the coast of Brittany, three times: in 1949, 1965, and 2005. On each trip he made drawings, and each time he was a different person: a timid student, a brash “art star,” an 82-year-old man. Fifteen of these sketches appear in “Monet/Kelly.” Only one has been previously shown, which gives the collection an air of secrecy, as if you were reading Kelly’s private diary. Kelly chose three canvases

by Monet that depict the same island in 1886 and 1887.

One recent painting hangs in the exhibit: White Curve in Relief over White (Belle-Île) (2013), based on a drawing Kelly made in Brittany in 1949. It consists of two white canvases, one shaped like a half-moon, the other a triangle. Just as a drawing abstracts a landscape into lines on paper, White Curve carries the process one step further, into pure geometry. Kelly even avoids the necessity of making lines, by using customized canvases. The 90-year-old artist is looking back at himself as a youthful student tentatively sketching out an ocean view.

Now, with masterly assurance, Kelly reduces that image to two lines. White Curve has minimalist complexity—it’s simultaneously a painting, two paintings, an installation, and a sculpture.

“Monet/Kelly” suggests that Kelly’s art is rooted in landscape. (He has been living in the Columbia County hamlet of Spencertown since 1970.) In upstate New York, for at least four months of the year, we behold white on white. A field full of herbs and grasses becomes a monochrome canvas, with a few mysterious bulges. Ellsworth Kelly paints what he sees.

“Monet/Kelly” is being exhibited at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, through February 15. Call (413) 458-2303; Clarkart.edu —Sparrow 1/15 CHRONOGRAM FORECAST 95

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES Beer Home-Brewing Workshop: Extract Brewing 101 1-3pm. Fishkill Farms, Hopewell Junction.

897-4377.

Cooking and Remembering 9am-5pm. Weekend workshop hosted by Peter Gevisser. Beahive Beacon, Beacon.

418-3731.

Intro to Small Metals: Enameling 8am-4pm. $120/materials $25. This workshop will provide the basic techniques of applying enamel to metal surfaces. Center for Metal Arts, Florida. 651-7550.

Yoga Fundamentals: A Workshop for Beginners 2-4pm. $30/$25 in advance. This 2-hour interactive workshop is designed to answer any and all questions that you might have about starting a yoga practice. The Yoga House, Kingston. 706-YOGA.

WEDNESDAY 21 DANCE East Meets West Coast Swing Dance $8/$6 FT students. Beginner’s Lesson 5:306:00 and dance to DJ’d music 6:00-9:00.

Reformed Church of Port Ewen, Port Ewen.

255-1379.

MUSIC Syracuse/Siegel Duo 9pm. Jazz. Catskill Mountain Pizza Company, Woodstock. 679-7969.

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES A Floral Display: Growing a Cutting Garden $25. Learn how to make a small, highly productive cutting garden as an addition to the vegetable garden or as a standalone garden. Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA. (413) 298-3926.

life threatening emergencies, provide CPR, use an AED and relieve choking in a safe, timely and effective manner. Vassar Brothers Medical Center, Poughkeepsie. 475-9742.

MUSIC Neon Moon 9pm. Country. The Golden Rail Ale House, Newburgh. 565-2337.

NIGHTLIFE Soul R&B Dance Party with Breakaway 9pm. Hyde Park Brewing Company, Hyde Park. 229-8277.

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES Dance Workshop $15 each/$20 both. Two sessions: 6:30-7:15 & 7:15-8:00. Poughkeepsie Tennis Club, Poughkeepsie. 471-1120.

SUNDAY 18 Jay Kantner Presents Oddball Cambodia: Dispatches From Asia’s Most Peculiar Country 4pm. Inquiring Minds Bookstore, New Paltz.

255-8300.

MONDAY 19 Jason Kao Hwang/Sing House 8pm. Jazz. Quinn’s, Beacon.

Quinnsbeacon.com.

Joe Bonamassa 8pm. $82/$99/$128. Acoustic. Palace Theater, Albany. (518) 465-3334.

TUESDAY 20 HEALTH & WELLNESS Community Holistic Healthcare Day 4-8pm. Third Tuesday of every month. A wide variety of holistic health modalities and practitioners are available. Appointments can be made on a first-come, first-served basis upon check-in. Marbletown Community Center, Stone Ridge. 687-0800.

LITERARY & BOOKS Open Mike with Chrissy Budzinski 7pm. Inquiring Minds Bookstore, Saugerties.

246-5775.

MUSIC Little Ceesar Band 9pm. Hyde Park Brewing Company, Hyde Park. 229-8277.

CHRONOGRAM.COM These listings do not include weekly recurring events, such as classes that take place every Wednesday, for example. Visit Chronogram.com for events updated daily, recurring weekly events, and staff recommendations. You can also upload events directly to our Events database at Chronogram.com/submitevent.

96 FORECAST CHRONOGRAM 1/15

MUSIC Helado Negro 8pm. MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA. (413) 662-2111.

THEATER

OPEN HOUSES/PARTIES/BENEFITS

MUSIC

Marilyn Johnson: Lives in the Ruins 4pm. Presentation, Q&A & book signing.

