The staff of Savage Wonder, a veteran-focused arts organization, which recently moved to the former Mechanic Bank building on Main Street in Beacon. Founder Chris Meyer is pictured, center.
Photo by David McIntyre
COMMUNITY PAGES, PAGE 38
DEPARTMENTS
6 On the Cover: Jeremy Dennis
Jeremy Dennis’s photographs expose acts of Indigenous erasure—and the persistence of Native resistance.
8 Esteemed Reader
Jason Stern confronts his inner Superfund site.
9 Editor’s Note
Brian K. Mahoney on the necessity of speaking out.
CRAFT BEVERAGE
10 The Trees Come First: Metal House Cider Metal House Cider branches out in New Paltz with a new orchard, cellar ambitions, and a punk-rock devotion to tree-first cidermaking.
16 Craft Beverage Map
There are nearly 200 craft beverage producers in the region. Visit them all! Map by Mosa Tanksley.
FOOD & DRINK
20 Isabela: A Bistro of Sorts
Chef Jose Ramirez-Ruiz, who earned a Michelin star at Semilla in Williamsburg, has opened a vegetable-forward restaurant in Amenia.
22 Sips and Bites
Recent openings include Tibet Pho in Bearsville, Club Sandwich in Tivoli, and Beacon Quality Eats in Beacon.
HOME & GARDEN
24 Sunny Side Up
Ghislaine and Jaime Vinas transform a crumbling Tivoli cottage into a radiant, color-forward retreat rooted in history, light, and their deep design sensibility.
HEALTH & WELLNESS
34 What No One Told You About Menopause
Once stigmatized and silent, menopause is being reclaimed by Hudson Valley women as a powerful, shared rite of passage toward healing and connection.
COMMUNITY PAGES
38 Beacon: The Fight to Shape the Future
As Beacon booms, city leaders, activists, and residents wrestle with development, affordability, and identity— balancing preservation and progress in a community shaped by planning, protest, and grassroots creativity.
46 Beacon Portraits by David McIntyre
RURAL INTELLIGENCE
54 The Workshop Experience Weekend
The Workshop Experience returns to Hillsdale May 10-11 with hands-on classes in cooking, blacksmithing, bonsai, community choral singing, and more—celebrating curiosity, community, and creativity in a beautifully curated, placebased weekend of learning.
Mike Brandon of the Mystery Lights, who play No Fun in Troy on May 3.
Photo by Gabriella Gagliano
THE GUIDE, PAGE 68
ARTS
56 Music
Dan Epstein reviews Do You Still Think of Me? by Benny Trokan. Jeremy Schwartz reviews Short Tales of Science Fiction and Family Dissonance by June Cleaver and the Steak Knives. Michael Eck reviews Strange As Trees: Songs of the Incredible String Band by Margaret Vetare. Plus listening recommendations from Isabel Soffer and Danny Melnick, owners of The Local in Saugerties.
57 Books
Joan Vos MacDonald talks with Heinz Insu Fenkl about translating Snowy Day and Other Stories by noted Korean filmmaker and author Lee Chang-dong. Plus short reviews of Crush by Ada Calhoun; The Poorly Made and Other Things by Sam Rebelein; 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times by Ross Benes; The Boats of Summer, Volumes 1 and 2 by Richard V. Elliott; and Fabian: A Cubist Biography by Tom Newton.
58 Poetry
Poems by Kemp Battle, James Christopher Carroll, Steve Clark, Matt Clifton, Emily Gaynor, Janet Kaplan, Ze’ev Willy Neumann, Ben Rendich, Christopher Porpora, Geroge J. Searles, J. R. Solonche, Brandon Wolfe. Edited by Phillip X Levine.
THE GUIDE
60 In Catskill, Joe Stefko has been publishing exquisitely designed limited edition books under the Charnel House imprint for over 30 years.
63 Live Music: Dean Wareham at Bearsville, Tune-Yards at Assembly, and Italian Surf Academy at Untouchable Bar.
65 “The Tango Diaries” has its premiere run May 2-18 at Philipstown Depot Theater.
67 Franc Palaia’s “Urban Archeology” retrospective is on exhibit at Garner Arts Center May 3 to June 15.
68 The Mystery Lights rock No Fun in Troy on May 3.
70 Fran Lebowitz speaks her mind at the Paramount Hudson Valley Theater in Peekskill on May 9.
71 Short List: PKX Festival, Asbury Shorts USA, Hudson Valley Kite Fest, Spring Antiques at Rhinebeck, and more.
72 Highlights of museum and gallery shows across the Hudson Valley, Catskills, and Berkshires.
HOROSCOPES
76 Toe Holds, Traction, Then Double-Jointed Movement
Cory Nakasue reveals what the stars have in store for us.
PARTING SHOT
80 This Ain’t Your Land
Dan Goldman’s stark photos at Convey/er/or in Poughkeepsie ask: What does it mean to be unseen— and unseeable—in America today? may 5 25
on the cover
Unleash Your
Creativity
Arts Week at Omega
JUNE 29-JULY 4
eOmega.org/arts-week
Leisure and Erasure on Stolen Land
Jeremy Dennis’s Art of Resistance
Jeremy Dennis, a member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, uses photography to probe the ongoing tensions between Indigenous and non-Native people. His image Land Claim, shot on the shores of Peconic Bay—ancestral Shinnecock land—depicts a white woman planting a beach umbrella in the sand while an Indigenous man, presumably Dennis, struggles beneath it. “The absurdity of the scene mirrors the historical reality of Indigenous land dispossession— how casually, even unknowingly, Colonial violence continues in everyday actions,” Dennis says.
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The image exaggerates a familiar scenario to spotlight Indigenous erasure. The woman is oblivious to the harm she’s causing, echoing how Native presence is ignored in places like Southampton, where Shinnecock people must pay $50 a day to access beaches free to town residents.
“Land Claim’s title plays on legal battles over Indigenous land while literally showing a moment of physical displacement. The image exaggerates this everyday reality. It also speaks to the invisibility of Indigenous presence; the woman is completely unaware of the harm she’s doing. That’s the unsettling part,” Dennis says.
Dennis meticulously plans his shoots—sketching compositions, scouting locations, assembling props—then leaves space for spontaneity. In Land Claim, a beach towel and umbrella evoke contemporary land occupation; the subject’s posture suggests both struggle and resistance. Shot with a Canon 5DSR using a wide-angle lens, the photo captures the expansiveness of the shoreline while keeping its central figures sharply in focus. Its saturated vacation hues contrast starkly with the image’s unsettling undertones.
“I’m excited to share this work in the Hudson Valley, where histories of displacement and resistance are deeply rooted. I want viewers to sit in the discomfort of these juxtapositions—to laugh, to feel unsettled, to recognize the absurdity of the fears and myths that persist about Indigenous people,” Dennis says. “My work isn’t just about the past; it’s about how history lingers in the present.”
Dennis’s upcoming exhibition, “Rise: Scenes of Resistance,” runs May 17-June 22 at Garrison Art Center. Featuring new and past work, the show explores defiance, resilience, and the reimagining of history. “The Hudson Valley has long been a contested space—home to Indigenous nations, sites of colonial violence, and later, political and artistic movements,” Dennis says. “These conversations about land, memory, and resistance aren’t just historical—they’re ongoing.”
For Dennis, Native survival isn’t a relic of the past. “Art is one of the ways I engage with that, using humor and surrealism to challenge dominant narratives,” he says. “We are still here, resisting, and telling our own stories.”
—Mike Cobb
EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Brian K. Mahoney brian.mahoney@chronogram.com
CREATIVE DIRECTOR David C. Perry david.perry@chronogram.com
DIGITAL EDITOR Marie Doyon marie.doyon@chronogram.com
ARTS EDITOR Peter Aaron music@chronogram.com
HOME EDITOR Mary Angeles Armstrong home@chronogram.com
POETRY EDITOR Phillip X Levine poetry@chronogram.com
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Anne Pyburn Craig apcraig@chronogram.com
Maggie Baribault, Winona Barton-Ballentine, Mike Cobb, Michael Eck, Dan Epstein, Jamie Larson, Elias Levey-Swain, Joan Vos MacDonald, David McIntyre, Carrie Molay, Cory Nakasue, Jeremy Schwartz, Sparrow, Mosa Tanksley, Taliesin Thomas
PUBLISHING
FOUNDERS Jason Stern, Amara Projansky
PUBLISHER & CEO Amara Projansky amara.projansky@chronogram.com
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT Jan Dewey jan.dewey@chronogram.com
BOARD CHAIR David Dell
sales manager
Andrea Fliakos andrea.fliakos@chronogram.com
media specialists
Kaitlyn LeLay kaitlyn.lelay@chronogram.com
Kelin Long-Gaye kelin.long-gaye@chronogram.com
Kris Schneider kris.schneider@chronogram.com
ad operations
Jared Winslow jared.winslow@chronogram.com
marketing
MARKETING & EVENTS MANAGER
Margot Isaacs margot.isaacs@chronogram.com
BRANDED CONTENT WRITER
Xenia Ellenbogen xenia.ellenbogen@chronogram.com
administration
FINANCE MANAGER
Nicole Clanahan accounting@chronogram.com
production
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR
Kerry Tinger kerry.tinger@chronogram.com
PRODUCTION DESIGNER
Kate Brodowska kate.brodowska@chronogram.com
office
45 Pine Grove Avenue, Suite 303, Kingston, NY 12401 • (845) 334-8600
I woke up this morning to the sound of birds singing and I didn’t like it. Rising from bed I went to the bathroom and looked out the window to see the sun shining on the horizon in a perfectly clear blue sky. I saw the daffodils sprouting on the lawn and squirrels chasing each other with a playful, procreative impulse. The depressing feeling persisted and deepened.
Standing in the shower I began thinking about a person I don’t like. He’s so full of himself, I was thinking, such a big ego, boasting incessantly about what and who he knows, bragging about his humility. I could barely feel the hot water pouring over my body as these thoughts led to complaints about other things.
Celebrate Treasured Occasions
I could see the complaining happening and I had a vague sense that I should somehow struggle against it and try to be present, but I forgot this impulse when new objects of ire popped up as if there was a voice inside yelling, “And another thing…!”
Washed and dressed, I went downstairs to make coffee. My wife was in the kitchen and, giving way to one of the fixations that had been building steam in the shower, I criticized the way she was handling an issue having to do with one of our children. She nodded in a kindly way, gave a brief, neutral explanation of her approach and changed the subject. Her clean response provided a mirror which, to her credit, remained intact under the buffet of my criticism.
I felt sad and empty. The bright, beautiful spring day was in stark contrast to my weakness, lack of creativity, and general malaise. It seemed to mock me in presenting an occasion to which I could not rise.
In this moment of relative clarity, I remembered an admonition for practice which says, “Like what it doesn’t like.” With this in mind I took my coffee outside and stood in the sun. Little by little, its radiance penetrated the crust of my associations. I reflected on the ubiquity of my negative thoughts and could see that they are not only useless, but actually destructive. Perhaps I could simply let them go but the whining complaints and criticisms arise with a compelling arsenal of justifications and reasons.
In the political arena, I stand in judgement of the many stupid and ignorant people who don’t share my opinions. We are all spectators in the same stadium but they are rooting for the other team and I despise them for it. I’m not interested in how they have come to be so deluded as to not share my sensibility. I wouldn’t humiliate myself by inspecting their stupid and ignorant sources of information. I even have a secret fear that reading their news channel would somehow, like a vector of contagion, make me ill and poison my mind.
In my personal life, I see how this liking and disliking of people leads to a narrow and limited band of experience. With someone I don’t like, I’ll quickly send their call to voicemail or cross the street to avoid running into them. I’ll talk to the few people I like at a party and steadfastly avoid everyone else. I stand in judgement of other people’s haircuts, clothes, opinions, and manner of expressing themselves. I particularly dislike people that fail to acknowledge my importance, don’t notice me, or express insulting insinuations.
When the negativity of judgement of others and fear of existential danger abates for a moment I feel empty and bereft. Instinctively I pick up my phone and read the news or the social media channels specially curated to satisfy the appetite of the toothy tapeworm gnawing at my gut. Reading the “news” or likeminded people’s opinions about what’s wrong with each other and the world is a palliative, a temporary tonic, like having a drink, or taking antibiotics.
Seeing reprehensible behavior in others is easy. The negativity implanted in myself and its manifestations is more difficult to acknowledge. A glimpse of the ubiquity and depth of my negativity, and my addiction to its poison, is nearly impossible to bear. I turn away and go back to complaining and criticizing myself, others, and the world. Even inebriation with substances or mindfulness meditation is better than confronting the inner Superfund site.
By grace, at times I catch a glimpse not only of the poverty of my state but also another possibility. This other state doesn’t admit negativity. Integral to this freer state is a hunger and aspiration to be with what is, to maintain a watchful, engaged and curious regard for the pleasant and unpleasant, the attractive and repulsive, good and evil alike.
by Brian K. Mahoney
Resistance Is Fertile
Following the reelection of Donald Trump last year, I wrote a column in the December issue expressing my bewilderment that 70-plus million people voted for a bully whose bedrock campaign promise was cruelty. Brutishness to the LGBTQ community, viciousness to immigrants, bloodthirstiness to academic and cultural institutions, abandonment of foreign aid programs, savagery to the bureaucracy that runs the government. Say what you want about the man, but he’s certainly kept his promise.
Now, just four months into his second term, it’s clear that the cruelty was only the beginning. What we’re seeing now is something much darker and more coordinated: An effort not just to punish political enemies or settle scores, but to fundamentally reorder American democracy. Trump’s executive overreach has become routine. His administration has begun using federal agencies—DOJ, IRS, ICE—as political weapons. Deportations have ramped up despite court orders. DOGE is gutting entire swaths of the civil service. Harvard is under IRS review for being too “woke.” This isn’t a second term. This is a reckoning with American authoritarianism. And it’s not just policy. It’s the performance of power. This administration governs by spectacle, grievance, threat, and retribution. The damage is immediate, but the deeper danger is to our norms—to the invisible glue that keeps democracy from becoming mob rule. As political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt wrote in How Democracies Die, institutions alone can’t protect democracy. They depend on mutual toleration and forbearance—the idea that opponents are legitimate and power should be used with restraint. This administration rejects both outright. As Levitsky and Ziblatt warn, “Democracies may die at the hands of elected leaders who subvert the very process that brought them to power.” That isn’t a hypothetical anymore.
The consequences are cascading. Economically, we’re seeing what political scientist Ian Bremmer recently called “the most destructive economic own goal in recent history”: the reimposition of sweeping tariffs under the empty promise of bringing manufacturing back home. No credible economist believes tariffs can do this. What they do achieve is higher prices, disrupted supply chains, and pain for small businesses—the very folks this administration claims to champion.
You don’t need to take my word for it. Take it from Don Guidi, CEO of Paper House Productions in Saugerties, who wrote to us after the latest round of tariffs went into effect.
“Trump’s tariffs are destroying the value and jobs of small businesses,” he wrote. “Americans will continue to pay more for products like ours going forward, as we will have to raise prices just to stay in business. We pay the ‘China’ tax— not China.” His company, which designs paper goods and has employed hundreds of Hudson Valley residents over the past four decades, now faces an uncertain future because the quality he needs simply isn’t available domestically—and the administration knows it. The tariffs aren’t protectionist—they’re punitive.
After we posted a call on Instagram for small businesses affected by the tariffs to contact us for an article we’re currently reporting, the floodgates opened. Small business owners of all stripes— chefs, wine shop owners, farmers, clothing retailers, chocolatiers, an upholsterer, and a lumberyard owner among many others—wrote in with stories of rising costs, squeezed margins, and the hollowing-out of the local economy. What ties their experiences together isn’t just economic anxiety—it’s the quiet, dawning realization that their government is no longer on their side.
But if despair is tempting, it isn’t the only option. On April 5, thousands of people across the country joined the Hands-Off movement, staging rallies in cities big and small. Here in Kingston, I stood in Academy Green Park with
neighbors, activists, students, and elders. We were there to say: Hands off our bodies, hands off our neighbors, hands off the First Amendment, hands off our rights. There was no national leader, no slick branding campaign, no celebrity endorsements. Just people—Americans—stepping up because they felt they had to.
That sense of duty is something writer Amitava Kumar spoke to recently in an interview we published in early April. Kumar, who immigrated to the US decades ago and is now a citizen, said, “The only reason I feel a certain calm is because I am a US citizen. But because I am a citizen, I have to say something. I feel like I have a greater responsibility to stay and fight.”
That’s the call. That’s the imperative. Not just for writers or activists or business owners but for anyone with a voice, a platform, a patch of ground to stand on. We are not helpless. We are not voiceless. But we are obligated. Those of us who can speak must speak. Those who can organize must organize. Those who can stand up, even shakily, must do so.
Democracy doesn’t die with a bang. It dies with a shrug. With a news cycle that moves on. With the hope that someone else will handle it. But someone else isn’t coming. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. Resistance isn’t futile. It’s fertile. And now it’s time for planting.
The April 5 Hands-Off protest at Academy Green Park in Kingston.
Photo: Brian K. Mahoney
The Trees Come First
METAL HOUSE CIDER IS MAKING MOVES
By Elias Levey-Swain
Kimberly Kae does it all for the trees. That much is clear, following her through the orchards, where she greets them like old friends. Remarking on the raggedy appearance of one sapling, she holds its branch tenderly. “I’ll be back tomorrow to prune you,” she promises. There’s much work to do. Spring for the cidermaker promises the mammoth labor of new plantings on top of regular orchard maintenance, not to mention all that’s to be done in the cellar. For Kae, who’s run Metal House Cider with her husband, Matt DiFrancesco, since 2015, this year is a different beast entirely.
Last spring, Kae and DiFrancesco moved their family from Esopus to New Paltz, leaving behind their home of over a decade, along with the small orchard that sits on the property and the corrugated metal barn—the titular “metal house”—that’s served as their production space since the very beginning. They continue to manage the historic orchard down the road at the former Rosemount Estate—900 trees or so, which they’ve tended for the past eight years with permission from the owner. But, with space
constraints on the production side and dreams of a larger home orchard, it was time for something new. Like shedding a too-tight skin, bidding adieu to the old metal house signifies a poetic moment of revolution for the small-but-mighty cidery: It’s time for Metal House to grow.
The New Paltz property—18 acres on South Putt Corners Road—comes equipped with an established orchard, an old Dutch barn complex, and a beautiful farmhouse, the basement of which they’ve converted into a functional cellar. The locus of Kae’s ambition is the orchard, where she’s already begun pruning the existing trees and mapping out new plantings. Fifty new trees this season, she says: Oxford, Golden Russet, Gold Rush, and some crabs. The land, an apple orchard for three generations now, has been conventionally managed. The vision is to expand the orchard while simultaneously converting the land to holistic farming: organic sprays, biodynamic preparations, companion plants, and silvopasture (an agroforestry practice wherein livestock graze in the orchard to promote biodiversity and soil health). Kae hopes it will
be a model for other farmers seeking to dispense with conventional practices amid a changing climate. She fantasizes about leading tours through their orchard and production spaces: This is what holistic farming looks like, she’ll tell people, from the tree to the bottle. “You need to know what you’re doing in the cellar, of course, but the orchard comes first,” Kae explains. “Good cider comes from well-grown fruit.”
From Scrumpy to Sparkling
As for the cellar, Kae and DiFrancesco’s mastery has come a long way since their earliest experiments. Moving from Brooklyn to Esopus in 2009, seeking a “more engaged experience with the ground,” they quickly turned to the 45 neglected apple trees on their new property for inspiration. Borrowing an old cider press from a neighbor down the road, they made a scrumpy “a real funky, farmhouse kind of a cider,” Kae remembers. They fermented it quickly, left it unsparkling, and siphoned it into old beer and vinegar bottles. “We thought it was pretty good,” Kae admits. It’s been trial and error, alongside
Metal House Cider recently moved operations from a humble outpost in Esopus to an 18-acre farm in New Paltz.
borrowed wisdom from the likes of Autumn Stoscheck of Eve’s Cidery and DiFrancesco’s own father, a retired Finger Lakes vintner, that’s pushed Metal House far beyond the rustic slapdashery of their first eager attempts.
Metal House ciders are made with handharvested and hand-selected fruit, and there’s not an inch of automation in their production line. Passing through a homemade rack-and-cloth press in the fall, the juices ferment naturally, then rest through the winter. In the spring, the cider is blended, and sugar, nutrients, and yeast are added to encourage a second fermentation in the bottle. This stage, tirage, lasts from six months up to several years. When the bottles have reached the desired flavor and effervescence, Kae and DiFrancesco disgorge them by hand—a rigorous labor of removing the lees while leaving the rest of the cider in the bottle, not unlike pulling a tablecloth out from beneath a teetering tower of china.
This process—Methode Champenoise—is associated with the finest sparkling wines. While not unheard of in cidermaking, it’s far from standard practice. The result is a cider with a refined stateliness; the bubbles are mouth-filling and uniform, the flavors balanced and welltempered. These methods require glass bottles with a crown cap, fitting for a cider more rightly imbibed from a Champagne flute than a can or a pint glass. The likeness of their product to a fine wine was perhaps what called the attention of Field Blend Selections, a distributor working otherwise exclusively with winemakers, who picked up Metal House last year.
But proven methods do not preclude experimentation. “I want to reach for something that’s classic,” Kae explains, “but I want to play with it as much as we can, given the fruit we have.” In this spirit, echoed in the caption of a recent Instagram post—“genre be damned”— Metal House has increasingly dabbled in unusual blends and coferments. The 2020 Pearlina is a blend of wild pears and Esopus Jonathan, Idared, and Rambo apples; the 2021 Bam Bam is a coferment of Cabernet Franc skins and local Jonamac. Recurring cuvees coexist with one-time oddities, depending on the availability and quality of fruit in a given season. Kae’s staunch commitment to using holistically grown fruit encourages playful innovation with whatever’s available, while discipline in the cellar allays the risk of either waste or a subpar product. These, for Kae, are one and the same. If the product is flawed, the tank is getting dumped—no small cost for a tiny producer. “I think this comes down to being a really harsh critic about what we put out,” Kae says. “We wouldn’t release an experimental something that failed even part way.” Asked how she can hold convention in one hand and experimentation in the other, Kae recalls another question posed to her by a friend: “How can you be punk rock and drive a Volvo?” She laughs as she answers, “Because you can.”
Pump Up the Volume
The production space in New Paltz remains a work in progress. DiFrancesco, who runs his own construction company, is drawing up plans. Emerging out of the cavernous cellar, Kae points toward the barn complex across the lawn. The smallest one’s in pretty good shape, she explains, but they’ll need to create a new entry. The big one in the middle needs to be taken apart piece by piece, then reconstructed. The furthest one needs to be lifted up so that a new foundation can be laid underneath. The result will be a much larger production space than they’ve ever enjoyed, allowing for more volume and more experimentation. Metal House’s annual output is dictated by fruit yield and availability. It ranges widely, thanks to an increasingly fickle climate, from roughly 300 gallons in a bad growing season to 2,000 gallons in a good one. The new orchard, as well as the larger production space will hopefully facilitate a larger and more consistent annual yield. The heart quickens at the thought of all that remains to be done. Renovations, new plantings. The turbulent economy is another thing; Kae already knows she’ll have to find a new bottle supplier. Amid all that, harvest creeps up. As Kae recounts all of this, though, there is more wonder in her eyes than anxiety. She looks over toward the new orchard, where a family of deer
has convened in the early dusk around a pile of yesterday’s pruning. “They love the budwood,” she says, smiling.
There’s a lot of cider in the Hudson Valley, and in New Paltz in particular, but for Kae it’s never been about competition. “It’s like Napa,” she says. “More is more. In cider, there are so many ways to do it.” As for Kae’s philosophy? “It’s all about finding a way to be in the trees, finding a way to justify spending so many hours in the cold, in the winter, in the trees, pruning. In any season, being in the trees is the reason to do it.” Even though the old metal house sits empty back in Esopus, the spirit of Metal House lives on in the new orchard. Strolling among the trees with Kae, it’s hard not to see what she sees: the potential for “a diverse and alive orchard environment,” colorful with companion plants and bustling with grazing livestock. And, as for the cider, its quality will no doubt continue to express, with humble elegance, the attention paid to its origins.
Metal House Cider can be purchased in bottle shops and restaurants throughout the Hudson Valley and New York City. Reliable stockists include the Montgomery Place Orchards Farm Market (from whom Metal House has sourced fruit in the past) and Kingston Standard. It can also be purchased directly from Metalhousecider.com.
Meatl House Cider owners Kimberly Kae and Matt DiFrancesco.
Craft Beverage Guide
With picturesque surroundings, robust farm-to-table menus, events galore, and of course, top-notch pours, these craft breweries, distilleries, and cideries are detour-worthy destinations all their own.
Set high atop a hill with epic views of the Catskill mountains, Klocke Estate is an earth-to-glass distillery by day and a fine dining destination by night. Working with locally-sourced fruit (much of it grown directly on the property), Klocke Estate’s Master Distillers create exceptional brandies, eau de vies, vermouths, and ready-to-drink cocktails using imported Charentaise and Meuller Pot stills. Come for a distillery tour and taste the magic! Enjoy spritzes and other brandy-based cocktails while taking in the view, then feast upon elegant dishes that marry seasonal, country cooking with the terroir of the Hudson Valley.
Hillrock Estate Distillery
408 Pooles Hill Rd, Ancram (518) 329-1023
Hillrockdistillery.com
One of America’s few Field-toGlass® distilleries, Hillrock hand crafts fine bourbon, rye, and single malt whiskeys from grain grown sustainably on the Estate. Setting a new global standard, Hillrock is the only USA founding member of the Estate Whiskey Alliance located outside of Kentucky. Open seven days a week for tours and tastings.
Dassai Blue Sake Brewery
5 Saint Andrews Road, Hyde Park Dassai.com
Come experience New York’s finest sake–an idea born in Japan, now made in New York. Enjoy exceptional sake and learn about sake production at the Hudson Valley’s only sake brewery. The tasting room is open for tours, tastings, bottle sales, freshly prepared sushi and walk-ins! Stop in anytime for sushi and a flight of premium sake.
Litchfield Distillery
569 Bantam Road, Litchfield, CT
Litchfielddistillery.com
All One One All
221 Craigville Road, Goshen (845) 320-2773
Alloneoneall.org
Sip handcrafted cocktails at AOOA Farm—open April to October, Friday to Sunday. Dig into the farm-to-table menu, grab goodies to-go, and toast the weekend with live music at Friday happy hours. From educational workshops to a dreamy flower u-pick, there’s plenty to taste, try, and take home.
Discover Connecticut’s premiere craft distillery in historic Litchfield. Litchfield Distillery crafts award-winning spirits from Connecticut-grown grains. Enjoy free tours and tastings offered daily, including a walk through the distilling process and Connecticut’s largest rickhouse. An unforgettable experience for whiskey lovers and anyone who values The Spirit of Hard Work®.
Since its opening in 2021, Hudson House & Distillery in West Park has evolved into a multifaceted hospitality destination as refined as the premium spirits it distills. Set on 27 acres with panoramic views of the Hudson River, the property is home to a working distillery, restaurant, and private event spaces, with a boutique hotel to follow.
Founded by hospitality veterans Charles Ferri and Paul Seres, the property includes a stately 1800s Italian Renaissance Revival manor and a four-story brick monastery built in the 1930s. The buildings had fallen into disrepair before Ferri and Seres acquired them in 2015, sparking a challenging six-year-long renovation effort that blended preservation with ambitious new programming. Today, the space and its diversity of offerings appeals equally to couples seeking a wedding venue with an unforgettable view, locals in search of a top-notch weeknight restaurant, and weekenders looking for an immersion in the Hudson Valley’s storied craft beverage scene.
“Anyone can pour a spirit in a glass in any old bar,” Seres says. “Building Hudson House created the opportunity to tell our story and offer a unique experience for our guests.”
The heart of the operation is the distillery, which produces a line of small-batch spirits including Black Creek bourbon, Black Creek Empire rye, and Altair vodka. A new addition to the portfolio, Altair Ultra Premium gin, will debut this spring. Made with non-GMO corn from Sauer Farm in Saugerties and water from the property’s artisanal well, the gin is cold- and slow-proofed for exceptional smoothness. With notes of juniper, jasmine, and citrus, Seres describes it as “a true New York State ultra premium gin,” intended to elevate the profile of any gin cocktail.
Hudson House’s restaurant and bar, open Thursday through Sunday, has become a popular local dining spot as well as a key part of the event experience. The recent completion of its commercial kitchen has enabled the venue to expand its culinary offerings under the direction of Chef Max Renny—offering everything from intimate anniversaries, birthdays, or showers to 200-person seated dinners.
The menu changes seasonally, with an emphasis on comforting yet refined fare. Classics like a burger or NY strip and new spring additions like delicate king crab salad, French onion galette, and a wild mushroom and leek risotto showcase the kitchen’s range and attention to detail.
Cocktails are crafted to complement the Hudson House spirits, and include favorites like an Old Fashioned featuring housemade bourbon maple syrup. Guests can also enjoy a tasting flight of its spirits—bourbon, rye, vodka, and, soon, gin—offering a curated introduction to the distillery’s core lineup.
With its blend of historic architecture and modern amenities, Hudson House has also emerged as a sought-after venue for private events. Smaller gatherings take place in the manor house’s parlors—complete with parquet floors, chandeliers, and fireplaces—while the 5,000-squarefoot former monastery has a ballroom and 300-person deck with Hudson River views to accommodate larger celebrations. A speakeasy-style bar next to the distillery is a favorite for grooms and their parties, and a bright, well-appointed bridal suite upstairs is designed for day-of wedding preparations.
The addition of regular programming throughout the week also makes Hudson House a lively spot to stop in for date night or with friends.
Events range from Thursday and Friday happy hour with $7 Altair vodka cocktails, Thursday night Bougie Bingo hosted by Ferri, line dancing with Double Dee Duke, and DJ nights featuring classic and current dance hits.
Looking ahead, Seres and Ferri are deep in the final phase of the historic property’s development—the opening of a 24-room boutique hotel, with accommodations spread across the manor and monastery. The newly launched online store has also made Hudson House spirits available for nationwide and international shipping, the next step in bringing a decade of hard work to spirits lovers in the Hudson Valley and beyond.
Thehudsonhouseny.com
A Spirited Scene Hudson House Raises the Bar for Distillery-As-Destination
Catskill Brewery
672 Old Route 17, Livingston Manor (845) 439-1232 Catskillbrewery.com
Honest, hardworking beer crafted in Livingston Manor! Powered by the sun, the earth, and pristine Catskill mountain water—Catskill Brewery is an expression of everything that makes this region beautiful. Visit their taproom in Livingston Manor for weekly live music, events in their spacious beer garden, food trucks, and the best beer in the Catskills.
Roe Jan Brewing
32 Anthony Street, Hillsdale (518) 303-8080
Roejanbrewing.com
Drink in history in this awardwinning restoration, where every detail invites visitors to unwind and reconnect. Enjoy exceptional craft beer that’s beautifully balanced and true to tradition, and savor hearty pub fare prepared in an open kitchen. And don’t miss the weekend lineup of regional live music. Dogs welcome too!
Rough Cut Brewing
5945 Route 44/55, Kerhonkson (845) 626-9838
Roughcutbrewing.com
Discover Rough Cut Brewing— just minutes from Minnewaska State Park. Enjoy award-winning craft beer, delicious food, and a spacious, dog-friendly outdoor dining area nestled in the scenic Shawangunk Ridge. Perfect for post-hike brews or relaxing with friends in the heart of the Hudson Valley.
RMV Cellars
112 Burroughs Drive, West Park Redmaplevineyard.com/rmvcellars
RMV Cellars is Red Maple Vineyard’s sister location and the new home of Great Life Brewing. Featuring awardwinning wines by Madi Marshall, award-winning beers by Cody Lynch, and seasonally and globally inspired food by Sara Gonzalez. Winery, brewery, restaurant and sculpture garden with live music Friday and Saturday evenings. Dog friendly. Family friendly.
Two Farms Brewing
689 Winterton Road, Bloomingburg (845) 412-5205
Twofarmsbrewing.com
Tucked away in the woods beside a lavender field, Two Farms Brewing is a hidden gem farm brewery crafting small batch flagship brews and unique, seasonal offerings using local NY ingredients. Their diverse range of beverages, rooted in sustainable practices and farm-fresh character, offers bold flavor and an unforgettable experience.
Aspire Brewing
600 N Galleria Drive, Middletown (845) 673-5975
Aspirebrewing.com
Aspire Brewing is a 30,000-square-foot brewery, restaurant, and entertainment facility. It features a self-pour tap wall, a beer hall with over 40 taps, a full kitchen offering an elevated pub menu, axe throwing, indoor cornhole, golf simulators, and an elegant private event space.
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C. Cassis is a farm winery and distillery focusing on all things black currant. Visit their jewelbox tasting room, CCTR, on Saturdays and Sundays 12-6pm for exceptional small plates, cheese/charcuterie, cocktails, natural wine, beer, and cider, plus a charming market and bottle shop. Regularly hosts guest chefs and excellent pop-ups!
Little Apple Cidery
178 Orchard Lane, Hillsdale (518) 610-1345
Littleapplecidery.com
Little Apple Cidery is a beautiful destination for people of all ages. Enjoy a fine selection of ciders under an apple tree at their seasonal Orchard Bar and Market. Reopens May 10 with live music. Don’t miss out on the apple blossoms! Open Saturdays and Sundays 1-6pm.
Berkshire Cider Project
508 State Road, North Adams, MA (413) 409-6058
Berkshire-cider.com
Berkshire Cider Project creates dry, sparkling hard ciders inspired by the Berkshires’ art, agriculture, and community. Using local, foraged, and imported apples, their ciders are gluten-free, zerosugar, and naturally aged. Visit their tasting room at Greylock Works in North Adams, or join their Cider Club for seasonal deliveries.
Union Grove Distillery and Arkville Brewstillery
43311 Route 28, Arkville (607) 287-0208
Uniongrovedistillery.com
Union Grove Distillery is farm licensed craft distillery located in the Catskill Mountains in Arkville, New York. Stop by to pick up some of our spirits, enjoy a cocktail, or a Calico Outlaw Brewing beer on tap. Visit the Brewstillery today.
Whitecliff has dedicated more than 30 years to finding and planting grape varieties that succeed on their site. They are dedicated to sustainability, environmentalism, and producing vegan wines to be proud of. The family run business is celebrating 25 years in 2024. Winning more international awards than any other producer in the Hudson Valley, they are certified sustainable, and make limited release vegan wines. With two tasting rooms, one in Gardiner and one in Hudson, it’s simple to come and see why their favorite review described them as “Like visiting an unpretentious friend who is excited to teach people about wine.”
Nostrano Vineyards
14 Gala Lane, Milton (845) 795-5473
Nostranovineyards.com
Nostrano Vineyards is a familyrun, 65-acre farm, vineyard, and winery in the heart of the Hudson Valley. Relax in their hilltop tasting room, where rustic charm meets sweeping vineyard views. Sip awardwinning wines, enjoy woodfired pizza and local charcuterie, and take in live music—indoors or al fresco beneath the glow of a Hudson Valley sunset. Come share the Nostrano experience with friends and family!
Brooklyn Cider House
155 N. Ohioville Road, New Paltz (845) 633-8657
Brooklynciderhouse.com
Explore artisan cider like never before with their Small Batch Club! Membership includes a quarterly release, a discount on all additional bottles, free flights in the tasting room, a free tour of the cidery, seasonal gifts, cidermaker insights, and invitations to exclusive events. Gifting and pickup options available.
4. Aspire Brewing
600 North Galleria Drive, Middletown (845) 673-5975 • Aspirebrewing.com
Aspire Brewing in Middletown, offers +35 of their own craft beers. The brewery features a self-pour tap wall, cornhole, axe throwing, golf simulators, and an award-winning full-service restaurant.
Honest, hardworking beer crafted in Livingston Manor. Visit their taproom in Livingston Manor for weekly live music, events in their spacious beer garden, food trucks, and the best beer in the Catskills! IG: @TheCatskillBrewery
30. King's Court Brewing Company 40 Cannon Street, Suite 1, Poughkeepsie (860) 918-0925 • Kingscourtbrewingcompany.com Kings Court Brewing Company is a craft brewery located in Poughkeepsie. Come enjoy awardwinning craft beers in their cozy taproom! Indoor & outdoor seating, pet friendly, and ample parking!
49. Roe Jan Brewing
32 Anthony Street, Hillsdale (518) 303-8080 • Roejanbrewing.com
Exceptional craft beer, hearty pub fare, and live music every weekend in an award-winning historic restoration.
Discover Rough Cut Brewing—serving a wide selection of award-winning craft beer and food with spacious, dog-friendly outdoor dining. Just minutes from Minnewaska State Park in the heart of the Shawangunk Ridge.
Tucked in the woods, Two Farms Brewing offers small batch flagship and seasonal brews, a beer terrace with outdoor seating, cozy fire pits, and a laid-back atmosphere rooted in farm-fresh flavor.
65. Upper Depot Brewing Co. 708 State Street #1, Hudson (518) 859-9114 • Upperdepot.com
Locally owned and operated, their taproom features up to 12 craft beers rotating seasonally and made fresh in house by head brewer, Aaron Maas. With a wraparound deck reminiscent of a train platform, there’s plenty of room for outdoor seating. Show this ad for $1 off a pint, one per customer.
67. Wallenpaupack Brewing Company
73 Welwood Avenue, Hawley, PA (570) 390-7933 • Wallenpaupackbrewingco.com
Earning national acclaim with three Great American Beer Festival medals and a World Beer Cup, Wallenpaupack Brewing Company produces a wide variety of both traditional and innovative styles for every palate.
5. Berkshire Cider Project Greylock WORKS, 508 State Road, North Adams, MA (413) 409-6058 • Berkshire-cider.com
Berkshire Cider Project crafts dry, sparkling, zerosugar ciders using local and foraged apples. Made with care, these gluten-free ciders reflect the region's art, agriculture, and community.
7. Brooklyn Cider House 155 N. Ohioville Road, New Paltz (845) 633-8657 • Brooklynciderhouse.com Visit Twin Star Orchards' homebase for cider flights, wood-fired delights, cidery and orchard tours, live music, and apple picking.
19. Little Apple Cidery 178 Orchard Lane, Hillsdale (518) 610-1345 • Littleapplecidery.com Little Apple Cidery is a beautiful destination for people of all ages. Enjoy a fine selection of ciders at their seasonal Orchard Bar and Market. Reopens May 10th. Saturdays and Sundays 1-6pm.
1. Dassai Blue Sake Brewery
5 Saint Andrews Road, Hyde Park info@dassai.com • Dassai.com
The state-of-the-art sake brewery is open for tours and tastings, bottles sales, sushi and walk-ins! Come experience New York's finest sake.
Sip handcrafted cocktails at AOOA Farm—open April to October, Friday to Sunday. Dig into their farm-to-table menu, grab goodies to-go, and toast the weekend with live music at Friday happy hours. From educational workshops to a dreamy flower U-pick, there’s plenty to taste, try, and take home.
C. Cassis is a blackcurrant aperitif producer with a charming tasting room open on Saturdays and Sundays from 12p-6p. Come by early for lunch and leisurely lounging on this 45 acre property with gardens, fields, and plenty of hidden picnic spots.
16. Hillrock Estate Distillery
408 Poole Hill Road, Ancram (518) 329-1023 • Hillrockdistillery.com
Hillrock crafts award-winning, terroir-driven whiskeys from its own grain, grown sustainably using organic principles and copper pot-distilled in small batches.
20. Klocke Estate Distillery
2554 County Route 27, Hudson (518) 672-1166 • Klocke-estate.com
Set high atop a hill with epic views of the Catskill mountains, Klocke Estate is an earthto-glass Brandy and Vermouth distillery by day, and a fine dining destination by night.
Connecticut’s premiere craft distillery is located in historic Litchfield, CT. Litchfield Distillery produces award-winning spirits from CT-Grown corn, rye and malted barley. Free tours & tastings offered seven days a week.
33. The Hudson House & Distillery 1835 Route 9W, West Park (845) 834-6007 • Thehudsonhouseny.com
A destination distillery like no other in the heart of Hudson Valley.
35. Union Grove Distillery and Arkville Brewstillery 43311 NY-28, Arkville (607) 287-0208 • Uniongrovedistillery.com
A farm licensed craft distillery and brewstillery located in the beautiful Catskill Mountains in Arkville, New York. Vodka, Whiskey, Gin, Maple Spirit. Craft cocktails, beer on tap. Fri & Sat 3-9.
34. RMV Cellars
112 Burroughs Drive, West Park • (845) 834-6050 Redmaplevineyard.com/rmvcellars
Red Maple Vineyard’s sister location & tap room and the new home of Great Life Brewing. Winery, brewery, restaurant and outdoor sculpture garden with live music Friday & Saturday evenings. Dog friendly. Family friendly.
356 South Main Street, Sheffield 7. Black Dirt Distilling Co.
385 Glenwood Road, Pine Island
331 Mckinstry Road, Gardiner
44. Wild Arc Farm
918 Hill Avenue, Pine Bush
When most people think of wine country in the US, regions like Napa, the Willamette Valley, and the Finger Lakes often come to mind. Thanks to a long history of winemaking and a resurgence of interest in minimal intervention and maximum character, the Hudson Valley is quietly yet increasingly lauded as a hidden gem of the wine world. In Ulster and Orange Counties, the Shawangunk Wine Trail offers an easy map to navigate many of the region’s producers.
“Our mission is to support the terroir of Hudson River Region wineries and cideries, which not only allows people to experience our vineyards and orchards in a farm-to-table way but also helps support local jobs in viticulture and agriculture,” says Marygiulia Capobianco, president of the Shawangunk Wine Trail.
While the number of vineyards, orchards, and farms along the Trail have varied over time, there are currently 13 highlights along the west side of the Hudson River. Members range from nationally known names like City Winery Hudson Valley in Montgomery and Angry Orchard in Walden to those steeped in the nation’s history like Brotherhood, America’s Oldest Winery in Washingtonville and Benmarl
in Marlboro, which lays claim to the oldest vines in the US. One thing they all have in common: the arduous growing conditions of rocky or silty soil here, combined with the notoriously fussy nature of grapes grown in the Northeast bring more risk—yet, more reward.
“We have a very unique sense of terroir; our soils may feature clay, silt, glacial rock, and quartz, plus the river draws varying temperatures in different ways than other New York growing regions,” Capobianco says. “This means that our vines need to work hard, so we might produce less yield, but we make up for it in character.”
Established in 1984, the Shawangunk Wine Trail used to appeal to those whose goal was to hit as many wineries as possible in a day. But as wineries and cideries have evolved to experiential destinations, and as drinking culture has changed, Capobianco says that more people are interested in slowing down and making their visits more intentional.
“In the past, it was pretty rock ’n roll, but these days people are seeking smaller, more high-level wine and food experiences,” she explains. “Instead of doing as much as possible once a year, make it an experience you can enjoy throughout the season. Many of these spots are family-friendly, with live music and food trucks. You can spend
Hudson Valley Terroir
Shawangunk Wine Trail Tells the Region’s Story by the Glass
an afternoon sipping wine outside with a blanket spread out enjoying mountain views during our region’s most beautiful seasons.”
One way to enjoy this approach is by purchasing a Wine Tasting Passport, available through their website. The passport provides one prepaid tasting flight at each location between January and August. “The passport is a great way to get to know each place and its offerings, but it also makes a really great gift,” Capobianco says.
In addition to the Passport, members also participate in Trail-wide special events including Earth Day at the Wineries in April and Holiday Fineries at the Wineries during November and December.
“Part of the joy of being on the Wine Trail is that by supporting one, you support them all,” says Capobianco. “The people making wine and cider here are so dedicated and passionate about their craft. When you stop in for a tasting, you’re sampling a season and a moment that was steeped in careful cultivation of the land. Then you can take home a bottle to remember that moment.”
To learn more about the Shawangunk Wine Trail’s member wineries and cideries, special events, or to purchase a Wine Tasting Passport, visit Shawangunkwinetrail.com.
A Bistro of Sorts
ISABELA IN AMENIA
By Carrie Molay
The sourdough comes out first: four warm, golden Parker House-style rolls served with a round of Cowbella butter, topped with tangy buttermilk and a pinch of flaky salt. It’s a quiet, intentional beginning to a meal at Isabela, the new Amenia bistro from Jose Ramirez-Ruiz (in the former Monte’s space). Behind the food’s understated elegance is a deep devotion to craft, community, and—vegetables.
Isabela delights in subtle subversion. While classic cocktails are available, the bar leans hyperlocal: nearly all cider, beer, and spirits are sourced from New York State, with tequila and mezcal the only outliers. Liz, the house bartender, nudged me toward a cocktail on tap: a Tipperary, made with bourbon, sweet vermouth, and Genepy. It lands somewhere between a Manhattan and an herbal Alpine breeze. The nonalcoholic Quince Mezcalito, with quince shrub and orange blossom salt, hits zippy, sweet, and savory notes with style.
Ramirez-Ruiz calls his philosophy cocina de cercanias—cooking with everything around here. Though most ingredients are familiar, the menu is far from obvious. Its pleasures are revealed gradually: A phrase that invites curiosity (what’s a chaudfroid?), or a dish that delivers a stealthy hit of umami.
A Menu Built for Curiosity and Comfort
The menu is organized by size, inviting diners to compose a meal that suits their hunger and habits. After the sourdough, we started with a plate of olives and a side of fresh greens—overwintered baby kale and spinach dressed in a smoky vinaigrette made from foraged spruce boughs. As the season shifts, pea shoots and other spring greens will rotate in.
Ramirez-Ruiz describes Isabela as “a bistro of sorts”—welcoming, beautiful yet casual, and true to its Hudson Valley setting. “I had to build a place that at least attracts people like myself— blue collar people,” he says. To that end, the bar is reserved for walk-ins.
Dishes range from $8 to $36 and span snacks, small plates, mains, and sides. The vegetableforward appetizers best showcase RamirezRuiz’s culinary ethos. Marinated turnips with spinach, puffed rice, and peanuts recall the gentle savoriness of miso in both flavor and texture.