Oblong Books & Music, Rhinebeck. 876-0500.

Bindlestiff Family Cirkus Cabaret 9pm. Featuring a variety of circus, theater, comedy and musical entertainers. Club Helsinki, Hudson. (518) 828-4800.

The Organ Grinders Jazz Trio 11am-2pm. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

NRA Home Firearm Safety 11am-2pm. $20. Ages 21+. This course is required for your NYS pistol permit. Town of Esopus Library, Port Ewen. 338-5580.

LITERARY & BOOKS

NIGHTLIFE

The Mandingo Ambassadors 7pm. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

Cooking and Remembering 9am-5pm. Weekend workshop hosted by Peter Gevisser. Beahive Beacon, Beacon.

418-3731.

Starting from Seed: An Afternoon with Margaret Roach 3-5pm. $25/$20 in advance. Join garden expert Margaret Roach, originator of AWaytoGarden.com. Garden resources including Turtle Tree Seeds and Hudson Valley Seed Library will be on hand. Benefit for the Campaign for the New Hudson Area Library. Solaris Camphill Hudson, Hudson.

(518) 828-1792.

Me & My Ex 8pm. Acoustic. Aroma Thyme Bistro, Ellenville. 647-3000.

MUSIC

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES

LECTURES & TALKS

Jesse Harris 7pm. Opener: Rabbits in the Rye. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

LITERARY & BOOKS

Woodstock’s 25th Annual Birthday Tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. 2pm. Through reflection, celebration, education and song let us remember the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr. Woodstock Town Hall, Woodstock. 679-2113.

shore up the resources of the Newburgh Boxing Club. Newburgh Boxing Club, Newburgh. 565-7980.

Hudson Valley Rail Trail Winterfest The rail trail party returns for its 18th annual winter family festival. This one-day event hauls in over 20 regional restaurants that will compete to be named the “Best of Fest” as they dish out hearty batches of chili for the People’s Choice Award in both meat and vegetarian categories. The celebration also offers children entertainment under the Lowe’s Project Tent, which provides a heated space for kids to enjoy craft projects and activities. Hay wagon rides, chestnut and marshmallow roasting, and a bonfire warm up the festivities on Saturday, January 10, at the Hudson Valley Rail Trail Depot in Highland. General Admission is $2 and children under six get in free.

(845) 691-2066; Hudsonvalleyrailtrail.net.

THURSDAY 22 FILM Art and Craft 7:30pm. MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA. (413) 662-2111.

HEALTH & WELLNESS Holistic Self-Care Class 7-8:30pm. Neuro Emotional Technique (NET) with Dr. Bruce Schneider. Family Traditions, Stone Ridge. 377-1021.

MUSIC Trio Mio 7-9:30pm. This 4-5 member trio performs mostly original music in either acoustic or electric formats. High Falls Cafe, High Falls.

687-2699.

FRIDAY 23 COMEDY Jim Breuer 8pm. $27/$24 students. Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Troy. (518) 273-8945.

DANCE Noche Flamenca: Antigona 8pm. $10-$50. Live music, song, and dance bring the fiery, expressive nature of flamenco to one of the world’s great tragedies.

Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA. (413) 644-9040.

SATURDAY 24 DANCE Ignite Your Flow: Hoop Dance Workshop with Heather Davies 1-3pm. $25. This curriculum balances core strengthening waist-hooping moves, with lots of off-body variations, toning the arms and shoulders. In addition to a full-body workout, hooping provides an opportunity to develop focus and concentration, connecting the body and mind, and uplifting the spirit. The Living Seed Yoga & Holistic Center, New Paltz.

255-8212.

FAIRS & FESTIVALS Festival of Frost 11am-4pm. $40/$30 in advance/$15 12 and under/5 and under free. An obstacle race filled with fun designed for people of all levels of fitness. There will be live music and entertainment; a DJ; a beer tent; games and activities; and Olaf and Queen Elsa.

The proceeds go toward a fund that helps patience with cervical and gynecological cancers. Memorial Park, Beacon. 590-2758.

HEALTH & WELLNESS

Swing Dance to Eight to the Bar 8:30-11:30pm. $15/$10 FT students.

Beginners’ lesson at 8pm. Poughkeepsie Tennis Club, Poughkeepsie. 471-1120.

American Heart Association BLS for Healthcare Providers Course 9am-2pm. $75. This course is designed to provide a wide variety of healthcare professionals the ability to recognize several life threatening emergencies, provide CPR, use an AED and relieve choking in a safe, timely and effective manner. Vassar Brothers Medical Center, Poughkeepsie. 475-9742.

HEALTH & WELLNESS

KIDS & FAMILY

BLS for Healthcare Providers Renewal Course 6-10pm. $75. This course is designed to provide a wide variety of healthcare professionals the ability to recognize several

Artists and Boxers 5-7pm. An art show to raise funds to help keep Newburgh’s youth in the gym and off the street. Seven of Newburgh’s top artists are offering their work at a benefit to help

Helado Negro: Island Universe Story 8pm. Work-in-Progress. MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA. (413) 662-2111.