A starter of kale gnudi—pillowy dumplings filled with a sharp ricotta-Parmesan blend— floated in a delicate white bean and Parmesan broth. Though the dish typically includes guanciale, our server offered it without, insisting it’s better that way. She was right.
The trout—blushing coral and perfectly
cooked—is paired with salsa seca, a crunchy seedlaced condiment that adds texture and depth. A puree of celeriac, smooth and earthy, forms the base, while paper-thin slices of raw celeriac on top add a sweet, vegetal crunch. It’s an elegant study in hot and cold, cooked and raw.
Other mains include fluke, a vegetarian pot-aufeu, a butcher’s cut (traditionally hanger steak—so prized the butcher kept it for himself), and roast chicken with cabbage, apple, potato, and golden raisins—a dish with the comforting heft of winter. Service is gracious, confident, and refreshingly abundant. Staff wear simple, undyed linen aprons over black and white—uniform, but not stiff. When we lingered over the last of our bread, our server didn’t clear the plate—she brought more butter.
With just 44 seats, the dining room offers space to breathe. Blonde wood tables and syrup-colored floors keep things warm within the minimalist, farmhouse-chic setting. When we dined on its ninth night of service in early April, Isabela felt seasoned already: full, buzzing with conversation, and relaxed in a way that suggests people will come back.
Wines That Whisper, Desserts That Sing
The wine list is anchored in low-intervention, mostly European bottles, with a few selections
Jose Ramirez-Ruiz, who earned a Michelin star for his vegetable-forward fare at Semilla in Williamsburg, has opened a new restaurant in Amenia.
from California and New York. All Champagnes are growerproducers. Ramirez-Ruiz picks wines that don’t overwhelm the food. “The wines should complement,” he says—“everything must be very delicious,” guided by “a rough idea of what people like.”
Eight by-the-glass options span styles and hues, most bottles clock in under $90. The house rosé is a light Provencal, but for the natty seekers, it is easy to choose the $48 Rheinhessen.
Dessert keeps pace. A bundt cake, spiked with Alpine liqueur and topped with a silky mascarpone whip, is just sweet enough. Rice Pudding for Two (easily four) arrives with sundae bar fixings: dulce de leche, candied pecans, berry compote, and toasted coconut. A poached pear with rosemary and cashew cream is vegan but doesn’t feel like it’s missing anything.
Housemade ice creams rotate—vanilla, chocolate, coconut, and a knockout peanut butter. I licked the spoon clean.
Ramirez-Ruiz earned acclaim in Brooklyn with Semilla, the vegetable-centric, Michelin-starred restaurant he opened in 2014 after hosting the cultish pop-up Chez Jose with pastry chef Pam Yung. Semilla drew accolades from Bon Appetit, The New Yorker, and the James Beard Foundation. But with buzz came burnout. A fully booked Saturday meant no room for locals. With Isabela, Ramirez-Ruiz wants something else.
“This is Napa in the ’70s,” he says of the Hudson Valley. “All these producers doing really dope shit.” Isabela is his return to the table—not just to cook, but to eat.
Isabela is located at 3330 Route 343 in Amenia. It is open for dinner Wednesday to Sunday, 5:30 to 9pm.
Above left: Kale gnudi—pillowy dumplings filled with a sharp ricottaParmesan blend—float in a delicate white bean and Parmesan broth.
Below left: Butterhead lettuce is dressed with spruce vinaigrette and served with radishes, shallots, and fresh cheese.
sips & bites
Wiltwyck Spirits
188 Greenkill Avenue, Kingston
Started as a farm distillery with no tasting room in late 2022, Wiltwyck Spirits opened the door to their new home in a renovated garage at the corner of Greenkill and Wilbur avenues at the end of February. Their signature Karnavat vodka is made with 100 percent New York State-grown corn. Penny tiles, a long geometric bar, and green leafy accents offer an airy space to drink and catch up with friends. The signature cocktails— Nothing Lasts and American Pie (both $12)—feature the house vodka, while the other half-dozen cocktails on the list feature regional producers like Dennings Point Distillery and Hudson House, where Wyltwick founder Kyran Tompkins was the previous distiller. Expect rotating food trucks on the weekends to complement the bar snacks sold in-house.
Tibet
Pho
295b Tinker Street, Woodstock
On April 11, Tibet Pho, a new Tibetan-Vietnamese restaurant, opened within the Bearsville Center complex in Woodstock. An offshoot of Pho Tibet in New Paltz, the new eatery blends Himalayan and Southeast Asian flavors— serving pho, banh mi, summer rolls, momos, shabtak (a beef stirfry), and tingmo, Tibetan steamed bread. The popular momo, fluffy dumplings native to both Nepal and Tibet, can be ordered with vegetable, chicken, or beef filling, or “swimming” in broth. The restaurant also serves Vietnamese coffee, both hot and iced, as well as bubble tea. The cozy space features prayer flags and shelves lined with noodles, beans, and other Asian grocery items. Photibetus.com
Beacon Quality Eats
157 Main Street, Beacon
During the pandemic, Beacon culinary fixture Kitchen Sink stayed alive with takeout pop-ups, eventually shifting to outdoor dining, and then a supper club model with communal seating. Now, restaurateurs Brian Arnoff and Jeff Silverman have again reinvented the space, moving away from the Kitchen Sink name and concept to open Beacon Quality Eats. With a Norman Rockwell meets retro deli-mart aesthetic, the new spot serves up soups, salads, sandwiches, prepared foods, and desserts for a lunch and early dinner crowd. Sandwiches are divvied up by meat with almost 20 hearty options spanning from a duck bahn mi ($19) to a French dip roast beef ($17) and a reuben chop cheese ($18). The interior is simple with a few two- and four-tops, plus drink coolers and chip shelves.
Beaconqualityeats.com
Club Sandwich
76 Broadway, Tivoli
On April 3, hospitality veteran Anna Morris and Fortunes Ice Cream owner Lisa Farjam threw open the doors to their new cafe/market Club Sandwich on Broadway in Tivoli. Sandwiches are central to the menu, though there will also be salads, other bites, and prepared foods soon. Everything is available to eat in, on the patio, or to go. Beer, wine, and excellent coffee round out the offerings. Club Sandwich’s small, well-stocked grocery section offers essentials for locals and weekenders alike, from canned tomatoes to oat milk, olive oil, stock, peanut butter, and baking basics.
Clubsandwichtivoli.com
Dassai Blue Sake Brewery
5 St. Andrew Road, Hyde Park
At just over a year old, the Hyde Park sake brewery Dassai Blue has not stopped evolving. With the addition of an exhibit on the history and process of making sake, a calendar of events inspired by Japanese traditions, and fresh sushi made in-house all week long, the brewery has become a cultural center of sorts, imbued with charming hospitality—and an exquisite line of sake offerings. Although the menu will change over time, the current $25 seven-piece plate includes a flavorful selection of tuna nigiri, salmon nigiri, yellowtail nigiri, shrimp round nigiri, inari (fried tofu), and two rolls. Additional food options include smoked duck and smoked trout plates prepared by the Culinary Institute, as well as local cheese and meat plates. Dassai.com
—Marie Doyon
on a new project, she and her clients tend to get very close. “Ghislaine has found herself folding a bachelor’s underwear,” explains her husband and business partner Jaime Vinas of his wife’s deep commitment to projects. “We’ve become so friendly with some clients that we’ve even travelled with them. Some clients are now our closest friends.”
Sunny Side Up
A
design duo creates a new nest in Tivoli that’s anything but empty.
By Mary Angeles Armstrong
Photos by Winona Barton-Ballentine
Ghislaine and Jaime Vinas were looking for a home in the Hudson Valley when they got a sign—and not just metaphorically. Throughout 2022 they ’d viewed at least 50 properties when the recent empty-nesters finally came across 42 bucolic acres outside Tivoli. “ The first time we drove down the driveway we were immediately struck by the rolling hills,” says Ghislaine of the former hay and grazing fields. “ They ’ re so charming and beautiful.”
The ramshackle 1920s Arts and Crafts cottage at the property ’s center was a different story. Well loved by generations of the same family, the home was chock full of the past century’s detritus and had fallen into disrepair. “ We came in, went up and down the stairs, and looked around for about five minutes,” explains Jaime. “ They offered to show us the basement and we said no.”
Walking the land with the owner ’ s son, however, kept their interest. “ The property
was littered with the rusting carcasses of cars and both the home and the barn were chock full,” says Jaime. Even so, they loved the mix of woods and fields dotted with ponds and brimming with wildlife. “ We were completely enamored with the natural surroundings,” explains Ghislaine. “It was really the land that stole our hearts. “
They put in an offer almost immediately and turned their attention to the house. “It was in total shambles,” says Jaime. “ There was mold, the ceiling was falling down, and there was vermiculite—which often contains asbestos—in the roof.” They considered tearing it down completely. However, as they began to spend more time in the 1,600-square-foot rambler, the home’s history and charms slowly revealed themselves. “Inside, the millwork was in great shape and I fell in love with the river rock chimney,” says Ghislaine. “ The house had been standing for 100 years, and we began to feel a responsibility to preserve that history.”
Designer Ghislaine Vinas in her living room. When Vinas takes
Sitting on 42 acres, the Arts and Crafts home needed a complete overhaul. However, the couple were intent on preserving its history and continuing the story of the home rather than erasing it. After clearing away surrounding overgrowth, the couple livened up the exterior with white paint and elected to cover the river rock chimney as well, adding texture to the exterior.
The couple in the cottage’s newly expanded dining room. While, they’ve loved the chance to make the cottage their own, it’s the community that has really turned their Tivoli cottage into a home. “So many of our friends, colleagues, fellow designers, artists, and makers live here,” says Ghislaine. “It’s an incredibly
Bottom: To create an airy, welcoming interior, they knocked down walls and even relocated the main entrance at the side of the house, adding double doors painted egg yolk yellow and an expanded entryway.
Right:
vibrant and welcoming creative community.” Orange BlueDot candelabras match the orange Tom Dixon Peg chairs. A Crate and Barrel dining table balances the space.
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The couple utilized Mad Plaider wallpaper—a design collaboration between Ghislaine and Wolf Gordon—throughout the living room, and chairs upholstered with Sir-StripeA-Lot, a pattern Ghislaine designed for HBF Textiles. Magical Girls, by artist Bethany Blake, tops the mantle. Gucci pillows and vintage finds— including the flower sculpture and ottoman—match the Avenue Road coffee table and L’Objet sculpture box.
Still they were on the fence: The renovation costs would be substantial and they ’d barely scratched the surface of understanding the work that needed doing. Then, while cleaning out the garage, the universe sent them a message. It just happened to be hand painted on wood. “It read This is it,” remembers Jaime. “It really felt like the house was trying to tell us something.” And that was that.
Renovators for Life
The couple were hardly strangers to gut renovations. Nearly two decades earlier, after years of renting and running their architectural interiors business out of a Tribeca loft, they purchased a modest weekend house in Bucks County. “ We wanted something we could make our own,” explains Jaime of the Pennsylvania project. “ We had been renters for years and really wanted our own project.” They survived that renovation and it became a happy weekend home for the couple and their two children. Back in Tribeca, the two continued to evolve their design practice, mixing their complimentary skillsets to take on from-the-studs-up renovations and turn them into highly personalized havens for their clients, who often became close friends. Ghislaine primarily focused on designing architectural interiors, taking
bare-bones spaces, then reimagining room layouts and closet placement with her clients’ lifestyles in mind. She became known for her colorful, playful designs layered onto thoughtful, functional layouts. Jaime utilized his graphic design and branding experience helping clients name their homes, develop personalized monograms, and even site-specific gifts that celebrated each property’s unique qualities.
After nearly two decades in Pennsylvania, the couple felt it was time for a new chapter. “ We had that house for 17 years and it was a godsend,” says Jaime. “But after our kids grew up the home felt too big and isolated.” They began seriously looking for both a new home and a new community. Having been married in Woodstock, the Hudson Valley was already a special place for them. So, when former-clients-turned-friends bought a home in Clinton Corners they discovered Dutchess County and could immediately see its appeal. “ We love the natural beauty of the region—the mountains, the light, the sense of quiet,” explains Jaime. “But we were impressed by all the culture and the thriving design community. It felt like the kind of place where we could both grow creatively and feel at home.” By 2023 they found the Tivoli house and in July they were ready to dive into the remodel.
It Started with Light
On the first floor, the couple set out to transform the previously dark, compartmentalized interiors into a bright, breathable space. “Light is everything—it’s love and life,” explains Ghislaine. “I always joke that I must ’ve been a cat in a past life, because I’m constantly chasing sunny spots around the house.”
In the kitchen, the couple removed several interior walls, creating an open-plan layout that allows light to flow freely throughout the main floor, shifting with the hour and seasons. “I wanted the kitchen to feel like it was part of the landscape—not just a place to cook, but a place to breathe,” she explains. Newly added windows above the countertops and near the dining area invite in views of the landscape and further amplify the connection to the outdoors. By relocating the front door from a claustrophobic side entry to the driveway adjacent wall, they created a clearer, more intuitive entryway.” The flow just didn’t make sense before,” says Jaime. “By reorienting the entryway the house feels more welcoming.” The new entrance features a bright egg-yolk yellow double front door and an ample foyer with playful design touches.
Mad Color
The couple preserved as much of the home’s original detailing as possible while still adding personalized updates. “Even through the big transformation, we preserved the baseboards, doors, and flooring,” explains Ghislaine. “ We patched in some areas, but we didn’t try to hide the imperfections. I love that it adds so much character.”
In the living room, the home ’s original fireplace became an anchoring feature of the redesign, brought back to life with color. “Jaime and I both knew we wanted to use wallpaper in the living room, and we were drawn to the idea of using a saturated green,” she says. “However, we had different visions originally and landing on the right shade took some back and forth.” The couple eventually compromised with a deep, fresh green for the fireplace mantel and millwork. “Surprisingly, it wasn’t either of our initial picks, but we both fell in love with it,” says Ghislaine. They used the custom green to print a fresh version of their Mad Plaider wallpaper, created for the design company WolfGordon, wrapping the living room and
In the light-washed kitchen, the couple topped Ikea base cabinets with grey Corian counters. The central kitchen island includes David Chipperfield barstools for guests. The painting, Abe, is by Marcus Kenney.
Top: The cottage is filled with art and oddities the couple have collected through their work and travels. “I’m very drawn to odd and unusual objects,” says Ghislaine. “I love things with character and charm. I’ve collected pieces from around the world and they bring a unique and eccentric spirit to the home.” Downstairs, the couple paired a pig side table by Mooi with the painting Girl Without a Pearl Earring. A collection of gnome art hangs along another wall.
Bottom: “Almost every item in our home feels deeply personal to my family and me,” explains Ghislaine. “It’s such a joy to be surrounded by pieces I’ve discovered on my travels near and far. They carry memories and stories: treasures from dusty little shops off the beaten path, flea markets, and thrift shops.” In the guest room art by the couple’s daughter Saskia Vinas and painter Hala Nasir is matched by a pig cabinet by Seletti under the window.
staircase in its bold pattern. “The saturation makes the space feel incredibly cozy—especially in winter, when the fireplace is lit and the whole room just envelops you,” explains Ghislaine. They also painted the exterior walls and chimney a warm white, giving the home a fresh, textured exterior. Upstairs, the design tone shifts. “There’s a lot of green in the living room and along the staircase, so I wanted the upstairs to feel a bit quieter,” Ghislaine explains. She kept the palette largely neutral, however light still plays a starring role, shifting across surfaces and drawing attention to the home’s original lines. In one of the bedrooms, a door scratched up by the previous family ’s pet was left standing but painted over. “We didn’t want to erase the home’s history,” says Ghislaine. “Instead, we wanted to continue its story. It ’ s a subtle reminder of the life lived here before us.”
In the bathrooms, color returns in strategic bursts, energizing the otherwise serene palette.
“The bathrooms were a chance to have a little fun without disrupting the overall calm upstairs,” explains Ghislaine. “ I love adding surprise moments—an unexpected wallpaper, a bright tile, or something that makes you smile.”
One bathroom features pops of bright orange, while another includes bold floor tiles in a geometric design.
The couple are thrilled with their upstate nest, which they named Sunny Side after its light-inspired interiors. (Jaime even made house caps, printed with a depiction of the property ’ s unusual footprint.) Living in the Hudson Valley has been transformative for the couple, both personally and professionally. “Spending more time in nature has really shifted my pace—it’s allowed me to slow down, reflect, and recharge,” Ghislaine says. “ But being surrounded by a community of designers, artists and makers has really made this house a home."
Ghislaine livened up an upstairs guest bathroom with bright orange paint and added a vintage cabinet to the space.
“Each piece holds a meaning for us,” explains Ghislaine. “It’s not so much about curating a perfect collection that would appeal to anyone and more about living among things that speak to us and that we’ve connected with as a family.”
A Forest Of Choice.
A Forest Of Choice.
The
The broadest selection of the biggest trees and plants in the Hudson Valley.
The broadest selection of the biggest trees and plants in the Hudson Valley.
The broadest selection of the biggest trees and plants in the Hudson Valley.
The broadest selection of the biggest trees and plants in the Hudson Valley.
and plants in the Hudson Valley.
selection of the biggest trees and plants in the Hudson Valley.
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8am–5pm and
9W & Van Kleecks Lane, Kingston, NY (845) 338-4936 AugustineNursery.com
Spring Hours: Monday–Saturday, 8am–5pm and Sunday, 10am–4pm
Spring Hours: Monday–Saturday, 8am–5pm and Sunday, 10am–4pm
9W & Van Kleecks Lane, Kingston, NY (845) 338-4936 AugustineNursery.com
9W & Van Kleecks Lane, Kingston, NY (845) 338-4936 AugustineNursery.com
Spring Hours: Monday–Saturday, 8am–5pm and Sunday, 10am–4pm
Spring Hours: Monday–Saturday, 8am–5pm and Sunday, 10am–4pm
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What No One Told You About Menopause
Breaking the silence with shared experiences, expert advice, and holistic approaches
By Maggie Baribault
At first, W. S. thought it was just aging. The reading glasses, heat crawling up her neck at night, a slow accumulation of change. But soon, her body began communicating in more confusing ways: sudden shivering, dry skin, thinning hair, numb fingers, aching joints, stronger bouts of depression, and a jittery sensation in her chest. “I felt like I was falling apart,” she says. “And I didn’t know who to talk to about it. All I’d ever heard about menopause was that it was terrible and would last a decade, and that your experience would be just like your mother’s,” which terrified her.
Now 55 and living in Woodstock, W. S. is semi-retired, childless, caring for elderly parents, and juggling part-time work with pet- and house-sitting gigs. Looking back, she realizes perimenopause crept in during her mid-forties— and no one had prepared her. She grieved the end
of menstruation. “Despite never wanting children, I felt deep loss that my choice of whether or not to create life was no longer viable. I questioned what the point of my life was, what it meant to be a woman, and whether I made a big mistake.”
For years, she suffered in silence, hiding the depression, anxiety, memory fog, and urinary incontinence that made her feel embarrassed, unattractive, and alone. “It felt like the beginning of the end,” she says.
Eventually, she joined a group of women going through similar experiences, formed a “MenoPosse,” and began sharing stories, research, remedies, and encouragement. “The freedom to open up and share with others that understand is invaluable,” she says. “Even though each of our bodies are different and our process is unique— mine is not my mother’s or sister’s—we are not alone in this anymore.”
She tried hormone replacement therapy (HRT), supplements, pelvic floor therapy, weight training, yoga and Pilates, yoni steaming—a traditional practice involving sitting over herbal-infused steam to support pelvic health—acupuncture, and found a therapist. “Now I sleep on a terry cloth towel so I don’t have to change the sheets when I get night sweats,” she says with a laugh. “And now, when things feel hard, I have help and deep respect for my body.”
W. S.’s journey isn’t uncommon. While menopause impacts half the population, silence and stigma often leave women confused and unprepared. But that’s beginning to change. Women across the Hudson Valley are finding their voices, arming themselves with knowledge, and reframing menopause as a powerful transformation.
Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz, author of Menopause Bootcamp, will lead a workshop at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck in August.
Understanding Perimenopause and Menopause
Perimenopause, the transitional phase before menopause, typically begins between ages 40 and 44, though some notice changes as early as their mid-30s. It’s marked by fluctuations in the reproductive hormones estrogen and progesterone, triggering wide-ranging physical and emotional shifts. Menopause is reached after 12 consecutive months without a period, usually between ages 45 and 55. About 6,000 women in the US reach menopause each day, with over 75 million currently in perimenopause, menopause, or postmenopause—the life stage following menopause.
Symptoms range from minimal to highly disruptive: temperature dysregulation, sleep issues, irregular periods, joint pain, elevated cholesterol and blood sugar, weight gain, loss of libido, vaginal dryness, urinary tract infections and frequent urination, digestive issues, hair loss, brain fog, mood swings, and new or worsening depression and anxiety. “Everyone has a story,” says Holly Shelowitz, a certified nutrition counselor, menopause coach of Nourishing Wisdom, and creator of the “MenoPosse.” “Every woman has had mysterious experiences and needs to know she is not alone.”
Despite its widespread impact, many women navigate menopause with little information or support. “There’s a stigma in our society about aging for women,” Shelowitz says. “As a result, women are not talking about it. It feels vulnerable. They are suffering alone.”
Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz, OB-GYN, chief medical correspondent for the “Drew Barrymore Show,” and author of Menopause Bootcamp: Optimize Your Health, Empower Your Self, and Flourish as You Age, puts it bluntly: “I like to say misogyny and ageism had a baby—it’s called menopause.” That silence is shifting, but many agree it’s long overdue.
Tracking, Nutrition, and Preventative Care
For Shelowitz, tuning into the body’s rhythms is central to wellness. Her work centers on menstrual cycle tracking and nutrition—essential tools during hormonal shifts. “When we track, we can see patterns, she says. “It could be one month is 28 days and the next is 36 days. That change has meaning.” Whether through an app or physical calendar, tracking provides a foundation for recognizing when perimenopause begins and ends.
But that’s just one piece of the puzzle. During perimenopause, “what we eat, how we move, and how we live affects our menstrual cycles,” Shelowitz says. She promotes protein-rich meals, mineral-dense teas, and blood sugar regulation as tools for stability in a time of biological flux. Eating in sync with the cycle further boosts support. “There’s a beautiful, sacred rhythm we can use to full advantage,”
Shelowitz says. Menstruation (days 1 to 7) is ideal for rest and replenishment with mineralrich foods like meats, beans, leafy greens, and herbal infusions like nettles and red raspberry leaf. During the follicular phase (days 8 to 14), energy rises, so Shelowitz recommends fermented veggies, seeds, lean proteins, and complex carbs to prepare the body for ovulation (days 14 to 15), when energy and libido peak. The luteal phase (days 16 to 28) brings mood swings and cravings, calling for warming foods and magnesium-rich snacks like roasted root vegetables, nuts, and dark chocolate.
Shelowitz also urges rest when needed, time outdoors, and “horizontal time” with feet up and heart quiet. “One day at a time, these adjustments become our lifestyle,” she says. The same principles apply after menopause, continuing to support the body’s changing needs through nutrient-dense foods, consistent movement for bone and heart health, and routines that nourish emotional well-being.
Exploring Tools and Modalities
Functional Medicine
Lori Graham, a certified functional medicine practitioner based in Stamford, CT, focuses on identifying and addressing root causes of imbalance. She begins with personalized hormone testing—estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol, and thyroid panels— alongside gut health, inflammation, and nutrient assessments. “We consider antecedents, triggers, and mediators of dysfunction,” she says, highlighting how early life factors like birth method and feeding can shape the microbiome and impact health decades later. Treatment plans integrate tailored nutrition and supplements, stress management, reduced exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals that worsen hormonal imbalances, sleep optimization, movement, and low-dose HRT when appropriate. For Graham, menopause is “a powerful time for recalibration and renewal”—an opportunity to align biology, lifestyle, and emotional needs.
Hillary Thing of Nourishing Life Heath Center in Kingston creates cutomized herbal formuals for women that draw on centuries of wisdom passed down through practice.
Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture
In traditional Chinese medicine, menopause is known as the “second spring,” a profound life evolution and time for reflection, renewal, and fuller embodiment. Hillary Thing of Kingston’s Nourishing Life Health Center explains it as “a time of great change and transformation,” focusing on restoring harmony between Yin and Yang energies, as Yin—the cooling, nourishing, calming force—naturally declines. This energetic balancing act is supported through holistic practices that strengthen kidney and liver meridians, thought to be central to hormonal and emotional stability.
Customized herbal formulas, including dang gui (Chinese angelica), huang bai (phellodendron root), sheng ma (black cohosh), and red clover, are paired with acupuncture to regulate the body’s internal energy systems (Qi), drawing on centuries of wisdom passed down through practice. “Acupuncture and Chinese herbs help reduce symptoms, build back blood and Yin deficiencies, and move Qi,” by releasing stagnation and gently guiding the body back to equilibrium, says Kingston-based acupuncturist Jipala ReicherKagan. “Chinese medicine zeroes in on nurturing a lifestyle that values the feminine.”
Mayan Abdominal Massage
Mayan abdominal massage supports the uterus and pelvic alignment as estrogen levels decline and ligaments, bladder, and uterine tissues shift. “What we’re doing is taking the woman as a whole being and realigning the uterus within the pelvic girdle,” says Ellenville-based massage therapist Natasha Zajac This repositioning, combined with breathwork and rainforest-native herbal medicine, supports lymph flow, hormone production, and energetic balance, easing the transition into postmenopause. “We have this beautiful communication circuitry between our reproductive organs and brain,” Zajac says. “When there are abdominal adhesions, blockages, energy cysts, impasses between the two, the hormones get disrupted. With the anatomical repositioning into homeostasis and emotional nurturing, we’re working with a more balanced hormonal possibility.”
Her practice is rooted in personal experience and cross-cultural ancestral knowledge passed down from herbalist and naturopath Dr. Rosita Arvigo, who studied with a Mayan shaman in Belize. “The womb is an emotional archive,” Zajac says, and menopause is a time to let go and reconnect. With consent, she sometimes “sings into clients’ bones” to release trauma and reawaken the body’s innate intelligence.
Holly Shelowitz is a certified nutrition counselor and creator of the “MenoPosse.” “Every woman has had mysterious experiences and needs to know she is not alone,” she says.
Hormone Therapy and Conventional Medicine
Conventional care, especially when supplemented with holistic practices, remains a vital support for menopausal women. Gilberg-Lenz combines clinical knowledge with education and advocacy, creating a space where women feel informed and empowered in their health decisions. Her Menopause Bootcamp series, including an upcoming session at the Omega Institute in August, was born out of the limitations of standard visits: “I created a half-day of content to teach about the basics—terminology and stats, solutions to the most common and least understood symptoms, a full workout session with a trainer, and meditation,” she says.
She supports HRT when it fits a woman’s needs, considering risk factors, symptom severity, age and time since menopause began, and preferences—often recommending bioidentical hormones and individualized plans. “One size will never fit all,” Gilberg-Lenz says.
Still, systemic barriers remain. While HRT itself isn’t expensive, getting access can be— especially without good insurance or a wellinformed provider. “Menopause care is timeconsuming and poorly reimbursed,” GilbergLenz says. “Until this system shifts dramatically or crumbles, I don’t think we’ll see much improvement.”
Reframing Perimenopause as a Rite of Passage
W. S.’s journey highlights that what we commonly refer to as “menopause” is a layered process—one that unfolds over time, reshaping identity and purpose as it leads into a new phase of life. Rather than a single moment, it’s a gradual and often challenging transformation that marks the threshold into a woman’s later years. “When a woman enters menopause, her womb closes and her throat opens,” Zajac says. “There is a trembling potential energy for the complete, vast power, clarity, and healing aspects of women’s voices ready to be heard. It’s time for women to be in their full holistic power, to come back to the body, come back to the earth, herbs, plants, water, prayer, touch, what it is to be human, what it is to be a child of the Earth, and to have this kind of sharing with other women.”
Shelowitz agrees: “Menopause is a rite of passage, an awakening, a time of deep understanding of the power of being a woman.”
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The Fight to Shape A City’s Future
Beacon
By Anne Pyburn Craig
Photos by David McIntyre
When Mayor Lee Kyriacou was first elected to the Beacon City Council in 1993, just a year after moving to Beacon, he found a comprehensive plan that assumed that the answer for its struggling Main Street involved high-rise buildings up to 13 stories tall, feeder roads, and a pedestrian mall. “But the city was such an unattractive investment that the high rises never got built,” he says. “So we were able to preserve the historic buildings that were there and say ‘Nope, we’re changing how we’re doing this.’ We changed some pretty dramatic components, got rid of the high rises, got rid of the concept of cutting Main Street down.”
Working with Beacon’s first woman mayor, Clara Lou Gould, the council decided to restore Main Street instead. By the time Gould retired in 2007, having shepherded in a new water filtration plant, new municipal building, and Dia:Beacon, it was time for a fully revamped plan. “We encourage density on and just off our Main Street, along our creek, and along the train station parking lots,
Opposite, top: Residents of High Streets who are opposing a development on the corner of High and Beekman Streets.
Opposite bottom: Broadway in Beacon hosts monthly show tune karaoke at The Yard on Hanna Lane. The next show is on May 8 at 6pm. Melvin Tunstall III sings, accompanied by Alex G. Kunz on piano.
Above: Ecstatic dance party hosted by Metta Chase, Aga Maros, Dee Yergo at St. Andrew and St. Luke Episcopal Church on Wolcott Avenue.
and we did reconstruction in those areas of factory-style, residential construction with density,” says Kyriacou, a self-described “zoning geek” who won the mayor’s seat in 2020 after nine terms on the council. “Most of the construction of the last 10 years has been our fallow urban renewal land. I live right in that area, and our home was originally supposed to be torn down for urban renewal, which didn’t happen. But all around it were large empty spaces that didn’t get built out for 40 years.”
Those empty lots are no more, and Kyriacou says that the city’s current desirability allows it to be choosier about design. “Now we can require brick facades, and the kind of bits and bobs that historic structures have, and give people form-based examples of what to do. We’re still seeing proposals. We’ve got a planning board that says, ‘You know what, we want it done better than it’s been done in the past.’ And we can ask for better, because we’re a popular place to be, and we tend to get it.”
Comprehensive plan revisions in 2017 included establishing an arterial workaround using Beekman and West Main to encourage a bustling streetscape all the way down to the waterfront. In May of 2024, Beacon was designated a pro-housing community; last November, Governor Hochul announced that the MTA was seeking proposals for new transit-oriented development near the train station, and the city is working with Hudson River Housing to kick off Plus One grants that will help residents build accessory dwelling units, which have been allowed since the ‘90s but were prohibitively expensive to construct.
Not everyone, of course, is enthralled with every proposal. On High Street, a coalition has arisen to object to a proposal on the corner of High and Beekman Streets that would merge three lots to create two mixed-use four-story buildings with 64 apartments. The project is currently in the public hearing phase of its environmental review, and some believe it to be out of character, out of scale, and an overall “monstrosity.”
“I feel like we’re making our voices heard at the planning board,” says High Street resident Edwin Chong, “and I think they’re sympathetic. They kept letting us go over the three-minute limit, and they’re hearing the same concerns from a number of different perspectives, as well as new ones from new voices.”
A full-scale campaign to stop the development, known as 45 Beekman, or at least make it smaller, is underway and has drawn in residents of other neighborhoods who feel at risk of being overrun by “large, sterile, ship-like buildings,” as it’s put in a Change.org petition which at this writing has 85 signatures.
“The city just seems to be glossing over a lot,” says High Street resident Maryellen Case. “They say the soil test was fine, but it’s hard to believe it would have passed—there’s sewer runoff on that lot and it was a contractor’s yard for a number of years. So how did it pass? Who’s behind this? Who’s letting certain things slide?”
Residents have T-shirts and posters, and will be out in force at the May 13 planning board meeting, when the public hearing continues. The attorney for developers Beekman Arts Center and Bay Ridge Studios contends that the issues raised have largely been addressed during the process, but residents beg to differ.
Top: Renita Principe and Jacob Schupack in The Top Drawer Boutique, their recently opened lingerie shop on Main Street.
Middle: Beacon restaurateur Kemal Jamal inside the soon-to-open Piggy Bank barbecue on Main Street.
Bottom: Kitty Sherpa and the staff of Beacon Natural Market on Main Street.
Cuboricua & Christine Alicea
Radiance, Tailored to You
A Delicate Balance
Other Beacon residents have their own issues with the city’s boom. Kara Marie Dean-Assael, a cofounder of food justice nonprofit Fareground, and kk naimool, founder of Collective Justice Consulting and chief executive steward of Queer Family Network, share concerns that city government isn’t mindful of the needs of poorer residents. “There are organizations forming and community groups supporting their neighbors, but there seems to be zero support from the city of Beacon to recognize the people who’ve lived here for a very long time who are getting displaced,” says naimool. “What this city looks like now is not something they can afford or even understand, because it’s growing so fast. The city is not supporting its existing community, it seems to be promoting and escalating this growth. I love that new people come and that we get new food, new neighbors, and shops, but it shouldn’t become unlivable for anyone who’s not rich.”
“We’re hearing from local teens who can’t afford to enjoy Main Street with their friends— everything is a special-occasion restaurant, there’s nowhere they can just grab a slice and hang out,” says Dean-Assael. “There’s really nowhere to
just sit, indoors or out. Most of the new stores now cater to tourists and are closed Monday through Wednesday. One thing that would really help everyone is a well-run, well-organized community center, a place that everybody—youth, seniors—could come and hang out, relax, do some volunteer work, and help each other. It would be so good for all of us.”
Both naimool and Dean-Assael believe that city government is preoccupied, rather than hostile, and say that a few businesses have been absolutely outstanding. “Happy Valley Arcade Bar always helps us, and Hudson Valley Brewery helped us throw a community dinner for 80 on their beautiful rooftop last fall,” says Dean-Assael. “And the VFW is hosting a Pride bash on June 1.” Yvette Valdes Smith represents part of Beacon in the Dutchess County Legislature, where she serves as minority leader. “I sat on the Dutchess County Housing Trust Fund committee, and during that time we were able to fund 2 Cross Street, which will provide affordable housing units and housing for senior citizens,” she says. “I’m proud of that, and of keeping county property taxes low. City government always has my back with whatever I try to do with the county, and
that really has made a huge difference. So for instance, we were able to keep the Beacon free loop bus, and we’re looking to make the BeaconHopewell Junction Rail Trail a reality.”
Smith is mindful of the delicate balance required to provide enough housing while fighting overdevelopment. “Density is tricky in Beacon at this point,” she says. “But I believe we have an incredible planning board. They’ve stopped things that needed to be stopped, and greenlit other things that needed to happen but were challenging. I have a lot of faith in them— the people there are in it for the right reasons.”
A Bank Is Reborn
Chris Meyer is the founder of Savage Wonder, a nonprofit arts organization producing works by veterans and first responders. The organization is in the process of restoring the imposing Mechanic Savings Bank on Main Street. Set to open on May 9, the first production at the art center will be Eugene Ionesco’s “The Bald Soprano.” Audiences, he says, should expect boundary-busting content by talented creators from the outer limits of the human experience. “We produce shows that are intimate, absurd,
Longtime Beacon resident Emil Alzamora in his sculpture studio just off Main Street.
whimsical and/or jarring,” he says. “Our jam is, we want you to get a huge ‘hell yeah!’, we want you to leave thinking, ‘Thank God I’m alive in 2025 and got to be part of that experience.’”
When fully built out, Savage Wonder will feature three venues and two bars; 6,000 square feet will host an art gallery. And in finding an iconic building in Beacon, Meyer says, he’s “landed in the briar patch. Every week we stumble into some other world class artist that’s up here, where we’re like, boy, that would be a cool collaboration. Let’s figure out what that might look like down the road. It’s just an amazingly lush ecosystem for us to end up in.”
"I Want Things to Be Better"
Kyriacou says that the city is creating affordable housing, citing Dutchess County’s Fair Share plan that set Beacon a goal of five affordable units a year. “We’re doing far more than that in any given project,” he says. “We’ve redone the water and sewer, so we’re set for that; we got the central fire station built that we’ve been talking about for 20 years. We’ve gone from being a place where nobody wanted to invest to the hottest place in the county, a remarkable—maybe unique—progression over 30 years, and I find that something to celebrate.”
Meyer agrees that Beacon, for all its growing pains, isn’t close to losing its soul. “Our landlord couldn’t have been more magnanimous, gracious, and accommodating in ways that allowed us to get the launch we needed, and it’s indicative of how Beacon has been overall. We have the warm fuzzies for this area and for what people have done for us, the grace they’ve shown us, and we just can’t wait to do stuff for them.”
Justice McCray, lifelong resident and founder of food justice organization Beacon’s Backyard, says the needs in Beacon are very real, as are the grass-roots responses. “We began serving free breakfast after another kitchen closed, and went from serving 13 meals the first week to 200 the second,” says McCray. “All the volunteers eat, and everybody who comes to eat wants to join in and help. Everybody’s sitting down together and making new friends, connecting with each other. It brings me so much joy. People here are really building something magical, and I feel so hopeful when I look around at my community and see the ways that people are constantly stepping up, supporting each other. There are so many doers, so many people that are willing to step up and say, ‘I want things to be better’ and then do something about it. It’s hard to find a lot of that in one place, but Beacon’s got it.”
Top: Mount Gulian Historic Site, former home of the Verplank family on Sterling Street, is open for tours through October.
Middle: Meal service at Fareground Welcome Table: Free meals are served every Friday night at the First Presbyterian Church on Liberty Street, a collaboration between the church, Fareground, and Songbird.
Bottom: The barroom of Lyonshare, the steakhouse recently opened by Peter Luger alum Bud Schmeling in the former Max's on Main space.
Beacon
Portraits by David McIntyre
It was a typically gray and blustery spring day when we set up shop at Hudson Valley Brewery in Beacon on April 6. Thanks to John-Anthony Gargiulo and the staff of Hudson Valley Brewery for hosting us. And a tip of the Chronogram chapeau to all the Beaconites who showed up to represent their fair city.
Join us for the May issue launch party on Wednesday, May 14 at Savage Wonder in the former Mechanic Savings Bank, 139 Main Street, from 5:30 to 7:30pm.
The Savage Wonder crew: Topher Cuccola, Ted Major, Chris Meyer, Jeremy Plyburn, and Semra Ercin.
Top row: Alex Schmidt, podcast host of “Secretly Incredibly Fascinating”; Amy C. Wilson, Moon, Serpent & Bone Oddities & Curiosities Night Market, and Frank Mesa of Changolife Arts; Andramada, drag queen; Andrew Salomon, professor; The Houses of High Street crew: Edwin Chong, Lisa Plimley, and Winnie Wang; Angela Paquette, owner/esthetician at Piare Skin Studio.
Middle row: Beth McDonough, Heron Brand Design, with Rich O’Neill; Henry Reinke and Stella Reinke, students, and Brandy Burre, actress and Howland Cultural Center board member; Brenda Yang, user research; Chris Cimino, Last Outpost Store, with Leloo.
Bottom row: Courtney Gillette, college administrator and Emily Pullen, librarian, trustee at Howland Public Library; Demetria Montgomery, recruiter with Braze and Aretha Martin, hairstylist with all 4 you salon; Donald Arrant, conservation planner with Watershed Agricultural Council, Rebecca Arndt, camera operator, with Greta, Ellis, Robin, and Wendell the pup; Donna Haynes, MTA Metro-North Leisure Travel Marketing and Missy Badu; Jessica Jelliffe and Christine Wang, Beacon Spring Celebration of Light.
Bottom inset: Hudson River Sloop Clearwater crew: Caitlin Zinsley, Rory Kane, captain, Liam Henrie, captain, Carol Ruffini, first mate.
Top row: Green Teen Beacon-Cornell Cooperative Extension Dutchess County crew: Emily Murnane, program manager, Anibal Soto III, deputy crew leader, Samiria Ferrer, crew member, Zion Segarra, crew member, Prince Jones, crew leader, Jude Williams, crew member; Shane Killoran, Hit House Creative; Scott Rosenberg, owner, Il Figlio Enoteca.
Middle row: Parker Elbe, West Palmetto Burger Company, Michael Elbe/co-owner; Nico Hughes, Author of new Beacon children’s book Pink Unicorn’s Magical Day and Jill Quaglino, Founder of Beacon Unicorn Fund; Tara O’Grady, dreamer.
Bottom row: Bannerman Castle Trust: Neil Caplan, Laurie Clark, Mary Babcock, Paul Kluckman, Len Warner, Johan Ayoob; Taylor Lyons, Kelta, with Federico Fridman and Rio Fridman; Vic Alam, DJ and owner of Old Dhaka Coffee House.
with
Middle row: Hannah Brooks, Beacon Litfest and Beacon Litworks; Jacky Yoon, creative director at SHY Creative with Toto; Josh Boardman, Hewes House; Julie Winterbottom, writer/musician; Justice McCray, Organizer of Beacon Juneteenth Riverfront Festival, librarian, board chair of Beacon’s Backyard (free breakfast service).
Bottom row: Kara Dean-Assael and Katrina Ross Zezza, Fareground Welcome Table; Greg Slick, artist, Karlyn Benson, curator and art writer, Marisa Slick, artist; Laura Ornella, actor and filmmaker and John Jagos, musician; Lee Kyriacou, City of Beacon Mayor; Lena Rizkallah, financial advisor/ Palestinian activist/storyteller.
Bottom inset: Broadway in Beacon crew: Jennifer Malenke, Will Reynolds, Gianna Cusato, and Alex Kunz.
Top row: Emil Alzamora, artist; Emily Boone, digital project manager with Gillybean, rescue ambassador; Emmanuel Jimenez, real estate agent
Upstate Curious Team at Compass; Erica Hauser, artist; Gwen Laster, musician.
Join us for the May issue launch party on Wednesday, May 14 at Savage Wonder in the former Mechanic Savings Bank, 139 Main Street, from 5:30 to 7:30pm.
Top row: Marika Blossfeldt, heath coach and Cookbook author; Marko Guzijan, owner Hudson Valley Food Hall and The Roosevelt Bar with Vuk Guzijan and Lav Guzijan; Deborah Davidovits, artist, beekeeper, member of Beacon Bucket Bangers and Matt Harle, artist; Mindy Fradkin aka Princess Wow, comedic storyteller/hat designer; Mist Muhammad, hairstylist.
Middle row: Pam Wetherbee, City of Beacon Council Member Ward 3; Yvette Valdes Smith, Minority Leader, Dutchess County Legislature and Molly Rhodes, Councilmember, City of Beacon; Zeno, DJ/aboveNY; Beacon Bonfire crew: America Campbell, Christian Campbell, Sennett Campbell, Banu Akman; BAU Gallery crew: Karen Allen, Bob Barry, Robin Adler, and Joan Harmon.
Bottom row: Rachael Sage, singer and multimedia artist; Noah Rosaler, Beacon Litfest; Renita Principe and Jacob Schupak, co-owners The Top Drawer; Ruth Danon, Poet Laureate of Beacon and Dutchess County, Founder Live Writing: A Project for the Reading, Writing, and Performance of Poetry; Sandy Santra, Beacon LitFest Photographer.
Hudson Valley Shakespeare 2015 Route 9, Garrison
After 37 seasons, the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival is now simply Hudson Valley Shakespeare (HVS). It’s a subtle but significant nod to the company’s long-awaited permanent home, the Samuel H. Scripps Center, currently under construction in Garrison. As the final season under its tent unfolds, attendees can honor the closing of this chapter by reveling in its ephemeral al fresco performances one last time.
HVS’s world-class productions—paired with breezy summer evenings and pre-show picnics or seated dining with a view—bring Shakespearean canon, classic American theater, and bold new work to life without pretention. The 2025 season highlights the company’s signature blend of artistic rigor and playful spirit.
June brings both Shakespeare’s fast-paced, slapstick romp through mistaken identity, “The Comedy of Errors,” and Thornton Wilder’s Gilded Age romantic comedy “The Matchmaker” (itself the inspiration for the musical Hello, Dolly!, which was filmed partly in Garrison). Debuting in August is “Octet,” a thrilling chamber musical by Dave Malloy—best known for his Broadway hit “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812”—that dives into the modern anxieties of internet addiction, sung entirely a cappella.
Complementing the main stage shows is a slate of exclusive pre-show talks, accessible performances, and mixers, including “Out at the Tent” on June 22, a festive Pride Month reception ahead of the evening’s performance of “The Matchmaker.” The company will also bring “Julius Caesar” on tour to regional middle and high schools this fall.
For HVS’s season schedule, tickets, and more information visit Hvshakespeare.org.
Produced by Chronogram Media Branded Content Studio.
Off the Beacon Path
Glynwood Farm Store at Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming
Local food lovers rejoice! The Glynwood Farm Store is filled with fresh, seasonal produce and nose-to-tail cuts of meat from its regenerative farm, as well as an exciting selection of distinctive products from other regional farms. The Farm Store is part of Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming, a nonprofit serving food and farming changemakers from the Hudson Valley and beyond. Nestled within Fahnestock State Park in Cold Spring, the Farm Store serves as the community hub for Glynwood’s working farm and organization, whose mission is to cultivate just and resilient food systems so that food, land, and farmers thrive.
The Farm Store is an innovative social enterprise and retail destination, making it the lower Hudson Valley go-to for people seeking peak-quality, farm-direct food at a fair price. The shop curates a product mix that is seasonal, diverse, and centers the very producers and artisan-makers stewarding this movement toward healthier agriculture.
The Glynwood Farm Store is committed to feeding its community by providing nutrient-dense foods, increasing the economic viability of regional farmers, and serving as a gateway for visitors to become active stakeholders in their food system. During summer, the Farm Store comes alive with pick-your-own flowers and vegetables, community supported agriculture (CSA), tastings, and pop-ups. The Farm Store’s growth since its grand opening in July 2023 is an affirming reminder of the potential for small, community-minded marketplaces to spark meaningful change, without losing sight of the joy and thrill of eating well.
Produced by Chronogram Media Branded Content Studio.