London’s National Theatre in HD: Treasure Island 5pm. $17. A story of murder, money, and mutiny. The production is suitable for audience members ages 10+. Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA. (413) 644-9040.

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES 21st-Century Herbal 2pm. $35/$30 members. Join ethnobotanist Michael Balick, Ph.D., as he discusses medicinal botany, based on his recent book, with Aviva Romm, MD and medical herbalist.

Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA. (413) 298-3926.

Blacksmithing Basics 9am-4pm. $120. This class teaches the basic elements of blacksmithing. You will learn how to stand at the anvil, hold the hammer, hand-forge tapers, curl over the horn, form small scrolls and right angle bends. Center for Metal Arts, Florida. 651-7550.

Intro to Organic Beekeeping: Planning a New Hive for Spring 10am-6pm. $110/$200 both weekend workshops. Learn about the basic requirements and responsibilities for maintaining a hive. Sustainable Living Resource Center, Rosendale. 255-6113

SUNDAY 25 DANCE HD broadcast of the Bolshoi Ballet’s Swan Lake 1pm. $17. Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA. (413) 644-9040.

HEALTH & WELLNESS ACLS Renewal Course 9am-5pm. $150. This is a recertification of the ACLS course. You must have a current ACLS certification to take this course.

Course completion results in a two-year ACLS certification from the American Heart Association. Vassar Brothers Medical Center, Poughkeepsie. 475-9742.

LITERARY & BOOKS Readings, Q&A & Book Signing 4pm. Megan Mayhew Bergman: Almost Famous Women: Stories. Oblong Books & Music, Rhinebeck. 876-0500.

FRIDAY 30

Empire State Youth Orchestras Presents Orff’s Carmina Burana 3pm. $23/$13 seniors/$8 children. Palace Theater, Albany. (518) 465-3334.

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES Understanding and Caring for your Bees 10am-6pm. $110/$200 both weekend workshops. Sustainable Living Resource Center, Rosendale. 255-6113.

MONDAY 26 LITERARY & BOOKS Mystery Mondays Book Discussion 11am-noon. The Rabbit Factory, by Marshall Karp. Adriance Memorial Library, Poughkeepsie. 485-3445.

The 7th annual Traditional Robbie Burns Supper 6:30-9:30pm. Celebrate the life and art of the legendary poet Robert Burns. Featuring the recitation of Burns’s poetry, a traditional dinner with the entrance of the haggis, storytelling, songs, and whisky toasts. The Rhinecliff Hotel, Rhinebeck. 876-0509.

LITERARY & BOOKS Boria Sax Presents Stealing Fire: Memoir of a Boyhood in the Shadow of Atomic Espionage 7pm. Inquiring Minds Bookstore, New Paltz.

255-8300.

MUSIC Frank Migliorelli & the Dirt Nappers 8pm. Classic rock. BeanRunner Café, Peekskill. (914) 737-1701.

MUSIC

Modfest Concert: Vassar Jazz Combos 9pm. The student ensembles present a colorful variety of jazz styles. Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. Vassar.edu.

Juan Pablo Carletti and Daniel Levin 8pm. Quinn’s, Beacon. Quinnsbeacon.com.

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES

Rounds! Rounds! Rounds!

7-9pm. $10/$8 PS21 members. Join Conductor Sheri Bauer-Mayorga and others from the community in singing traditional and classic rounds. Open to singers of all levels.

Chatham Brewing, Chatham. (518) 392-6121.

THEATER The Typographer’s Dream 7pm. A staged reading of the play by Adam Bock, Curated and Directed by Nancy Graham. Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center, Poughkeepsie. 486-4571.

TUESDAY 27 LITERARY & BOOKS Starr Book Group 7pm. Discussing A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. Starr Library, Rhinebeck. 876-4030.

WEDNESDAY 28 HEALTH & WELLNESS Knitting Circle for Women with Cancer 6:30-8pm. In this monthly group for women with breast, ovarian or gynecological cancer, Support Connection provides the time and space for women to begin or finish a knitting or crocheting project. Support Connection, Yorktown Heights. (914) 962-6402.

MUSIC Syracuse/Siegel Duo 9pm. Jazz. Catskill Mountain Pizza Company, Woodstock. 679-7969.

The Met: Live in HD Lehár’s The Merry Widow 1pm. $18-$25. Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA. (413) 644-9040.

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES Walk on the Wild Side: Big, Bold Perennials $25. With so many perennials to choose from, take a look at the best of the bunch, selected for garden worthiness, including multiple season interest, spectacular flowers and or foliage, exceptional form, low maintenance, hardiness and longevity.

Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA. (413) 298-3926.

THURSDAY 29 HEALTH & WELLNESS The New Year, New You Wellness Workshop 7-8:30pm. $267 by Dec. 31/$287 by Jan. 15/$327 after. Weekly through March 5.

Marika’s Kitchen, Beacon. (646) 241-8478.

MUSIC Beppe Gambetta 7pm. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

Jason Kao Hwang and Sing House 8pm. Quinn’s, Beacon. Quinnsbeacon.com.