Emily Ota, Nance Williamson, and Mayadevi Ross in HVS’s 2023 production of “Love’s Labor Lost.”
Photo by T Charles Erickson.
ROWSEELEE
81 Main Street, Cold Spring, Rowseelee.com
After two decades of building a global fashion house spanning multiple designer brands, ROWSEELEE founder Jon Koon made a pivot—this time from high fashion to handcrafted bubble tea.
When Covid slowed his globetrotting, Koon settled in Putnam County. Immersed in the Hudson Valley’s vibrant food scene, he saw an opportunity to reimagine the popular Asian tea, milk, and tapioca drink for Western tastes.
ROWSEELEE (the phonetic spelling of Cockney slang for a cup of tea) is his answer. Its 50-plus drinks use organic, natural ingredients sourced from over 30 countries and come artfully packaged in sleek, transparent cans. The first RowSeeLee cafe opened in Mahopac last spring, followed by a second in Cold Spring in the fall.
“Two-thirds of our menu doesn’t exist anywhere else in the US,” says Koon. While the Black Sugar Fresh Milk nods to traditional bubble tea, the rest of the menu showcases the team’s obsession with sourcing and innovation.
Take the Green Apple Lychee tea: a base of coconut meat and lychee juice from Vietnam, topped with shock-frozen jasmine tea, Taiwanese Jujube apple purée, Japanese spherical ice, and Oregon-grown Granny Smith slices. “It’s a study of the green apple,” says Koon. “There’s no added sugar, but it still tastes like dessert.”
Beyond tea, the sleek, minimalist, zen-influenced cafe also serves coffee, ice cream, and desserts—offering something for every taste.
Earth Angels
Veterinary Hospital
44 Saint Nicholas Road Wappingers Falls (845) 227-7297
Earthangelsvet.com
Earth Angels Veterinary Hospital, a locally owned and operated integrative facility, opened its doors in 2009 and provides its patients with a mix of the best in conventional and alternative medicine including wellness programs, supplement protocols, pain management, surgery, dentistry, dog/cat boarding, and more.
Hidden Rose Catering
33 Chelsea Road, Wappingers Falls (845) 522-0534
Hiddenrosecatering.com
Experience the charm of Hidden Rose in the picturesque Hudson Valley. The stunning grounds provide the perfect backdrop for any occasion. With a cozy wood-burning stone fireplace, a spacious outdoor deck, and an enchanting gazebo, the setting offers a rustic yet elegant atmosphere. Led by owner Sabrina Rose, with over twenty years in hospitality, her passion for curating unforgettable events shines through.
Paula’s Runway Cafe
263 New Hackensack Road Wappingers Falls (845) 240-1940
Paulasrunwaycafe.com
A must visit destination, whether arriving by car or airplane! Located inside the Hudson Valley Regional Airport’s lobby; fresh, delectable food and drink is served breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This sparkling jewel box has a full bar for grownups, and fun views for the kids.
Boho Beauty
2591 South Avenue #1, Wappingers Falls (845) 245-5808 Bohobeauty.net
Boho Beauty, located in the Village of Wappingers is a sustainable boutique salon. They use all Davines products, a BCorp from Parma, Italy. Boho Beauty combines the personalized experience of a luxury salon with a commitment to ecofriendly practices. They specialize in all hair coloring, curly hair techniques, and also offer concierge bridal services.
Produced by Chronogram Media Branded Content Studio.
Black Sugar Boba Milk Strawberry Matcha Latte
Graceland Tattoo
2722 W Main Street, Wappingers Falls (845) 297-3001 Gracelandtattoo.com
Graceland Tattoo has built its reputation on bold ink, timeless craft, and real connection.
For over 20 years, Graceland has been a trusted name in the Hudson Valley—an award-winning studio where passion meets precision. Its mission is simple: Create stunning tattoos and piercings with soul, skill, and unmatched professionalism.
The team of artists—Adam, Cookie, and Dana—bring decades of experience, mastering everything from vivid color to smooth black and gray. Choose from thousands of flash designs or collaborate with them to turn a custom vision into permanent art.
Allison, Graceland’s resident piercer of 25-plus years, provides top-tier jewelry, expert technique, and genuine care from consultation to healing.
Whether planning a first piece or fiftieth, the Graceland team is there for the long haul. Looking for a one-of-a-kind gift for a special someone? Grab a Graceland gift certificate—ideal for new tattoos and piercings, available in any denomination.
Graceland is more than a tattoo shop. It’s a creative home built on trust, integrity, and the relationships they’ve developed one appointment at a time.
Enjoy a happy hour deal on wine and free bites.
Chronogram.com/LaunchParty 5:30-7:30pm at Savage Wonder 139 Main Street, Beacon No cover, just vibes.
Are You Experienced? The Workshop Experience in Hillsdale
B y Jamie Larson
In the hills of eastern Columbia County, spring arrives with blossoms, birdsong, and an invitation to get your hands dirty, your mind engaged, and your creativity inspired. The Workshop Experience Weekend in Hillsdale is a two-day dive into making, cooking, singing, and storytelling, led by a thoughtful cohort of local creatives who believe learning should be beautiful, communal, and deeply rooted in place. Now in its fifth year, the Hillsdale Workshop Alliance will once again open the doors of its studios, kitchens, barns, and gardens on May 10-11 for this curated celebration of craft and connection.
The Alliance is a collective of local businesses and cultural stakeholders that includes Alliance co-founder Matthew White, an interior designer
and proprietor of Hillsdale General Store and HGS Home Chef, gardening writer Margaret Roach, and Paul Ricciardi of the Ancram Center for the Arts, among others. The event serves as an annual capstone to individual workshop programming throughout the year.
“This isn’t about just filling a schedule,” says White. “Everyone involved is committed to delivering high-quality learning experiences that are relevant to our region. It’s not just about craft—it’s about curiosity, community, and place.”
Since its launch five years ago, the event has grown to draw more than 1,000 attendees, with many visitors booking multiple sessions and spending the full weekend moving between workshops, garden tours, and businesses on Hillsdale’s Rockwellian Main Street. Some of the weekend’s most popular events, like mushroom foraging with John Wheeler and the garden tours of Margaret Roach and Peter Bevacqua and Stephen King (not that one), are already sold out. Organizers highly encourage those interested to register ASAP.
An Eclectic Slate in an Elegant Space
This year’s program includes returning favorites as well as new standouts. Among the headliners is Dan Pelosi, a viral food personality and New York Times contributor who will teach a pasta workshop at HGS Home Chef. While the kitchen store runs workshops all year, this event brings in the heavy hitters.
“We turn up the volume for this weekend,” says White. “We’ve hosted over 500 workshops since we opened, but this one feels special. Everyone puts on their best Sunday hat.”
James Beard Award-winning authors Amy Chaplin and Tamar Adler will cohost a talk on whole food cooking at the shop as well. But the events aren’t all about food. In “Blacksmithing: Forging Hearts with Marsha Trattner,” attendees will learn traditional blacksmithing methods to craft personalized forged hearts, no prior experience required. Additionally, “Botanical Bundle Dyeing with Hannah Ross” teaches participants how to naturally dye a silk scarf using local spring plants, offering a hands-on introduction to natural dyeing suitable for all ages and skill levels. These workshops, among others, provide valuable opportunities for experiential learning in a picturesque setting.
“ The Art of Bonsai with Matt Puntigam,” of Dandy Farmer, provides an introduction to bonsai techniques, covering essentials like repotting, watering, soil composition, and pruning, making it ideal for beginners.
“It comes down to getting your hands in the dirt and working with nature,” says Puntigam, who will hold his workshop at Taconic Ridge Farm. “You literally can’t be on your phone when your hands are covered in soil. It’s a return to one of the most natural ways we know to deal with overstimulation.”
From left: “Woven Woolen Coasters Workshop” with Margot Becker, “One Day Choir” with Kenter Davies, and “Botanical Bundle Dyeing” with Hannah Ross. Photos courtesy of Hillsdale Workshop Alliance.
Though he doesn’t overtly market his workshop as therapeutic, Puntigam sees clear emotional and physical benefits: “There are so many examples of attendees coming in flustered—and by the end, they’re smiling, talking, laughing. There’s a visible change in their physical tension.”
He also emphasizes bonsai’s quiet challenge to our modern obsession with instant gratification. “You’re working toward a vision that might take four or five years to realize,” Puntigam explained. “It’s humbling. You can control a lot of variables, but in the end, it’s a living thing. You adapt, you reassess, and sometimes you change your entire plan.”
The class also makes full use of its picturesque surroundings. Puntigam notes the Japanese concept of “borrowing the landscape,” using the natural setting to inspire and inform miniature tree arrangements. “I can refer to the edge of a field where the handworked land meets the forest,” he says. “That liminal space teaches you how to think about transitions in bonsai, too—light, shadow, topography—it’s all part of the classroom.”
Permission to Find your Voice
A new addition to the lineup organizers are excited for is music facilitator Kenter Davies’s experiment in communal singing, “What a Wonderful World, One Day Choir.”
“These aren’t trained vocalists—it’s for anyone who loves to sing,” says event organizer Jim Carden, owner of Taconic Ridge Farm, where the choir will gather. “It’s about the courage to open your mouth and raise your voice with others. People leave feeling connected and uplifted.”
A leader with the Gaia Music Collective, Davies has facilitated dozens of community singing events in Brooklyn and New York City, but Hillsdale marks his first time bringing the workshop into a rural setting.
“I honestly don’t think I’ve led a choir in a quiet, nature-filled space before,” Davies says. “That’s kind of why I chose ‘What a Wonderful World.’ So much of that song is about the beauty of the natural world, and to be able to sing it outside, under the trees, in such a beautiful place—I’m so excited for what that combination does to the nervous system. Just to bring some calm.”
The choir, Davies emphasizes, is for absolutely everyone—no training or sheet music required. Participants can learn by ear from vocal demos and then gather to sing together. “It’s about creating a space where people can rewrite the story they have around their voice,” Davies says. “You don’t have to define yourself as good or bad. If you sing one note, you’re a singer now.”
The experience includes warmups, small group interactions, open discussions about the meaning of the lyrics, and a welcoming, lightly structured environment. “It’s not about perfection. It’s about presence,” says Davies. “Mistakes are welcome. Everything is an invitation. If someone wants to sing at the top of their lungs, they can. If they want to quietly share something personal during the lyric reflection, they can do that, too.”
The event falling on Mother’s Day weekend is especially meaningful to Davies. “My mom is coming,” he says with pleasure. “We’re going to sing together—and then take in some of the other workshops. That’s pretty special.”
Hillsdale is for Mothers
The entire weekend will include a number of nods to Mother’s Day with themed offerings. Trattner’s iron roses and hearts, for example, are intended to make a great gift. The storytelling session at the Ancram Center for the Arts will center on maternal narratives. “It’s not a hard theme,” Carden says, “but there’s a warm, emotional thread running through a lot of what’s being offered.”
While many workshops take place in barns, studios, and gardens, all venues have been chosen for their aesthetic appeal and functionality. “You’re not stuck in some windowless conference room,” White says. “You’re surrounded by beauty and purpose.”
Even as it grows, the Workshop Experience Weekend has attempted to retain the intimacy and integrity that inspired its creation. “Every year, we hear from attendees who thought they were just coming for one workshop,” says Carden, “and then realize it’s part of something bigger. Now people will plan a whole trip around it.”
Tapas & Pizza Award Winning Wine List
65 Church Street Lenox, MA 01240
413-637-9171
Tapas & Pizza Award Winning Wine List 65 Church Street Lenox, MA 01240 413-637-9171
www.bravalenox.com
www.bravalenox.com
27 Housatonic St. Lenox, MA
Open 5pm to 1 am
Kitchen Till Midnight Closed Sundays
del mccoury band
steve earle
glori wilder
madeleine peyroux & bettye lavette
Barrington, MA
Benny Trokan
Do You Still Think of Me? (Wick Records)
Having long paid his dues playing bass for Spoon, Lee Fields’ Expressions, the Reigning Sound, Charles Bradley’s Extraordinaires, and the Jay Vons, multi-instrumentalist (and Beacon resident) Benny Trokan finally steps out on his own with a rock-solid debut album for Daptone Records’ Wick subsidiary. Possessed of a raspy, haunted voice that’s occasionally reminiscent of a cross between the Young Rascals’ Felix Cavaliere and Colin Blunstone of the Zombies, Trokan delivers 12 moody-yet-hooky songs here that harken back to the glory days of late-’60s AM radio without ever sounding slavishly retro. Trokan’s chiming electric 12-string leads the way on most of the album’s highlights, including “Long Shadows,” “Turn Back You Fool,” and “Nowhere to Be Found,” all of which sound like the sort-of-cool-but-unheralded B-side you might find on the flip of an old Blues Magoos or Left Banke 45.
The overall sound and vibe remains fairly consistent throughout, but the album’s arrangements are sparse enough that just a touch of musical color here and there—be it the whirring organ on “Save a Place for Me,” the sassy castanets on “It’s Time,” or the title cut’s dispassionate female backing chorus—is often all that’s needed to keep things fresh and interesting from track to track. Though he clearly reserves the right to rock when he feels like it, Trokan mostly keeps Do You Still Think of Me? cooking at a slow burn, which makes this collection of brooding ruminations on romance, betrayal, and love lost the perfect companion for a late-night listening session.
—Dan Epstein
June Cleaver and the Steak Knives
Short Tales of Science Fiction and Family Dissonance (Independent)
Mining the alienation and cognitive dissonance of living in the wired world of the 21st century, Accord’s June Cleaver and the Steak Knives specialize in quirky tales of explicit and implicit dread. Multiinstrumentalist brothers Christopher and Patrick Bradley draw from a wellspring of progressive art rock and postpunk to create idiosyncratic songs, layered with synths bleeps, acoustic guitars, and varied time signatures. Among the resonant themes explored is the idea of moral certainty in “Must Be Nice.” Propelled by a cheerful electronic pop beat, the vocals declaim “Must be nice to be so certain / Must be nice to / win every fight / Must be nice having second sight / Must be nice to know that you’re right.” The Bradleys come to this project with professional backgrounds in film production, museum exhibition, commercial jingles, and soundtracks; these skills coalesce into a literate and creatively satisfying record.
—Jeremy Schwartz
Margaret Vetare
Strange as The Trees: Songs of the Incredible String Band (Independent)
Oozing out of the Lower East Side, the Holy Modal Rounders dropped acid on American folk music. Across the pond, the Incredible String Band, well versed in the deep folk strata of the British Isles, did the same, exploring a newfound, Rounders-like freedom of warped original songs rooted in tradition as the ’60s expanded. Strange as The Trees, by Beacon’s Margret Vetare, is a loving tribute to the ISB. Perfectly rendered and justifiably ethereal, it’s a bit studied and tame, not reflecting the English group’s genuine weirdness. Still, with the instrumentation both sparse and lush—listen to the ersatz title track, “God Dog,” written by ISB founder Robin Williamson but offered to Shirley Collins—and a voice duskier than the ISB’s mysterious Licorice McKechnie, Vetare’s disc, like her fellow Hudson Valley artist Lady Moon’s delicate solo interpretations of Pentangle, provides a wide-open door to the wonderland of the ISB.
—Michael Eck
SOUND CHECK | Isabel Soffer and Danny Melnick
Each month we ask a member of the community to tell us what music they’ve been digging.
Isabel Soffer: I spend most days and nights discovering music from around the world at the intersection of traditional and contemporary. This is how I’ve seen ancient traditions thrive and gain new audiences. A band I can never listen to enough is marimberos Son Rompe Pera, founded by the Gama family from the outskirts of Mexico City. This outrageously fun band is firmly rooted in Mexican marimba music and cumbia but have moved it brilliantly into the music they love like garage, punk, and ska. Sonic shapeshifter Ganavya [who will play The Local on May 31] is a revelation. She is a New York-born and South Indian-raised singer and transdisciplinarian who has been making serious waves in disparate music circles since the release of her killer album Daughter of a Temple with a who’s who of collaborators. She moves ethereally between spiritual jazz and Indian devotional music. It’s like nothing I’ve heard before and it’s magical.
Danny Melnick: It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows us from our work at The Local that we are lovers of diverse music and musicians. I am constantly trying to keep up with new album releases and two recent ones I can’t stop listening to are Church of New Orleans, by the pianist and composer Kyle Roussel, and Is by the arena rock/jam/psychedelia band My Morning Jacket. Roussel is, by all measures, the next “one” in a long line of brilliant Crescent City pianists. He’s a beautifully gifted musician and did a masterful job on his new album, which features numerous special guests including Irma Thomas, Ivan Neville, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and Jamison Ross. My Morning Jacket’s 10th album sounds like it’s been around for decades. All the songs are incredibly familiar yet fresh and new. The album was produced by Brendan O’Brien, who has worked with Phish, Bruce Springsteen, and Pearl Jam.
Music- and concert-industry veterans Danny Melnick and Isabel Soffer are the cofounders of the event production company Hudson Valley Live and curators of Saugerties venue The Local.
Crush Ada Calhoun VIKING, 2025, $30
Ada Calhoun, a Catskills-based writer best known for her bestselling memoirs, makes her fiction debut with Crush, a taut and witty novel of midlife longing. The story follows a married woman whose husband unexpectedly urges her to pursue an old crush, sparking a spiral of desire, regret, and reawakened ambition. Set in motion by a single question—“What do you want that you don’t have?”—Crush charts the chaotic emotional terrain between contentment and craving. Calhoun brings the same keen observational eye from her nonfiction to this smart, sly, and deeply relatable exploration of love, loyalty, and the stories we tell ourselves.
The Poorly Made and Other Things
Sam Rebelein
WILLIAM MORROW, 2025, $18.99
Poughkeepsie-based author and Bram Stoker Award nominee
Sam Rebelein returns to his eerie fictional setting of Renfield County in The Poorly Made and Other Things, a collection of interconnected horror stories. Each tale delves into the unsettling aftermath of a historical family massacre, where bloodstained wood from the crime scene was repurposed into everyday items, spreading malevolence throughout the community. Rebelein’s narratives are interwoven with emails from a woman uncovering the dark history of Renfield, adding depth and cohesion to the collection. This work expands upon the universe introduced in his debut novel, Edenville, offering readers a chilling exploration of a cursed land.
1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times
Ross Benes
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PRESS, 2025, $32.67
Ross Benes, Tarrytown-based journalist and author, revisits the cultural landscape of the late ’90s in his latest book, 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times. Benes examines how phenomena like pro wrestling, Pokemon, and “The Jerry Springer Show” not only dominated the era but also laid the groundwork for today’s media and political climate. Drawing from his own experiences growing up in Nebraska, he offers a critical yet personal perspective on how the entertainment of 1999 continues to influence contemporary society. This work follows his previous titles, including Rural Rebellion and Turned On, further establishing Benes as a keen observer of American culture.
The Boats of Summer, Volumes 1 and 2
Richard V. Elliott
SCHIFFER PUBLISHING, 2025, $59.99
Richard V. Elliott’s The Boats of Summer volumes offer a richly detailed chronicle of the Hudson River and New York Harbor’s golden age of steamboating in these large-format coffee table books. Volume 1 delves into 35 nineteenth-century vessels, including the storied Mary Powell and the ill-fated General Slocum, providing physical descriptions, routes, and historical anecdotes. Volume 2 continues into the twentieth century, profiling 28 steamers from the Thomas Patten to the Alexander Hamilton, the region’s last paddlewheeler. Both volumes, edited by Linda D. Elliott, feature rare historical images and meticulous research, making them essential for maritime enthusiasts and those interested in the Hudson Valley’s nautical heritage.
Fabian: A Cubist Biography
Tom Newton
RECITAL PUBLISHING, 2025, $15
Woodstock author Tom Newton’s Fabian: A Cubist Biography is a literary Rubik’s Cube that defies categorization. This metafictional odyssey introduces Fabian, a would-be filmmaker conjured into existence by his creator, Newton, who abandons traditional narrative structures. The novel traverses time and space, weaving through encounters with conquistadors, Aztec priests, and immortal alchemists. With its blend of digressions, ambiguous photographs, and footnotes, the book challenges readers to question the nature of reality and fiction. Echoes of Borges and Sebald resonate throughout this inventive narrative, making it a must-read for those seeking a multidimensional literary experience.
—Brian K. Mahoney
Snowy Day and Other Stories
By Lee Chang-Dong, translated by Heinz Insu Fenkl and Yoosup Chang
PENGUIN PRESS, 2025, $32
Heinz Insu Fenkl first read a story by Korean director Lee Chang-dong in the mid-80s. The director is best known for his award-winning films, which include Oasis, Peppermint Candy, Poetry, and Burning (which was shortlisted for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars in 2019), but he also writes stories and novellas. Fenkl was so taken by the visceral quality of Lee’s imagery that he longed to one day translate the director’s written works. Accomplishing that goal would take a few decades. Snowy Day and Other Stories, Fenkl’s eloquent translation of Lee’s stories and novellas, was finally published in February by Penguin Press.
Fenkl, who speaks English, Korean and German, is a professor at SUNY, New Paltz, teaching graduate and undergraduate creative writing workshops in both fiction and memoir. He’s acquired a lengthy resume of scholarly translations and wrote the autobiographical novels Memories of My Ghost Brother and Skull Water. He did not publish his first translation of Lee’s work until 2007, when his translation of The Dreaming Beast appeared in Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature and Culture, published by Harvard’s Korean Institute. He finally met the director at a New York City retrospective of his films. Fenkl gave Lee one of his books and the director gave him a DVD set of his films.
“I told him I would be interested in translating his work,” says Fenkl. “Lee Chang-dong is always really humble and he asked, why would you want to translate more of my stories? I’m so embarrassed that you translated that first one.”
Snowy Day and Other Stories, a new collection by Chang-dong, was translated by SUNY New Paltz professor and author Heinz Insu Fenkl.
For the next 12 years Fenkl was engaged in translating The Nine Cloud Dream, a 17th-century Buddhist novel written in classical Chinese, which he learned as a graduate student at UC Davis. Lee and Fenkl met again at the premiere of Lee’s 2019 film Burning. This time Fenkl gave the director a copy of The Nine Cloud Dream
“I told him I can finally translate your works,” says Fenkl. “He expressed both interest and also asked me again, why would you want to translate that stuff?” The director gained insight into Fenkl’s motivation when he read a Korean translation of Memories of My Ghost Brother and a chapter of Skull Water, Fenkl’s novel about boys growing up around an American army base in Korea.
“Skull Water is set in the `70s,” says Fenkl. “He writes mostly about the mid-`80s. So it took him back to his childhood days. After he read it, he understood why his work resonated with me.”
Fenkl hadn’t lived in Korea for years so he recruited former student Yoosup Chang to help keep the translation current and colloquial. They collaborated with Lee, who made suggestions.
“He was also very open to suggestions,” says Fenkl. “I think this is partially because he’s a film director. He understands the collaborative process.” In both his films and stories Lee mirrors the fickle nature of fate, relaying the frailty of human nature with raw poetic imagery. Fenkl’s translation vividly captures the director’s cinematic narratives, stories shaped by Lee’s experiences during a turbulent era of South Korean history.
Translators have different styles, explains Fenkl. Some translate phrase by phrase, others sentence by sentence. He prefers to work on a paragraph at a time, but not before he’s read the entire book.
“The translation process is inherently interpretive,” says Fenkl. “You generally don’t know how to interpret a piece until you’ve read the whole thing.” Staying true to an author’s intent can be a weighty responsibility and Fenkl says that after translating, writing is like “running without weights on your ankles.” He recently coauthored The Korean Myths: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes and Legends with his daughter Bella Myong-wol Dalton Fenkl.
“Bella and I divided up the sections, and oddly enough, she did the ancient stuff and I did the contemporary stuff,” says Fenkl. “She was not interested in Korean pop culture.”
Their book explores the role myths play in creating Korean culture, both in South Korea and North Korea. “It’s especially interesting because we can see culture actually being created,” says Fenkl. “Our mythology book covers North Korea, which other books don’t. A lot of these myth and folktales books pretend Korea is some monolithic culture or monolithic political entity, but we make a very clear distinction about the differences in culture.” Fenkl is currently working on Baumholder, a memoir.
—Joan Vos MacDonald
Hudson Valley Spring
Today outside the toy shop
I found $20
And there was time leftover in the meter so I went in and bought a flower press to preserve those things which cannot be saved
My flower smusher
Sidney called it
When she opened the door she was fresh as a lamb in her new white fleece with a halo of silver bangs
Sat in my favorite blue and white pitcher quinces on the branch devotedly supplied year after year by a mysterious benefactor who vacations in Italy
Aside country roads the dandelions have burst wide open kicked down the door
The unrestrained fecundity of spring a welcome violence
I wouldn’t want you too close I’m glad for the distance I’m sorry to say that when it comes to love I’m a bit of an anorexic Absence and the heart and all that
Can you tell I am trying to say something that can only be spoken in tears or in a child’s drawing?
The tulips too they bloom In colors so pure I glance quickly I put my cigarette out three quarters of the way through (I place a single petal in the press) I am afraid
To have too much of a good thing
—Emily Gaynor
Cold Comfort
If you have the sense that each year seems worse than the one before,
Relax. You’ve not lost your marbles; you’re right. It is worse. Much worse.
—George J. Searles
Even the Wintering Chickadee
Even the wintering chickadee outside my window must think she is only a bird singing her songs of warning, her songs of love believing, like me, she is only the form she inhabits. I am a danger to her despite my hands full of seed, I pierce her pleasure at the feeder with my yearning. So it is, each day our mutual mysteries count for nothing and the carousel turns, bird fearing man man longing bird, our habits and needs keeping our friendship at bay. So on this early spring morning I offer my covenant: blessed bird, skittish, intrepid pirate, furious flier who drops in and scatters without malice, I see you.
I want nothing from you. You are released.
As am I.
—Kemp Battle
Reflections in the Black
Not the shagbark of hickory, life-beaten, hanging brown and cold, peeling the former parts of itself; emptied and waiting by the pond near my home.
Not the dying daylight flame on the water; its smoking cold fog of memory, of sinking along the shallows with lily pads and frosted reed. But all the nights spent alone; pitch black, new moon and my eyes to the sky: Does starlight ever end— when all of this is dead; cragged branch and frozen-snapped limbs.
There as the sun at dawn; this is the ruse of the stars. And—oh, how I dream to tell you of that morning where I wish for songbirds to speak; and how it will make me understand our language.
—Brandon Wolfe
Greek Tragedy
Some wise-ass Greek—a poet— has a line above his name in posterity Honoring his deep thought:
“Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.”
Renaissance artists set the scene in stone.
A marbled hand on a heavy, noble brow: Euripides’ reed poised to get his wisdom down before the ink dries.
But is that how it happened?
Hypothesize: Perhaps, some long weekend, a soma-drunk bar-fly— belligerent, kicked out, he’d had a skinful— Slipped and splayed akimbo in the Athens mud, raised a fist, wobbled at the gathered town, and moaned his piece.
A passing scribe, amused, exclaimed “‘Make mad.’ That’s good! I’ll write that down.”
—Matt Clifton
The Mind
“the foul rag and bone shop” —W. B. Yeats
The mind is like a puddle on a dirt road. It dries to caked mud, then becomes a puddle again. There’s nothing to be fathomed in a puddle, other than passing reflections of sky, its muddiness, and tiny frogs that dart deeper into the murk, evading intruders.
She brought a dried washcloth from upstairs. She said, “Here, this is yours.” I said, “Yes, it looks like my brain.” She said, “You got that right.” It had been a wet cloth used to soothe tired eyes. Now it’s all I ever wrote.
The heart, let’s not even dwell on it.
—Steve Clark
Full submission guidelines: Chronogram.com/submissions
Wanting a Forest
See the word as “for rest,” joined. In such wakeful watchfulness, what rests? Old roots, youngest shoot, each cell of budworm, hemlock, spore eats, multiplies, dies. Sometimes I rest like this, in what is, no different than a forest, a forest in me in want of nothing.
—Janet Kaplan
I Stand Here
I stand here watching the faithful wash the feet of fools sharing their lies better than bread
I stand here rusting on this rock sinking in this harbor a colossus of failed destiny perhaps you’ve been inside me parted the copper and slowly worked your way up my robe searching for my promise and a little taste of America perhaps you’ve climbed into my mind starry eyed me red capped me tied me up and wrapped me in flags and patriot grins perhaps you fancy me as some quaint antebellum girl with a childish dream
I stand here in grey waters my torch my poor my homeless out with the tide I stand here
Ashamed
—James Christopher Carroll
On the Rondout
I find a tree to lean against; this is where I feel at ease— with roots, with buds.
Beside me, the Mariner’s— full of men: throwing darts, bellowing, drinking beer. Embracing their lot.
Amongst them, I think, is a man who wanted me— he’d caught me at the light:
“It’s been a good day, and we’re going downtown. We’d like to see you there, if you’re around.”
So I came, and I don’t see him. I do see his car, though: black, with chrome, leather upholstery, fuzzy dice and Arizona plates.
He wasn’t handsome, but exciting.
I lean against my tree, and think about those men in there. I want them, they frighten me; my jacket is loud, and so are they.
What if they say the wrong thing?
How do I ground myself in their midst? How can I be discreet, when the bartender has a waist like that? Arms like that? When the man over there is trying not to look at me?
And when I’m trying to see a man I can’t see, who I only want because he wanted me?
—Ben Rendich
Liberty Song Cento
I wonder how it all got started, this business announced by all the trumpets of the sky.
Waking, these mornings, is like being thrown from a train. What defense can one mount against an avalanche?
Spare us all the words of the weapons, their force and range. The Declaration of Independence was written with a feather. It will happen here. No doubt. Someday, here, but history has never stopped me from praying.
How circumstances can save us from catastrophe. We the people, we the one.
The cento key includes the following poems: Billy Collins’ “The Art of Drowning,” Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The Snow Storm,” Michael Ryan’s “Poem at Thirty,” Amy Gerstler’s “The Ice Age,” Richard Wilbur’s “Advice to a Prophet,” Dean Young’s “Belief in Magic,” Laura Kasischke’s “After Ken Burns,” Saeed Jones’ “A Memory,” Pam Bernard’s “Field Notes,” and David Hernandez’s “We Would Never Sleep.”
—Richard L. Matta
Good. Intention
Why would you build high rises For people who used to live Close to the ground
Why would you build sidewalks For people that used to walk Barefoot on sandy ground
What heat source do you plan To give to the people that used To gather around the fire
What kind of solution Do you have For world hunger Without food
What joke would you tell Around the fire
After you run out of wood —Ze’ev Willy Neumann
Distance
“I have lost my sense of direction. I turned the wrong way on the road,” I overheard an old woman say this morning in the post office. I understand her. We’re the same age, but that’s not me. I still have my sense of direction. I turn the right way all the time. What I have lost is my sense of distance, the two miles I drive to pick up my mail get longer, the walk to the car in the lot gets longer, the drive home gets longer, the ascent up the front stairs, oh the ascent, the ascent gets longer, one risen riser at a time longer.
—J. R. Solonche
For There Is Nothing Quite So Fine
For there is nothing quite so fine as a lovingly woven little line —Christopher Porpora
Bound for Glory
Joe Stefko and the Beautiful Books of Charnel House Press
By Peter Aaron
Lifting it off the shelf and holding it, it’s difficult to believe a book so exquisite exists. Feeling the volume’s perfect heft in your hand, you ease it out of the sumptuous Japanese silk slipcase, caress the three-quarter inch black Moroccan leather spine, and marvel as you run your fingertips across the embossed, hand-dyed textured cover boards. Opening the cover reveals pages of bold text, offset-printed on coarse, 80-pound stock that was handmilled by Southwestern artisan makers Cave Paper.
Other offerings on hand to ogle and caress include books that incorporate three-dimensional physical elements into their designs: brushed metal, screwheads, bullet holes, rose petals, glass panels, tarot cards, poker chips, mirrors, uncut sheets of dollar bills, even a crystal-studded leather dog collar. These are just a few of the limited-edition pieces created by designer Joe Stefko and his magical Charnel House Ltd. publishing company, which he runs from his Catskill home. The business specializes in producing rare works mainly in the horror fiction/fantasy genre. And, unsurprisingly given the books’ over-the-top construction, they’re not cheap.
“This is a limited, lettered edition of the 40thanniversary printing of Dinner at Deviant’s Place by Tim Powers and it’s signed by the author,” Stefko says, holding the tome aloft like a chalice. “It’s hand bound in full custom-dyed Hydrangea Moroccan leather and stamped in gold on the front board and the spine, the pages are printed on Mohawk Superfine paper, and we used leather headbands and Black Bugra [paper] end sheets. Only 26 copies were made, one for each letter
of the alphabet. It’s $1,500. People go, ‘Why would I pay that much for a book?’ But as a book collector I’ve been very unimpressed with the quality of the modern limited editions that are being produced. My aim with Charnel House has always been to make things that I really like, because I knew there were other collectors out there who also really appreciated unique, interesting, welldone books.” Indeed, there are: The imprint’s dedicated, world-wide customer base has included actress Mary Tyler Moore and comedian Richard Lewis as repeat buyers. But it was music, not publishing, that was Stefko’s initial beat.
Playing Chicken
Before he became a bookmaker, Stefko, who grew up on Long Island, was a beat maker. An in-demand drummer, he played with some of the more prominent acts of the 1970s. And, like so many rock ’n’ roll drummers, he was inspired to pick up the sticks by one percussionist in particular. “Ringo,” he says. “I saw the Beatles on ‘Ed Sullivan’ in 1964 when I was nine years old, and I said, ‘That’s what I’m gonna do.’ By the early ’70s I was going into the city to audition for bands.”
Above: Endsheets from Last Call by Tim Powers
Left: Portrait of Joe Stefko by David McIntyre
Opposite, clockwise from top left: The New Neighbor by Ray Garton; Last Call by Tim Powers; Saint Odd by Dean Koontz; Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz.
After stints with several groups and jamming with influential guitarists April Lawton and Tommy Bolin, he landed a spot in John Cale’s band, with whom he toured the UK in 1977. “This was during the height of punk in England, and [ex-Velvet Underground member Cale] was being called ‘the Godfather of punk,’” Stefko recalls. “I still had long hair, which was very ‘un-punk’ then, and John really wanted me to cut my hair. I wouldn’t do it, and he just stayed on me about it the whole tour.” Things came to head, literally, at a show in Croydon where a drug-addled Cale decapitated a dead chicken on stage with a meat cleaver, right next to the drum kit. For the vegetarian drummer, it was all too much. He promptly quit, leaving his former boss to immortalize the incident in the song “Chicken Shit.” But a bigger gig would come next.
“When I got home my dad told me a friend had called and said I needed to call CBS about this guy Meat Loaf, who had a debut album that was about to come out and needed a drummer,” says Stefko. “I called the number, and they knew who I was because the stuff about me quitting John Cale’s band had been in Rolling Stone and all the English music papers. The guy said, ‘Get down here!’” Stefko ended up playing with Meat Loaf for the singer’s epic Bat Out of Hell tour, another wild ride, which continued into 1978. Work with Edgar Winter, Hot Tuna, and others followed but it was his time with Flo and Eddie—AKA the Turtles’ Mark Vollman and Howard Kaylan—that would lead the sticksman to his ultimate vocation.
Next Chapter
Vollman and Kaylan revived the Turtles name in 1980, and Stefko would spend the next 35 years on the road with the “Happy Together” rockers. He and the two singers were all big readers and while they were on tour they took to hitting bookstores to hunt for modern first and limited editions. “Word got around that we were really into books and pretty soon we had rare book dealers, along with the drug dealers [laughs], visiting us backstage,” Stefko says. “Some drug dealer would be wanting us to check out some vial of something and we’d say, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s great, but have you seen this first edition Dracula?’”
At a 1988 Turtles concert at New York’s iconic Biltmore Hotel ballroom, Stefko met the award-winning sci-fi/ fantasy writer Tim Powers, who told the drummer about the novel about Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats that he was then working on. “I thought about that book throughout the show,” remembers Stefko. “After the show, I asked Tim if he would trust me with the production of the limited edition and after some discussion he said yes and even agreed to illustrate the book. I told him that I would do it right, that I wouldn’t let him down.”
Titled The Stress of Her Regard, the book, bound in hand-bleached blue denim to evoke Shelley’s watery demise and complete with an introduction by Dean Koontz and afterward by Jim Blaylock, appeared in 1989 as Charnel House’s first release. Since then, Stefko, who in 2005 moved to Catskill, hasn’t slowed his output, publishing many more volumes by Powers as well as
Koontz, Harlan Ellison, and others. “Charnel House leaps ahead of many who have spent years fashioning elegant limited editions nowhere near this spectacular,” enthused the late Ellison, a giant of contemporary American fiction, for a website testimonial. “A new, higher standard for the collectable presentation of modern literature.”
“I thought I’d just do one book and that would be it,” Stefko says. “But at this point I’ve done 64. I look at the shelves in my office and I just can’t believe it.” He’s seemingly also grown more ambitious with each project, regularly pushing the boundaries of what can be done within the art of bookmaking. “Every time I call my bindery guy, who’s in Minneapolis, and tell him I have another idea for a book, the first thing he does is sigh [laughs],” says Stefko, who utilizes a Rhode Island typesetter, and admits he has no design schooling of any kind. “But I think he digs what I do because it’s usually a challenge for him.”
Of course, the overriding paradox of Charnel House is that its existence flies in the face of the current Kindle/ audiobook age. “Those are formats that don’t really even exist, they’re in the wind,” says Stefko. “I know there are people for whom books might as well be printed on toilet paper, but I want to help raise the bar and make things that inspire me. And I hope that gives other people the inspiration to do it themselves.”
Empty Chambers by Tim Powers will be available for preorder from Charnel House in June. Charnelhouse.com.
Left: Alternate Routes by Tim Powers Right: Brother Odd by Dean Koontz
by Shervin Lainez
Terra String Quartet
May 4 at the Caramoor Center for Music and Arts in Katonah
Made up of Juilliard, New England Conservatory, Harvard, and Curtis Institute of Music graduates, the Terra String Quartet took their name from the members’ multicultural origins. This concert by the group is part of their ongoing residency at Caramoor and includes madrigals by the late Renaissance Italian composer Maddalena Casulana, the first female composer to have her music published. (Twisted Pine puts down roots May 2; Nicole Zuraitis sings May 9.) 3pm. $34-$49.
Combo Chimbita
May 4 at Tubby’s in Kingston
Brooklyn band Combo Chimbita is fronted by vocalist Carolina Oliveros and started up in 2016. The fourpiece outfit uses cumbia as the jumping-off point for a spicy, spacey sonic sopa of psychedelia, AfroCaribbean rhythms, and contemporary electronic textures. Lush, trippy, and, above all, danceable, the group released Ire, their second album, in 2022, its Spanish lyrics concentrate on transcendence, social power structures, totalitarianism, and other timely themes. (Takaat and History Dog heel May 8; Frente Cumbiero heads in May 16.) 7pm. $24.72.
Sasami
May 6 at the Egg in Albany
In one persona, Sasami Ashworth is a conservatorytrained classical French horn player—but in another she’s Sasami, a dance pop diva. It’s that guise that she brings to this Tuesday night appearance in support of her newly released third album, Blood on the Silver Screen. “This album is all about learning and respecting the craft of pop songwriting, about relenting to illogical passion, obsession, and guiltless pleasure,” she says. Mood Killer opens. (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah brings applause May 7; 10,000 Maniacs go mad May 31.) 8pm. $25-$45.
Tune-Yards
May 9 at Assembly in Kingston
Acclaimed indie band Tune-Yards, whose core members are vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Merrill Garbus and multi-instrumentalist Nate Brenner, are known for weaving clever, socially themed lyrics into their lo-fi pop songs. And they put their money where their mouths are: $1 of each ticket sold at this show will benefit Street Spirit, an independent Bay Area newspaper that covers homelessness and poverty. The duo’s sixth album, Better Dreaming, is out this month. (Fantastic Cat purr-forms May 7; John Moreland sings and strums May 10.) 8pm. $31.39.
Italian Surf Academy
May 17 at Untouchable in Newburgh
Italian Surf Academy is guitarist Marco Cappelli (Art Spiegelman, John Turturro, Marc Ribot) bassist Damon Banks (George Benson, Stevie Wonder, Peter Gabriel) and drummer Dave Miller (John Zorn, Dave Burrell, Karl Berger). As their name hints at, the group, whose appearance here features guest poet Denver Butson and celebrates their debut album, Morricone is Dissolving, combines surf rock with Italian spaghetti Western theme music. (Pulverize the Sound pounds May 31; the James Carney/Richard Bonnet Trio jams June 7.) 8pm. Donation requested.
Dean Wareham
June 4 at the Bearsville Theater in Bearsville
The front man of influential neo-psychedelic legends Galaxie 500 and Luna and coleader of the duo Dean and Britta, singer-guitarist Dean Wareham is currently touring on That’s the Price of Loving Me, his fourth solo album. The disc finds him reunited with producer Kramer, who oversaw the sound of Galaxie 500’s final album, 1990’s This is Our Music, and sees him covering tunes by Nico and Mayo Thompson alongside its wealth of new Wareham originals. (The Lemon Twigs get sweet June 6; Band of Horses ride in June 8.) 8pm. $35.20-$61.50. —Peter Aaron
Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner of Tune-Yards, who play Assembly in Kingston on May 9.
Photo
Daniella Dooling, Mathew Gilbert, Phil Knoll, Gabriel Martinez, Rafael Santiago, Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens
A Familiar Type of Magic Bill Arning Exhibitions
LANDMINES:
Dawoud Bey, Christina Fernandez, Richard Mosse, Rick Silva February 8 – July 13, 2025
It Takes 10 to Tango
“THE TANGO DIARIES”
AT PHILIPSTOWN DEPOT THEATER
May 2-18
Depottheater.org
My father had the tango bug. Anytime tango dancers appeared on Broadway, he was compelled to buy a ticket. Why? Dad himself was an awful dancer. He wasn’t Argentinian. He wasn’t even born when the tango craze first swept the world—beginning in Paris—in 1912.
The appeal of the tango is inexplicable; that’s the point of “The Tango Diaries” at the Philipstown Depot Theatre in Garrison.
“The Tango Diaries” illuminates the lives of fanatic devotees of this intoxicating dance. Six actors perform, alternating with four first-class tango dancers who illustrate the narrative with snakelike ritual display—to live music.
The first story is told by Annie, a woman who wanders into a tango bar in New York City to escape a rainstorm, and abruptly decides to quit her job, leave her boyfriend, move to Buenos Aires, and study the emotive art form.
“Tango has such a huge underground global presence,” the director, Alice Jankell, remarks. “You know what country has the most tango festivals in the
world? Finland!” What is the appeal of the tango? Is it the sexuality? The frisson of violence? The exoticism? Or some mystical essence the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges hints at in his stories?
Jankell worked with Ron Hutchinson, coauthor of the play, in the late ‘90s, developing theater works for Disney. They reconnected years later in the Hudson Valley, and she directed a staged reading of “The Tango Diaries” in Carmel. In 2021 the play was dramatized on BBC radio, but this is its first actual full performance. Hutchinson has written widely for film and television, winning an Emmy for “Murderers Among Us: The Simon Weisenthal Story.” Alisa Taylor, a former dancer and Hutchinson’s wife, cowrote “The Tango Diaries.”
The Depot is an intimate 86-seat theater in a former railway station on the Hudson, directly across from West Point. In 1996 Metro-North magnanimously donated the Victorian structure to the Garrison Landing Association. A new railroad station was built right next to it, which means you can reach The Depot without a car! (The building appears in the movie Hello Dolly!)
For some reason, railroad stations have fabulous acoustics. Many well-known groups, such as Blonde Redhead and Okkervil River, have performed at the Depot, due to the fineness of the sound and the room’s intimacy.
Taking the helm last September, Alice Jankell is the theater's first new artistic director in 20 years. She
comes with an impressive portfolio as actor, director, and writer. Jankell was associate artistic director of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and has written several plays, including “The Sweet Spot,” which debuted last winter in Manhattan.
“You don’t really serve a community unless you grow,” Jankell says of the Depot. She’s forged a partnership with Fable & Sow, a visionary theater school and sustainable farm outside Newburgh. Another link is with Theatre Now, a nonprofit nurturing new voices in musical theater. The Depot has also begun a series of staged dramatic readings, titled “Sometimes Sundays.” Professional actors perform brand-new plays, with a talkback afterwards, in which audience members respond to the playwright.
Jankell also launched the Professional Mentorship Program, where she teaches high school students the thousand skills necessary to direct a play. “Depot Docs” is a documentary series which often includes a Q&A with the film director.
For “The Tango Diaries,” the theater itself will be transformed into a tango milonga, a traditional Argentine cabaret, with a checkerboard floor and intimate round tables. Unlike the Broadway spectacles my father schlepped me to, the dancers will be up close. “Here you can see them sweat,” Jankell promises. “You’re breathing in and breathing out with the people onstage.”
—Sparrow
Dancers Sandra Antognazzi and Walter Perez are part of the cast of "The Tango Diaries" at Philipstown Depot Theater.
Photo by Cecilia De Bucourt
STANDPOINT
Naoko Oshima
Archil Pichkhadze
May
STANDPOINT
Flint
Hopkins
Dawn Bisio, Rosangela DeFalco, Gianna DeFalco, Laurie DiFalco, Freya De Nitto, Nancy Drew, Andrea Gill, Nancy Graham, Lanette Kristin Hughes, Laura Katz, Pat Kelly, Nadine May Lewis, Lara Locke, Nikki Pison, Polly Reina, Rubi Rose, Shamsi Ruhe, Barbara Smiley, Nancy Smith, Lisa Spiros, Jean Tansey, Charlotte Tusch
Stacie
Mark
Digging Deep
“FRANC PALAIA: URBAN ARCHEOLOGY” AT GARNER ARTS CENTER
May 3-June 15
Garnerartscenter.org
The first time I met Franc Palaia I knew I was in the presence of an old-school badass. Our initial meet-andgreet-art-connectivity-chitchat swiftly evolved into a lively discussion about the downtown scene in New York City during the 1980s, the evolution of his graffiti-infused style, his life as an artist working in the Hudson Valley, and that time when the mighty Jean-Michel Basquiat commissioned Palaia to paint two small paintings for him and later incorporated elements of Palaia’s imagery into his own collaborative piece with Andy Warhol. (True story.) Since that conversation on Main Street in Saugerties, we have since maintained an epistolary exchange with a constant flow of dynamic news from his end, everything from his “Public Art in Poughkeepsie” tour (running since 2007) and his participation in recent group exhibitions around the US, including the Foto Focus Biennial in Cincinnati, Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art in Peekskill, and Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz to his latest family sojourn in Rome for his daughter’s wedding. (In 1985, he and his now-wife, Eve D’Ambra, an acclaimed historian and professor at Vassar College, met during their respective fellowships at the prestigious American Academy in Rome).