Genealogy Night: Find Your Roots 6-7pm. Audrey Klinkenberg, President of The Ulster County Genealogical Society will provide basic research assistance on searching for your genealogical roots. Town of Esopus Library, Port Ewen. 338-5580.

Po d c a s t Brought to you by

Like the Late Show meets A Praire Home Companion

SATURDAY 31 LITERARY & BOOKS Laura Ludwig Presents Performance Art and Poetry 6:30pm. Inquiring Minds Bookstore, Saugerties. 246-5775.

Reading adn Discussion with Fiona Saxman 6pm. Author of The Reluctant Psychic.

Kleinert/James Arts Center, Woodstock.

679-2079.

MUSIC Cosy Sheridan with guest Matt Nakoa $20 in advance, $25 at the door. Cosy Sheridan has been called “one of the era’s finest and most thoughtful singersongwriters.” This show is a benefit for Crawford Park Crawford Park Mansion, Rye Brook. (914) 417-9151.

Johnny Dell & Nite Life 8pm. Hyde Park Brewing Company, Hyde Park. 229-8277.

The Met: Live in HD Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann 1pm. $18-$25. The magnetic tenor Vittorio Grigolo takes on the tortured poet and unwitting adventurer of the title of Offenbach’s operatic masterpiece, in the Met’s wild, kaleidoscopic production.

Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA. (413) 644-9040.

Modfest Concert: Alice In Our Times: Fantasy, Surrealism, and Nonsense 8pm. Skinner Hall at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. 437-7319.

Nomadic Massive 7pm. Hip-hop collective. MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA. (413) 662-2111.

Robert Capowski 9:30pm-midnight. Electric. The Shelter, Rhinebeck. 876-1500.

Robert Cray Band 8pm. Bardavon Opera House, Poughkeepsie. 473-2072.

Roosevelt Dime 8pm. $10. Rosendale Cafe, Rosendale.

658-9048.

Taped Live at BSP Kingston

February 21

7PM DOORS, 8PM SHOW $10 advance, $15 at the door

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Cocomamma 7pm. All-female Latin jazz ensemble. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

FOOD & WINE

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Big Joe Fitz + The Lo-Fis 11am-2pm. The Falcon, Marlboro. 236-7970.

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MUSIC

Hosted by Sam Osterhout, The Locals takes place in the tiny fictional town of Dinges, New York, where, coincidentally, some of your favorite bands, comedians, writers, and actors live.

In February’s episode, those partial to President’s Day go to war with Valentine’s Day lovers, and our special guests (TBA) are on the front lines.

Stay tuned.

Because everybody’s a Local somewhere

for more information, visit us at:

www.facebook.com/LocalsShow

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES Bonsai Basics 10am-12pm. Join Bonsai expert Glen Lord for an informative talk and live demonstration on successfully growing bonsai in a home setting. Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA. (413) 298-3926.

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Planet Waves ERIC FRANCIS COPPOLINO

BY ERIC FRANCIS COPPOLINO

A Beginner’s Guide to the 21st Century

I

t’s taken me 14 years to get a handle on the 21st century, but I finally feel like I’m making some progress. One thing that I will say is that I’m learning how helpful it is to look to the past for some information about where we are today. It may not be the ultimate guide, but if you want to know where “here” is, it’s a good idea to know where you came from and how you went.

That includes the astrological past, and it includes the past as told by eras when one communication medium collided with another one. Fortunately there is an easy intersection of those themes, as told in astrology, media studies and social history.

In 1964, in a time much like our own, when many things were changing very fast and few people understood what was happening, a soft-spoken English professor, a Canadian fellow named Marshall McLuhan, came out with a book that explains how society has become a product of its media. It always does, he says, and if you want to understand what society is becoming and why it’s becoming that way, look at how people communicate. Look at their technology. That will tell you the story of what is actually happening.

He takes this back to the emergence of the printed word—the innovation of the typeset and printed book, which paralleled the development of industrial society and industrialized people. He describes how the printed word led to a sense of false individualization, which in turn de-tribalized society. The printed word ended the oral tradition of in-person storytelling.

The mode or “medium” of communication, McLuhan proposed, is more influential than the specific content. That is what he means by “the medium is the message.” For anyone doubting this, he suggests you consider the electric light—a medium of pure information without specific content. Electric light changed civilization, and everyone and everything with it. It turned night to 98 PLANET WAVES CHRONOGRAM 1/15

day and in the process, changed every person, every town and every city with it. What was the message of light? Well, it was LIGHT! While this is happening, it’s difficult to notice, because it’s happening gradually, and as a new technology, it’s taken for granted. People figured out that TV was changing politics when John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon for the presidency because he understood how to use TV and Nixon did not. All politics followed suit, but we stopped noticing.

Today we are in the age of the Internet fully emerging. It’s true that I’m writing this article on the 16th anniversary of the Planet Waves website. The Internet itself is not brand new, but its mass proliferation is—mainly in the form of the “smart phone.”

The “smart phone” puts the Internet everywhere, all the time. It therefore puts the user everywhere, all the time—often except where they actually are, such as having dinner with friends, while texting someone else, somewhere else.