My ongoing communication with Palaia yields one energetic “artist update” after another, among them juicy tidbits about his past projects (his murals have been featured in Hollywood movies) and memorable short stories, notably his time as a drummer in the rag-tag Afrofunk new wave band Jon Waine when the late Pope.L (born William Pope) was the lead singer. Pope.L went on to became an internationally celebrated performance artist. Palaia shared with me a screenshot of the band from a video that was featured at the MoMA memorial for Pope.L last year. Palaia can be seen hammering away on his drum set behind Pope.L as they command the room in a potent moment of musical mayhem.
Other messages from Palaia detail his extraordinary experiences in Manhattan during the height of ‘80s creative culture, including his stint as a set designer for the Actor’s Studio, his work with Salvador Dali on a holographic film, and his job painting studio backdrops for Annie Leibovitz. Last summer Palaia bombed my inbox with many great images of his work as seen out and about in the world, including a picture of the renowned rapper KRS-One standing in front of his sculpture in the “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: Celebrating 50 Years of Hip Hop” show at Albany Center Gallery. With this exhibition at Garner Arts Center, we encounter Palaia’s gutsy artistic style in nearly 65 vibrant artworks including paintings, sculptures, photographs, and mixed media pieces that employ found objects and embody his many years of exploration and focus. Beginning with his early works that reflect his affinity for cave paintings to his later Styrofoam sculptural
Occhi Belli, Rome, Franc Palaia, archival color photograph, paint, paper collage, wood, spray, faux cement on Polystyrene, 34” x 46” x 3”, 2023
photographs and his current works that contain imagery of war weapons, Palaia engages with diverse ideas both archaic and extant. What we don’t see in this retrospective show are his many projects around the globe, including recent community wheatpasting activities in our region.
With their strong street-art edge, Palaia’s artworks also express his admiration for the rich visual cultures of other countries, including his bright Chinese fresco series that incorporate Maoist-era imagery and other iconographical references from far-flung lands such as Italy, France, Turkey, China, Russia, Palestine, and Cuba. Among the most powerful elements of this show is the wall that includes his “dictator series” of decrepit portraits of living tyrants including Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un among other psychopathic overlords now dead and gone. Together these artworks illuminate a joyful jumble of symbolism and metaphors, everything from Western cartoon figures to classical European visuals culled from art history and everything in-between.
For 50 years, Franc Palaia has devoted himself to his dynamic art practice as a multidisciplinary “urban archeologist” artist and Renaissance man. Having received over 23 grants and fellowships in nine media categories (including murals, artist books, and curating) and bolstering a storied professional career in art, music, theater, performance, and documentary projects (among other areas of creativity), Palaia continues to realize a bold and confident body of work that confirms his status as a long-standing badass of his generation.
—Taliesin Thomas
Noisy by Nature
THE MYSTERY LIGHTS AT NO FUN IN TROY May 3 at 7pm Nofuntroy.com
There have been a few bands that have formed over the last decade who aim to replicate the sound, style, and performance of their rock ‘n’ roll forefathers. Greta Van Fleet, for perfect example, is essentially a Led Zeppelin clone.
What they and other nostalgia-driven bands are missing, however, is the execution of poetic insurgence. True rock ‘n’ roll wasn’t performative, it was revolutionary. Contemporary artists are ignoring their civil duty to cause anarchy.
Enter the Mystery Lights. A beacon of seditious hope for those who want to keep the tradition of musical mutiny alive in the age of passive complacency.
Upon first glance, The Mystery Lights’ self-titled album from 2016 resembles that of The Doors in an uncanny way—the raw, blues-infused riffs mixed with a sultry, walking bassline, and the harmonious screech of a modcutted frontman could nearly transport you to the dimly lit, hazy barstools of the Whisky a Go Go circa 1967. To a well-tuned ear, however, there are some key production elements that add significant, contemporary intricacies to their sound.
“Wayne Gordon is the perfect producer for us,” says lead singer Mike Brandon. “He comes from a hip-hop
background, so he puts a unique touch on the garage stuff. It adds a bass-heavy back beat, so when you listen to our songs it intuitively makes you bob your head.” Gordon, chief studio engineer of Daptone Records and cofounder of their garage-rock subsidiary, Wick Records, is a Grammy Award-winning engineer for Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk.” His very first signees under Wick Records, however, was the Mystery Lights.
“In 2015, we were playing a show at Union Pool in Brooklyn and some people from Daptone were brought to see us,” says Brandon. “That’s when things really changed. Wayne came up to us after the show and told us about his idea for Wick, and how he wanted us to be the first release.”
Though their first record came out the following year in 2016, the Mystery Lights have been making music together since the early 2000s. Brandon and lead guitarist Luis “L.A.” Solano went to high school together in Salinas, California.
“At first, we were just making music for ourselves with the intention of having fun,” says Brandon. “Back in the day, we used to play with Shannon and the Clams a bunch and Ty Segall when he was in Traditional Fools. The difference was that they put out records with labels, and we were okay with putting our demos on MySpace. We did that for a good 10 to 15 years and just flew under the radar, but we were just being picky, waiting for the right label.”
In 2012, Brandon and Solano moved to New York City. They met the rest of their current lineup—bassist Alex Amini, keyboardist Lily Rogers, and drummer
Zach Butler—and paired with Gordon’s resources to put grandeur and fame into plausible reality, their creativity burst at the seams.
They fed the fruits of their labor to the streets of New York at the Mercury Lounge in Manhattan on June 24, 2016, embarking on a continuous, five-month tour. They kept touring for the next three years, straight through the release of their second album, Too Much Tension!, in 2019 and onward into 2020.
“After the second album and Covid-19, there was this huge stretch of time where I really wasn’t interested in playing music,” says Brandon. “I think we just burnt out for a minute there. Then, three years later, we reunited with Wayne and the mentality was ‘let’s just get into the studio and have fun’ instead of ‘let’s make another album because we have to.’”
Inspired by ideas of Stoicism, righteousness in the face of hatred, and societal complicity, the Mystery Light’s latest album, Purgatory, is unmistakably theirs. Genrebending, heart-pumping and thought-provoking; pulling from country licks, psychedelic tones, and punk rock enthusiasm, the Mystery Light’s upcoming tour is bound to be their best yet. And better still—their final date is in our own Hudson Valley, at the notorious No Fun in Troy on May 3. Sun Natives and Abyssmals will open.
“We’ve never played this venue all together before, so we’re really excited,” says Brandon. “The promoter is so excited to have us. You can tell this guy really appreciates our music. I’m looking forward to that show the most, in all honesty.”
—Gabriella Gagliano
The Mystery Lights playing Bowery Ballroom on April 16.
Photos by Gabriella Gagliano
May
May
Fran Lebowitz speaks at the Paramount Hudson Valley Theater in Peekskill on May 9.
Speaking Her Mind
FRAN LEBOWITZ AT THE PARAMOUNT HUDSON VALLEY THEATER IN PEEKSKILL May 9 at 8pm Paramounthudsonvalley.com
For nearly 60 years Fran Lebowitz has been the unvarnished voice of New York’s collective gut. Now 74, she began broadcasting her brilliantly blunt—and often hilarious—social commentary about the city and the world around it in the 1970s via her work as a magazine columnist, author, and actor. Since the 1990s, though, the sage observer, who will hold forth at Peekskill’s Paramount Hudson Valley Theater on May 9, has been offering her wry, instinctual musings mainly via public speaking engagements. “It’s what I wanted my entire life,” she told The L Magazine in 2011. “People asking me my opinion, and people not allowed to interrupt.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly the outspoken Lebowitz has long had opinions on another prominent erstwhile Manhattanite, one whose rise intersects with her initial print coverage of city society: Donald Trump. “In New York he was always a joke,” she says by phone when asked about the current White House occupant. “Most people
in New York never considered him a New Yorker, and most real estate developers looked down on him. I mean, can you imagine the level of moral squalor you have to have for a New York real estate developer to look down on you? This man managed to go broke owning casinos. People walk into a casino, throw their money away, and walk out. How do you go broke owning a casino? He didn’t get [to the presidency] by being any kind of genius. He got there because he’s the luckiest man in the world. Without question. And not because of hard work, either. I have a friend with a little boy, a four-year-old. Whenever that little boy puts away one of his toys, he’s already worked harder than Donald Trump ever did.”
Lebowitz, however, has seen her share of work. Upon moving to New York from her New Jersey birthplace in 1969, she initially supported herself as a house cleaner, chauffeur, college term paper writer, print ad seller, and even a pornography scribe. Gravitating to the art scene, she befriended Andy Warhol and his circle and was hired by Warhol for his Interview magazine, penning the columns “The Best of the Worst,” which reviewed bad movies, and “I Cover the Waterfront,” which focused on the broader New York arts landscape; a stretch at Mademoiselle followed. A fixture at hotspots like Max’s Kansas City and Studio 54, Lebowitz was running buddies with figures like Robert Mapplethorpe, Jerome Robbins, David Wojnarowicz, and the New York Dolls,
“the only rock ’n’ roll band I ever really cared about.”
Lebowitz’s first book, the comedic essay collection Metropolitan Life, was published in 1978. In its wake came 1981’s Social Studies and 1994’s The Fran Lebowitz Reader (a reprint of the first two books) and the children’s title Mr. Chas and Lisa Sue Meet the Pandas. The author’s whiplash wit made her a hit guest on TV talk shows, and from 2001 to 2007 she starred as Judge Janice Goldberg on “Law & Order.” In 2010 she became the subject of Public Speaking, an HBO documentary directed by her longtime friend Martin Scorsese, in whose 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street she also appears. In 2021 she again collaborated with Scorsese, this time for “Pretend It’s a City,” an acclaimed Netflix series centering on their conversations about New York life.
“I would never move out of New York,” says the defiantly analog orator—she’s never owned a computer or a cell phone—who briefly lived in Poughkeepsie as a teenager. “People move out because it’s so expensive to live here. New York could be in flames and it would still be an incredibly expensive place to live. If you think having a backyard is a good substitute for living in New York, then that’s great. It never appealed to me. But because of that I have to be constantly working to stay here.”
—Peter Aaron
Photo by Brigitte Lacombe
PKX Festival
May 3 at various locations in Poughkeepsie
The PKX Festival returns to Poughkeepsie, transforming Mansion Square Park and the Family Partnership Center into a vibrant celebration of youth creativity. This free, all-ages event features hands-on art-making activities, live music, local vendors, and a teen art exhibition showcasing the talents of young artists. The evening culminates in a film showcase and awards ceremony, highlighting youth-produced short films from around the world. Designed and produced by the Poughkeepsie Board of Artistic Youth (PK B.A.Y.), the festival embodies the spirit of community and the power of youth-led artistic expression. The festival is a great place to experience the energy and innovation of Poughkeepsie’s next generation of artists. 1-8pm.
Spring into Newburgh
May 10 at various locations in Newburgh Downtown Newburgh throws open its doors for Spring into Newburgh, a day-long celebration of art, wellness, and community spirit. The event features Art on the Block, an outdoor market showcasing regional artists; the Safe Harbors Run for the Green 5K, a charity run through the historic district; a vibrant farmers’ market; and a health and wellness festival promoting well-being and healthy living. It’s a grassroots showcase of the city’s creative energy and resilience, offering a chance to explore local businesses and connect with the community. 9am-6pm.
Asbury Shorts USA
May 10 at Rosendale Theater in Rosendale Asbury Shorts USA returns to the Rosendale Theatre for an evening of cinematic delights, hosted by none other than Chronogram’s own Brian K. Mahoney. This longrunning traveling short film showcase brings together a fast-paced mix of award-winning comedy, drama, documentary, and animation from around the globe— curated for maximum impact and minimal attention span fatigue. Interspersed throughout the program are vintage television ads, adding a layer of retro kitsch to the proceedings. It’s a popcorn-fueled rollercoaster of storytelling, perfect for cinephiles and commitmentphobes alike. One night only, so don’t sleep on it—or you’ll miss 20 stories in 90 minutes. 7pm.
Hudson Valley Pirate Festival
May 10-11 at the Ulster County Fairgrounds in New Paltz
If your idea of a good time involves corsets, cutlasses, and yelling “Arrr!” without irony, you’ll want to make way for the Hudson Valley Pirate Festival at the Ulster County Fairgrounds. This gloriously low-tech gathering of landlocked buccaneers features mock battles, bawdy
sea shanties, questionable British accents, and a ragtag flotilla of entertainers, vendors, and cosplay lifers. There’s a kids’ area for your little powder monkeys and enough fried food to clog even the most seaworthy artery. Equal parts Ren faire, backyard theater, and rum-soaked fever dream, it’s a day of make-believe mayhem that doesn’t take itself too seriously. 10am-6pm.
“The Flick”
May 16-June 1 at the Mescal Hornbeck Community Center, Woodstock
Performing Arts of Woodstock brings Annie Baker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “The Flick” to the Mescal Hornbeck Community Center, under the direction of Shelley Wyant. Set in a fading Massachusetts movie theater, the play follows three underpaid employees— Sam, Rose, and Avery—as they navigate the monotony of their jobs and the complexities of their personal lives. Baker’s signature naturalistic style captures the subtle tensions and unspoken emotions that simmer beneath everyday interactions. With performances by Wallace Norman, Taylor Steward, Shaq Sinclair, and Joan Craig, this production offers an intimate look at the quiet dramas unfolding in the most ordinary of places. Friday and Saturday at 7pm, Sunday at 1pm.
The Hudson Valley Kite Fest
May 17 at Kingston Point Park in Kingston
The Hudson Valley Kite Fest returns to Kingston Point Beach, offering a day of skyward whimsy and community spirit. Organized by MyKingstonKids, this free event invites attendees to bring their own kites or design one on-site, filling the sky with vibrant colors and creativity. Beyond kite flying, the festival features local vendors, live performances, and the MyKingstonKids Play Cafe, ensuring entertainment for all ages. With the gentle breeze off the Hudson and the open expanse of the beach, it’s a perfect setting to reconnect with simple joys and shared experiences. 11am-4pm.
Beltane
May 17 at Stone Mountain Farm in New Paltz
The 34th Hudson Valley Beltane Festival brings a riot of spring color and pagan pageantry to Stone Mountain Farm in New Paltz. A cross between a Renaissance fair, a community picnic, and a woodland rave, this family-friendly fete is anchored by the Beltane Pageant—a wild whirl of myth, music, aerial dance, and giant puppets courtesy of the Vanaver Caravan. Expect frolicking fairies, ceremonial maypole dances, prancing hobbyhorses, and enough flower crowns to make Coachella blush. Bonus: It’s donationbased, and all are welcome—just bring your reveling spirit (and maybe a tambourine). Rain date is the next day, if the gods don’t cooperate. 1-6pm.
Garner Arts Festival
May 17-18 at Garner Arts Center in Garnerville
Garner Arts Festival is the rare cultural event where you can sip a craft brew beside a 19th-century smokestack while watching site-specific performance art unfold in an old printworks alley. Held across the sprawling, red-brick Garner Historic District in Garnerville, the festival features open artist studios, live music, large-scale installations, and a vintage makers’ market curated by Trade and Prosper. Food and drink flow freely (shoutout to Round Table Brewery), while a full slate of kids’ activities, hands-on workshops, and student exhibitions rounds out the weekend. Come for the art, stay for the post-industrial atmosphere—and maybe a retro bolo tie. 12-6pm.
Spring Antiques at Rhinebeck
May 24-25 at Dutchess County Fairgrounds in Rhinebeck
Each Memorial Day weekend, the Dutchess County Fairgrounds in Rhinebeck transform into a treasure trove of history and craftsmanship with the Spring Antiques at Rhinebeck show. Curated by Barn Star Productions, this event gathers over 125 exhibitors showcasing a diverse array of antiques—from American and Continental furniture to fine art, folk art, textiles, and vintage collectibles. Spanning centuries and cultures, the offerings include Oriental rugs, designer and costume jewelry, ceramics, and more. Visitors can explore these curated collections across three spacious buildings, enjoy fare from specialty food trucks, and immerse themselves in the rich tapestry of the past. Saturday: 10am-5pm; Sunday: 11am-4pm.
“Looking for Justice (in all the wrong places)”
May 31 at Phoenicia Playhouse in Phoenicia Amy Oppenheimer has spent decades navigating the labyrinth of American justice—as a feminist lawyer, judge, and workplace investigator. Now, she steps onto the stage at the Phoenicia Playhouse with “Looking for Justice (in all the wrong places),” a solo performance that’s part memoir, part reckoning. Oppenheimer revisits her journey from 1970s Berkeley activism to courtroom battles over sexual harassment, all while grappling with a haunting early case: a friend’s rape trial that left her questioning the very system she served. Directed by David Ford and produced by Martha Frankel, the show balances humor and gravity, offering a deeply personal lens on the elusive pursuit of justice. Both performances conclude with a discussion led by journalist Carole Zimmer. 2pm and 7pm.
—Brian K. Mahoney
Mats Qviström in The Car Spotter, directed by Martin Sandin, part of the slate of films to be shown at Asbury Shorts USA at the Rosendale Theater on May 10.
415 MAIN STREET GALLERY
415 MAIN STREET, ROSENDALE
“Soul Captures and Contemplations.” Photographs by Cali Alpert. May 9-18.
68 PRINCE STREET GALLERY
68 PRINCE STREET, KINGSTON
“Symbolic of the Whole.” Paintings and sculpture by Francine Tint. Through June 26.
ABC LATINO
356 MAIN STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE
“20 x 20.” Work by Jose Acosta, Luz Castaneda, Penny Dell, and Julia Santos Solomon. May 2-23.
ALBANY INSTITUTE OF HISTORY & ART
125 WASHINGTON AVENUE, ALBANY
“On the Road to Cragsmoor with Charles Courtney Curran.” Traces the American painter Charles Courtney Curran’s (1861-1942) career. Through October 13.
ANN STREET GALLERY
104 ANN STREET, NEWBURGH
“The Destiny”. Work by Destiny Arianna, Vernon Byron, Cy Hinojosa, Lala Montoya, Alisa Sikelianos-Carter, and Tony Washington. Curated by Jaime Ransome. Through May 10.
ART OMI
1405 COUNTY ROUTE 22, GHENT
“Staging Area: A Barn Raising in Two Parts.” Installation by Erin Besler. Through June 8.
ARTS SOCIETY OF KINGSTON
97 BROADWAY, KINGSTON
“Fractural: Sculpting the Human Condition.” Sculpture by Aleksandra Scepanovic. May 3-25.
BANK ART CENTER
94 BROADWAY, NEWBURGH
“Who Am I?” Group show. Through June 1.
BAU GALLERY
506 MAIN STREET, BEACON
“Swallowing the Sun.” Work by Daniel Berlin.
“In This Place.” Group show.
“Precious Stones.” Work by Iain Wall. All shows May 10-June 8.
BILL ARNING EXHIBITIONS
17 BROAD STREET, KINDERHOOK
“Familiar/Unfamiliar.” Work by Kevin Mosca, Matthew Bede Murphy, Sue Muskat, and Erik Daniel White. Through May 17.
“A Familiar Type of Magic.” Work by Phil Knoll, Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens, Gabriel Martinez, Mathew Gilbert, Rafael Santiago, and Daniella Dooling. May 24-July 7.
BUSTER LEVI GALLERY
121 MAIN STREET, COLD SPRING
“Between Observation and Abstraction.” New work by Lisa Diebboll. May 3-31.
CAROL COREY FINE ART
6 NORTH MAIN STREET, KENT, CT
“Roz Chast.” Drawings, embroderies, and pysanky eggs. May 3-June 8.
CARRIE HADDAD GALLERY
622 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“Uncanny Perceptions.” Paintings by Ann Getsinger, Carl Grauer, India Sachi, and sculpture by Dai Ban. Through June 1.
CATSKILL ART SPACE
48 MAIN STREET, LIVINGSTON MANOR
“Wade Kramm, Howard Schwartzberg, and Susan Silas.” May 3-June 21.
CONVEY/ER/OR GALLERY
299 MAIN ST, POUGHKEEPSIE
“This Land Ain’t Your Land.” Portraits of migrant workers and First Nations people by Dan Goldman. Through June 1.
CPW
25 DEDERICK STREET, KINGSTON
“Larry Fink: Sensual Empathy.” Curated by Lucy Sante. May 24-August 31.
“Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950-Present.” Curated by Russet Lederman and Olga Yatsevich. May 24-August 31.
“The Rose.” Curated by Justine Kurland and Marina Chao. May 24-August 31.
CUNNEEN-HACKETT ARTS CENTER
9 & 12 VASSAR STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE
“Portrait Paintings by Mari Keeler Cornwell.” May 9-31.
D’ARCY SIMPSON ART WORKS
409 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“Ekaterina Vanovskaya.” New paintings. Through May 26.
Installation view of "Symbolic of the Whole," a show of paintings and sculpture by Francine Tint at the recently opened 68 Prince Street Gallery.
DIA BEACON
3 BEEKMAN STREET, BEACON
“Renee Green: The Equator Has Moved.” Installation. Through August 31.
DRAW GALLERY
24 IWO JIMA LANE, KINGSTON
“Palimpsest: Past, Present, and Print.” Group show curated by Devon Stackonis and Jacob Taylor Gibson. Through May 17.
ELIJAH WHEAT SHOWROOM
195 FRONT STREET, NEWBURGH
“Compact, Relaxed, & Intact.” Sculptures by Millicent Young and video installation by Virginia L. Montgomery. Through June 29.
“Girls at the End of the World.” Site-specific installation by Jessica Hargreaves. Through June 29.
installation view of The Equator Has Moved, Renee Green, at Dia Beacon.
Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio
FENIMORE ART MUSEUM
5798 STATE HIGHWAY 80, COOPERSTOWN
“American Masterworks.” Featuring 27 oil paintings by Eastman Johnson, John Singer Sargent, and others. Through December 31.
“Boundless Spirit: American Folk Art at the Fenimore Art Museum.” Through December 31.
“Mary Cassatt/Berthe Morisot: Allies in Impressionism.” May 24-September 1.
“The Power of Photography: 19th-20th Century Original Master Prints.” May 24-September 1.
FRANCES LEHMAN LOEB ART CENTER
124 RAYMOND AVENUE, POUGHKEEPSIE
“Great Green Hope for the Urban Blues.” Artists reinterpret and reinstall the Loeb’s collection of Hudson River School art. Through August 10.
“Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Black Space-Making from Harlem to the Hudson Valley.” Group show retelling of the history of the Hudson Valley. Through August 17.