The Internet is redefining the concept of self in such a way that there is no private self, there’s just a public self. Anything conveyed via the Internet is presumed to be public, whether voluntarily, by surveillance, or by hacking.

One’s private self becomes a mass media event.

Tom Wolfe, an author who was one of the first people to understand and promote the ideas of Marshall McLuhan, parodied the “media event” in his book The Bonfire of the Vanities. In one scene there was supposed to be a protest, but which was not quite happening. Then the TV truck arrived, raised its mast with the microwave dish on top, and everyone gathered around the truck and the protest actually happened.

This is becoming the story of our lives.

In the story of astrology, the current developments are described by the transit of Uranus in Aries. Aries is the sign of self-concept, self-seeking,

identity, and “I am” in general. Uranus has been in this sign for a little while, making some bold aspects there. Uranus is about technology, inventions, revolutions and very fast, unexpected changes, often on a mass scale. By inventions I mean some of the most important ones, such as the light bulb and the airplane (and the Moon landing, the Concorde and the 747, all of which happened under the influence of Uranus).

In Aries, Uranus represents the rapid technological developments we’re now experiencing, and it also represents reinvention of self as a result of those advances. It’s kind of the ultimate description of the selfie—the obsession with self, but that self is being broadcast almost all the time—to some group. The thing is, what we’re experiencing or exploring now is the selfie defining the self, rather than being a picture of the pre-existing self.

You might think of Uranus in Aries as the total reinvention of the self concept, dominated by technology. Self is now group property, it’s nonlocal (you appear many places simultaneously). The concept of the immediate, physically present, one-to-one relationship is evaporating. And with that, a sense of self, the private self that can exist within itself, is evaporating as well.

One property of Uranus is its connection to groups, and the concept of self is verging on meaningless without affirmation or acknowledgement by the larger self of the group. It’s becoming more prevalent that a person is a media event, and without that media presence, one does not exist.

Once the province of Weegee Felig (the world’s first spot-news photographer, who spawned many great artists with his vision), now every person has a camera and darkroom with them at all times. Everyone also has a police scanner, a tape recorder, telegraph machine, fax machine, TV camera, editing studio and broadcast facilities in their pocket everywhere, all the time.

Not surprisingly, everyone is expected to respond in realtime to everyone else, all the time. You must reply to everything, instantly. It doesn’t matter if you’re eating, sleeping, driving, in a therapy session, taking a poo or a bath, or wholly drunk. You must be absolutely responsive at all moments while connected to a nervous system that spans the entire globe. Admittedly, this might make it difficult to get a moment to yourself or to share a private thought, but since “yourself” and “private” and “thought” barely exist anymore, that’s not too much of a problem.

Uranus in Aries officially began the day of the Fukushima incident in March 2011, when technology went horribly wrong, when a whole lot of uranium began leaking into the environment. At that time, a toxin emerged in awareness (and the ocean) as something that could contaminate anyone, anywhere. That was a warning of what can happen when things go out of control.

Uranus in Aries is related to another current transit, Pluto in Capricorn.

Pluto can have the property of Shiva the Destroyer. Capricorn is the sign of the corporate state—governments, companies and anything that upholds the structure and integrity of society. That transit began the year of the mortgage and banking scandal, in 2008.

While the self is undergoing its technological transformation, the corporate structure of society is being routed, changed, dismantled by Pluto in Capricorn.

Pluto in Capricorn is change from beneath. The concept “tectonic” comes to mind—associated with the movement of the continental plates.

There is another quality of Pluto moving through Capricorn which you could describe as a do or die need to put a little soul into these corporate structures of society. They can no longer be so inhuman and insensitive to human needs.

It’s as if the concept of a private person is being eliminated by Uranus in Aries, while at the same time corporations are being made to find their soul.

This sounds a little like a big theme of our era—corporate personhood.

Some day we will need a Supreme Court decision to affirm that people are people—that is, if we can get the justices to agree with that novel theory of

law. The clash of the cultures between the individual and the corporate (and the reversal of roles) is a huge theme of our times, and it’s happening on many different levels.

Uranus and Pluto are working together—that is the Uranus-Pluto square.

It’s an aspect (a meeting or alignment) between these two powerful slowmovers that spans over seven events from June 2012 to March 2015. Then the aspect begins to separate. But that does not mean that its power is reduced. We are likely to see the most interesting manifestations of Uranus square Pluto this year and into the next three to five years.

The aspect’s exact span (those seven events from 2012 through 2015) were just the thing that got the momentum going. Now we get to ride the toboggan down the slippery slope.

Two other aspects play into this same story.

While so much is happening in the world of structure, and with the concept of self being turned inside out, there’s another area of the sky that describes a profound inner pull.

Reading what I’ve written so far, you might get the idea that everything of any significance is being externalized, but in Pisces, there are developments that describe the inner environment and its most intimate expressions.

Slow-moving (and therefore especially influential) planets are gathering there as well.

The two best known are Neptune and Chiron, which ingressed Pisces between 2010 and 2012. Pisces is the inner cosmic realm—the closest thing you can call spiritual in the sense of direct experience. Neptune is the modern planet associated with Pisces, which amplifies the effect. There’s a lot more Pisces than usual to go around—it’s as if a fresh ocean of water has been added to that inner realm that Pisces represents.

Chiron has a focusing effect. Pisces is not always easy to grasp; Chiron is much more obvious. A good example of Chiron in Pisces is the effect that the Beatles had on the 1960s, the last time Chiron was in Pisces. The Beatles took that message of peace and love, focused it and made sure we all got to see it.

There’s a planet similar to Chiron, called Nessus, which is going to enter Pisces early in the year. Nessus has a focusing effect similar to Chiron, but what it focuses is the theme of accountability. The message is that we are all responsible for attending to that inner realm that we possess. Both Chiron and Nessus come with a caution, which is that the space they are occupying is not optional. Tuning into one’s inner space is a necessity.

Life cannot be lived exclusively outwardly. At a certain point, you must regard your inner life as real. There is a fourth slow-mover in Pisces, called Borasisi. That has the message that you are responsible for what you believe and the effects that it has on you.

Surrounded as we are by many distracting, perhaps useful technologies, the invitation of the planets in Pisces is to use that technology for creative purposes; for humanitarian purposes; for awareness.

Marshall McLuhan was fond of two concepts, both of which are described by these Pisces planets. One concept was the way in which the environment we live in tends to be invisible. Pisces tends to be invisible. Yet Chiron in particular focuses awareness of the environment and our relationship to it.

The other concept was pattern recognition. Overwhelmed as we often are, sometimes the only thing left to do is to notice the patterns of your life and of the world you live in, and see what you can observe. There’s too much going on to take on one item at a time. Confronted by all experience being simultaneous, awareness of patterns is one of the few things that can keep you from drowning. This kind of consciousness is the morph of self-awareness and that of your environment.

Here in the early 21st century they have very nearly merged into the same thing—and that process is just getting started.

The Internet is redefining the concept of self in such a way that there is no private self. Anything conveyed via the Internet is presumed to be public, whether voluntarily, by surveillance, or by hacking. One’s private self becomes a mass media event.

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ARIES (March 20-April 19) You are way ahead of yourself, even though you may have this crazy idea that you’re lagging behind. Like any inventor (that does seem to be your role these days), you have more ideas than you can put into practical use on any given day, though now you must embody the principle of cooperation. One sticking point here seems to be the idea that nothing of any worth is accomplished unless some people are exploited. But it’s time to question that one. Cooperation is voluntary. That voluntary factor is also an important step out of false individuality and into true autonomy. So you don’t have to feel bad about asking people to collaborate with you. However, you will need to be aware of any murky psychology that emerges once people form any kind of collective, or share in any goal. Remind people that it’s a privilege to partake in anything larger than themselves, and to work toward goals that benefit the whole community. Some of the more unusual psychology will be your property alone, focused on the theme of your early environment. What, exactly, happened when the child you once were tried to get people to cooperate with you, or with one another? That set up some negative expectations, and it’s time to let them go in support of better outcomes. If you can, so can everyone else. That is leadership.

TAURUS (April 19-May 20) One by one this month, planets make their way across your midheaven—the angle of your solar chart that describes your highest goals, your achievements, and your reputation. This is calling on you to take on a leadership role that you might think is not quite in your nature; however, at least in astrological in fact, it’s the essence of your nature. Have you tuned into the fact that you’re a leader in whatever you do, even if you never hold yourself out as one? You lead by example, and you lead with the quality of your ideas. So I suggest you start with being bolder, more vocal and more articulate about what you’re thinking and what your priorities are. Follow that up with careful observation of the people around you, and several rounds of listening. The chances are that whatever you’re doing is going to require two revisions before it settles into a stable form, and this process takes you into mid-February. Till then, hang loose and allow your ideas to evolve. Look at things sideways, from different perspectives and from the opposite point of view. Your tree-like stability sometimes resists that process, though trees are exceptionally responsive to their environments and more communicative than nearly everyone imagines. Among the many people offering ideas, there will be a few gems. Look for them with your eyes, and feel for them with your hands.

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GEMINI (May 20-June 21) This year it looks like your relationship life settles down enough for you to actually keep track of what is happening. There’s still plenty going on and you will need to devote yourself to understanding yourself and others as a way of life. The difference is that now have a sense of what the process of your relationships is all about. First, they are indeed extensions of yourself. Second, what they “extend” into your environment is your process of making contact with your deeper self. You have experiences with others that seem impossible to have on your own. That’s not strictly true; but it’s easier to see certain things when they are projected outside of yourself. One of those things is how people actually grow and transform. You have seen people address some of the darkest elements of themselves, take a huge step and emerge in a different place. In some ways you’re less confident about being able to do this yourself, though the fact that you know others can and to take these steps is proof of what is possible. That is, it’s a demonstration of what is possible for you. Events early in the month in one especially important partnership will enable you to get underneath the surface layers of personality, ideas and opinions. On this deeper level, you can access authentic change where it really happens, at your emotional core.