“Water/Bodies.” Work by Sa’dia Rehman. Through August 17.
FRED J. JOHNSTON HOUSE MUSEUM & GALLERY
63 MAIN STREET, KINGSTON
“Edward Budney: Photographer.” Photographs of Kingston in the 1950s. May 3-October 31.
GALLERY40
40 CANNON STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE
“The Animal Kingdom.” Work by Emily Nomer, Jacqueline Oster, and Susan Siegel. May 2-June 1, 5-7pm.
GARNER ARTS CENTER
55 WEST RAILROAD AVENUE, GARNERVILLE
“Echoes of Grass.” New work on paper by Edward M. O’Hara. May 3-June 15.
“Urban Archaeology”. Twenty-year survey of the multimedia work of Franc Palaia. May 3-June 15.
GARRISON ART CENTER
23 GARRISON’S LANDING, GARRISON
“Rise: Scenes of Resistance.” Photographs by Jeremy Dennis. Through June 22.
GEARY CONTEMPORARY
34 MAIN STREET, MILLERTON
“Things: Wheels, Ladders, Teeth, Alps, Gods, Boats, Etc.” Sculpture by William Corwin. Through June 8.
GREEN KILL
229 GREENKILL AVENUE, KINGSTON
“Deidre Day and Joanna Grabiarz.” May 3-June 28.
GRIT WORKS | GRIT GALLERY
115 BROADWAY, NEWBURGH
“Astounding Sanctuaries and Sun Lit Songs.”
Abstract paintings by David Lionheart. May 3-July 6.
HAWK + HIVE
61 MAIN STREET, ANDES
“Funny Feeling.” Paintings by Brian Cirmo. Through May 11.
HEADSTONE GALLERY
28 HURLEY AVENUE, KINGSTON
More Than Any Mirror.” Work by Adie Russell and Benjamin Herndon. May 3-June 1.
HESSEL MUSEUM OF ART/CCS BARD
BARD COLLEGE, ANNANDALE-ONHUDSON
“15.” Exhibition curated by the Center for Curatorial Studies 2025 graduating class. Through May 25.
HUDSON HALL
327 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“Wolfgang Tillmans.” Photographs. Through May 18.
HUDSON RIVER MUSEUM
511 WARBURTON AVENUE, YONKERS
“Smoke in Our Hair: Native Memory and Unsettled Time.” Twenty-seven works highlighting some of the most influential Native artists working over the last 60 years. Through August 31.
HUDSON VALLEY MOCA
1701 MAIN STREET, PEEKSKILL
“Psychological Portraiture.” Group photography show. Through June 30.
JANE ST. ART CENTER
11 JANE STREET, SAUGERTIES
“Pin Up.” Group show. Through May 10. “Super Cute.” Group exhibition. Through May 10. “Folds and Faults”. Paintings by Lindsey A. Wolkowicz. May 17-June 21.
KENISE BARNES FINE ART
7 FULLING LANE, KENT, CT
“Julia Whitney Barnes and Sarah Morejohn.” Drawings, paintings, and cyanotypes. Through June 8.
KINOSAITO
115 7TH STREET, VERPLANCK
“Alice Mizrachi: Unifying Threads of Our Evolution.” Mural. Through May 18.
“Kikuo Saito: The Wrong Side of the Brush.” Paintings. Through May 18.
“Reuven Israel: U.F.O. (Untitled Folding Object) 1329.”Site-specific installation. Through May 18.
LABSPACE
2642 NY ROUTE 23, HILLSDALE
“Carlton Davis: Humble Beauty.” Solo photography exhibition. May 3-June 29.
“Susan Meyer: Group Chat.” Solo exhibition of mixed media sculpture. May 3-June 29.
LAMB CENTER
41 MARKET STREET, SAUGERTIES
“Sol Zaretsky: Paintings.” Work by Sol Zaretsky. May 1-31.
LOCKWOOD GALLERY
747 ROUTE 28, WEST HURLEY
“In Pursuit of Color.” Paintings by Stanford Kay, James Austin Murray, and Karlos Carcamo. Through May 11.
MAGAZZINO ITALIAN ART
2700 ROUTE 9, COLD SPRING
“Maria Lai. A Journey to America.” Comprehensive overview of Maria Lai’s ( 1919–2013) work. Through July 28.
“Qui Dentro/In Here.” Work by Lucio Pozzi, curated by David Ebony. Through June 9.
MARK GRUBER GALLERY
13 NEW PALTZ PLAZA, NEW PALTZ
“Staats Paints Mohonk.” Paintings by Staats Fasoldt. Through May 10.
MARKET STREET STUDIO
9 MARKET STREET, ELLENVILLE
“Art Stars.” Work by Ellenville High School students Kayla Barbieri, Meadow Concepcion, Emma Dechon, Hanna Horl, Alena Kasumaj, Josalyn Kehlenbeck, and Leily O’Sullivan. Through May 5.
MASS MOCA
1040 MASS MOCA WAY, NORTH ADAMS, MA
“Like Magic.” Simone Bailey, Raven Chacon, Grace Clark, Johanna Hedva, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Cate O’Connell-Richards, Rose Salane, Petra Szilagyi, Tourmaline, and Nate Young. Through August 31.
MATAGIRI SRI AUROBINDO CENTER
1218 WITTENBERG ROAD, MOUNT TREMPER
“Sam Spannier Centenary Exhibition.” Work by Sam Spannier. May 1-June 1.
MENDES WOOD DM GALLERY
10 CHURCH STREET, GERMANTOWN
“Peter Shear: A Point Between the Eyes.” New paintings by the self-taught artist. Through June 8.
MONUMENT GALLERY
29 WEST STRAND STREET, KINGSTON
“Over Under.” Trace monotypes on paper and ceramic tablet paintings cast in porcelain and stoneware by Claire Whitehurst. Through May 11.
OLIVE FREE LIBRARY
4033 ROUTE 28A, WEST SHOKAN
“Address: Earth Art Expo—Reef & Desert.” Group show curated by Bibiana Huang Matheis. May 17-July 12.
ONE MILE GALLERY
475 ABEEL STREET, KINGSTON
“Thinly Veiled.” Work by Lindsay Gwinn Parker. Through May 11.
OPUS 40
356 GEORGE SICKLE ROAD, SAUGERTIES
“Woodstock Work.” Works on paper and sculptures by Bruce Cahn (1942 - 2020). Curated by Jen Dragon. Through May 25.
PAMELA SALISBURY GALLERY
362 1/2 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“At Work.” Photographs by Lothar Osterburg.
“Invitation to Wander.” Paintings by Alex Cohen.
“She Opened her Ear to the Great Below”.
Painting by Elana Sisto.
“Threads and Cuts.” Collages by Rotem Amizur.
“Weather.” Paintings by Elizabeth Hazan. All shows through May 11.
PRIVATE PUBLIC GALLERY
530 COLUMBIA STREET, HUDSON
“The Navigator.” Work by Michael David. May 31-June 29.
RE INSTITUTE
1395 BOSTON CORNERS ROAD, MILLERTON
“Mountains.” Work by William Corwin. Through May 17.
“New Beginnings: From Sea Anemones to Astronauts.” Work by Henry Klimowicz and Barrie Schwartz. Through May 17.
REHER CENTER FOR IMMIGRANT CULTURE AND HISTORY
101 BROADWAY, KINGSTON
“Boundless Creativity: Immigrant Artists in the Hudson Valley.” Celebrates the vision of immigrant artists in the Hudson Valley. Through June 1.
ROBIN RICE GALLERY
234 WARREN STREET, HUDSON
“Three Decades of Photography, A Retrospective.” Photographs by Patricia Heal. May 3-June 22.
Change, Ryan Kraus, photograph, from the show "Focus: In Flux" at the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum.
ROOST ARTS
122 MAIN STREET, NEW PALTZ
“Spring Members Showcase.” Group show. Through May 11.
“Stone, Steel, and Paper.” Work by Dr. John Diamond. May 23-June 15.
ROUNDABOUTS NOW
25 BARBAROSSA LANE, KINGSTON
“Liquefier.” Work by Meg Lipke and Jeff Williams. May 10-June 21.
SAMUEL DORSKY MUSEUM OF ART
1 HAWK DRIVE, SUNY NEW PALTZ “Landmines.” Work by Dawoud Bey, Christina Fernandez, Richard Mosse, and Rick Silva. Through July 13.
THE SCHOOL
25 BROAD STREET, KINDERHOOK
“General Conditions.” Group show including El Anatsui, Gordon Parks, and many others. May 17-November 29.
SEPTEMBER
4 HUDSON STREET, KINDERHOOK
“I was here.” Work by Kesewa Aboah, kg, Emma Safir, Jen Simms, Odessa Straub, Amas Verdatre. Through May 11.
THE SPARK OF HUDSON
502 UNION STREET, HUDSON
“Chad Weckler: Photographs.” May 9-August 1.
SPENCERTOWN ACADEMY
790 ROUTE 203, SPENCERTOWN
“10th Annual Members Show.” Group show curated by Meryl Enerson. May 3-25. “Nurturing Nature.” Work by Deborah H. Carter, Maxine Davidowitz, Shelley Lawrence Kirkwood, Anat Shiftan, Jackie Skrzynski, and Anna Thurber. May 31-June 29.
THOMAS COLE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
218 SPRING STREET, CATSKILL
“Emily Cole: Ceramics, Flora & Contemporary Responses.” Work by the daughter of Thomas Cole. May 3-November 2.
TIME AND SPACE LIMITED
434 COLUMBIA STREET, HUDSON
“Decades.” Paintings by Donna Moylan. Through May 18.
TREMAINE ART GALLERY AT THE HOTCHKISS SCHOOL
11 INTERLAKEN ROAD, LAKEVILLE, CT
“Perspective Narrative.” Group alumni show. May 2-June 7.
TYTE GALLERY
3280 FRANKLIN AVENUE, MILLBROOK
“Rudy Vavra: Paintings.” Through May 31.
WASSAIC PROJECT
37 FURNACE BANK ROAD, WASSAIC
“So It Goes.” Group show curated by Bowie Zunino, Will Hutnick, Jeff Barnett-Winsby, and Eve Biddle. May 17-September 13.
WIRED GALLERY
11 MOHONK ROAD, HIGH FALLS
“Serendipity.” Work by Michael Hopkins. Through May 11.
“What Was.” Work by Kristin Flynn. Through May 11.
“Vintages.” Reimagined photographs from a bygone era by Michael Gold. May 17-June 8.
WOODSTOCK ARTISTS ASSOCIATION AND MUSEUM
28 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK
“Paola Bari: Nature, Revisited.” Sculptural ceramics. May 9-June 22.
“Focus: In Flux.” Group show. May 9-June 22. “Recent Acquisitions.” Group show curated by Tom Wolf. May 9-August 10.
WOODSTOCK PLAYHOUSE
103 MILL HILL ROAD, WOODSTOCK
“Standpoint 3.” Work by J. W. Cornbroom, Naoko Oshima, Archil Pichkadze, Stacie Flint, and Mark Hopkins. Through June 1.
WOODSTOCK SCHOOL OF ART
2470 ROUTE 212, WOODSTOCK
“Woodstock School of Art Showcase Exhibition III.” Group show. May 3-June 7.
LINDSEY A. WOLKOWICZ
May 17 - Jun 21, 2025 Opening Reception - Sat, May 17, 4-6pm
Lindsey A. Wolkowicz, detail of Between Us (There are mountains), 2025
JANE ST. ART CENTER • 11 Jane St, Ste A, Saugerties, NY, 12477 (845) 217-5715 • janestreetartcenter.com
Helping visitors understand the historical forces that have shaped America.
New Paltz, NY / (845) 255-1660 For Information on Tours and Events Visit: www.HuguenotStreet.org
Artist Talk: Sat., May 17, 3 - 4 pm
JEREMY DENNIS
Rise: Scenes of Resistance May 17 - June 22, 2025
Opening Reception: Sat., May 17, 5 - 7 pm
Family Workshop: Sun., May 18, 12 - 1:30 pm
Adult Workshop: Sun., May 18, 3 - 5 pm
Sol Zaretsky PAINTINGS featuring beaded sculpture by Connie Lam
May 2025 Friday-Sunday, 1pm-6pm Lamb Center, 41 Market Street, Saugerties, New York
23 Garrison's Landing Garrison, NY 10524 845-424-3960 garrisonartcenter.org Sol Zaretsky Paintings featuring Connie Lam beaded sculpture
Horoscopes
By Cory Nakasue
Toeholds, Traction, then DoubleJointed Movement
The fabric of reality starts to solidify in May. With Mars and Venus finally leaving retrograde territory, Saturn’s move from dissipating Pisces into single-pointed Aries, and Mercury moving unfettered through the sky, progress and clarity are within reach. Add to that three weeks of the Sun in steadfast Taurus and two uncomplicated lunations, and we might feel like we’ve finally landed. Whether we’ve landed somewhere we want to be or not is a whole other conversation, but at least we’ll know where we’re at after months of freefall.
During the first week of May we’ll be acclimating to the slowdown. By the time Mercury enters Taurus on the 10th, we can fully luxuriate in tending to the practical and sensual matters of life, and yes, this includes sleeping, resting, and indulging in spring’s full expression. A full Moon in Scorpio on May 12 makes it clear that we can’t have the intimacy we crave until we can differentiate determination from stubbornness. This full Moon opposes disruptive Uranus, so our senses of material, emotional, and economic security will be tested.
We’ll be craving levity and movement by the 20th, when the Sun enters variety-seeking Gemini. Our curiosities will compound as Mercury enters its home sign of Gemini on May 25, followed by a new Moon in Gemini on the 26th and Mercury’s conjunction with the Sun on the 30th. There are brand new insights to be shared, multiple perspectives to juggle, and restless urges for novelty that must be pursued by month’s end.
ARIES (March 20–April 19)
You’re embarking upon a rather merciless vetting process of the habits, attitudes, and relationships that give shape to your life. It’s as if you’re a sculptor searching for a more definite image, chipping chunks of marble off anything that obscures the contours you’re looking for. Physically, psychologically, and energetically, you’re streamlining the person that you are. By getting rid of anything and anyone that gets in the way of embodying your desired form, you not only simplify yourself, you also turn your fleeting energy into sustainable matter. This may slow your roll, but it takes time and determination to become formidable.
The most significant transit of the month is Saturn’s entrance into Aries on the 24th. The planet of gravitas, limits, and hard-won wisdom enters the sign of instantaneous action. This will be a three-month preview of its longer, more consequential stay that lasts from 2026 through 2028. Cory Nakasue is an astrology counselor, writer, and teacher. Her podcast, “The Cosmic Dispatch,” is
TAURUS (April 19–May 20)
People talk a lot about unlearning, unraveling, and undoing before starting something new, but most people underestimate the amount of time and work this takes. For the next few years, you will be in a place of unwinding yourself from all the lessons and experiences that don’t apply to a future version of yourself. This might look like wrapping up projects that are underway, discarding belongings, alliances, and beliefs that have served their purpose, or confronting self-sabotaging hangups. However this is expressing itself in your life, it’s a good time to begin any kind of contemplative practice to help you do a thorough job.
GEMINI (May 20–June 21)
By month’s end, you’ll be feeling at home with yourself and the world, feeling free to sample all the shiny objects that catch your attention and mixing with a wide variety of people and situations. There is, however, a weightier and farther-reaching project in the works. In the realm of your social life and long-term aspirations, the cosmos is asking you to pick sides and commit to a group of allies and long-term goals. Gemini is much more comfortable shapeshifting and keeping one foot out the door. Integrating yourself with and committing to the right group/projects brings rewards.
CANCER
(June 21–July 22)
The month begins as a delicious time for you socially and ends with an equally scrumptious time of privacy. There are many conversations to be had with your subconscious, your dreaming life, and all forms of the natural world. I see you excitedly scribbling in your journal, picking flowers, and planting seeds. This all coincides with the introduction of a longer period of developing and crystallizing your power and influence in the roles you play in the world at large. Responsibilities that are actually growth opportunities might introduce themselves soon. Be selfish with your time during the last week of May.
LEO (July 22–August 23)
You are approaching a period of peak understanding. A lot of what seemed illegible, confusing, or nebulous in the past is beginning to take solid form. This makes it easier to take wholehearted action. When our beliefs and actions are aligned, our actions have a bigger impact on our reality. Remember, just because you’re arriving at a peak in your comprehension, that doesn’t mean that you have perfect comprehension of life and your role in it. It serves you best to find practical applications for your philosophies—and all teaching and learning projects. What will you do with all this knowledge?
VIRGO (August 23–September 23)
Being forced to cooperate with others to get what we need is one the most transformative experiences we can go through during our lifetimes. It puts us in a position that requires surrender or softening to enable merging with another person or entity. We often focus on the parts of our individuality we’re losing; a sense of control, ego, or autonomy. It’s important to remember that when we allow ourselves to relinquish our rigid shapes, we have the chance to grow and receive the benefits from others as well.
Life Happens. Plan.
ASSOCIATES
LIBRA (September 23–October 23)
People often panic when Saturn makes its way through the part of their chart that has to do with relationships. This year, you’re getting a preview of this longer transit that will be in full effect next year. You’re beginning a process of strengthening and creating clearer definitions of the agreements you make with others. To do this, your relationships will be tested, and you’ll actually need to more accurately identify what makes you different from others. In what ways do you mistake parts of yourself as attributes of others? In what ways do you outsource your responsibility to yourself?
HIGH SOCIETY
The culture of cannabis, from Chronogram
Summer Arts Preview
Highlight Your Business in June
Chronogram’s most anticipated issue of the year is almost here—our 2025 Summer Arts Preview is an insider guide to the season’s most exciting performances, exhibitions, and creative happenings. Don’t miss the chance to get in front of 100,000+ monthly readers in print and online. This is your moment to be seen, celebrated, and shared.
SCORPIO (October 23–November 22)
Conserve your energies for only the most important projects and people in your life. In a few years, you’re going to arrive at a culmination point. This means that right now you’re in a critical phase of preparation. If you are an artist, this would be the time of devoting yourself to your creations; a time of blood, sweat, and tears. What distractions do you need to rid yourself of? What people are getting in the way? Even if you’re not an artist, treat yourself like one. Dedicate yourself to the meticulous upkeep of your instrument(s), hone your skills, and stay inspired.
SAGITTARIUS (November 22–December 22)
Most Sagittarians like schools of one sort or another, or at the very least, the act of teaching and learning. You’re entering a time when life lessons will be coming from all directions—even from the places and people you’d least expect. And, yes, there will be homework. There’s a refining of your self-expression in the works. At first, it might feel very limiting, but you’re about to attend the school of “less is more.” Flying by the seat of your pants can be fun, and feel very natural, but aren’t you curious about the powers of self-possession?
CAPRICORN
(December 22–January 20)
You may be wondering, no matter how much you’ve accomplished in life, why it feels like you’re starting at square one. The cyclic nature of life can be quite humbling, but accepting that everything has a life cycle that eventually brings us back to the beginning can be quite freeing. Focus on the foundations you’d like to build for your next undertaking. Reflect on the lessons you’ve learned from your family of origin. If there is unfinished business that’s weighing heavy on you, now is the time to address it. Tend to your roots, and the leaves will take care of themselves.
AQUARIUS
(January 20–February 19)
It might feel like you’re walking through a hall of mirrors. At times it’s fun, but sometimes it can feel scary or confusing. If you’re having trouble discerning fact from fiction, or are just feeling lost, know that you’re starting a process of mental restructuring. One of the best things about confusion is it gets our attention. It makes us question how we know what we know. Often, when we look at something, we take for granted that we’re just perceiving what’s there. You now have the opportunity to differentiate the things you’re looking at from the lenses you’re looking through.
PISCES (February 20–March 19)
your space today:
Our material possessions tend to reflect what we value, what we find beautiful, and what makes us feel secure. If we’re unclear about what we value, we may exert an unnecessary amount of effort managing our possessions or our finances. You’re entering a phase of reevaluating your worth and the worth of everything in your life. Imagine that you’re rewriting the price tags you place on your time, your skills, and your relationships. What can you give away? What have you undervalued? If you do a good job with this, your money, and material possessions will take care of themselves.
Omega Institute ........................................6
Paula’s Runway Cafe 52
Peekamoose Restaurant & Tap Room 22
Red Maple Vineyard -
Harm nious Development
This Ain’t Your Land
Dan Goldman’s Anonymous Portraits
Dan Goldman’s latest photo exhibit doesn’t whisper—it withholds. “This Ain’t Your Land,” now on view at Convey/er/or Gallery in Poughkeepsie through June 1, features a series of striking portraits of anonymous subjects shielding their faces with slips of paper. These are not acts of modesty or mystique. These are refusals. Refusals to be seen, to be claimed, to be archived, to be erased.
“I consider myself an activist artist,” Goldman says. “I’m not trying to make beautiful pictures. I’m trying to make images that demand engagement with what’s happening right now.”
The title, of course, rewrites the inclusive gospel of Woody Guthrie into a protest hymn. This land ain’t your land—not if you’re undocumented, not if you’re Indigenous, not if you’re on the wrong end of a border drawn in ink and blood. Goldman’s work delivers a visual rebuke to the myth of American inclusivity, offering a quieter, tenser landscape, where survival demands invisibility and resistance is often silent.
Shot in black-and-white, the photographs have the stillness of mid-century documentary work but hum with contemporary unease. That’s no accident. Goldman cites Dorothea Lange as an influence—specifically her impulse to bear witness with a lens and a conscience. “There’s something about that era’s visual language that still speaks to this moment,” Goldman says. “But instead of
faces of suffering, we have covered faces. Not because there’s nothing to say, but because the system won’t listen.”
In one image after another, a man stands in a sunlit field, body square to the camera, face partially obscured by a blank piece of paper. In another, a person’s face has been washed away like a wave on the sand. It’s protest by redaction. Each photo confronts the viewer with what’s missing—and dares them to fill in the silence.
Goldman began this series in response to the surge in anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy over the last decade. “I was seeing people disappear— figuratively and literally—from the American conversation,” he says. “And I felt like the only way to respond was to build a kind of visual record that acknowledged their presence without exposing them to further harm.”
There’s a long tradition of artists responding to national trauma with metaphor and myth. Goldman goes another way. His myth is already broken. His metaphor doesn’t hide the message—it carries it, blank-faced, toward the camera, like a protestor who won’t give you their name.
An artist talk with Goldman will be held at Convey/er/or Gallery on May 18 at 3pm. Bring your questions—and maybe a blank piece of paper.
—Brian K. Mahoney
Migrant Worker, Dan Goldman, photographic triptych, 2024
savor
Find joy and make memories.
We’re gearing up for a fun summer season in our charming small towns. We’re starting with a finger-licking good, good old-fashioned BBQ and it only gets better from there. Float down a river. Sing out loud with the band. Cast a fly in crystal clear waters. Hike with goats. Take an alpaca walk. Sip on a craft brew or a handcrafted spirit. There are more things to do here than summer has weekends.
Dave Matthews Band: May 24
Bethel Woods
Catskills BBQ: June 7
Grahamsville Fairgrounds
Legends of the LPGA Charity Golf Tournament: June 26-28 Monster Golf Course at Resorts World Catskills