CANCER (June 21-July 22) It’s simply not true, as you often believe, that others are stronger than you, or more persistent. They may however be more inclined to use force, and you are especially sensitive to that. You also expect people to be connected to their feelings in a way similar to yourself, though that rarely turns out to be true. I suggest that if you find yourself provoked into any kind of confrontation, wait for a few days before responding. Pause, listen, and observe. Most of all, feel. The situation is not what it seems, and anyone who is acting up or dramatizing something is likely feeling like they have no power (which is not true, and don’t fall for it). For you, the message can be an affirmation of your own strength, and your power of faith. The sign Cancer is famous for its cycles, owing to your close connection to the Moon. Now you get a chance to hold steady (as a general rule, it would be wise to wait one month before making up your mind about anything). Once the early drama sorts itself out, it will be clear who owes what to whom. Said another way, someone in fact has a debt to you, and once that becomes obvious, it will be clear that some form of payment or at least acknowledgement is due. In the end, however, that transaction must be voluntary.

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LEO (July 22-August 23) Get a handle on group dynamics, since this is the most important theme of your life right now. Everything is affected: all kinds of groups, from those of family to friends to work and their various crossovers. They key here an exchange that happens on the level of the collective, rather than a bunch of individual transactions.

There is a larger entity involved, and within that entity, everyone must be clear and open with everyone else. Unlike bees and ants, who must adopt a hive mentality centered around one leader, humans have the capacity to live in mutual community, where individuals are all consciously aspects of one another. A number of other factors indicate that this is a “get-serious” moment around anything related to your creativity, children and sex. You could say it’s a time to understand the role of pleasure in your life, and how that in turn influences your ability to be productive. Looked at another way, you must take full responsibility for your creative power and its results. The thing is that now, pleasure and productivity are no longer solo activities, or contained in one-on-one partnerships. The good news is you don’t have to take any burden on your shoulders exclusively. The learning challenge is seeing (and experiencing) yourself as fully integrated into a group process. It needs you, and you need it.

VIRGO(August 23-September 22) Your ability to focus is a gift and a privilege. Your intelligence is also a gift, and a key to the universe that you possess and can use at any time. There have been times when you’ve perceived yourself as the victims of these things, mainly because you’ve perceive them to alienate you from others socially. That no longer seems to be the case. Brains and beauty are coming back into style. You’re no longer surrounded by weirdos who have to prove how different they are, or what geniuses they are. Your environment is now populated by people who value their connection to others, and who recognize you for who you are. The sticking point, if there is one, is self-criticism, often taken to excess. The point of contention is that you still may not take well to those who are easier on themselves than you are. You may perceive this as weakness, lack of discipline and lack of self-awareness. You’re probably correct in your perceptions, though that bears no relationship to being gentle on yourself, or on others.

Do everything you can to keep your point of view wide and inclusive of all perspectives. Tap into how others receive information and intuition—you have a lot to learn from them, and what you learn will greatly benefit your worldly goals and your inner growth agenda.

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LIBRA (September 22-October 23) Events this month will contribute to the sensation that you’re at a tipping point. You have figured out that an approach to existence has reached the end of its useful life. The theme is independence from the structures of the past, including your concepts of family and relationship. I would include every structure you’ve taken for granted, including your notion of what makes you safe. The truth is that nothing but your thoughts contributes to your sense of safety; if your environment is involved, that is associated with the value that you place on certain factors. Anyway, the confidence you’re feeling is real, and it’s closely associated with making the choice not to hold yourself accountable for the actions of others. If you’re feeling better about yourself, that’s about making up your mind that you alone are the assessor of your worth. I suggest that you start to move forward the moment you realize you’re ready to do so. It looks like you’re suddenly taking an idea or creative vision more seriously. From another point of view, you may be observing that something you’ve long dreamed of is now actually possible. It always was, though how you look at such potentials makes all the difference. Devote yourself fully to this thing, whatever it may be, and check in on how much progress you’ve made by mid-June. You’ll be impressed.

SCORPIO (October 23-November 22) Saturn has finally left your sign, which is offering you freedom and flexibility you have not felt in a long time. It’s as if a weight has been taken off of your shoulders. The thing about these kind of developments is that the effects tend to be short lived. The way to maintain the feeling lightness is to remember how much you had to do in order to get there—and keep doing whatever that was. If people need to put you under less pressure, that’s because you’ve stepped up to your known and agreed-to commitments consciously and willingly. If you’re actually responsible for yourself and your actions, you don’t need a boss or parental figure telling you what to do. These are old themes—as old as you are, and because they span the generations, actually far older. It may have taken your entire ancestral lineage to produce you, who has figured out that you are responsible for what you say, think, do and feel. You are responsible for what happens in your environment. But this only becomes a burden if you pretend it’s not true—then suddenly you’re under everyone’s thumb. To really be free, you don’t have to live up to the expectations of others. Rather, you must set high standards for yourself and exceed your own expectations on a regular basis.

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SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 22) Attend to practical matters first. Let form follow function. Let content dictate form. Attend to your responsibilities in the order they come due, and while you’re at it, get ahead on long-term projects. You may be feeling like you’ve been released from an invisible bubble. You may feel like suddenly people are noticing your presence, your talent and your wisdom. Definitely invest some energy into social affairs, though keep your focus on what you know needs to happen; on what you want to make happen. The special beauty of this moment is that your most intelligent ideas will translate easily into something tangible, whereas on the past they might have seemed too abstract to do much with. In a similar vein, each step you take toward any worthwhile goal supports all of your goals. It’s not merely your imagination telling you that your long-range objectives are within reach if you concentrate your efforts and take the necessary steps to get there. You have seen the power of negative thinking to waste your energy and derail your peace of mind. That is becoming a thing of the past, though you may have one last run-in with a point of view that you know you’re done with. The key to the puzzle that seems to vex the human race: take absolute responsibility for your own thoughts, and move on fast.

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CAPRICORN (December 22-January 20) If you’ve been putting off decisions about money, you will soon know exactly what to do. Do your research and get your plan of action together. Consult any necessary advisors. There will be some matters you can attend to the first week of the year.

However, should there be any additional preparations necessary, I suggest however that you wait until after Mercury stations direct on February 11 to implement any actions. The more money is involved, the more important it is to wait out Mercury retrograde. This is less about superstition and more about allowing additional information to emerge. The nature of Mercury retrograde is to flush out hidden information. It’s also to find the weakness in the system; the two are often related. Meanwhile, the recent sign change of Saturn is encouraging you to tune into yourself for all of the information you need, on nearly any subject. No doubt you have plenty of data in your hands and will soon have more. In the end, the final check on any decision is your intuition. As the next few months progress, you may find yourself losing interest in what anyone thinks on any topic of actual importance to you. Pry yourself out of that every now and then and reality check with someone or two people that you have come to trust over the years. The final call is always yours.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 19)

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102 PLANET WAVES CHRONOGRAM 1/15

You are entering The Year of the Peak Experience. Such is the thing you want to do all the way; the full distance; scaling the actual mountain rather than riding on Space Mountain. A number of factors describe this, though one is letting go of an obsession with consequences that seems to have stalked you for a while.

This has been an excellent exercise in accountability. You have, if you’re been in tune with your astrology, learned how to think things through. You’ve figured out that what you do now influences what happens later. The whole time thing can be annoying, but at least it’s dependable and can be put to productive use. Even as you experiment with more daring people, places and experiences, you still have a diversity of safety devices in place that will keep you from running off the rails—and at times you may need to override them. For example, you may be more conservative than usual in financial and sexual matters, having a tendency to fear the worst. You may check your intuition regularly, seeking facts to support your hunches. In order to succeed at anything, you will need to take some risks. The good thing is that those can be conscious choices rather than involuntary reflexes. That and a modicum of intelligence is all anyone needs, and you have plenty more than that.

PISCES (February 19-March 20) No need to wonder what has become of your insecurities: the mighty Saturn has taken its place at the top of your solar chart.

This is your moment to take command of your life, and by extension, all the affairs over which you preside. Pisces has big dreams, though few know the extent to which you are driven by the desire and indeed the need to achieve something real. However, in recent years it hasn’t been that easy to concentrate your efforts. Yes, there has been a bit too much going on, and events moving faster than you could keep up. Mainly there has been a confidence issue. Thankfully you’ve grown tired enough of it to want to get over it—and that’s most of what it takes. Part of your confidence issue has involved concerns about being accused of the profit motive. I realize that not every Pisces aspires to be Jesus or Buddha, but most people born under your sign put service first, pleasure second and profits last. Your current phase of enhanced leadership directly involves focusing the drive to make money at what you do.

You don’t have to play the game of society’s cognitive dissonance on this issue. Whatever their theoretical philosophy, everyone likes to have money in their pocket. All the better if it’s earned with a clear conscience, as yours most surely is.

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Parting Shot

A photo from Eating Delancey: A Celebration of Jewish Food by Aaron Rezny and Jordan Schaps.

New York’s Lower East Side is not only a location, but also a state of mind. Woodstock native Aaron Rezny captures the je ne sais quoi of the storied neighborhood through reflections and photographs in his new book Eating Delancey: A Celebration of Jewish Food (Powerhouse Books, 2014). A book dedicated to eating traditional Eastern European Jewish food is not only filled with handfuls of recipes, but it’s also rounded out with enticing photos of entrees, nostalgic flashes of old New York, and loving memories of being “a New York City kid.” Rezny and co-author Jordan Schaps invite a community of celebrities and notable names to muse over the bond they share with the mom-and-pop Jewish restaurants that populated the 104 CHRONOGRAM 1/15

Lower East Side prior to the “hipster” era of grand-scale gentrification. Contributors include documentary filmmaker Michael Levine, writer Dan Shaw, and fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, with an introduction from the late Joan Rivers. Flipping through the pages of Eating Delancey, expect to find classic photos of Jewish market storefronts that portray the perfect blend of an Eastern European and all-American spirit, paired with savory images of authentic Jewish foods such as rugelach, potato latkes, and challah. As the Passover proverb that’s quoted at the end of the book puts it, “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.”

—Laura Farrell

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